Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow took issue with the NFL's schedule makers sending Cincinnati to Baltimore in prime time for a fourth consecutive season. The NFL's lead scheduler understood the lament.
Mike North, the NFL's vice president of broadcast planning and scheduling, told the Bengals' official team website that he understands Burrow's criticism, adding that if he could wave a "magic wand" and change one part of the schedule, he'd tweak that Thanksgiving night game.
"It's fair. It's not a one or two years sort of a league where you fix every problem every other year or every two years," North said. "Once you start getting to the same thing three years in a row, four, or five years in a row, whether it's a short week Thursday on the road or opening on the road. ... When trends like that emerge, we probably have to adjust at some point."
North acknowledged that when dealing with a 17-game schedule for 32 teams, no one is always happy.
"It just ended up as we got down the stretch here, that this was our best schedule, and fully acknowledging that, I'm sure the Bengals fans are a little surprised and probably a little disappointed, which puts them in the same category as all 31 other teams," North said. "Everybody is just a little disappointed in the schedule makers."
Ultimately, the league wanted to ensure that the Bengals-Ravens game would land in prime time. Putting it on Thanksgiving night provides the brightest of spotlights. Cincy has four prime-time games at the moment, three of which are on the road.
"They deserve it. You've played your way into these windows," North said. "An MVP-quality quarterback and superstar wide receivers, and we play exciting games. Both Ravens-Bengals games last year were spectacular. We wanted to make sure that we ended up with at least one of them in prime time this year. We got it. I'm sure Bengals fans would have preferred it in Cincinnati, but it should be fun for you guys to ruin Baltimore's Thanksgiving.
"One way to ensure a little extra mustard on those is to make them division games. And you see how big we went on Thanksgiving this year. When you start the day with Green Bay-Detroit, and you come back with K.C.-Dallas in the middle, you needed something for NBC Thursday night to kind of fit with that motif, if you will. And that's how we ended up with Bengals-Ravens."
