Last night, the San Francisco 49ers thoroughly dominated the Pittsburgh Steelers en route to a 20-3 victory on Monday Night Football. The mind-numbingly lackluster game also suffered from two delays due to Candlestick Park losing power for extended periods of time, as if viewers at home needed another reason to change the channel. This was supposed to be a promising matchup between two playoff teams fighting for home field advantage, but it wasn’t even close. Like seemingly every other Monday Night Football game this season, last night’s game was painfully disappointing.
It didn’t used to to be like this. Monday Night Football used to be the most exciting game of the week. It used to serve as a reason for fans to throw parties at their houses, or get sloshed at the local watering hole during the beginning of the depressing work week. MNF was a showcase game, it was prestigious, until now. With the help of grating announcers, poor scheduling and bad luck we have arguably witnessed the most abysmal season in the history of MNF.
In retrospect the best game of the Monday Football Schedule was an overtime win by the Kansas City Chiefs over the San Diego Chargers, which included a whopping eight turnovers. Ten of the sixteen games so far this season have been decided by more than ten points with eight of those being decided by more than two touchdowns. Nearly three quarters of the participating teams in this year’s schedule currently have a record of .500 or worse. There have also been multiple occasions, especially in Jacksonville, when teams have played in front of seemingly half-full stadiums.
To put MNF’s fall from grace in perspective, last night I watched an NHL game between the Anaheim Ducks and the Dallas Stars instead. I’m not a big fan of the NHL and I had no connection with either squad. It was neither a matchup of top teams, nor an important game, yet I still preferred it over Monday Night Football. When a diehard sports fan is picking meaningless mid-season hockey games over primetime NFL games with playoff implications there is a problem.
The most obvious reason for MNF’s drop-off is the increased popularity of Sunday Night Football on NBC. In fact it might be one of the very few things the peacock network has done right in recent years. Sunday Night Football has completely replaced MNF as the NFL’s defacto game of the week. Without a decent product on the field the rambling of ESPN’s MNF crew that consists of Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski and Jon Gruden becomes quite taxing. Let’s face it, since Hank Williams Jr. acted like complete jackass, forcing ESPN to give him the axe, the show has now become nearly unrecognizable of its former self.
Last night’s game was simply an example of bad luck. It was supposed to be an exciting game, but Steeler’s QB, Ben Roethlisberger, was playing on one leg and both teams were missing their All-Pro middle linebackers. Nevertheless this has become such a reoccurring theme this season it’s become hard to simply chalk yet another week up to bad luck. So when the lights went out in San Francisco, not once, but twice, it seemed to be a microcosm for the entire Monday Night Football season. Are they going to be able to bounce back next year, or will they forever struggle to turn the power back on?
