Here’s why teams wear a special badge of honor at NFL games on Thanksgiving Day

Here’s why teams wear a special badge of honor at NFL games on Thanksgiving Day

For the second year in a row, the NFL will honor the late legendary John Madden with its jerseys on Thanksgiving Day.

Madden, which became synonymous with NFL Thanksgiving, not only for the way he played the game, but also for how much he enjoyed it Turducken, passed away in 2021. The league has since done its best to honor him.

Madden patches will be worn on the jerseys of all six teams playing on Thanksgiving Day. The Lions and Bears at 12:30 p.m. ET, the Giants and Cowboys at 4:30 p.m. and the Dolphins and Packers at 8:20 p.m

Here’s a look at some of them:

After a ten-year stint as head coach of the then-Oakland Raiders, during which he won Super Bowl XI, Madden entered the world of broadcasting in 1979.

Alongside legendary announcer Pat Summeral, Madden hosted a majority of 20 Thanksgiving Day games from 1982 to 2001, voicing the Turducken into a familiar Thanksgiving dish, teaching audiences how to prepare and cut the dish first invented in New Orleans:

“You have the turkey on the outside, then you stuff the turkey with a duck, then you stuff the duck with a chicken. So it’s tur-duck-en.”

Madden and his crew then awarded turkeys, turducken and turkey legs to the winning teams.

Since then, the NFL has called its Thanksgiving Day games the “John Madden Thanksgiving Celebration,” with each game honoring a “Madden Player of the Game,” and NBC’s nighttime contest continues the tradition of awarding the turkey leg to the game’s players.

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