Leaving aside the fact that flexing games not by hours but by days creates logistical problems and potential expenses for fans traveling to games, if the league is going to prioritize drawing large audiences over the comfort of fans in the stadium, there is more work to be done.
Specifically, Thursday/Monday flexion should begin earlier.
For Monday games, flexibility is available from weeks 12 to 17 (12 days in advance). For Thursday games, it is available from weeks 13 to 17 (21 days in advance).
It’s now Week 11. And Monday night’s game will have the Raiders hosting the Cowboys. By contrast, Week 11’s Sunday lineup has a LOT of better games that could have been moved to Monday night. (The same concept applies to Thursday night’s game, which puts the Jets at 2-7 in a separate window.)
The midseason no-flex period raises another important point. When the league is putting together the schedule, it’s critical to have Thursday and Monday games from, say, the end of October until the flex window opens. Potentially “bad” teams should have prime-time games early in the year, before their records fully expose their flaws. The Raiders, a team that anyone paying even casual attention to the NFL knew or should have known would struggle this year, nevertheless had a Thursday night game in Week 10 and a Monday night game in Week 11.
The best candidate to move on to Week 11 on Monday night would have been Seahawks-Rams, which is currently hidden in a 4:05 pm ET regional window. (Chiefs-Broncos is the big platform game at 4:25 p.m. ET). However, under current rules, Seahawks-Rams could not have gone to Monday night because the rematch is scheduled for a future Thursday night. And one of the two games in the annual rivalry should be available for Fox.
If the goal is to put the best games in prime time, that rule needs to go. And yes, it’s important not to steal from Peter in order to give Paul hot games in prime time, but there are enough “good” games to go around on most weeks (and especially this week).
It should never be the case that, in November, the Monday night game is one of the objectively least desirable games of a weekend that has Sunday afternoon games like Seahawks-Rams, Broncos-Chiefs, Buccaneers-Bills, Charges-Jaguars, Bears-Vikings and Bengals-Steelers.