PIZZA WARS: DiGiorno And Pizza Hut Tag Team Against Papa John's For Criticizing NFL

You hear that knock at the door? It's not delivery . . .

And it's not pizza.

It's DiGiorno and Pizza Hut with their middle-fingers up at Papa John's.

Earlier this week, Papa John's founder and CEO John Schnatter leveled criticism against the NFL's leadership for failing to clamp down on players protesting the national anthem, saying the declining viewership has hurt their pizza sales since a great number of pizza orders occur at game time.

“We are disappointed the NFL and its leadership did not resolve this,” Schnatter said in a conference call. “Leadership starts at the top, and this is an example of poor leadership.”

Papa John’s canceled a high volume of television advertising with the NFL as a result of the anthem protest debacle.

Seeing their opportunity, frozen pizza chain DiGiorno, owned by Nestle, trolled Papa John's on Twitter, mocking both their sales numbers and their "Better Ingredients, Better Pizza" slogan:

 As my granddaddy used to say, "Them's fightin' words," and Papa John's responded with a salvo of their own by changing their Twitter bio to read:

Frozen pizza = the pizza equivalent of a participation trophy.

It turns out it was a tag-team match. On the very same day, Pizza Hut CEO Greg Creed told Fortune that Papa John's NFL problem is strictly their own. “We’re not seeing impact on any of that on our business,” he said.

No indication or hints show any of the trolling against Papa John's were politically motivated or in support of #TakeAKnee.

Domino's and Little Caesars have issued no comment.