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I think we can all agree that we don’t really need NFL games on TV on Thursday night. We lived without them for so long and did just fine getting through the week, right? Nobody every turned on their TV before that on a Thursday and yelled out “WHERE’S NFL FOOTBALL GAME!?” before crying about how there wasn’t a NFL game on TV.

We just lived life, watched some sitcoms, and waited until Sunday when football normally gets played.

But then the NFL, which loves money above everything else, realized it could make even more money so Thursday night games became a thing. They were often miserable games played as if the teams only had a few days to prep and recover because, well, they only do have a few days to prep and recover.

TNF became so lucrative that in 2018 Fox Sports bought the rights to broadcast five years of TNF for a cool $3.3 billion… because of course.

The NFL, which clearly doesn’t care about its officiating problem, isn’t all that interested in player safety, either, or they’d never have players play a football game four days after they just played in one.

But here we are and now we have what could be a serious, league-changing injury suffered in a Thursday night game as Chiefs star QB Patrick Mahomes left Thursday night’s game against the Broncos after suffering a painful knee injury in the second quarter.

He was then immediately ruled out of the game and reportedly diagnosed with dislocated kneecap and that a MRI will be conducted on Friday to see if there’s any ligament damage at all.

Was this injury directly a result of playing on a Thursday night? That is hard to say because you just don’t know how banged up these players are and how their bodies could be more willing to break – or dislocate – because they haven’t had enough time to recover. These players need to do what’s right for their bodies, not what’s right for the NFL’s bottom line.

It seems like each week that players who are playing on Thursday night talk about how their bodies just aren’t ready for the quick turnaround.

But the NFL never hears those concerns because they are too busy swimming in billions of dollars to actually care about their employees, who put their careers at risk every time they step on the field.

Now Mahomes, the electrifying star who makes the NFL lots of money by being who he is, his hobbling around with a busted kneecap.

And for what? A Thursday night game against the dreadful Broncos?

What a joke.

Thursday’s biggest winner: Detroit Lions fans.

Lions fans are still rightly heated about those horrible calls in Monday night’s game that likely cost them a victory over the Packers in Green Bay. Billboards popped up all around Detroit on Thursday mocking NFL refs by having an image of a ref wearing a cheesehead. I don’t know if it’s money well spent, but it is entertaining. Let it out, Lions fans!

Quick hits: NFL trades we want to see… ‘South Park’ mocks LeBron… College football surprises… And more!

– Henry McKenna broke down six NFL trades he’d like to see happen before the trade deadline, including Stefon Diggs finding a new home in the AFC.

– ‘South Park’ brilliantly mocked LeBron James for his comments on the China situation.

– Michelle Martinelli has the five biggest surprises thus far in the college football season, including the Big Ten still having four unbeaten teams.

– The annual NBA GM survey was released and it had some good tidbits, like the two teams they think are the clear favorites to win the NBA title. The Lakers aren’t one of them.

– Michael Irvin thinks he knows how to fix the Cowboys – sign Antonio Brown. For real.

(Follow me on Twitter at @anezbitt. It might change your life. Just don’t tell me about your fantasy team.)