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Welcome, everyone in the NFL Cover Zero podcast going into week 13.

I am Matt Jones.

It's Thanksgiving week.

Drew Franklin's with me and Billy R.Sports.

It is the week where football, of all sorts, pro college, college basketball.

There's just sports on from the moment you get up until the moment you go to bed from now until Sunday.

And, of course, we'll focus on the NFL side of it.

It is Thanksgiving week.

Drew, I enjoy this week.

I feel like in some ways this is, you know, this is the most festive time. And from a football standpoint, I think this is probably the time you could actually watch the most games. You can get three Thursday. There's the game on Friday, which is actually really, really good this year. And then all the games on Sunday and Monday. Yeah. And, you know, I grew up in a Cowboys family. So it's always been football over Turkey since I've been little. But now they've been to add more games over time. They've got that Black Friday game that includes your team. I love NFL adding new days each season, getting more around Christmas. It's not strictly Sundays and then the Thanksgiving day anymore. Like, just throw it anywhere. Put it on all the holidays. Yeah. Do you like, I mean, with the Cowboys, I know they're kind of your secondary team. They're your wife's team. Do you like that they always play on Thanksgiving? That that's like a part of your sort of family tradition. You have to be there. And the Cowboys always at the late game. Yeah, I picked up the Titans later in life. But when I was young, I mean, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, it was Cowboys. We like wear Cowboys sweatshirts to Thanksgiving dinner every year. So I have fond memories going back to when I was a little kid watching the Cowboys every Thanksgiving. Like I said, the food was always the second part of the day. It was almost a Cowboys party as much as it was the feast. I always, I mean, the Cowboys is the main event Thanksgiving team makes sense. But I've never really understood the Lions part of it. Like the Lions, I mean, now they're good, but they were awful for years. And I always found that interesting that they were one of them. I'm sure it goes back to some sort of tradition. Yeah, the owner that moved him from Ohio to Detroit when they became the Lions looked for ways to market them and got NBC to pick them up on Thanksgiving. There you go. There's your answer. An innovative owner, whatever his name was. And I guess they probably just said, I bet he was a Ford. I don't know, but I'm just going to guess anything in Detroit is ultimately a Ford.

So I'm going to say that's what it is.

Well, you know, you look at the games this year.

This is like one of the better slates that I think we've ever had on Thanksgiving.

I mean, for years, Detroit wasn't good. You get Packers lines Lions, Chiefs, Cowboys, Bingles with Joe Burrow returning against the Ravens, and then Friday Bears Eagles. I mean, that's a heck of a run of games. It actually makes Sunday Slate kind of not great because of how good those are. Yeah, and like you said, for many years of the Lions,

I guess you had the Barry Sanders run where he'd be fun to watch. That would be the one time of year. You'd see the only time of the year I'd ever see Barry Sanders. It's literally the only time. He only existed in my mind on Thanksgiving. And then when he retired early, it wasn't a lot of reason to get up for the Lions. Calvin Johnson might make one crazy catch a year.

But really, like, And then when he retired early, it wasn't a lot of reason to get up for the lions. No, Calvin Johnson might make one crazy catch a year.

But really, like people, you know, younger people now, you have Red Zone and you have,

you have Lee, you know, what do they call it?

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