Drew Brees says Saints’ injuries were ‘100 percent a product’ of ‘Thursday Night Football’

Thursday night games are bad for players. And Drew Brees is the latest NFL player to speak out about it.

The Saints lost six key players, including rookie running back Alvin Kamara, in their loss to the Falcons on Thursday Night Football. Brees said the quick turnaround from the Saints’ late-afternoon win over the Panthers on Sunday was the reason.

“It’s 100 percent a product of playing on Thursday night,” Brees said.

“We worry about what we can control. We play the games that are on the schedule, and play them when they say we do. But, when you see guys go down, it seems unnecessary because you put them at a much higher risk with such a quick turnaround.”

Safety Kenny Vaccaro confirmed that his groin injury was a result of the short recovery time.

“Any time you have to play three or four days later after a Sunday game, I had a lot of scar tissue get broken up this last game, which is a good thing,” Vaccaro said. “However, it also causes inflammation, and it causes my adductor to really hurt. It’s just to the point in the game where it was too sore, and I just couldn’t go anymore.”

Brees and Vaccaro aren’t alone. Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin said after a Thursday night game that saw Richard Sherman and five other starters go down that the games “should be illegal” because of the risks to player health and safety.

“This shit should be illegal. It is not OK. It’s not OK. You can quote me on that,” Baldwin said.

Sherman has called the games “an absolute poopfest.”

“It’s terrible,” Sherman said. “We played, got home at like one o’clock in the morning, something like that on Monday, and then you got to play again. I mean, congratulations NFL, you did it again. But they’ve been doing it all season so I guess we’re the last ones to get the middle finger.”

The sentiment is shared by many around the NFL.

“It sucks, man. I hate it. Felt like crap today. Probably feel like crap on Thursday. I think it’s stupid.”

“It’s dangerous. It feels horrible.”

“(The NFL) emphasize(s) concussions when they start getting hit with lawsuits and then they care about the player safety but Thursday Night Football is putting every player on the football field in danger. Nobody is ready to play physically after a Sunday game but you have to go out there and do it.”

“You decided to throw another football game into a week, it shows they don’t really care about the players. I know how I feel on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and then you have to play Thursday.”

“They suck. They throw a wrench in our schedule. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we have to do this. As physical as this game is, as much work and preparation that goes into this, to force us to play games on four-day weeks, it’s completely unfair and bullshit. The league makes money off it, and that’s all they care about anyway.”

The league won’t willingly scrap its Thursday night cash cow, even though it would absolutely be safer for players. But players do have one chance to do away with Thursday games: the new collective bargaining agreement in 2021. But they’ll need to be willing to miss games to get it done.