The NFL has a pretty big change coming to its Thursday Night Football broadcasts next year. While a proposal to flex late-season games to Thursdays with enough of a heads-up during the season has apparently been tabled until May, the league determined that teams can now play two games a year on a short week on Thursdays.
The Thursday Night Football flex scheduling proposal was tabled until May, per NFL EVP/Chief Media and Business Officer Brian Rolapp.
However, owners did approve a change that will allow a team to play two TNF games in a season.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) March 28, 2023
For clarity, the change would allow a team to play on TNF *on a short week* twice in a season. So doesn’t include the Week 1 opener, a TNF game after a Thanksgiving game, etc.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) March 28, 2023
As Pelissero noted, the way this worked in the past — even before Amazon acquired the rights to Thursday Night Football last season — was that teams could only have this sort of arrangement once in a season. It has not been especially popular among players, who have noted that there are legitimate safety concerns that surround playing a game on a Sunday, packing an entire week’s worth of recovery and preparation into three days, and then playing again on a Thursday.
You can, apparently, count Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes among those who isn’t a fan of playing on this short of a week. Mahomes took to Twitter after news got out of the new arrangement and expressed his disappointment with one emoji.
🤦🏽♂️ https://t.co/7kIyOGpOvV
— Patrick Mahomes II (@PatrickMahomes) March 28, 2023
We’ll have to wait and see on whether or not games will end up getting flexed to Thursdays, which we have to assume Mahomes will not like, either.
