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People in Hollywood used to love to make disaster movies. Now the primary local NFL team stars in one.
Already 3-8 in 11 games, the Rams are one of the worst defending Super Bowl champions of all time. (Of course, several franchises would love to have that title.) And with quarterback Matthew Stafford now on injured reserve, things aren’t getting any better for the Rams.
Things aren’t getting any better for the NFL either.
Tonight’s game against the Seahawks has a small regional footprint. But the next three, all of which Stafford will miss, end up in big, national, self-contained, inflexible places.
Thursday evening, December 8th: Raiders at Rams.
Monday night, December 19: Rams at Packers.
Christmas Day: Broncos at Rams.
Stinks, stinks, stinks.
And you can’t do anything about it. The Rams are stuck. The NFL is stuck. The audience is stuck.
The good news is that something like this may prompt the NFL to get even more creative when it comes to late-season planning. With Sunday-Monday flexibility on the horizon, why not allow all standalone, nationally televised games from Thanksgiving through the end of the regular season?
Postponing games to other days has been frowned upon by the league, with fans regularly planning trips to distant cities to attend. If that line is being crossed in the looming Sunday-Monday/Monday-Sunday shift, why not embrace it fully?
It’s a question that could become very noticeable when we’re suffering from a trio of Rams games involving a Rams team that’s a far cry from the Rams team that won the Super Bowl earlier this year .