NFL Makes It Easier to Flex Games to Thursday Night Football
PALM BEACH, Fla. — The NFL has approved a rule-change resolution to reduce the amount of time required to flex a Sunday game onto Thursday Night Football, according to a report by Tom Pelissero of NFL Network.
Until this year, the league has had to give teams and fans a four-week notice in order to move a game from a Sunday to Thursday Night Football.
That plan was first enacted in 2023 amid a contentious debate among ownership, with Steelers president Art Rooney II and John Mara of the New York Giants aggressively pushing back on the idea that the league should be able to flex games into Thursday Night Football.
Rooney and Mara lost in the long run, but they got the long lead time provision installed as a countermeasure. In the two years where games could be flexed into TNF with a four-week lead time, just one game was selected, a game between the Los Angeles Chargers and Denver Broncos last year.
The move to make the lead time three weeks will give the NFL and Amazon Prime Video, which holds exclusive Thursday night broadcasts rights, greater flexibility in terms of getting the best matches on national television.
But it will come at the expense of the ticket-paying customer, especially those that often travel great distances to come to games at Acrisure Stadium, and who plan their travel months in advance.
Each team can still one play two short-week Thursday Night Football games per season, so a team that already has two scheduled cannot be flexed into a third. The Steelers have played two short-week games in each of the last two seasons, playing two Thursday Night Football games in 2023 and a TNF game and a Wednesday afternoon Christmas Day game in 2024.
The schedule for the 2025 season will be released in May.