Perhaps never before in NFL history will a game featuring teams like 2-10 Houston at 3-9 Jacksonville get more coverage by a network.

NFL Network will bring its entire vast traveling show to Jacksonville, blanketing the game with pregame and postgame analysis. Count on several moments of humor from Rich Eisen, who will undoubtedly poke fun at the match-up.

The rules mandate that every team plays on a Thursday. Hence, tonight’s game. Yet even with the horrible match-up, viewers still will tune in. Hey, it’s the NFL.

The prospect of even more Thursday night games in the future won’t go down well with the players who have to play in them. Robert Klemko at MMQB talked to several players who voiced their complaints about these mid-week games.

Klemko writes:

Duane Brown is not one of these players.

“It’s dangerous,” says the Texans Pro Bowl tackle. “It feels horrible.”

Brown, whose Texans visit Jacksonville on Thursday, played two overtime games back to back, on Sunday, Nov. 18, 2012 and Thursday, Nov. 22. Brown played 172 combined snaps that week, and describes a subsequent degree of pain and fatigue that he had not yet felt in four previous NFL seasons.

“That Friday, everything was hurting; knees, hands, shoulders,” he remembers. “I didn’t get out of bed until that night. I didn’t leave the house at all. You talk about player safety, but you want to extend the season and add Thursday games? It’s talking out of both sides of your mouth.”

And:

“It’s a problem,” said Broncos guard Louis Vasquez.

“I don’t like them,” says Texans wide receiver Andre Johnson. “I guess because they don’t play in the league office, they don’t understand how your body feels.”

No, the NFL only knows how it feels to touch all that money the Thursday night games produce.