John Mara Rips Proposal to Flex Sunday Games into Thursday Night

The Giants co-owner also expressed concern about adding a second Thursday night game to teams' schedules.

The NFL's continued quest to ensure the games featured on a national stage are of interest to the audience was rejected Tuesday when the owners voted down a proposal that would have allowed late-season games to be flexed from Sunday to Thursday night.

Despite the setback for the league, the idea could be revised again later this year, and Giants co-owner John Mara isn't thrilled with the idea.

“I am adamantly opposed to that,” Mara told reporters in between league meetings Tuesday. “Flexible scheduling as it is is inconsiderate to our season ticket holders who fill our stadiums every week. People have gotten used to going from Sunday afternoon to Sunday night. That doesn’t mean that they like it. To flex a game back to Thursday night is, to me, abusive, and I am adamantly opposed to it.”

The league did allow for the flexing of a Sunday game into Monday night, another concept Mara doesn't particularly care for.

"I think it is really inconsiderate to our ticket holders," he said.

My understanding is the vote count in the room (no official vote was taken) for the tabled TNF flex proposal was as follows …

• 22 owners for it.
• 8 owners against it.
• 2 owners abstaining.

We’ll see if Roger Goodell, who was pushing for it, can get to 24 votes in May.

— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) March 29, 2023

Regardless of Mara's feelings, the league wants to appease its broadcasting partners. The way to do that is to deliver the top games of the week whenever possible, including eventually moving Sunday games to Thursday.

“At some point, can we please give some consideration to the people who are coming to the games?” Mara said. “I understand the ratings at the end of the year on Amazon were down a little bit. We probably had some bad matchups – let’s pick better matchups.”

Meanwhile, the owners did approve a proposal allowing teams to play two Thursday night games instead of one, another item that MAra isn't thrilled with.

“I know the injury data has shown that playing one Thursday night game doesn’t increase the chances of injury. But now, if you’re going to get a second one, and it’s going to be late in the season when players’ bodies are a little more beaten up than they were maybe earlier in the season, I think we need to look at that. I think it should have been vetted with the health and safety committee, it should have been vetted with the competition committee, and it wasn’t.”

Mara knows the disdain many players and coaches have about playing on Thursday night.

“Players don’t like playing on Thursday nights,” he said. “We get that. We’ve been doing it once a year. I think adding the second one is not going to be very popular.

“If they had done a poll of the 32 coaches, I think it would’ve been overwhelmingly against that, and the general managers as well. They don’t get to cast those results.”

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