Sorry, but the OP's argument is tired. Have you ever been to the gym and really really wrung yourself out? Because after a rough arm day I'm fairly useless for a couple days as far as strength and flexibility. These guys exert themselves as hard as they can on Sunday, not just running against air, but smashing into other elite athletes who are exerting themselves just as hard. It takes at least 2-3 days just to physically recover from that, assuming they haven't pulled something. Thursday games are difficult, you can't discount that. Now, the other team is playing with a similar level of discomfort and fatigue, that's a given. But you can't say that there are no excuses, there are plenty of mitigating factors to performing poorly on Thursday. Bottom line is we played poorly in all facets of the game though.