Reporter rips NFL for suggested Thursday night flex

The NFL's reported interested in introducing flux scheduling to its Thursday night games was described by NFL reporter Peter King as "a punch in the face to the fans" in his weekly column for Pro Football Talk.

He isn't wrong.

People buy tickets to out-of-state games, book lodging and travel accommodations for late-season games when the schedule is released in May but could have those plans upended if the league goes through with allowing games to be flexed into the Thursday night slot.

It's bad enough the league is hellbent on making "Thursday Night Football" a thing when it consistently underdelivers. Commissioner Roger Goodell's push to give TNF potentially better games is just another sign that the fan experience is an ancillary concern for the league.

The idea that placing better teams in a bad timeslot will make the games better ignores the biggest problem about Thursday games. The quick turnaround from Sunday afternoon to Thursday night leaves little time for players to recover or for teams to properly install game plans.

Fans in attendance are set to be losers in this arrangement along with players and coaches. Fans at home are already used to watching bad football on Thursdays and that likely won't change because of flex scheduling. Plus, the bad games haven't kept people from watching.

In TNF's first year as a streaming-only game via Prime Video, the decline in viewership was negligible. The broadcast averaged 16.6M viewers per game in 2022 as opposed to 17.1M viewers in its last year at Fox.

The sport — and "Thursday Night Football" — is doing well enough for itself that it doesn't need to hang fans out to dry so that it can get even bigger. 

But perhaps there is some good that could come out of this. If the league does begin flexing better games into the Thursday timeslot and they still underwhelm, the NFL will finally know the team's aren't the problem.