- The NFL could not flex the Jets-Patriots game because it falls outside the eligible window for Thursday Night Football.
- Despite some lopsided matchups, Prime Video’s ‘Thursday Night Football’ ratings are up 14% year over year.
- Flex scheduling is complex due to logistics, network protections, and potential hardships for teams and fans.
The anticipation ahead of the Nov. 13 matchup between the New York Jets and New England Patriots, Prime Video’s latest “Thursday Night Football” offering, is at a fever pitch – the AFC East clash generating copious interest … and perhaps more so for people who just crawled out from beneath heavy objects … and who live in the northeast … and think it’s still 2010, when the NYJ were still competitively relevant.
The Jets, who have won two straight after losing their first seven games, are 13-point underdogs, per BetMGM. New York’s myriad injuries and a roster recently depleted at the trade deadline would seem to justify the notion they very likely might not come within two touchdowns of an archrival sitting atop the division and tied for the best record in the NFL. Crippled as the Jets are, it might also beg the question: Why didn’t the league flex its prime-time Thursday broadcast away from this game?
If the Patriots cruise to another victory – or even prevail from a slog that Thursday games so typically devolve into – it will extend what’s been a brutal patch of prime-time games, especially of the “TNF” variety. (The Los Angeles Chargers beat the Minnesota Vikings 37-10 in Week 8’s Thursday game. Week 9 served up the Baltimore Ravens’ 28-6 bashing of the Miami Dolphins. A week ago, the Denver Broncos defeated the Las Vegas Raiders 10-7 in a contest that was – technically? – competitive, if still a tough watch.)
So why not pivot to a better game than Jets-Patriots? The reasons are myriad, both operationally and logically, so let’s break it down.
Why didn’t the NFL flex out of the Jets-Patriots Thursday night game?
Just one word: Impossible.
The Jets and Patriots will ring in Week 11. Thursday games are only eligible to be flexed between Weeks 14 and 16, and only a maximum of two can be moved in a given season. And in actuality, the league has only utilized the Thursday flex option once – moving a Denver Broncos-Chargers game into last year’s Week 16 Thursday slot when the initially scheduled Browns-Bengals matchup had lost nearly all of its luster.
It’s not a decision the league would make lightly anyway given the logistical imposition on fans for moving a game from Thursday into a Sunday afternoon slot – which is much more disruptive, for example, than moving a 1 p.m. ET kickoff on a Sunday into the prime-time “Sunday Night Football” prime time slot. The NFL would strive to provide at least three weeks advance notice before flexing a “TNF” contest.
Are Amazon’s ratings suffering from the Thursday slump?
Just one word: Nope.
A league spokesman told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday that Prime Video’s ratings are up 14% year over year. Sunday night (9%) and Monday night (17%) games have also gotten a nice bump this season – none of them flexed, either, even though they’ve also had what turned out to be suboptimal matchups (Chiefs-Commanders, Seahawks-Commanders and Chargers-Steelers among them) in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, Sunday afternoon ratings, traditionally the NFL’s most watched time slot are “only” up 4% to date in 2025.
Why aren’t more midseason games flexed?
There’s a certain Jenga element to moving any game that perhaps casual viewers don’t take into account. For example, the Week 7 Sunday night game between the Atlanta Falcons and San Francisco 49ers earlier this season was eligible to be moved – and probably wasn’t the sexiest pairing of the season, unless you bought into the tailback showdown between Bijan Robinson and Christian McCaffrey.
But, as typically happens in the middle of a given season, there aren’t a ton of good options on the other side of that equation. In Week 7, for example, two teams were on bye and two more were playing in London. There was one Thursday night game that week and two on Monday night, none of those contests eligible to be moved to Sunday night. Furthermore, FOX and CBS are permitted to protect one of their own games, so it’s not like Chargers-Colts – probably a more attractive game at the time on the surface – would necessarily even be available to swap in. The circumstances of the teams being flexed out must also be taken into account, including whether a scheduling change would create a hardship or conflict with their circumstances on either side of a flexed game.
Not every preseason projection works out
The NFL certainly wasn’t forecasting in May that Jets-Patriots, for example, would look like such a dud when the 2025 schedule was released on May 14. At the time, both teams seemed like they might get a boost from head coaching changes and some notable personnel additions via free agency and/or the draft. Few prognosticated the Patriots would be in the mix for the AFC’s No. 1 playoff seed while the Jets were in the mix for the No. 1 draft pick in 2026.
But as the league optimizes its revenue with more and more exclusive broadcast windows – just in the past few years, it has added an increasing amount of international games, including on Friday night in Week 1, the Black Friday game, and the determination to play on Christmas no matter what day of the week it falls on – that means incrementally diminishing flexibility … to flex.
When can the NFL begin flexing games?
Flex scheduling was initially implemented in 2006 as a mechanism to occasionally move egregiously bad matchups out of prime-time slots, when they didn’t serve viewers well and/or broadcast partners which might be stuck with a dog game as their only inventory of a given week. Said another way, it was also a way to spotlight teams that were much better than they were forecast to be heading into a season.
These are among the current pertinent rules around flex scheduling, per the league:
For Sunday Night Football, it may be used up to twice between Weeks 5-10, and any week during Weeks 11-17.
For Monday Night Football it may be used any week in Weeks 12-17.
For Thursday Night Football it may be used up to twice between Weeks 14-16.
Only Sunday afternoon games (or those listed as TBD) are eligible to be moved to Sunday night, Monday night, or Thursday night, in which case the initially scheduled Sunday, Monday, or Thursday night game would be moved to Sunday afternoon.
Sunday afternoon games may also be moved between 1 p.m. and 4:05 p.m. or 4:25 p.m. ET.
As in prior seasons, for Week 18, the final weekend of the season, the scheduling of the Saturday, Sunday afternoon, and the Sunday night games is not assigned. The schedule for Week 18 will be announced at the conclusion of Week 17.
For Sunday Night Football in Weeks 5-13 and for Monday Night Football in Weeks 12-17, the NFL will decide and announce no later than 12 days in advance of the game, which game will be played on Sunday night and which game will be played on Monday night.
For Sunday Night Football in Weeks 14-17, the flexible scheduling decision will generally be made no later than 6 days prior to the game.
For Thursday Night Football in Weeks 14-16, the flexible scheduling decision will generally be made no later than 21 days prior to the game.
