SEATTLE — Seahawks fans who had circled their calendars for a pivotal Week 15 game will need to adjust their schedules after a historic announcement from the National Football League (NFL) on Thursday.
Seattle's Week 15 game at Lumen Field against the Philadelphia Eagles has been flexed into Monday Night Football by the league, the first time the league has ever moved a game from Sunday to Monday. The NFL changed its flex scheduling policies in 2023 to allow for date changes depending on matchups.
The Seahawks previously were scheduled to play at 4:25 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 17. Instead, the game will now be at 5:15 p.m. PT on Monday, Dec. 18. The game previously scheduled to play on Monday Night Football -- the Kansas City Chiefs facing off against the New England Patriots -- will now be played that Sunday at 10 a.m. PT.
This will be the Seahawks' fourth primetime game of the season so far and the second in a row after Week 12's Thanksgiving night loss to the San Francisco 49ers. The Seahawks got the win over the New York Giants in the team's first Monday Night Football game of the year in Week 4.
The Seahawks' last home Monday Night Football game was a memorable one, as Geno Smith helped lead Seattle to a win over Russell Wilson and the Denver Broncos in Week 1 of the 2022 season.
The Seahawks say all tickets for Seahawks-Eagles will still be valid for the new date and time. Mobile tickets will be automatically updated, and no action will be necessary for anyone planning to attend the game in person.
What does it mean to flex an NFL game?
For years, the NFL has had a policy that certain games late in the season can be moved from an afternoon time slot to a primetime one if it is a more intriguing matchup. Previously, the NFL only could flex games from a Sunday afternoon to a Sunday night, causing less disruption to the schedule for all the stakeholders involved.
However, the NFL changed that rule in 2023 to include Amazon Prime's Thursday Night Football and ESPN's Monday Night Football time slots as possible flex options. Given the star power around the Eagles as the reigning National Football Conference (NFC) champions and the Seahawks' success this season (albeit not as much recently), this game appeared to be more enticing to TV executives at ESPN than the previously scheduled game between the Chiefs and the lowly Patriots.
The point of the policy is to allow teams to play their way onto primetime, and give the NFL's television partners the ability to add matchups that might draw more ratings down the stretch of the regular season.
