You may or may not be ready for some football. Your rowdy friends may or may not be coming over.
Regardless, there are 13 NFL preseason games today. Thirteen.
Beyond the issue of triskaidekaphobia, it’s a lot of games for one day. Especially since there was only one on Thursday, none — NONE! — on Friday, and two on Sunday.
Although the NFL would love to swap out all preseason games for regular-season games (and inevitably will), the league is leaving meat on the bone by jamming so many games into one day. A prime-time Friday night game would have done well.
At least there’s a Fox game on Sunday at 8:00 p.m. ET (Saints-49ers). However, the only other game that day also starts at 8:00 p.m. ET (Packers-Broncos, on NFL Network).
Today, the games start at noon ET, and the finale kicks off 10 hours later. It’ll be Falcons-Ravens at 12:00 p.m. ET, Bengals-Bears at 1:00 p.m. ET, Giants-Texans at 1:00 p.m. ET, Lions-Chiefs at 4:00 p.m. ET, Vikings-Browns at 4:25 p.m. ET, six games at 7:00 p.m. ET (Jets-Panthers, Cardinals-Colts, Commanders-Dolphins, Bills-Steelers, Rams-Chargers, which technically kicks off at 7:05 p.m. ET), and Cowboys-Raiders at 10:00 p.m. ET.
They could have spread it around a little more. Which would have generated more eyeballs and ratings and money.
Next weekend will be better — two on Thursday, three on Friday, eight on Saturday, and three on Sunday. And then the preseason will be over, with the final countdown on for Ravens-Chiefs on September 5, Packers-Eagles on September 6, and the first full Sunday of the 2024 regular season on September 8.
