For sports fans, the weekend is a cornucopia of wonderful games to watch. This is particularly true in the fall with its traditional pattern of College Football on Saturday and NFL Football on Sunday and Monday. As the parent, child, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband, wife, roommate, or best friend of a sports fan, this can be a challenge. It must be true that some games are more important to watch than others but it’s hard to know which is which. As a sports fan, the power of habit and hundreds of thousands of marketing dollars get in the way of remembering to take a break from sports and do something with your parent, child, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband, wife, roommate, or best friend. To aid all of us in this, and just because it’s fun, I’m going to write a weekly post highlighting a single game that is ideal for skipping. Use this to help tell yourself or someone else: “Do not watch this game!”
Thursday, 8:25 p.m. ET, NFL Football, Kansas City Chiefs at Oakland Raiders. It’s on the NFL Network, but do not watch this game!
Some weeks, it’s difficult to write this post. After all, I am a big sports fan. I play fantasy football. I often say that I’m happy watching any kind of sporting event at all, and it’s true. I’ve got a long record of stopping on the sidewalk in New York to watch kids play basketball or handball. One of the elements of a trip in Europe I took last year which I loved was watching all the weird sports they televise out there in hotel rooms. Plus, I’m an optimistic guy — I always think the underdog has a chance to win. So, it’s sometimes tricky for me to pick a game to suggest skipping. The way I usually write the post is this. I head over to 506 Sports NFL maps to see which games are being televised when and to who. There’s no point in recommending that you skip one a game that only a small portion of the country could see anyway. For that reason, I look at the nationally televised NFL games first — Thursday, Sunday, and Monday nights, and then if all of them are too good to miss, I look on Sunday afternoon to see if there is a relatively big game that’s worth looking twice at. I look at point spreads to find games that are unlikely to be close and read other people’s previews of the NFL to hear what they think of the weekend’s slate of games.
I didn’t have to do any of that this week. This week, the answer is so clear, it basically leaps up out of my laptop screen and slaps me in the face as if I’m in Monty Python and it’s a fish. The Thursday Night football game this week is absolutely not worth watching! I’m not even going to provide an alternative this week. If you’re a Raiders fan, then… I’m sorry but save yourself the heartache and do something else. If you’re a Chiefs fan, have some mercy. You don’t need to see your team blow the poor Raiders out of the water.
The Raiders are winless so far this season and they look suspiciously like they might end the year that way too. It’s not all bad for them, they’ve been starting a rookie quarterback, Derek Carr, who looks like he might be quite good at some point. After all, even great quarterbacks like Peyton Manning (who went 3-13 his rookie year) need some time to mature. The Raiders have also managed to keep a bunch of their games relatively close. They came within a touchdown of beating the Chargers last week. They stuck nicely with the Seahawks a few weeks ago as well as the Patriots in Week 3. The problem is, the Chiefs are not to be trifled with right now. After starting the season slowly, they’ve won five games in a row and seven of the last eight. They’re fourth in the league at running the ball, averaging over 140 yards per game at an average of almost five yards per rush. The Raiders are the sixth worst in the league at rush defense. Not a combination that’s going to make for a good game.
Look, I can’t lie to you. There’s a part of me that does want to watch this game. There’s a 99% chance that it’s going to be horribly lopsided, which means there’s a 1% chance that it’s going to be hysterical and exciting to watch the Raiders win. In some ways, that’s more fun than a game that’s 50/50. Still, if you want to skip a night of sports, this is a good one to skip. We’re about to enter a period of eight days with an extra full day of football (three games on Thanksgiving) so it’s probably a good idea to store up some non-football watching goodwill.