Thursday Night Football is the brand name used by NFL Network for its schedule of live regular season telecasts of National Football League games on Thursday, Saturday and (rarely) Friday nights.

The eight-game package debuted on November 23, 2006 (2006 NFL season), with the Kansas City Chiefs (2006 Kansas City Chiefs season) handing the visiting Denver Broncos (2008 Denver Broncos season) a 19–10 Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving Classic) defeat. Most games kick off at 8:20 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) (Eastern Time Zone (North America)). Five games aired on Thursday nights, the other three on Saturday nights. Each game would be called either Thursday Night Football or Saturday Night Football, depending on the night on which it appears; the package as a whole was known as the Run to the Playoffs. This format carried over to the 2007 season (2007 NFL season). However, starting in 2008 (2008 NFL season), NFL Network eliminated all but one of the Saturday night games as well as starting their Thursday night package three weeks earlier. This was to accommodate the earlier schedule and the leagues antitrust exemption, which prohibits Saturday games during college football season. In the 2009 (2009 NFL season) season, all references to "Saturday Night Football" were dropped and any games not played on Thursday were referred to as Thursday Night Football Special Edition.

The game package is highly controversial mainly due to the relative unavailability of NFL Network compared to other cable stations such as ESPN or over-the-air affiliates. In most markets NFL Network is only available through premium tier packages, with war of words frequently being exchanged between the NFL and cable companies to get the channel moved to basic cable. Due to anti-trust regulations the NFL is contractually obligated to offer the broadcast to a local over-the-air station. Therefore the away team and (assuming a sellout) the home team markets will see the game regardless of cable availability of the channel. This stipulation also applies to ESPN broadcasts of Monday Night Football.

The controversy hit a new high in 2007. First the match up between the 10-1 Dallas Cowboys and 10-1 Green Bay Packers drew large attention to the issue, the fact that such a high profile matchup would be unavailable to a majority of the country was seen as unacceptable to fans. This controversy was surpassed when NBC and CBS both bought the broadcast rights from the NFL Network to air the New England Patriots (2007 New England Patriots season) season finale against the New York Giants, as they were 15–0 and vying to be the first team to finish the regular season with a perfect 16–0 record; the controversy was centered around the networks actions denying exclusive over-the-air rights to local stations WWOR and WCVB, who were the Giants and Patriots local broadcast homes for games on cable (the game aired on these stations, as well as on WCBS (WCBS-TV), WNBC (WNBC-TV), WBZ (WBZ-TV), and WHDH (WHDH-TV) in the teams market areas). The game was the first ever three-network simulcast in NFL history, and first simulcast since NBC and CBS both aired Super Bowl I in 1967.