As we discussed his feelings about playing on Thursday nights, recently retired Patriots safety Devin McCourty stopped me as I recounted his circumstances last year. Almost by accident, I’d quickly brushed over that New England actually did play two Thursday Night Football games in 2022, and said that, with those games coming in consecutive weeks (Thanksgiving and Dec. 1), the damage was mitigated, since there was only one short week.
Turns out, even that wasn’t really cool with McCourty and his teammates.
It meant where he and other older Patriot vets would normally get the so-called “minibye,” on the back end of playing two games in five days, they’d have to wait another week instead. And that minibye would be extended by a day, then followed by a Monday-Sunday-Saturday turn, throwing a Molotov cocktail into routines players spend years curating to get themselves ready on a weekly basis.
