Mike Tirico says the NFL should stop locking in some late-season TV windows months ahead of kickoff and wait until about a month out, the way the Premier League does. He said that would let the league protect its broadcast product in weeks when the schedule turns thin.
The comment lands now because the NFL continues to expand how many games are set apart from the usual Sunday afternoon routine. This coming season, the league will have 23 standalone windows, up from 15 last year, even as its full schedule is still released every May and specific network assignments are made months before teams take a snap.
On The Dan Patrick Show, Tirico laid out the case bluntly. He said there are weeks, especially near the end of the season, when the slate gets thin and bad games in individual windows hurt the product. His answer was to delay some designations until closer to kickoff so the league would know which matchups were actually worth putting in prominent slots.
“Here’s who you’re playing December 13,” he said, describing the kind of timetable he would prefer. “We’re not going to assign starting times with TV networks until like a month out. So, we’ll know that in those individual windows there are good games, because bad games in individual windows hurt the product.” He added that he would treat the week 12, week 14 and week 16 schedule the same way the league handles the final week of the season, when every game is already on hold for later selection.
Tirico said the goal would be to preserve the value of each window by making sure the 1:00 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. blocks still carry strong matchups. “Have a good four pack at 1pm, three pack at 4:30pm and go from there,” he said. The idea mirrors the Premier League’s later-stage scheduling approach, where some timing decisions come much closer to match day.
The push, though, runs into a familiar argument inside NFL broadcast planning: good teams should earn better windows by winning. On The Schrager Hour podcast, NFL vice president of broadcast planning Mike North said the added amount of prime time, holiday, international and Saturday games does not fully water down the Sunday network product. He added that if a team has a lot of Sunday 1:00 p.m. games, it should keep winning. In his view, a club’s Sunday footprint can grow from 10% to 20% to 40% and up to 60% to 70% at 1:00 p.m. if the record reflects it.
That is the friction at the heart of Tirico’s idea. The NFL has long favored certainty, with broadcasters and the league mapping out matchups months in advance so the season can be sold as a finished package each May. Delaying some decisions would give the league more flexibility, but it would also take away a reward system that ties exposure to performance, something North clearly wants to keep.
For now, the league has not publicly responded to Tirico’s proposal. But with 23 standalone windows coming and fewer ordinary Sunday afternoon slots to spread around, the question is no longer whether the NFL can protect its strongest games — it is whether it wants to give itself more time to decide which ones they are.
