The NFL has had the ability to flex Thursday night games since 2023, and after two seasons, the league is thinking about tweaking the flex scheduling rules for that night of the week.
Under the current rules, a Thursday night game can only be flexed if it falls between Week 13 and Week 17, and if it does get changed, the league has to give 28 days notice if it wants to move a game. Under the new proposal, the NFL could flex a Thursday game with just 21 days notice, according to the Sports Business Journal, so that would give the league an extra week to decide whether a game needs to be flexed.
In the two years that the Thursday flex has existed, only one game has been moved and that came last season. In Week 16, the Bengals and Browns were slated to play each other on Thursday night, but that game got bumped in favor of Broncos-Chargers.
Although the Week 16 Thursday game wasn’t scheduled to be played until Dec. 19, the NFL made the decision to move the game on Nov. 22. If this year’s proposal had been in place last season, the league could have waited until Nov. 29 to make a decision on the game.
When the original Thursday night flex proposal passed in 2023, it was a contentious vote. If a proposal is going to pass in the NFL, it needs 24 owners to vote it through, and the Thursday flex got exactly 24 votes.
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The Giants, Jets, Packers, Bears, Raiders, Lions, Bengals and Steelers were the teams who voted against the original proposal and it will be interested to see if those eight teams stick to their guns. The owners who voted against the flex thought it wasn’t fair to fans, who would be forced to change their travel plans if a game got bumped from Thursday to Sunday (or vice versa).
Although the NFL is allowed to flex up to two Thursday games per year during the five week period between Week 13 and 17, the league has been only moved one game (as we mentioned), so the NFL has been diligent about the use of the Thursday night flex.
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