When the NFL announced the 2024 schedule earlier this year, Al Michaels immediately hailed the “exciting” Thursday Night Football slate, saying “I can give you a great storyline for every one of these games.”
Four months later, Michaels is still excited about the TNF schedule, which kicks off this week with a great matchup as the Miami Dolphins host their AFC East rival Buffalo Bills.
Michaels, 79, had criticized Amazon Prime’s TNF schedule in the past, once comparing calling a game between bad teams like selling a “used car.” Many fans agreed that Thursday games were not the cream of the NFL crop.
The 2024 schedule features a number of intriguing matchups. Michaels has a theory on why the TNF slate is vastly improved. He told The New York Post he believes the NFL has a better understanding about the importance of streaming games.
“Early on, the first year, it was not so much my displeasure with the actual schedule, but the way the games were turning out,” Michaels said (via The Post). “We had that Indianapolis-Denver game and a Washington-Chicago game and they were not games that will ever be remembered by NFL Films.
“Last year was considerably better, and this year is even better than that — by far the best of all, and I think a lot of it has to do with where the business is right now. Streaming is more and more important,” Michaels said. “The graph is pointing up for streaming, and I don’t want to say down for linear because the NFL is so powerful right now and linear is still very, very important, but a lot of eggs are going in the streaming basket right now.”
Earlier this year, Netflix announced an agreement to broadcast NFL Christmas Day games the next three years, with two in 2024 and at least one in 2025 and 2026. And Peacock’s stream of the Green Bay Packers-Philadelphia Eagles game from Brazil drew 14.2 million viewers across all NBC platforms, roughly double the numbers from last year’s regular season Peacock game.
“The league now understands that this is the direction the business is going,” Michaels said. “How fast it gets there, I don’t know.”