As a companion to the recent post on why football is a special part of Thanksgiving for many sports fans, I’m going to explain some of the plot points of the three Thanksgiving day football games this year.
Game 1 — Packers at Lions, 12:30 on Fox
Game 2 — Raiders at Cowboys, 4:30 on CBS
Game 3 — Steelers at Ravens, 8:30 on NBC
I’m thankful to everyone who has read, commented, asked a question, or otherwise supported Dear Sports Fan this year.
Thanks and have a wonderful holiday,
Ezra Fischer
Pittsburgh Steelers at Baltimore Ravens, 8:30 on NBC
The turkey’s been brined, basted, braised, and broiled. The pie has been eaten. The family has been feuded with. Just when you’re ready to sneak back into the kitchen for a turkey sandwich… BOOM! another football game begins.
When the people who create the NFL schedule put this one on the docket for Thanksgiving night, they probably thought they were pretty clever. Baltimore had just won the Super Bowl and Pittsburgh, although it had just missed the playoffs, was a perennial power that had made it to the Super Bowl three times in the past ten years and won it twice. As two of the four teams in the AFC North, Baltimore and Pittsburgh were natural rivals known for playing close and fierce games against one another. Finally, both teams were known for being led by smothering, violent defenses whose aim seemed equally to prevent their opponents from scoring and from finishing the game without broken bones. They were the perfect choice to lure fans back to the television after a long day and to keep them alert through a haze of tryptophan.
In the NFL, the best laid schemes of men and schedulers often go awry. The defending champion Baltimore Ravens started the season by getting blown out by the Denver Broncos, rallied a bit, and have now lost four of their last six games. They’re really struggling and at 5-6 are two games back from the division leading Cincinnati Bengals. The Steelers are in exactly the same position at 5-6 but got there very differently. They started the season with four straight losses and looked like they were doomed to a painful few years of losing a lot while slowly rebuilding the talent on their team. After their second loss the veterans on the team decided to ban the rookies from playing ping-pong or pool in the locker room. After the fourth loss, the coach tried to “unify” the team by banning everyone from playing any games[1] in the locker room. This seems to have had[2] the intended effect and from that point on the Steelers have won five of their last seven games.
Based on the team’s identical records and their both being two games behind the division lead with only four games to play, their game on Thanksgiving night will have a big impact on whether or not they will make the playoffs. In every sport, there is a palpable difference in play between a regular season game and a playoff game. The NFL is less different from other sports because its short 16 game season makes every regular season game proportionally more important than one of 82 in the NHL or the NBA or one in 162 in the MLB. Still, the hitting will be harder, the scrambling more desperate, and the decisions even more agonized over in this game.
Enjoy the drama and the leftovers!