Is Bad Football Breaking Al Michaels?

[PGage]

Twitter has had fun worrying about Al doing several bad football games in a row. Last week he noted that the Colts/Broncos games was like the 7th worst Regional Sunday game, and this week he continued to bitch and moan over how bad the Bears/Commanders game was. 

But, of course Michaels knew the TNF games would be bad, they almost always are the worst matchup of the week. I was surprised when it was announced at the end of last season that he took the Amazon gig, thinking he would just retire (he does seem to have lost a step to me) or maybe take an emeritus role on NBC’s SNF game. Maybe he needs the money (some rumors he gambles and plays the stock market), but it seems unlikely to me he is that hard up. 

So why complain so much when he is only getting what he signed up for? It makes me suspect Amazon wants him to in order to try to pressure the NFL to give them better games next year.

In other Al Michaels message delivery system news, he also opined this week that Dan Snyder should sell the Commanders. Which, of course he should, and this was clear long before the nasty speculations about him reported recently. But unless Al is in pure “Old Man out of Fucks To Give” mode, this reeks of Roger and Jerry and other NFL big wigs sending a very visible, virtual horse head message to Snyder.

https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2022/10/14/al-michaels-commanders-bears-tweets

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[JW]

> So why complain so much when he is only getting what he signed up for? It
> makes me suspect Amazon wants him to in order to try to pressure the NFL to

> give them better games next year.

I suspect you're overthinking it. I'm sure Al knew that he'd be getting lesser matchups on Thursdays; what neither he nor viewers expected was games as awful as the last two Thursday nights. And Michaels has reached the point where he can "tell it like it is" (to cite one of his former colleagues) and call bad football bad football.

[PGage]

No doubt I am overthinking it. But, while bad, I don’t think the games have been any worse than they have been in recent years (indeed, while inartful, they have at least been competitive), and are just what he should have expected them to be.

My hypothesis that he is lobbying to get better games assigned to Amazon is an attempt to be charitable to him. If not, I see him less as honestly telling it like it is, and more as a rich and entitled asshole who took a lot of money to call bad games and then angle to get cheap ratings by taking a public dump on the predictably bad teams whose games he had to call. 

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[Tom Wolper]

The NFL schedule comes out in April and there’s no way to tell which teams will be good or which matchups will be compelling in mid-October. Thursday football has never been a good idea and maybe now coaches and players are adjusting to it. Michaels can’t lobby for better games because nobody knows what will be a good game when the schedule is drawn up.

The Dan Snyder story is long and complicated, mostly because the league is controlled by the owners and they have no interest in institutionalizing forcing an owner to sell. ESPN has a really long article explaining the situation and it’s clear that no comment made during a game broadcast can influence a decision.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/34778123/washington-commanders-owner-dan-snyder-claims-dirt-nfl-owners-roger-goodell

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[Pete Ahles]

Sunday night and Monday night games are picked by the schedulers to showcase the better teams.

The league has mandated that every team gets a Thursday game.

Pete

[Tom Wolper]

Sunday night games can be flexed. Monday games go to a much larger audience than Thursday, which is Amazon Prime and NFL+ (on mobile devices) only.

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[PGage]

I’m not sure I agree with your police work there. Of course it’s not possible to know for sure if a matchup will be good or bad in April, but they can make some reasonable projections. 

I count 30 of 36 teams on the SNF schedule (counting the season opener on Thursday) who made the playoffs in 2021 (83%), vs  18 of 32 playoff teams (56%) on the Amazon TNF schedule. 

Every single SNF game feature at least one playoff team, 12 feature two playoff teams, none feature no playoff teams. In contrast, TNF has only 6 scheduled games with two playoff teams, and 4 with neither team having been in the playoffs. All of that of course before any flexing.

Moreover, SNF has what I will identify as the 4 most desirable teams (Dallas Cowboys, Tampa Bay Brady’s, and the two Super Bowl Teams) a total of 11 times in 18 games (61%) while TNF has them only 4 of 16 games (25%).

I suppose I would need to do some more to show that the TNF are worse than the other Sunday day games, so I will modify my claim to say that Michaels had to know he was going to get significantly worse games than he got on SNF (Or MNF when he was at ABC, which got one of the two best games when Al was there).

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[Pete Ahles]

On Sat, Oct 15, 2022 at 3:40 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

I count 30 of 36 teams on the SNF schedule (counting the season opener on Thursday) who made the playoffs in 2021 (83%), vs  18 of 32 playoff teams (56%) on the Amazon TNF schedule. 

That was my point. The Thursday games include all the teams. Not just the playoff teams.

[JW]

> I count 30 of 36 teams on the SNF schedule (counting the season opener on
> Thursday) who made the playoffs in 2021 (83%), vs 18 of 32 playoff teams

> (56%) on the Amazon TNF schedule.

You made me look. There are 15 TNF games. Tennessee is in two, while the Lions, Vikings and Giants miss out. However, those three teams (as well as Dallas, Buffalo and New England) play on Thanksgiving. (Thanksgiving night is on NBC, not Amazon.)

Essentially, since the short week is such a big deal, the league spreads it around as evenly as possible. No amount of lobbying by Al Michaels, or anyone else, is going to get good teams into more Thursday games. The idea of giving teams byes the week before their Thursday games has been floating around, and it would likely make for better football, but the NFL doesn't seem to be in any hurry to do that.