NFL set to deliver more football for Christmas

Martin Rogers

FOX Sports Insider

Patrick Mahomes and pumpkin pie. Gang Green and green-bean casserole. Christian McCaffrey and cranberry sauce. Football and Christmas Day. Because, I mean, of course. 

Christmas Day and a festive fiesta of National Football League action is a combo that has become an entrenched part of our holiday enjoyment, but it has crept up so rapidly that it is easy to forget this particular treat is one that doesn’t bring very much tradition with it at all. 

As we congregate around the television for the Dec. 25 slate of Raiders-Chiefs, Giants-Eagles (4:30 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports App) and Ravens-49ers, there won’t be much room for the esteemed and elderly among us to wistfully reminisce about all those footballing Christmases past. 

This might come as enough of a shock to the fresh-faced generation to jolt them momentarily from their phone screens, but just as the NFL now goes to great effort to stage juicy morsels of pigskin enjoyment on Christmas Day, it used to go to even more trouble in trying to avoid Santa’s overtime shift. 

Through virtually the entire 1970s and 1980s, following a 1971 experiment of scheduling a pair of division round games over Yuletide and seeing them not particularly well received, the NFL calendar skirted around Christmas with admirably delicate footwork. 

If that meant stacked Saturdays, massed Mondays or even shifting the entire season forward a week, so be it. If indigestion was coming to American households, it would be a result of pure over-indulgence rather than botched snaps, dropped catches or foolish fumbles. 

No longer. This year’s triple header is a rarity when considered in football’s entire history, but it won’t be an outlier for much longer. There were three games for the first time last year and nine in total over the past four winters. For context, that’s more than what took place, combined, before 2003. 

Forget about…

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Publish date : 2023-12-21 17:14:26

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