Beginning this fall, the NFL can flex games into and out of Monday Night Football in addition to Sunday Night Football. The additional flexing will give MNF a better schedule, which is great news for ESPN and the NFL.
NFL Chief Media & Business Officer Brian Rolapp talked to The Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast about how flexing will work on Monday nights, and to no one’s surprise, it’ll be similar to what we see on Sunday Night Football.
NFL's Rolapp on how "MNF" flex scheduling will look.
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“I think its limited in how many weeks we’ll do it. There’s only a handful of weeks we will do it. I think we will make those decisions with a defined period of time. So it won’t be full flex every week – it will be limited,” Rolapp said. “And we’ll do like we’ve done with the other flex where there are some protections on Sunday afternoons, and for those non-protected games, we’ll flex them.”
Rolapp also said there would be enough notice for fans attending the flexed games, because moving a game back or forward a full day is a whole different beast than moving it by a few hours.
Additionally, Rolapp confirmed there was a maximum to the amount of times a Monday Night Football game could be flexed, but didn’t provide the exact amount. He said it was “in that range” of the three or four games per season mentioned by cohost Andrew Marchand.
Flexing MNF games is a great idea to ensure that another one of the NFL’s primetime packages doesn’t get too many bad games. Seeing the NFL’s week end with a turd of a game between teams with 4-8 or 5-7 records is a buzzkill.
Now, about flexing Thursday Night Football games…
About Joe Lucia
I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.