The NFL already can flex games into Sunday night, but Monday Night Football games have remained untouchable, well, that may not be for much longer.
Ben Fischer and John Ourand at the Sports Business Journal report that the NFL has queried teams on “radically expanding flex scheduling.” This would include moving games to Monday night.
There’s not much more to take beyond that. If there were to be any flex changes, it wouldn’t happen until 2023, when new contracts kick in. I know there’ some speculation that they may move Monday Night Football back to ABC to get a wider audience, but that’s neither here nor there.
If it’s straight flexing, I think no one will argue how great of an idea it is. Monday nights have been free of flexing, and as the season goes on, the guilt for skipping it becomes much less due to the duds they find for matchups. In 2018, the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers both played for a better draft position than for a playoff spot—that’s not the kind of game you want on prime time. If that above game were on Sunday night, it would have been flexed into the afternoon just as soon as it was allowed.
There’s no denying Monday Night Football has been atrocious the last couple years, and the matchups are a huge part of it. The other part has been how they’ve strayed from making it a producing a football show and instead of a very poor man’s Super Bowl. The Genesis Halftime Show is a direct example of how they are trying to shovel it to a broader audience. Booger McFarland hasn’t helped either.
If there were any way the NFL could flex Monday Night Football games now, you’d bet they would have done so already.