An NFL game the night before Thanksgiving is officially ‘too much football’

Not to offend anyone, but are we sure there is no such a thing as too much football?

On Wednesday, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that the NFL is “considering” adding a game the night before Thanksgiving to its annual schedule, possibly beginning as early as the 2026 season. Of course, the NFL does not do much “considering” these days. The league just does it.

And given that the NFL is shopping four extra games to (likely) a streamer, it is safe to expect a game on Thanksgiving Eve as soon as this season.

As for the league’s motivation, Netflix currently pays the NFL $75 million dollars per game for its Christmas Day doubleheaders. Exclusively streaming a game on the night before Thanksgiving could cost a similar amount.

With a market cap nearing $4 trillion dollars, YouTube parent company Alphabet is positioned to outbid any potential rivals. YouTube vice president of subscriptions, Christian Oestlien, also recently expressed interest in adding more NFL games to the platform.

“We want YouTube to be a core part of their media distribution,” Oestlien told The Athletic. 

For background, the expectation is that the Wednesday night game would air in addition to the rest of the Thanksgiving and Black Friday slate.

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Here’s a look at the potential 10-day stretch of football this November:

• Saturday: Full college football slate 
• Sunday: Full NFL slate 
• Monday: Monday Night Football 
• Tuesday: MACtion Wednesday: NFL game 
• Thanksgiving: the NFL games 
• Black Friday: NFL game 
• Saturday: college football rivalry week 
• Sunday: Full NFL slate 
• Monday: Monday Night Football

Even if you do not count the college football games, that is a lot of football. It also follows a familiar pattern of further diluting the NFL product, whose popularity was once tied to its scarcity.

Thanksgiving football is a tradition, though it is less exciting to wake up that morning to watch the first matchups of the new week if there was already a game the night before. Likewise, NFL RedZone gained cultural appeal as a way to follow a slate of intriguing matchups on Sundays at once. Yet, by the first Sunday after Thanksgiving, 10 teams will have already played.

Further, there would still be three nationally televised games left between Sunday afternoon (which is national for most of the country), Sunday Night Football, and Monday Night Football.

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And there are simply not enough good, interesting teams to spread the national schedule that wide.

Last year, just one of the teams playing on Thanksgiving made the playoffs, the Packers. The other five did not: Chiefs, Cowboys, Bengals, Ravens, and Lions.

The highly touted Christmas Day slate was worse. Cowboys vs. Commanders featured two teams already eliminated from the postseason. The Chiefs vs. Broncos featured a Kansas City team without Patrick Mahomes that was also already eliminated from the playoffs. Lions vs. Vikings featured two non-playoff teams in a 23-to-10 game with Max Brosmer at quarterback for Minnesota.

“But, Bobby, do not watch if you do not like it. Go watch a true crime doc,” some X user is about to demand.

Look, maybe I will. However, most of you will not. And no one is arguing that Americans won’t watch the extra games on television.

Still, at some point, the proliferation of poorly played nationally televised games, combined with a shortage of exciting matchups on Sunday, will push viewers to one day, wait for it, skip a game or two.

The league is also not as invincible as it presents itself.

Last season was not the win that the league touts. The NFL claims a 10 percent year-over-year viewership increase, marking the second-highest audience average since tracking began in 1988. But that is not exactly true.

The television industry believes that, by Nielsen changing its tracking methodology to Big Data + Panel last August, estimates for live sports events are up roughly 8%. So the 2025 regular season did not record a true double-digit increase.

Applying the same logic, the Super Bowl decline was likely closer to 7 to 10% rather than the 2%.

These are not dramatic collapses. Yet the idea that the NFL continues to gain popularity year over year, regardless of its scheduling decisions, is misleading.

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Call me all the names you want. We don’t need football games on Wednesdays and Fridays, early Sunday mornings in Europe, and probably somehow on Tuesdays. 

We also shouldn’t need six to seven different services/channels to watch the games, as the expansion of Thanksgiving week football would require.