Netflix's Turkey Day Gamble and What It Means for Ravens Fans Craving Prime-Time Respect in a New Streaming Era

Now let me tell you something about football and tradition and the way things are changing in this great league of ours. I was sitting in the stands at M&T Bank Stadium last Sunday, watching our Ravens do what they do best, and my buddy next to me, he says to me, "Big Mike, did you see that the NFL is putting games on Netflix now?" And I said, "Well sure I did, and you know what that tells me about where we are in this game right now?" It tells me that football is becoming something bigger than television, bigger than cable, bigger than the old ways we thought about how America watched the game on Thanksgiving afternoon. The NFL just announced that Netflix is getting five games in what they're calling a new streaming package, and it starts with Green Bay and Los Angeles on Thanksgiving Eve, but what I really want to talk about is what this means for us Ravens fans and where our team fits into this whole new landscape.

See, I've been around this game a long time. I remember when you had three games on Thanksgiving, period. You had Detroit, you had Dallas, and that was it. You knew what you were getting. You set your schedule around it. The whole country knew that's what you were watching. Now we got streaming, we got cable exclusives, we got packages split up so many different ways that sometimes you need a flowchart just to figure out where to watch your own team play. And that's not necessarily bad, it's just different, and different in football usually means somebody's winning and somebody's not happy about it.

The Rams and Packers kicking off this Netflix thing on Thanksgiving Eve, that's a big deal. That's not some Wednesday night matchup or a Thursday afternoon game that gets lost in the shuffle. That's prime time television, or whatever we call prime time when it's on streaming now, and it's got historical weight to it. The Packers, man, they've been part of Thanksgiving tradition for over eighty years. You go back to the days when football was really football, when men played both ways and the game was simpler but somehow more honest. The Packers have that lineage, that history, and now they're helping launch a new era. The Rams, they're the team that's always chasing relevance in Los Angeles, always trying to prove that football matters in a city that would rather talk about basketball and movies.

But here's what I keep thinking about, and this is where Baltimore comes in. We're a city that's proud. We're a city that cares about football like it's family. We've got a history with this game that goes back further than most people remember. We had the Colts before we had the Ravens, and that 1968 championship game, that's embedded in our DNA as a football city. Now we've got Lamar Jackson leading our team, we've got defense that can still bring pressure, and we've got a fan base that shows up and makes noise and makes our stadium one of the hardest places to play in this entire league. So when I see Netflix getting these prime-time games, I have to ask myself and all of you out there, when are the Ravens getting their moment in this new world? When do Baltimore fans get to watch their team in this kind of spotlight on a platform that everyone's talking about?

The NFL is clearly trying to grow its audience, trying to reach younger people, trying to make football accessible in new ways. I get that. I understand that the world is changing and you can't just rely on traditional television anymore. The kids today, they don't sit down in front of a television set the same way we did. They're scrolling, they're streaming, they're watching multiple things at once. So Netflix makes sense for the league, and those five games they're getting, that's going to draw eyeballs from all over the place. But it also means that the Ravens organization and our fans have to think about how we position ourselves in this new world.

Look, I'm not saying the Ravens should be on Netflix for Thanksgiving just yet. That's the Packers' tradition, that's earned over decades and decades. But I am saying that as we look at the schedule coming up, as we think about what games matter and where the eyes are going to be, we need to make sure that Baltimore is represented at the highest level. We need to make sure that when the Ravens are good, when we're playing meaningful football, we're getting the spotlight we deserve. It's not arrogance, it's just the truth. We've got a city that cares, a fan base that's passionate, and a team that's capable of doing something special.

Here's the thing about tradition and change that I've learned over my years watching this game. You can't stop change. The NFL is going to keep evolving, keep finding new ways to present football to America and the world. That's not bad, that's just progress. But what you have to do is make sure your team is positioned to take advantage of it. You have to make sure that when opportunities come up, when there are prime-time slots and big stages and networks throwing money at the league for exclusive content, your team is ready to be there.

The Ravens have had their moments in this regard. We've had big playoff games, we've had important regular season matchups in prime time. But we also know that consistency is what gets you the best schedule positioning, consistency is what gets you the respect from the networks and the league office. If we can get back to where we were a couple years ago, if Lamar and our defense can stay healthy and keep playing at a high level, then when the next round of scheduling comes around, when Netflix or whoever comes to the NFL and says "who do you want us to feature," Baltimore is going to be in that conversation.

This Netflix package, it's the future. It's the first of many such deals, I'm sure. Streaming is going to become more and more important to how football is distributed and consumed. But it shouldn't change the fundamental truth about why we watch football. We watch it because we love the game, because we love our teams, because football brings us together in ways that nothing else can. And that's true whether you're watching on a television, on a streaming service, or somehow holographically in your living room fifty years from now.

For Ravens fans, what this means is that we need to stay engaged, stay supportive, and keep our team playing at the level that demands attention. When your team is winning, when your team is playing good football, the networks take notice. The platforms take notice. That's just how it works. So as we move forward into this new era of streaming and Netflix packages and whatever comes next, let's focus on what we can control. Let's focus on our team getting back to championship caliber play, let's focus on winning our division and making deep playoff runs. Do that, and the spotlight will follow. That's not a promise, that's just how football works, and we've got too much history and too much pride in Baltimore to settle for anything less.