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The cries about Thursday Night Football’s poor quality of play amidst a historic stretch of blowouts have subsided for the moment.  But that didn’t stop Phil Simms from expressing how ticked off he was at critics of the franchise in a Thursday afternoon appearance on “The Drive” with Danny Parkins & Carrington Harrison on 610 Sports Radio in Kansas City.

Simms specifically seemed to call out analysts at other networks who have seen their own share of blowouts in a very strange season for the NFL’s television partners.  He also mentioned the quality of play and injuries on Thursday night in relation to other nights of the week and questioned the validity of criticism towards TNF:

“That’s a lot of talk from other people with games on other networks.  I want to say to them, ‘look in the mirror and see how your games are going.’  I’ve seen blowout after blowout in some of these night games and nobody talks about the quality of play there.  So I’m a little offended by it and I want to tell them to be quiet and worry about what you do and we’ll worry about what we do at CBS.”

Of course, this interview took place before a surprisingly competitive game where the previously winless Oakland Raiders got their first victory over the Kansas City Chiefs 24-20.

The criticism of Thursday Night Football is well entrenched and is about much more than the competitiveness of games.  But perhaps Simms has a point here.  When we crunched the numbers a couple weeks ago, all primetime games had a much higher margin of victory than daytime counterparts across the board.  And with all the hullabaloo over Thursday Night Football, it’s actually Sunday Night Football on NBC that has taken the lead in the blowout category.  The premier primetime NFL broadcast has averaged a 24.5 PPG margin of victory since Week 3 and the closest game has been 18 points.

And at least Thursday Night Football gave us this delightful gift last night:

Audio via 610 Sports Radio

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