Sorry, Amazon: no flexing for you.
On Tuesday, the Sports Business Journal reported that the NFL’s owners are backing away from flexing Thursday Night Football games on Prime Video.
In February, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell brought up the possibility of flexing TNF games in the future. Last week, the possibility came closer to reality, with the league deciding to discuss flexing TNF at this week’s league meetings.
That discussion apparently didn’t get far, with the vote being tabled and the proposal shelved until the May owners meetings.
While flexing TNF appears to be a non-starter, the possibility of teams receiving a second short week prior to TNF has some momentum.
However, sources said that there does appear to be a consensus in favor of allowing teams to play twice on Thursdays after a Sunday game each season — up from the current one. That alone would give schedule makers significantly more freedom to put high-interest, competitive teams in the Thursday game windows controlled by new media partner, Amazon Prime Video.
There was a “spirited discussion” among owners, one source said. They universally understand the importance of making sure Amazon gets good matchups, but they felt 15 days was insufficient notice for such a big change for coaches, team employees and fans.
This is the sensible decision. Moving games up from a Sunday on a Thursday on two weeks notice is absolutely horrendous for everyone except Amazon (and I guess the NFL as a general entity). While the possibility of flexing TNF isn’t completely dead quite yet, it does seem like the league got enough pushback to at least second guess the proposal.
