They can’t all be winners, can they?
As the NFL continues to make Christmas a pro football holiday, the trend has potential pitfalls. Including the very real possibility that the games to be played on December 25 will have little if any meaning to either or both of the teams involved.
Recent developments have made this season’s three-pack of games something far less enticing than gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
It will get started in nine days with Cowboys at Commanders. Both teams are more cooked than overdone roast beast.
Then comes Lions-Vikings. Detroit is scrambling to avoid missing the playoffs, which gives the game a little pop. The Vikings — who have won two in a row and are 6-8 — were eliminated on Sunday, when the Bears beat the Browns.
The day ends with the Broncos at the Chiefs. With the Chiefs eliminated. And with Gardner Minshew playing quarterback for the home team. Why would folks in Kansas City want to venture out on Christmas night to watch that one?
For in-home viewers who root for other teams, there’s a certain schadenfreude factor that will prompt those who had developed Chiefs fatigue to tune in and relish what should be a long night for the franchise that had appeared in three straight Super Bowls and five of the last six. Still, it will hardly be must-see streaming for Prime Video.
One factor is the calendar. With Labor Day landing on September 1 this year, the season started as early as it ever does. Which puts Christmas in Week 17. Which makes it harder to effectively predict in May the games that will matter in late December.
For that reason, don’t be surprised if the NFL eventually builds flexibility into the Christmas games, like it does for the late-season Saturday when five games are flagged as candidates for the three standalone spots.
Few teams are eliminated and thus irrelevant by Thanksgiving. More teams are and will be out of it by the time Christmas rolls around. If the NFL wants to maximize the audience for those games, it will have to either hit the bull’s-eye in May, or it needs to have the ability to move the dart.
