NFL trolls the Patriots with Thursday Night Football promotional graphic

Everyone has heard the news that the Patriots' Week 15 game against the Chiefs has been flexed out of their primetime spot, making them the first team to have a Monday Night Football game moved in NFL history. It's a new rule that was implemented this season.

The Patriots are, unfortunately, the ceremonial team to be awarded the embarrassing history-making title as another dose of reality of how far they have fallen to get to this point. But the NFL's decision to pile on a struggling team that dominated the league for many years did not stop there.

Later that night, during the Thursday Night Football broadcast, Al Michaels promoted the Week 14 matchup that will be taking place on Prime TV, which just so happens to be the Steelers vs the Patriots.

That would be fine and dandy if that's all the advertisement was, but the graphic shown on the screen displayed T.J. Watt representing Pittsburgh and Bill Belichick representing New England, the ultimate troll move by the league during a highly-watched matchup between the Cowboys and Seahawks.

It was a very noticeable part of the broadcast, prompting quite the response online by Patriots fans and opposers, most of whom found it humorous to see Amazon decide New England didn't have any star players to represent the team.

It may be all because of the questions surrounding the quarterback and who that may be, as they are the players most often shown in matchup promotions like this one. Or it could also be due to a popular defensive player like Matthew Judon remaining out due to injury, eliminating him from the limited list of choices they could use in the graphic instead.

Although the unanimous reaction by Patriots fans was to make jokes about the whole thing, it's kind of sad to see a visual representation of just how poorly the team has performed this season. But it's also sad to see the NFL seemingly troll a team that did so much for their league over 20+ years, and yet it's not all that surprising at the same time.

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