NFL Notebook, Week 5: Christian McCaffrey’s greatness, coaching carousel, weekly awards

NFL’s scheduling continues to be a letdown

I have a bone to pick, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. As I said last week, my Sundays mostly consist of sitting on a couch while watching football. The past weekend was no exception, though I was not glued to the television for long into the afternoon.

10 games at 1:00 p.m. ET is fantastic, but at the expense of having just two games follow them? That’s just lazy scheduling. I’ve scolded the NFL schedule-makers before, so my tantrum should come as no surprise.

I get that four teams were on byes and that the Raiders-Bears game in London had to play at one o’clock Eastern time. It still doesn’t excuse the easy solution to balance the games: Move a couple of games to later in the day. While I can easily immerse myself in any NFL game, shifting from 10 games to two is irksome and pointless to the many people who had previously consumed 10 games worth of action.

On the topic of the Raiders, by the way, what is the reason for not giving them a single home game in 48 days? They last played in Oakland in Week 2 and won’t play there again until Week 9. That is unfair to the organization, very unfair to the fans and especially unfair to the players. If the league actually cared about its members, they would have prevented this scenario.