The NFL adopted a flex option for Thursday Night Football in 2023. On Friday, the league activated the break-glass option for the first time ever, bumping Browns-Bengals out for Broncos-Chargers.
While there’s no blanket ability for teams that get a Thursday shoulder tap to say no, the Broncos could have. Per the NFL, the league has a policy against giving a team two short-week road games in the same season. The league asked the Broncos if they’d been willing to make the shift and accept a second short-week road game. The Broncos agreed — even though it makes them the first team since the 1926 L.A. Buccaneers to play twice on the road on Thursday after playing on Sunday, via Josh Dubow of the Associated Press.
“It’s a road game anyway, right?” coach Sean Payton told reporters on Friday, when asked about the shifting of the game. “I like the fact that we have another opportunity. I remember this a long time ago, ‘Boys, we’d rather be flexed in than flexed out.’ It’s a real good team playing real good, and it flexes Cincinnati out who we play the following week. So there was a little. . . . But it is what it is, and they just tell us when we’re playing.”
Payton didn’t go into further detail about the Cincinnati angle. The reality is that the Bengals would have had three extra days to prepare for the Denver game. Now, the Broncos have three extra days. It’s a six-day swing when it comes to relative prep time.
Payton also was asked whether the flex shows that the Broncos have earned the right to play in bigger games.
“Yes, that’s a big game,” Payton said, “but we’ll play in bigger.”
It’s a great attitude. And it’s supported by the performance of rookie quarterback Bo Nix, who through 11 weeks quite possibly could be emerging as the best of the six quarterbacks taken in the first twelve picks — even though he was the last.
