The NFL is looking to schedule a Christmas Day tripleheader for the second straight season.
According to John Breech from CBS Sports, the league wants to replicate what it had last year with an early, mid-afternoon, and Sunday night game on Christmas Day. The schedule allowed for the opportunity as Sunday was on Dec. 25. The NFL has another opportunity to do it again given Dec. 25 is on Monday this year.
For the first time in NFL history, it looks like the league is planning to hold a Monday tripleheader with the unprecedented event expected to happen on Christmas Day. According to NBC Sports, the league is expected to schedule three games for Monday, Dec. 25 this year.
Historically, when Christmas has fallen a Monday, the NFL has scheduled two games for the occasion like it did in both 2006 and 2017. However, the league will be bumping it up to three this year and that likely has to do with how successful Christmas games have been over the past few seasons.
Don’t expect the Houston Texans to be a part of that six-team holiday slate.
The Texans still aren’t inspiring confidence across the league that better days are ahead in Houston. While power rankings count for nothing in terms of actually deciding playoff spots or draft positioning, they are a decent measure of how the rest of the sports world views a team. The perception of the Texans is they are still mired in a rebuild, albeit with one of the best assistant coaches leading the way in DeMeco Ryans. Adding C.J. Stroud and Will Anderson is helpful, but the two don’t have the star power to command prime time.
The NFL also got burned the last time they scheduled Houston on Christmas Day. In 2017, the Pittsburgh Steelers demolished Houston 34-6 at NRG Stadium. Save for one spectacular DeAndre Hopkins touchdown catch, the Steelers had their way the entire afternoon.
The advantage for Houston in skipping Christmas Day is they can maintain their regular work week with two games to go, which would be an added benefit should Houston be in contention for anything.
