Mike Tirico wants the NFL to stop locking in most of its kickoff times in May. The voice of NBC’s Sunday Night Football said this week that the league should set its matchups for each week but hold back the time slots until about six weeks before the games, the way England’s Premier League does, so the best games land in the biggest windows.
The NFL heard the pitch in the same room and politely turned it down. Hans Schroeder, the league’s executive vice president and chief media officer, called it “an interesting idea” but said the current model “works pretty well today.”
Tirico’s “match window” plan
Tirico spoke Tuesday at a sports-business summit in New York, on a panel with radio host Chris “Mad Dog” Russo about whether football can stay on top of American sports. Asked by moderator Ryan Glasspiegel how the league could keep its product strong, he went straight to the schedule.
“I would lay out the first six weeks of the schedule, but then I would lay it out like the Premier League. Like, hey, ‘Here is match window 14 and here are the fixtures for that matchweek.’ And six weeks or so out, you start slotting them in.”
In his plan, that would keep strong games for the early Sunday window, push the best matchups to late Sunday afternoon and Sunday night, and allow some games to slide to Monday later in the season. He said Thursday is the hardest night to change because that schedule has to be built carefully and fairly for teams on short rest.
“The person who wins in flex is not the networks, it’s the fan,” Tirico said. “After two games on Sunday, you want a good game when it’s standing alone. You want a good game at 4:25 Eastern time when it’s standing alone.”
Tirico’s network has a stake in both sides of the comparison. NBC carries the Sunday night game and also holds major Premier League rights in the United States, where English clubs learn their dates in June but get their exact kickoff times in batches through the season as broadcasters make their picks.
The league’s answer: flex is already there
Schroeder was asked about the idea at the same event. He pointed out that the league’s current TV deals, signed in 2021, already added more ways to move games than ever before.
“In those deals, we’ve also added flex for Monday night for late in the season. We also added flex for Thursday night late in the season, and we have what we call cross flex. So after the games get scheduled in May, we can still move games between CBS and Fox.”
He added that, looking at the league’s history, “it’s been less than two times a year we flex games” even on Sunday nights, because the schedule makers work hard to put every game in the right window from the start. Then he brought up the people in the stands.
“I think it’s an interesting idea, but I think the model works pretty well today, and maybe there’s a little bit more flexibility around the edges. But I think as we think about balancing everything and the fan and the in-market and the experience going to the stadium and otherwise, there’s a lot that goes into it, and I sort of like where we’re at today.”
How flex works in 2026
The current rules already give the league a lot of room, but only inside set limits:
- Sunday night: the league can flex a game up to twice between Weeks 5 and 10, and as often as needed from Week 11 through Week 17.
- Notice: at least 12 days for a Sunday night change through Week 13, and six days from Week 14 to Week 17.
- Monday night: games can be flexed in any week from Week 12 to Week 17, also with 12 days’ notice.
- Thursday night: a game can be flexed only twice late in the season, with three weeks’ notice.
- Sunday afternoon: games can move between the 1 pm, 4:05 pm and 4:25 pm ET windows and between CBS and Fox.
- Week 18: no dates or times are set in advance, so the games with the biggest playoff stakes can go in the standalone slots.
For the full picture of how the 272-game slate is put together each spring, see our guide to how the NFL schedule is made.
Why fans pushed back
Tirico’s clip spread fast online, drawing millions of views, and the reaction split along a clear line. Supporters liked the idea of fewer prime-time duds. Critics, many of them season-ticket holders, said it would wreck travel plans in a league where a road trip often means a flight across the country, not a short train ride as in England. Several noted that you can fly home after a 1 pm game, but not after a Sunday night kickoff, so not knowing the time until six weeks out would make booking flights and hotels much harder. Others argued that the NFL’s short schedule, with just 17 games a team, is part of why every game already feels like an event.
Schroeder’s comments about the in-stadium experience lined up with those worries. He also made the same point he made in his wider remarks this week about the league’s plans for games on unusual days: the NFL wants to keep testing new ideas, but carefully. We covered that in our report on his “selective” approach to new game days.
A live test case: Week 8
The debate is not just theory this month. The league has until Oct. 20 to decide whether to move Eagles at Commanders out of the Week 8 Sunday night slot on Nov. 1. Philadelphia is 2-3 and Washington is 1-3-1, and Colts at Jaguars has come up as a possible replacement. We laid out the options in our Week 8 flex explainer.
That kind of decision, made a little under two weeks ahead, is about as far as the NFL is willing to go for now. Tirico’s plan would make it the normal way of doing things for most of the season. The league’s answer, at least for now, is that it likes where things are.
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