NFL owners have approved another change to “Thursday Night Football” that they are hopeful will help improve a product that has been lacking in recent year.
At the NFL owners meetings on Monday, team owners passed a resolution that will allow the league to flex games from Sunday to Thursday night with 21 days notice, according to Tom Pelissero of NFL Network. Previously, teams needed to be given 28 days notice if the league wanted to flex a Sunday game to “Thursday Night Football.”
The NFL has had flex scheduling in place for “Sunday Night Football” games for years, but that expanded to both “Monday Night Football” and “Thursday Night Football” more recently. Flexing for “Thursday Night Football” was approved ahead of the 2023 season.
There has only been one “Thursday Night Football” flex thus far, which was last year’s Week 16 game between the Denver Broncos and Los Angeles Chargers. That decision worked out, as the Chargers came from behind to beat their AFC West rival 34-27 in a thrilling game that had playoff implications.
The shorter notice window will, in theory, allow the NFL to better evaluate matchups to see which games might be the most intriguing for the Thursday night primetime slot.
There have been some extremely boring games on “Thursday Night Football” in recent years, and even Al Michaels has taken shots at the NFL over the lack of quality. The NFL will likely start flexing more Thursday night games in 2025 and beyond.
