NFL responds to Mike Tirico's proposal to change how the league schedules games

Pete Grathoff, The Kansas City Star on Oct 14, 2026

Published in Football

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Mike Tirico does a terrific job calling “Sunday Night Football” games for NBC Sports, and he sometimes provides viral moments.

For instance, when the Chiefs beat the Chargers, 19-17, to win the AFC West title in 2024, Tirico had a great call of the game-winning field goal from Matthew Wright that hit the left upright and went through.

“It’s the doink for the division for the Chiefs! Oh my goodness!” Tirico said that night.

Tirico went viral this week but it wasn’t for calling a game. While on the Front Office Sports “Tuned In” program, Tirico proposed the NFL change the way it prepares the schedule by not having set times at the start of the season.

“What I would do if I were the league — and they love when you do this — but why not?” Tirico said. “I would lay out the first six weeks of the schedule, but then I would ... lay it out like the (English) Premier League. Like, hey, here is Match Window 14, and here are the fixtures for that match week. And six weeks or so out, you start slotting them in. I think that would help leave good inventory for an early Sunday. Have your best games late Sunday afternoon and Sunday night. And there is some flexibility with Monday, right? You can move somebody a day later on in the season. Thursdays are hard because you’ve got to do that puzzle very intricately and fairly for teams.

“But I think if you did that, it gives you a chance to do better because at the end of the day, flex whether it’s Monday night, Sunday night, Thursday has some flex opportunities as well for a few of their weeks. The person who wins in flex is not the networks, it’s the fan. Because 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. So I think that could help a little bit of this as it gets spread out.”

It’s an intriguing thought and generated a ton of comments on social-media channels, with some praising the idea and others deriding the suggestion.

Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president and chief media officer, was at the same Front Office event and was asked about Tirico’s suggestion. Schroeder noted the NFL’s decision to remove what essentially was the exclusivity of AFC games on CBS and NFC games on Fox when the 2021 television contracts were finalized.

“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,” Schroeder said.

“So when I look at that, when I look at the viewership and results and what we’ve talked about before, when I look about the history of us and in our history of having flex (available) even for Sunday, it’s been less than two times a year we flex games, and so you know we work really hard in the scheduling process to try to get every game into the best possible window.”

Schroeder also talked about how the schedule Tirico mentioned might affect fans. In England, it’s much easier to get to any opponent’s stadium and back in a day. Not so when the Chiefs are playing in, say, Las Vegas, Los Angeles or even when driving to Denver.

“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,” Schroeder said. “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, you know, there’s a lot that goes into it, and I sort of like where we’re at today.”