The New Orleans Saints are among the teams that voted against Thursday night flex scheduling at spring NFL owners meetings, as first reported by NBC Sports’ Peter King. Notably, Saints owner Gayle Benson was not in attendance, having instead made the trip to New York City for NBA Board of Governors meetings to fulfill her responsibilities as owner of the New Orleans Pelicans.
Maybe Benson will vote differently than team president Dennis Lauscha did (as her representative) when NFL owners regroup for another roundtable in May, but it’s more likely they are both on the same page here. The Saints could have chosen to abstain altogether, as the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos did, but they decided to vote against the proposal outright. NFL bylaws needed 24 votes for the Thursday night flex scheduling rules change to pass, but it came up short.
It’s been a divisive topic. Thursday night games haven’t done as well with ratings as traditional Sunday and Monday night prime-time games, so from that perspective moving better matchups into that time slot makes sense. But it asks a lot of the players and coaches to switch up their preparation schedule even on two weeks’ notice — to say nothing of the tens of thousands of fans who have to make expensive travel arrangements in the event of a flex. We’ll see if this passes eventually or if there’s enough opposition to shelve it altogether.
