The NFL’s latest schedule stretch is again pushing games away from the traditional Sunday afternoon block, but Kenny Albert says the league is nowhere near running out of room there. With more games spread across Thursday, Wednesday, holidays and streaming, Albert still expects Sundays to remain the center of the season.
The timing makes the point hard to miss. In Week 12, the league is down to 10 games on Sunday with no teams on a bye, and only three are set for the Sunday afternoon window. A Seahawks-49ers game is the main draw there, even as the week also included a Wednesday night game on NBC and a second game of the season on Thursday night in Australia on Netflix.
Albert’s view is simple: the NFL has grown, but not in a way that empties out its most familiar day. He said that with 32 teams there will always be 13-16 games a week, depending on the bye, and that the majority will still land on Sundays. In his view, even if the schedule keeps shifting, it will still usually leave 8-10 games on Sundays.
That is the part fans and broadcasters keep watching. The Sunday afternoon window has been getting thinner as the NFL adds more games on Thursday night, international mornings in the United States and holiday slots, yet Albert does not see that as a sign the league is backing away from Sunday. He sees a league that has simply found more places to play, not fewer places for its core package.
He also does not think the next move is far away. Albert said expansion is likely coming soon, and he expects more rights fees to flow to the league and the owners if more games are added. More games would also keep more people working on the broadcast end, which is part of why he believes the league will keep opening new windows instead of taking the old ones away. As he put it, sports is the best reality TV, and the NFL will keep needing places to put every game.
That leaves the bigger question unresolved, even if the Sunday package itself looks stable for now: how many more games the NFL ultimately adds, and which days absorb them. The league has already shown it can spread its inventory across more platforms and more nights. What comes next is not whether Sundays survive, but how much more of the calendar the NFL is willing to claim.
