There's something extremely comforting about watching a public push as hard as it can for the ability to watch football on every night of the week and for that market to be pursued by rights-holders attempting to turn such a dream into reality. There's something even more comforting about knowing that a good portion of all that football will be met with complaining and open disgust about the quality of the play—which may or may not be directly related to all the short weeks and incongruent scheduling.
It didn't take long for Thursday Night Football between the Raiders and Broncos to loudly announce itself as a real dud. The two teams battled to a 10-7 Denver victory in a game where offense was hard to find, penalties were aplenty and the whole ordeal was just generally uninspired.
Which was bad news for those watching at home.
Except Stephen A. Smith. Because things always come up Stephen A. Smith, and a boring game was the magical elixir he'd been searching for over these past few weeks.
ESPN's biggest name explained his situation Friday on First Take.
"I had the whole dental surgery and I was on the air looking like a chipmunk and all of that stuff," he said. "The reason that's relevant to the point of this conversation is because I've been drugged up on pain medication because of the tooth surgery and all that other stuff and I've had a very, very difficult time sleeping over the last two and a half weeks."
.@stephenasmith doesn't believe the Broncos are as good as their 8-2 record 👀 pic.twitter.com/fMRf8nAvvd
— First Take (@FirstTake) November 7, 2025
"It's been a nightmare," he continued. "I can't get to sleep. Until last night. Last night all that changed. All of the sudden I was finally able to get some sleep."
Smith went on to call out the Broncos’ offense for looking pretty pedestrian against inferior competition and suggested that they may not be as good as their 8-2 record suggests.
But that's not the point here. The point is that he was able to use a bad game as a punch line on television. That's the dream right there. Perhaps the only thing that makes watching teams trade punts and holding penalties for three straight hours even remotely tolerable.
More NFL on Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Boring 'Thursday Night Football' Game Just What Doctor Ordered for Stephen A. Smith.
