Over the past several years, the NFL has been encroaching into what was formerly the NBA’s territory: Christmas Day games.
The NFL has played on Christmas Day for years — from 1989 to 2019, the NFL had typically scheduled games on Christmas Day if it fell on a Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. But starting in in 2020, the league has scheduled at least one Christmas game every season, even when the holiday falls on a day in which the NFL does not usually schedule games. This year, Christmas day falls on a Wednesday, and the NFL has two scheduled games, both of which will be shown on Netflix.
The four teams are the Chiefs vs. Steelers, and the Ravens vs. Texans.
In the past, teams who played on Christmas simply wore whatever jersey they had planned for the game, but there was nothing special, uniform-wise, to indicate the game was played on Christmas.
That will change this year.
According to the following tweet Adam Schefter, the NFL recently sent a new memo claiming that each team playing on December 25 will wear a special “holiday-inspired uniform patch” for Weeks 16 and 17.
The four teams who are a part of the NFL’s Christmas Day games — Baltimore, Houston, Kansas City and Pittsburgh — will wear holiday-inspired uniform patches during Weeks 16 and 17, the league said in a memo sent today. pic.twitter.com/NQEDBNNQfB
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) December 11, 2024
The tweet is a bit confusing, at least to me. I can certainly understand the four teams all playing on Christmas to have the candy cane/NFL patch, but it reads like those four teams will also wear the patch in the preceding week as well. The four squads playing on Christmas are all playing the Saturday (December 21) before Christmas, and then again four days later on December 25. So it sounds like those four clubs will wear the patch on Saturday and Christmas Day.
The games on December 21 feature Chiefs vs. Texans and Steelers vs. Ravens — the same four teams who will play again (with different opponents) on December 25. Interesting the NFL scheduled two games for 12/21 and two games for 12/25, both involving the same squads.
While the NFL hasn’t indicated where the patch will be worn, it’ll likely be in the same location as the recent Madden Thanksgiving patches, which is on the chest. Both the Steelers and Chiefs already have patches on the left breast of their jerseys, so they would likely simply move those to the opposite side. Here’s a quick mockup of how the Chiefs might look with the candy canes.
I’m not opposed to the patch, but I’m not sure about the design — granted, two crossed candy canes by themselves may not be the greatest design, but does adding the Shield to the middle help any? As you can see above, the Chiefs as well as other NFL teams already have the NFL shield at the base of the collar. If the patch is placed on the chest, that would place the NFL shield on the patch in close proximity to the collar shield. In addition, some players will have Captaincy patches, and four players wear the Walter Payton “Man of the Year” patches — with two of them Russell Wilson and Cam Heyward both playing for the Steelers. The Captaincy and Payton patches could cause placement problems for the Candy Cane patch.
I’m also wondering if the patch will just appear for the Christmas day games, or if it will also appear the Saturday before, as seems to be indicated by Schefter’s tweet.
Thoughts?
Christmas has historically been the NBA’s showcase day. The NFL trying to insert itself into everything is annoying.
Only the NFL makes its draft last a week in order to dominate the headlines in the spring when people are paying attention to baseball and the NBA season coming down to the wire.
Every time another sport has the spotlight it feels like the NFL has to go “LOOK AT ME!!!!”
You are very right. The NFL will not rest until all other sports are seen as second or third rate and mainstream media is more than happy to have us believe likewise. I love football, I watch the NFL every week but it is turning into a year round entertainment event with a constant clamoring for attention.
The NFL had to schedule the same teams to give the 4 days off between games. Sunday/Thursday is the same amount of days between games as Sat/Wednesday. There is no way the NFL would schedule a team to play Sunday then again on Wednesday. I was looking at this exact scenario last week.
Just visual clutter. Sports leagues need to embrace the idea of less is more.
I like the idea of a fun patch, although I agree the execution could be better. I thought the Madden patch was perfect, and doing something holiday themed in the same vein would have been awesome. This looks like the designer was given 1 hour’s notice to make.
Could it potentially be going on the collar? Crossed candy canes behind the NFL Shield could replace the main logo for a specialty jersey.
I suppose it could — although it would be very small. My guess is it will be on either the right or left side of the chest, but I could be wrong.
Fun fact: the 1960 NFL championship game between the Eagles and Packers was played on Monday, December 26, because Christmas fell on the Sunday. It also started at noon Eastern time because Franklin Field in Philadelphia didn’t have lights and the league didn’t want darkness to become a factor if the game went to overtime. I also recall playoff games as late as 1988 being scheduled around Christmas, with the games played on December 24 and December 26.
That’s actually still NFL policy if Christmas falls on a Sunday. According to wiki, “If Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, then the normal slate of Sunday afternoon games is instead played on Saturday, Christmas Eve, and one of the Christmas Day games will include the standard Sunday Night Football telecast. When Christmas Day falls on a Monday, the normal slate of Sunday afternoon games is still played on Christmas Eve, and Monday Night Football on Christmas night, but the Sunday Night Football telecast has been moved to either Monday afternoon or to Saturday, December 23.”
One wonders why it’s OK to play on Christmas in the middle of the week, but not on Sunday? Just out of intellectual curiosity.
I think that indicates under this policy they’re playing one or two games on Christmas no matter what, but that (a) Christmas on Sunday means that the regular slate of Sunday games get pushed to Saturday with just one or two Christmas games and (b) things will be adjusted so there will not be a night game on Christmas Eve.
At least they aren’t wearing jerseys with sleeves…oh wait…
What a horribly embarrassing patch that is. Crossed candy canes? Really NFL? Really?! Just for shiggles I went to Google image search for “candy cane logo” and there are literally dozens of the same idea. And as you mentioned with the captaincy and Walter Payton patches there is no place to put this one. Not to mention having the NFL shield twice on the same uniform just inches away from one another.
Yeah, I seriously thought that tweet was a joke. Not sure if the NFL has enough self-awareness to be embarrassed by it, though.
Two NFL shields next to each other is one too many. Nobody truly likes candy canes except for dentists.