According to reporting from Sports Business Journal’s Ben Fischer, NFL owners will vote on Monday whether “Thursday Night Football” will shorten its 28-day deadline to flex a Sunday game to the mid-week. There is currently a proposal to shave a week off of that figure, meaning that there are at least some people in the league who would like to give Amazon the option to flex games with just three weeks of notice.
As Fischer noted, the newly proposed 21-day deadline is still a longer period of time than the league’s initial proposal in 2023, which featured just a 15-day deadline. That initial proposal fell just two votes short of the 24-vote minimum that rules need to pass. So, as long as the league can find two more owners who are in favor of a 21-day deadline over a 15-day deadline, this change will go through.
For reference, the eight teams who voted against the 28-day deadline back in 2023 were your Green Bay Packers, the New York Giants, New York Jets, Chicago Bears, Las Vegas Raiders, Detroit Lions, Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers. None of their votes were needed to get to the 24-vote minimum.
The 28-day deadline was a one-year trial, which was executed during the 2024 regular season, so the league will need to construct new rules around “Thursday Night Football” flexing in some way, be it a 21-day deadline or not. As it stood last season, TNF was only allowed to flex Week 13 to Week 17 games with a maximum of two swaps total. They used just one flex in 2024.