Chiefs' Blowout Win Continues Trend of Underwhelming Prime-Time NFL Games

With games on Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights, the National Football League has three prime-time opportunities to showcase its product each and every week during the regular season.

When the schedule is made each offseason, the goal is to schedule compelling matchups, thrilling rivalries or top competitive teams in order to flaunt the best the NFL has to offer.

Through the first month of the 2014 season, the matchups have anything but compelling.

The Kansas City Chiefs thumped the New England Patriots on Monday by the score of 41-14. The Chiefs forced three turnovers during the contest and held quarterback Tom Brady to just 159 yards passing.

It was the latest one-sided snooze-fest to be featured for prime-time viewing.

The trend began on the first night of NFL action, when the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks embarrassed the Green Bay Packers in a 36-16 laugher.

Including that game, eight of the league's 13 prime-time games (there were two Monday night contests in Week 1) have been decided by margins of greater than two touchdowns.

Only three of the prime-time games have been decided by seven points or fewer.

Thursday night games have been especially one-sided, with all four to date featuring a final deficit of at least 20 points. 

Instead of giving fans something to look forward to at the end of a long day, the NFL has been providing fans with a pretty good reason to just go to bed early. Next week may provide a couple more. The 3-0 Cincinnati Bengals face the Patriots on Sunday night, and the Seahawks will take on the inconsistent Washington Redskins on Monday.

The Redskins and Patriots lost by a combined 58 points in Week 4.

The good news is that the league will have an opportunity this year to begin flexing Sunday night games in Week 5 (twice between Weeks 5 and 10), which is a departure from years past. 

This, of course, could only save us from a pair of potential disappointments before regular flex scheduling begins in Week 11, and it does nothing for Monday night contests. It also can't save us from those nearly unbearable Thursday night games, which will feature divisional matchups for the remainder of the year.

Date	Winning Team	Losing Team	Final Score
Thur 9/04	Seahawks	Packers	35-16
Mon 9/08	Lions	Giants	35-14
Thur 9/11	Ravens	Steelers	26-6
Thur 9/18	Falcons	Buccaneers	56-14
Sun 9/21	Steelers	Panthers	37-19
Thur 9/25	Giants	Redskins	45-14
Sun 9/28	Cowboys	Saints	38-17
Mon 9/29	Chiefs	Patriots	41-14

So far, these poor showings have done little to deter football fans from tuning in. Thursday's New York Giants and Washington Redskins game, for example, drew an estimated 16.3 million viewers between CBS and NFL Network broadcasts. That's only 1.7 million fewer than the estimated audience of Game 5 of this year's NBA Finals (18 million as reported by The Associated Press via ESPN).

However, fewer and fewer fans are likely to tune in each night if the prime-time games continue to induce sleep more often than excitement.

If the trend of providing poor-quality games continues for the rest of the year, the league may be forced to consider other scheduling options when the offseason finally rolls around.

Allowing for earlier and more frequent game-flexing may take a couple of potential blowouts out of the equation, and the league may want to think about limiting the pool of teams it considers for Monday night games (division champions or playoff-game winners for example).

It also might not hurt to move away from only featuring divisional games every Thursday after the season opener. These games are not always going to be competitive because, well, many of the divisions are not very competitive.

Whatever the league decides to do, it has to figure out a way to put a more appealing product on the prime-time stage. So far this season, the product has rarely been worth consuming in its entirety.