NFL schedule: Piecing together a Thursday night puzzle

By Craig Ellenport

After six years with a half-season of Thursday night games, the NFL awarded its own network a full slate of Thursday games for the first time this year – and it created a giant headache for the folks at 345 Park Avenue charged with creating that schedule. As one of the league’s schedule-makers put it, “They took a really hard problem and made it exponentially harder.”

For the record, this person wasn’t complaining – putting the schedule together is a rewarding challenge. He’s used to hearing complaints from owners about short weeks, long road trips and December games at Lambeau Field. It’s all a learning process, and – let’s face it – there’s no such thing as a bad NFL schedule.

So what makes it so difficult to schedule 13 games for NFL Network’s Thursday night package? Let’s take a look at some of the intricacies of the process…

For starters, the NFL adopted a policy that no team will be forced to play more than one “short week.” That means the six teams scheduled to play on Thanksgiving -- the Texans, Lions, Redskins, Cowboys, Patriots and Jets – are all out of the picture. And since this is the first year that NBC will be airing the Thanksgiving night game, that means arguably the best Thursday night matchup of the year – Patriots at Jets – is not on the NFL Network schedule.

That leaves 26 teams to fill 26 spots. And some pretty good teams playing on Thanksgiving that cannot be part of the NFLN package. In fact, it’s the first time since the network began its Thursday night package that the Cowboys are not on the slate.

Another new policy the league implemented after the Competition Committee weighed in: No TNF games in which a team has to travel more than one time zone. If that were in place last year, you wouldn’t have had Jets-Broncos, Eagles-Seahawks or the Harbaugh Bowl, 49ers-Ravens. (Note: This is not a hard-and-fast rule, and so there is one such game this season – Kansas City at San Diego.)

Between the short week and time zone limitations, it’s no wonder that none of the 12 games that NFL.com’s Elliot Harrison cited as the most intriguing matchups of 2012 are on the TNF schedule. Five are multiple time zone trips; six feature teams playing on Thanksgiving. The 12^th game is Green Bay at Chicago, which isn’t a TNF game – but Chicago at Green Bay is on the slate. Which should not be a big surprise given the limitations.

With so few choices to fill out 13 games, there’s really only one way to make them compelling: make them division games. Thus, nine of the 13 NFL Network TNF games are division games. (I heard Mike Mayock say this week that he “can’t wait” for the Cleveland-Baltimore game in Week 4. Okay, sure.)

A couple of other considerations when piecing this puzzle together:

* We’re not saying there aren’t some terrific TNF matchups. Bears-Packers, Giants-Panthers, Broncos-Raiders. Here’s what those games have in common: They are all scheduled for non-bye weeks. Why? Because if you’re going to pull those good matchups off the board for FOX and CBS, networks that are paying billions to air NFL games, then you at least want to give them a full complement of remaining games.

* Of the four non-divisional games, only one can really be considered a clunker: Buccaneers at Vikings in Week 8. Well, that one is going up against the World Series, so it’s essentially a sacrificial lamb.

Then again, would you be surprised if the least anticipated Thursday night NFL game outdrew a World Series game?