“Didn’t Work”: NFL Officially Admits Monday Night Football Mistake With ESPN as Roger Goodell’s Office Ends Doubleheaders

The NFL is finally admitting that its “Monday Night Football” experiment was a chaotic mess. Over the last few seasons, the league forced fans into an agonizing game-day dilemma. The back-to-back action at 8 PM and then at 10 PM on Monday resulted in a scheduling overlap. This often left fans divided between the choices. Now, Roger Goodell’s office is scrambling to clean up its scheduling strategy for the primetime football broadcast. 

“Yes, the Monday night doubleheaders are a thing of the past,” NFL broadcast planner Mike North said. “I don’t know why that didn’t work. Quite honestly, I thought it was fine. I thought it was good for us. That Monday night game, if it wasn’t your game on Monday, it would’ve been Sunday at 1, among eight, nine, or 10 other games. You probably weren’t going to watch it anyway. Having it on Monday, a national broadcast… it just didn’t work. The fans didn’t appreciate it, and it probably wasn’t a good use of an NFL asset.”

Monday Night Football doubleheaders started in 2006  when ESPN first acquired the primetime slot. However, over the years, fans have complained about the games overlapping, which led the league to finally decide to scrap it during the annual meeting in April. NFL’s Executive Vice President of Media, Hans Schroeder, acknowledged that the format left fans feeling conflicted about which matchup to watch.

Last season, during Weeks 2, 4, 6, and 7, the mixed scheduling benefited neither broadcast. Initially, the four games ESPN traded back to the NFL were supposed to land on YouTube and Netflix. That plan fell apart when YouTube refused to share the games. After YouTube pulled out, the games went into the open market. Fox Network jumped at the chance and bought broadcasting rights for one of the games. 

This set up a historic Week 10 with the first-ever broadcast TV primetime tripleheader. NBC got another game, and Netflix scooped up the rest to expand its own package. 

North explained that two of those four games were assigned to Netflix for a Wednesday night and a Week 18 Saturday matchup. The remaining two went to traditional broadcast networks. He stated that the league isn’t moving everything to streaming platforms. He added that the new Monday night format allows everyone to focus on one marquee game simulcast on ABC instead of dividing their resources.

Historically, Monday Night Football ratings see a massive boost whenever ABC simulcasts across networks, including the ESPN feed. In 2024, the Week 1 broadcast pulled in 20.5 million viewers across ESPN, ABC, and ESPN2, but viewership plummeted to just over 15 million the next week when ABC wasn’t part of the broadcast. 

This streamlined approach comes at a perfect time. ESPN will broadcast its first-ever Super Bowl at the end of the 2026 season. The network has every reason to make Monday night football a must-watch television again. However, there are still a lot of questions about the media giants’ treatment of the NFL Network.

Football Longtime NFL Broadcaster Suggests ESPN is Dismantling NFL Network

Disney’s massive $3 billion deal with the NFL officially handed the keys of NFL Network over to ESPN on April 1. Under the deal, ESPN officially acquired the NFL Network, NFL Fantasy, and the distribution rights to RedZone. In exchange, the NFL has received a 10% equity stake in ESPN. However, the NFL continues to produce and own the RedZone channel.

Initially, the network produced its own independent coverage of the 2026 NFL Draft. However, viewers noticed in Thursday night’s regular-season schedule that the ESPN SportsCenter Special was simply simulcast across the NFL Network. Now, Longtime broadcaster Rich Eisen, who has worked across both platforms, recently addressed the corporate takeover and how it has affected the NFL Network.

“The games are still on NFL Network, there’s seven of them,” Eisen said on The Dan Patrick Show. “Five international and two others. I have been told that the Sunday NFL GameDay Morning that I’m hosting, is the same, and so is the [Scouting] Combine and the draft. We’re still going to have the Combine, and we’re still going to have the draft. The rest of it, I mean, we didn’t have a schedule-release show for the first time in years. I don’t know if that’s an indication.”

For over 20 years, the NFL Network provided football coverage of the highest quality with a lot of different programs. However, just over a year since being taken over by ESPN, there are already questions about its quality.

Undoubtedly, ESPN is one of the biggest media platforms, but the NFL Network had its own detailed coverage, breaking news, and sharing analysis when it came to football. While ESPN is a multi-sport platform, if they want to maximise from the landmark deal with the NFL Network, they will have to try to maintain the quality and continue adding nuance to their coverage of the game, especially with them having the rights to the Super Bowl in 2027.