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

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

Madden, who became synonymous with NFL Thanksgiving, not just for his call to the game but also his joy of one The Turduck, died in 2021. The league has done its best to honor him ever since.

Madden patches will be worn on the uniforms of all six teams playing on Thanksgiving Day. The Lions and the Bears at 12:30 p.m. ET, Giants and the Cowboys at 16.30 and Dolphins and the Packers at 20.20

Here’s a look at a few of them:

After his 10-year Super Bowl XI-winning stint as head coach of the then-Oakland Raiders, Madden joined the television world in 1979.

Along with legendary announcer Pat Summeral for most of them, Madden called 20 Thanksgiving Day games from 1982-2001. In the process he spoke The Turduck into a familiar Thanksgiving dish that teaches audiences how to prepare and cut the meal 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 turn-duck-one.”

Madden and his crew would then hand out turkeys, turduckens and turkey drumsticks to the winning teams.

The NFL has since dubbed its Thanksgiving Day game the “John Madden Thanksgiving Celebration,” with each game awarding a “Madden Player of the Game,” and NBC’s nightly contest continues the tradition of awarding the turkey leg to the players of the game.