Cardinals May Not Play on Thursday Night Football in 2023

The Arizona Cardinals can't be that bad next year, can they?

The NFL is planning on releasing their full 2023 season schedules on Thursday, May 11. The schedule release provides a bit of fun for teams and their fans across the league to start imagining what their journey to a potential Lombardi Trophy may look like. 

For Arizona Cardinals fans, a look at the schedule will help fill some of the void after a strong 2023 NFL Draft that landed them some strong talent and future draft picks. 

The schedule release has become a part of the NFL offseason, as it's slow unveiling has been formed into a primetime event for viewers. NBC Sports' Peter King says it might be delayed. 

"It’s still likely to be done in time for release Thursday at 8 p.m., but I was told over the weekend it may not be finished in time. The 2023 mega-games—opening Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights, Thanksgiving Day, the new Black Friday tilt, the Sunday night game on Christmas Eve and the Monday tripleheader on Christmas—are not set in stone yet," said King. "I’m told as of the weekend the NFL was still in search of options on the 272-game regular season slate, with a series of computers continuing to spit out alternatives."

King also went on to say that teams such as the Cardinals, Houston Texans and Tampa Bay Buccaneers may be left out of Thursday Night Football this season. 

His full explanation:

"The league traditionally has made Thursday night the receptacle for bad teams once a year to play in prime time. But now that the league passed a rule in March allowing teams to play short-week Thursday games twice instead of once, that could empower the league to eliminate some of the teams that look like bad ones from prime time in favor of maxing out some teams with two Thursday games. 

"So Arizona might be left out this year, and maybe Tampa Bay or Houston. Stronger teams could find two Amazon games on the schedule, which would serve two purposes—strengthening a streaming schedule the NFL badly wants to work for Amazon, and giving good but not great teams with major national followings (Pittsburgh or Green Bay or New England, perhaps, this year) another primetime appearance."

The Cardinals are expected to be... well, less than stellar next season. There's a real possibility Arizona won't feature on any primetime games. 

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