EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — NFL+ buffered continuously for three hours and eleven minutes during Thursday night’s preseason game between the Giants and the Jets, delivering an estimated nine seconds of live football and, according to nearly every subscriber who sat through it, the single best broadcast in the platform’s history.
You own nine spatulas and all of them are slightly melted. We can help: Stuff to Buy Before Anyone Sees Your Kitchen
The stream loaded, displayed a coin toss, froze, and then committed fully to a gray rectangle and a small spinning circle for the duration of regulation. Viewers reported that the circle spun at a soothing, consistent rate. Several described it as “cinematic.”
“I paid for football and got a loading wheel, and I want to be clear that I came out ahead,” said one subscriber in Hoboken, who had blocked out the evening and bought a party sub. “Nobody threw a pick. Nobody tore an ACL for a roster spot he wasn’t getting. The circle just went around. I was moved.”
A Third-String Quarterback, Mercifully Unseen
League sources confirmed that a 24-year-old undrafted quarterback out of a school with a directional name attempted 31 passes on Thursday night, completing 12 of them, and that not one American witnessed this. He remains, in the public imagination, a promising young man. The NFL+ buffering issue has, in effect, preserved his career.
Today we have been authorized to sell you the "We Demand Your Silence" tee.
Sports bars that had the game on reported no complaints. Two Buffalo Wild Wings locations in New Jersey left the frozen screen up for the entire evening under the impression it was a technical difficulty at the venue, and patrons continued drinking at normal rates.
“The circle is honest,” said a bartender in Secaucus. “The circle isn’t pretending a fifth-round linebacker matters.”
League Response
An NFL spokesperson acknowledged “an intermittent playback experience” and said engineers had identified the cause, which was described only as “a routing issue” and “almost certainly not on purpose.” The league declined to say whether the fix would be applied to Week 2 of the preseason or held back as a premium feature.
Internally, the mood is reportedly less apologetic. One executive, granted anonymity because he is not authorized to admit that preseason football is a hostage situation with a rights fee attached, said the engagement numbers were the strongest of any exhibition broadcast in three years. Average watch time went up. Churn went down. Nobody left.
A proposal is said to be circulating for a tier called NFL+ Calm, which would cost an additional four dollars a month and show nothing at all.
At a house in Nutley, a man in a jersey he bought in 2011 sat on his couch until 11:40 p.m., long after the stream had recovered and gone dark, watching the place where the circle used to be.