Specific gameplay impacts aside, Adam Schefter revealed some extremely interesting details about how network games will be aired this season:
View: https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/1655674005263622197
NFL will have a Black Friday game for the first time ever.
Games don’t necessarily “belong” to networks anymore. All games are free agents.
Teams can be on Thursday Night Football twice.
Not all teams are guaranteed to have a primetime spot.
All of these are earthshaking compared to years past.
The Black Friday game conflicts with a lot of college and high school games, which has generally been verboten.
Games not "belonging" to networks anymore is also totally wild. We're all so used to the vast majority of Pats games being aired by whichever network owned the AFC rights, CBS for quite some time now. We'd generally see the same couple of broadcast crews from CBS depending on the Pats' place in the hierarchy, usually Kevin Harlan/Trent Green or Ian Eagle/Charles Davis in recent years. The broadcast teams see the same divisions and teams play regularly, and get a better feel for that football roster as the season goes on. And indeed, viewers get used to that broadcast booth and their rhythms. It makes for better TV. Now? We'll have much more opportunity for Fox crews to be in the mix, and in general, I find the Fox crews to be lackluster in comparison.
Multiple TNF games for the same team...ugh. These are already tough enough on a team to prepare for, but to have potentially to do it twice in a season, with only 1 bye to work with, seems awful.
Not all teams getting a primetime slot is generally fine, though a bummer for teams that are clearly set to tank (I'm looking at you, Arizona).