A potential change regarding how the NFL schedules — or, more specifically, flexes — its Thursday Night Football games could be in the works.
Presently, flexing a Thursday Night Football game requires 28 days of notice. But at the upcoming league meetings, there will be a discussion to potentially trim the required notice by a week.
Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal detailed the matter.
NFL owners will be asked to vote Monday on a measure that would potentially give teams one less week’s notice if a scheduled “Thursday Night Football” game gets swapped out for a better matchup. If it passes, the league could make a change to a Thursday game 21 days out, down from the current 28-day deadline.
The measure will be debated during the league meetings in Palm Beach, Fla., as part of a plan to renew TNF flexing, a rule that split the owners in a surprisingly intense debate when it first came up in the spring of 2023 — failing on the first attempt — with some owners passionately arguing it was unfair to ticket holders to switch games off Thursdays.
Until 2023, Thursday night games were not permitted to be flexed. Presently, the rules allow for two games between Weeks 13 and 17 to be flexed into Thursday night. Other rules, including teams being limited to two Thursday games following a Sunday game, also apply.
No games were flexed into Thursday night in 2023. In 2024, the scheduled Week 16 Thursday Night Football game between the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals was flexed out in favor of a game between AFC West rivals, the Denver Broncos and Los Angeles Chargers.
The 2025 season will be the fourth for Thursday Night Football on Prime Video.