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Give him a Sunday game anytime. (Ron Jenkins/Star-Telegram)
A member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame says it’s dangerous for the NFL to put players on the field for Thanksgiving.
Former Raiders coach and CBS and Fox analyst John Madden tells KCBS that the break is not long enough:
“I don’t know that the body can really do that. I’m against Thursday football. I don’t think two or three days is enough to heal up. We talk about safety. … Sometimes, we have to think about the bodies playing these games. And I don’t think going from Sunday to Thursday is right.”
Ron Kroichick of the San Francisco Chronicle expands on the idea:
It’s insulting to preach player safety on one front (such as cracking down on helmet-to-helmet hits) and then arrange a schedule with no regard for players’ health. Tradition might explain today’s games in Detroit and Dallas, but the Thursday night package on NFL Network – seven games, from Week 10 through Week 16 – has nothing to do with tradition.
League officials need to remember the primitive nature of their sport and its brutal toll on the human body. They need to stand on the sideline and watch, up close, as abnormally massive men, running at abnormally swift speeds, collide with abnormally violent force – on play after play after play.
Madden, in a phone interview Wednesday, recalled how long it took his Raiders players to recover from games. Late in the season, they usually didn’t feel normal again until Friday or Saturday.
Six teams, including the 49ers, do not have that luxury this week.
