The footprint “Thursday Night Football” will grow in the 2016 and 2017 seasons.

The NFL, CBS and NBC announced a deal Monday that will have the two networks each taking five Thursday prime-time games starting next season. CBS will air the first half of the schedule, and NBC will take the second. All games will continue to be simulcast on NFL Network, which will have the remaining Thursday games, as well as a couple late-season Saturday contests, to itself.

The league is also expected to announce a deal for a streaming partner on “TNF” soon.

CBS will presumably air its Thursday games at the beginning of the season, as it’s done for the past two years.

The ideal setup for NBC might be waiting to air its games until the final weeks of the regular season, starting with a Thanksgiving night telecast. And according to Sports Illustarted’s Richard Dietsch, that’s close to what will happen. Dietsch tweets that NBC’s first “TNF” game will air Nov. 17.

That will allow the network to keep its normal fall schedule more or less in place, with perhaps a slightly early start. (This season, the fall finale of “The Blacklist” aired on Nov. 20.) It will also give the network a big ratings boost in late November and December, when it would otherwise be airing reruns or specials.

Requests for comment from NBC and the NFL were not answered as of posting time. In the event of a reply this story will be updated.