'Thursday Night Football' offers another potential dud next week

If you thought Thursday's game between the Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos was a dud, wait until you look at the schedule and see what is looming next week.

It might be just as bad, if not worse, when the Chicago Bears host the Washington Commanders in a matchup of nearly equally inept offenses. 

"Thursday Night Football" has become probably the least popular aspect of the NFL over the years due to the consistently poor quality of the games. Players hate it because of the short week and safety risks associated with playing an NFL game on three days rest. Fans have a problem with it because the games are typically slop, combining poor matchups and poor play that is again associated with only three days of preparation and recovery from the previous week's game.

Thursday's 12-9 Colts win, featuring a Russell Wilson meltdown at quarterback, captured everything everybody hates about Thursday football. 

It is probably not going to get any better next week with what might be one of the worst quarterback matchups in the league given how poorly Justin Fields (Bears) and Carson Wentz (Commanders) have played so far this season in leading their respective offenses.

It is a virtual replay of this week's game.

With Indianapolis and Denver, we saw two struggling quarterbacks leading two of the league's worst offenses on short weeks. In nearly five quarters of football, they combined for only 21 total points in one of the worst NFL games you could possibly watch. 

Entering this week's action, the Bears and Commanders rank 25th and 30th in points per game, while Fields and Wentz are near the bottom of every major passing category in the league, from QBR and passer rating, to yards per attempt, to the number of times they turn the football over and get sacked. 

It continues what has been a pretty brutal run of Thursday night matchups over the past month that has featured Mitch Trubisky (Pittsburgh) and Jacoby Brissett (Cleveland) a week ago, last night's fiasco, and then the oncoming Bears-Commanders matchup.