NFL starting this fall can ‘flex out’ clunker Monday matchups, too

Flex scheduling for Monday night games is coming to the NFL next regular season.

That’s one of several tidbits of news to come out of commissioner Roger Goodell’s annual pre-Super Bowl news conference on Wednesday.

So, just as with Sunday nights for years, the league over the last three months of future seasons can swap out a matchup that had looked good when the schedule was announced in May, but which unexpectedly turned into a stinker — and swap in a far more compelling replacement game.

The change coincides with the start of the NFL’s new long-term deals with its media-partner platforms both in broadcast television and on digital platforms. Two years ago the league secured coinciding 11-year contracts, from 2023-33, with each of Amazon, CBS, ESPN/ABC, FOX and ABC to carry games.

“This is the first year of our new deals when we’ll have flexible scheduling on Monday night,” Goodell told a hall full of journalists, NFL executives and local dignitaries in Phoenix, Ariz.

Then he dropped this additional little news bomb — a veritable promise that the expansion of flex scheduling won’t stop with Monday nights.

“It wouldn’t at all surprise me at some point if we had it on Thursdays, at some stage,” Goodell said. “Not today, but it’ll certainly be something on our horizon.”

The only people who’ll grumble about the new potential for Monday-night schedule changes are the most anal-retentive head coaches, and team trip-bookers. Otherwise, as far as fans are concerned, in those two marquee prime-time windows — Sundays and Mondays — no wants to see anything less than a meaningful game between two teams able to start their star players. Otherwise, sub it out.

Other news to come out of Goodell’s Q&A with reporters included:

• Further to last Friday’s announcement by league health-and-safety leaders that while concussion incidence plummeted this past preseason it rose 18% during the regular season, Goodell underscored the league’s talking-point reasons — that safer, wider criteria for what constitutes a concussion, in conjunction with more concussion evaluations, all but necessarily meant the number of brain-injury diagnoses would rise. He also reiterated that the number of total injuries, overall, dropped 6% this past season, “and we think that is a positive.”

• Goodell said the league is not rethinking 2021’s schedule expansion that sees teams now play 17 games per season, up from 16. He said for the second straight year that injury rates in Week 18 were no higher than in previous weeks, and he furthermore swatted down complaints annually brought up that Thursday nights are too dangerous, with players having had only three days’ rest. In refuting that argument again this year, Goodell pointed out that Thursday-night injury rates continue to be no different than Sunday games.

• The commish said the quality of officiating, overall, “has never been better.” You could almost hear the collective wincing across North America. We’ll leave that one well enough alone.

• The International Series, Goodell said, continues to thrive. Expect more games annually in Germany, he said, while vowing that the absence of a game in Mexico City this coming season is temporary, so as to permit Aztec Stadium to undergo renovations in preparation for the 2026 World Cup. Goodell said nothing about games in Canada. Postmedia’s understanding is there still is nothing definitive by way of updates to report, beyond the league’s long-stated, long-term goal of branching into Canada to stage regular-season games at some point. “We want to make NFL football a global sport,” Goodell said, generally. “We’ll continue on this path.”

• Goodell said that the Super Bowl for the first time featuring two starting quarterbacks who are Black is “just another example of how diversity makes you better … and that’s what we’re so proud of.” He added that “I think we have 11 black starting quarterbacks today. They’re among the best leaders I’ve ever seen.” No doubt, with the exception of — pssssst, Commish — Deshaun Watson.

• Goodell was asked several times about the league’s “accelerator” program introduced in 2022 intended to promote greater diversity hirings within clubs at both the coaching and football-office levels. The first “coach and front-office accelerator” symposium took place last May, and involved more than 60 diverse head coach and GM prospects from all 32 clubs. The second accelerator event in December was intended only for talent evaluators, as coaches can’t break away in-season. Goodell said that’s where the Tennessee Titans met the GM they hired only weeks later, Ran Carthon, who is Black. “(This year) hopefully we can schedule better, so coaches have an opportunity to participate in that too,” Goodell said. “I also think there was some reluctance (on the part of Black coaches, as in), Is this really going to be beneficial? I think now, when coaches and others see that it has produced results already, I think they’re going to be anxious to participate. That will be good for our clubs, who loved the experience. In implementing any program you never know what the reaction is going to be. I was overwhelmed by the reaction from our clubs. They embraced it. They thought it was terrific. The conversations were great; I participated in many of them. It’s a program that has a great deal of potential.”

John Kryk writes a weekly newsletter on NFL matters. That’s where you can first see his straight-up picks each week. You can have the newsletter automatically dropped into your email inbox on Wednesdays simply by signing up — for free — at https://torontosun.com/newsletters/

JoKryk@postmedia.com

@JohnKryk