NFL tables 'Thursday Night Football' flex scheduling, but ups number of times teams can play maligned timeslot

A big change is coming to the NFL's widely maligned "Thursday Night Football," with an even bigger one potentially on the way.

The NFL owners voted to approve a change that will allow teams to play two TNF games on short rest in one season, according to NFL Network's Tom Pelissero. Teams previously only had to play one such game in a season.

The measure was one of many rules changes voted through by the owners on Tuesday.

The owners also reportedly tabled a proposal that would have introduced flex scheduling for the timeslot. Previous reports indicated that such a system would allow Sunday afternoon games in Weeks 14-17 to shift to Thursdays with 15 days notice.

Given how much players loathe the burden of playing games on four days rest and how much fans (and announcer Al Michaels) have mocked and criticized the Thursday games, sold to Amazon last offseason for a cool $1 billion per year, the proposals to increase the number of times an elite team can play that day was bound to be controversial.

Take one such player who now seems pretty likely to play an extra Thursday game many times for the rest of his career:

The flex scheduling seems to be controversial even among owners, as indicated by the fact that the proposal wasn't pushed through Tuesday.

On the side against, you have the influential New York Giants owner John Mara, who called the idea "abusive" for fans who attend games:

"People have gotten used to going from Sunday afternoon to Sunday night, that doesn't mean that they like it. This year, we could be flexed to Monday night, which I think is really inconsiderate to our ticket-holders. To flex a game back to Thursday night, to me, is just abusive. I am adamantly opposed to it. Fortunately, it didn't get enough votes today, but it will probably be revisited in May."

On the other hand, you have the even more influential Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who praised the idea's media potential to Yahoo Sports' Jori Epstein:

As Mara indicated, this matter clearly isn't settled, but Jones and his allies now only have two months to find voters willing to change sides.