NFL owners approved a change to the league’s scheduling rules on Tuesday.
Owners voted in favor of a proposal to exempt Friday games from be treated as short-week matchups. That change means that Friday games will now be treated like Saturday, Sunday and Monday games for scheduling purposes.
That’s significant because teams are limited to two short-week games a year and opening up Fridays allows more flexibility for moving teams into standalone slots on the schedule. Some of those slots will come on Christmas this year because the holiday falls on a Friday and the league is expected to have multiple games that day.
The league will likely try to schedule high-profile teams in those games and Tuesday’s tweak to the rules will allow them to do so without limiting opportunities for shorter turnarounds at other points in the season.