A potential change regarding how the NFL schedules — or, more specifically, flexes — its Thursday Night Football games could be in the works. Currently, flexing a Thursday Night Football game requires 28 days of notice, but at the upcoming league meetings, there will be a discussion on possibly reducing the required notice by a week.
Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal detailed that NFL owners will vote Monday on a measure to potentially give teams one less week’s notice if a scheduled “Thursday Night Football” game is swapped for a better matchup. If passed, the league could change a Thursday game with just 21 days’ notice, down from the current 28-day requirement.
This measure will be debated during the league meetings in Palm Beach, Fla., as part of a plan to renew TNF flexing. This rule split the owners in a surprisingly intense debate when it was first proposed in the spring of 2023, failing on the initial attempt, with some owners arguing it was unfair to ticket holders to switch games off Thursdays.
Until 2023, Thursday night games were not allowed to be flexed. The current rules permit two games between Weeks 13 and 17 to be flexed into Thursday night. Additionally, teams are limited to two Thursday games following a Sunday game. Notably, 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 matchup between AFC West rivals, the Denver Broncos and Los Angeles Chargers.
The 2025 season will mark the fourth year of Thursday Night Football on Prime Video.
