Al Michaels & Troy Aikman Sound Off On “Dreadful” Thursday Night Football Games: “No Other Way To Describe It”

Al Michaels TNF
Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

I think we can all agree that there were some atrocious Thursday Night Football games this year.

I guess it’s just how the needle ultimately fell, as it felt like it was two bad teams putting on an awful display of football every Thursday.

And one that comes to mind immediately was the horrible game between the Denver Broncos and Indianapolis Colts in week four, where there wasn’t a single offensive touchdown scored the whole game.

I mean my God, it was like watching paint dry.

With that being said, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. And one person who agrees?

No other than Thursday Night Football announcer himself, Al Michaels.

He admitted in an interview with The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch:

“I think I’m to the point in my life and career, having watched sports since I was 6 years old, I feel what the crowd feels. The Denver-Indianapolis game [in] Week 4 was a dreadful game. No other way to describe it. No touchdowns.

In fact, at one point during the game, I said to (analyst) Kirk Herbstreit, ‘Is it possible this game could be so bad that it’s actually good?’ He’d never heard that from a partner and went, ‘No!’”

Michaels also recalled the people who thought he was being “snarky” by how he called the game:

“We’re going to overtime and there’s a shot of maybe a thousand people walking out of the stadium. Then an overhead shot of people going to the parking lot. Kirk said, ‘I can’t believe it’s overtime and they are leaving.’ I said they’d seen enough.

Sometimes you just have to beat the traffic. So, look, was that snarky? I guess, in a way. But you can’t tell me that didn’t reflect the feelings of a lot of people, probably the majority of people watching that game.

A lot of people said, ‘Al’s bored, Al’s pissed off that he’s doing this.’ Not the case. Monday nights, Sunday night, I did things like this. Maybe not to that degree, but I try to echo the feelings of what the fan feels because I’m a fan.”

However, Amazon wasn’t upset at all by his comments, and had nothing but praise for the company who streamed Thursday Night Football this past season.

He likened the situation to trying to sell an old shitty car:

“From the Amazon people, nothing but support. I think they understood what this was. We’re making the most of it. I mean, you just can’t oversell something. Do you want me to sell you a 20-year-old Mazda?

That’s what you’re asking me to do. I can’t sell you a used car. … I’ve kind of gone down that road a little bit in games that have been bad in the past. But this game was horrifically bad. What were you supposed to do at that point? And away I went.”

Fellow analyst Troy Aikman also shared in an interview with Sports Illustrated that he as well wasn’t too happy with the product on the field as a whole as well:

“There were games that we watched, and I won’t say what network most of them were on, and I had to ask myself, ‘Is this professional football?’ There was some bad bad football being played, and that’s not good.”

He wasn’t completely negative about the situation, but it’s easy to see he’s not necessarily pleased:

“I just would like to see more emphasis on improving the product on the field. I’d like to see that there’s some interest in that as well.

It seems like all these decisions are made to increase revenue, which is great, but then it’s less time on the field for players, and then it’s less time here, and the product begins to erode a little bit, and and I think we’ve got to be really, really careful about that and I’ve been saying that for a while.”

And while he didn’t come right out and say Thursday Night Football, it’s pretty obvious what he’s referring to.

Nevertheless, you gotta commend Al Michaels and Troy Aikman for speaking their mind and saying what we were all feeling, because it was a pretty rough stretch there for awhile.

Amazon also reportedly compensated advertisers after not hitting their viewership goals:

A beer bottle on a dock

STAY ENTERTAINED

A RIFF ON WHAT COUNTRY IS REALLY ABOUT

A beer bottle on a dock