Can Thursday Night Football be canceled? Thursday Night Football first started in the 2008 season. 

On paper it seems like an amazing thing for fans, another day of football. 

“It’s nice to watch football [for] three days a week,” junior Thomas LaPine said. 

But the questions that are raised with Thursday Night Football are whether the players have enough time to rest from their last game. 

“They’re coming straight from a Sunday game,” junior Joseph Di Leva said. “They have less time to recover.” 

The players only have four days of rest between Sunday and Thursday. 

Many players believe that isn’t enough time to rest. 

In 2017, the NFL acknowledged that players did get more injuries on Thursday than other days in the 2017 season. 

But the NFL said that the injury increase was far too small to lead to the cancellation of Thursday Night Football.

The data supports the NFL. 2017 was an outlier year all over years it has been shown that players are less likely to be injured on Thursdays. 

Yet the conversation is always being brought up. In 2017 it was brought up when Richard Sherman ruptured his achilles in a Thursday night game. 

This points to an interview Sherman had in 2016 where he describes Thursday games as a “poopfest” and “terrible.” Same with this 2021 season Christian McCaffrey suffered an injury in a Thursday night game. 

And the conversations started up again. McCaffrey and Sherman were the one of best in their positions going into their seasons. 

Big players being injured on Thursday games seem to be the common factor in these conversations starting. 

But the players’ voices should not be silenced. Sherman voiced his opinion on Thursday night games. 

Many players have shown their unhappiness with Thursday games. Fans should not be angered by these players. Fans will never understand the struggle of these players. 

Same with the NFL. Truly the NFL’s biggest reason they will most likely never stop Thursday games is money. 

The NFL is making $450 million from CBS and NBC for Thursday night games. 

This isn’t about player safety. This is about the lack of caring from the NFL. Players make the NFL not money. 

“But when it comes down to it, it’s not the players that the NFL protects,” Sherman said.