Al Michaels hopeful Thursday NFL games will improve in 2023

Legendary broadcaster Al Michaels sounds hopeful fans will enjoy NFL "Thursday Night Football" games during the 2023 season more so than they did this past campaign. 

"The schedule is the issue because teams cannot play more than once on a Thursday night so we had to do every team," Michaels explained during an appearance on "The Michele Tafoya Podcast," as shared by Sean Keeley of Awful Announcing. "And obviously, there was gonna be some games that were good, some games that were not very good, but actually, that happens every Sunday. Now they’re gonna try to, this year, expand it a little bit, maybe have teams play twice on a Thursday night, which helps us, no doubt about it." 

Michaels handled "Thursday Night Football" duties for Amazon Prime Video last season and often didn't hide his feelings about the lack of quality of such games. He then generated headlines in January when he compared calling "Thursday Night Football" matchups to trying to sell "a 20-year-old Mazda." 

Of course, Michaels isn't the only noteworthy individual within the NFL community who has criticized the midweek games. Retired cornerback and current media personality Jason McCourty said in January some of the contests made for "just a brutal watch," and retired safety Devin McCourty hinted in April he sometimes watched "another TV show" instead of "Thursday Night Football." 

In late March, Bryan DeArdo noted for CBS Sports that teams could be given two Thursday night games this coming season via a new rule that, ideally, will help prevent some of the stinkers fans endured last fall. Despite all of the negatives hovering over "Thursday Night Football," Michaels seemed optimistic about what is to come for the Amazon Prime Video broadcasts. 

"All things considered, I was very proud of the way it works. The way it looked," Michaels remarked. "The streaming world is a different world. It’s not linear television. … But they’ve got a lot of smart people. The technological end of this thing is trying to work on making this simpler and more easily accessible to everybody [will] come in time."