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NFL approves controversial Thursday Night Football flex option

By Sayre Bedinger

Aug 25, 2022; Houston, Texas, USA; A general view of the NFL Network Thursday Night Football broadcast analyst prior to the game between the Houston Texans and the San Francisco 49ers at NRG Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Maria Lysaker-USA TODAY Sports
Aug 25, 2022; Houston, Texas, USA; A general view of the NFL Network Thursday Night Football broadcast analyst prior to the game between the Houston Texans and the San Francisco 49ers at NRG Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Maria Lysaker-USA TODAY Sports /
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The NFL now officially has options to flex any of its primetime matchups throughout the season. Whether it’s Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football, and now Thursday Night Football, the league can ensure that it has a chance to get the most eyes on the best possible matchups every single week. At least, that’s what they’re going to pitch to the fans.

The league has agreed to some massive, silly-money types of TV contracts within the last couple of years, not the least of which was the deal they agreed to with Amazon for the Thursday Night Football product. In order to stream Thursday Night Football, Amazon paid more than $1 billion per season over the next 11 years. For a billion dollars per year, they’d better be getting the best possible product the NFL can offer, right?

It makes sense when you think about it that way. Reports emerged as the NFL’s competition committee met this week that the league agreed to flex Thursday Night Football games but with some stipulations. Let’s look at each of them.

NFL agrees to have flex options for Thursday Night Football

  • League can only flex games in Week 13-Week 17
  • Teams cannot play more than TWO TNF games per season
  • Teams cannot play multiple AWAY TNF games
  • Decision to flex TNF matchup must be made 28 days in advance
  • Teams cannot be flexed more than once

Overall, these rules here pretty severely limit the league’s options when it comes to flexing teams into Thursday Night Football. Although it could drastically affect some teams, many teams probably look at all of these stipulations and think, who cares? Why not?

For instance, the Denver Broncos were one of the (minimum) 24 approving votes to allow flexing of Thursday night games within this particular window. The Broncos play a road Thursday game against the Chiefs in Week 6, so all of their road matchups are off the table for flexing in this window. They play three road games within this particular five-week stretch as well as a prime-time game on Christmas Eve against the Patriots. None of those four games can be flexed into TNF. The only “eligible” game on the Broncos’ schedule to be flexed into Thursday Night Football is a Week 17 home game against the Chargers, but since teams cannot play two road TNF games the Chargers are ineligible to be flexed into that spot since they have a road TNF game two weeks prior in Las Vegas.

It might sound horrible on paper that teams can be flexed into Thursday Night Football since teams already dislike playing in that game due to short recovery time, less time to prepare, and greater risk of injury, but in reality, it might not be such a bad deal if only to appease the powers that be. The Chiefs can’t be flexed into any late-season TNF games since they already play two within the first two months of the season.

Ultimately, it may be rare for the NFL to do something like this, but to at least have the option available isn’t overly unreasonable.

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