Garafolo: NFL giving road teams the shaft on Thursdays

Mike Garafolo, USA TODAY Sports | USATODAY

San Francisco 49ers guard Alex Boone thinks the Seattle Seahawks quit Thursday night.

Maybe they didn't. Maybe they're not to blame. Maybe it's the NFL's fault for forcing them and every other road team to travel and play on a short week, all in the name of increased revenue and decreased quality of football.

There's been plenty of conversation about what a physical toll it is on the players forced to line up on Thursdays, with aches from a game four days earlier that haven't fully subsided. Veterans repeatedly have said it isn't until late Thursday into early Friday in a standard week that they start to feel close to ready to play another game.

That's a problem for both teams in a Thursday game and always has been, though the NFL decided this season to have a game every Thursday as opposed to only late in the season, as had been done intermittently throughout its history.

From a competitive standpoint, though, the road teams seem to be at a distinct disadvantage.

The Seahawks became the fifth away team to lose Thursday night this season; the New York Giants' victory against the Carolina Panthers in Week 3 is the only win for a team traveling on a short week.

This is no fluke, apparently, because road teams have struggled on Thursday nights for years.

Since the NFL Network started its late-season Thursday broadcasts in 2006, road teams are 20-35 in the games. That figure includes Thanksgiving games (the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions are a combined 5-7 as home teams) but excludes season openers because they're not played on short weeks. It also includes a New York Jets victory against the Buffalo Bills in Toronto that was a neutral-site matchup, not a true away game.

It's not as if the better teams are winning these matchups, either.

Of the 55 Thursday games mentioned above, the home team had the better record entering the game on 16 occasions. The visitors had a better record 26 times, with 13 matchups of teams with equal records. It's not an exact science, of course, but those numbers indicate there's no reason why the winning percentage of Thursday road teams (.364) isn't in line with the rate of all road teams (.432) over the past six seasons.

The NFL tried to appease the concerns of teams who were angry they had to travel across the country on Thursdays in recent years (see the Arizona Cardinals' loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in 2008 and the Giants' defeat to the Denver Broncos in 2009) by keeping the flights as close to home as possible. Even still, the act of getting on a plane and setting up in a different location takes time – valuable time for a team with three days to prepare.

There are also injured players who won't make the trip because flying can worsen their injuries. That was the case with Giants wide receiver Hakeem Nicks, who was downgraded from questionable to out before even stepping on a plane to Carolina. Nicks said he would've played if the game were on a Sunday, though his sitting out the next week's matchup with the Eagles after his knee swelled muddles such a projection.

Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker LaMarr Woodley was ruled out of last week's game against the Tennessee Titans with a hamstring injury that was reportedly mild. If there were a few more days before he had to sit in a pressurized cabin, perhaps he'd have made the trip and played. And maybe the Steelers win that game.

Instead, teams are making trips short-handed, and they might be running out of gas late, as the Seahawks seemed to be this week and the Cardinals were in their loss to the St. Louis Rams earlier this month.

"We just kind of felt them start to give up a little bit," Boone told The Seattle Times, "and they knew that we were just going to keep running the ball on them."

Maybe deep down the Seahawks' defenders knew the offense, with rookie quarterback Russell Wilson, wasn't going to overcome a deficit anyway. Wilson started off OK but was brutal in the second half.

Wilson's performance surely wasn't helped by the short week to prepare for an experienced and talented defense. That's another issue with Thursday games: Rookies and other players without a lot of experience don't seem ready to play.

Late in the season, with more of practice time, those players would be better adjusted. But early in the year, especially with limited training camps under the new collective bargaining agreement, some of them look like they don't belong. Case in point: Cardinals tackle Bobby Massie's struggles late in the loss to the Rams.

Still, no matter the apparent competitive imbalance, these games won't be going away. Not as long as the NFL believes more is better.

Even if they're worse.