The effect of temperature and pressure, which play important roles in the mechanical properties of rocks during deep energy exploitation, has not been sufficiently studied in the previous rock creep models. In order to investigate thermal effect in creep models, a modified Nishihara rheological model, taking into account the coupled effect of thermal damage and stress, was proposed by combining the theoretical formula for thermal damage of rocks with the modified Nishihara model. The improved model introduces a nonlinear viscous dashpot, which can accurately describe the accelerated rheological phase of rocks. To verify the proposed model, a triaxial rheological experiment was conducted on sandstone subjected to thermal damage (600°C). In addition, the stress‐strain curves within whole creep process of the rheological experiment were analyzed. Furthermore, the theoretical curves of the modified Nishihara rheological model were compared with the experimental results. Results showed that the theoretical curves relatively agree well with the experimental data, suggesting that the proposed new model is more preferred to describing the rheological curve of sandstone subjected to thermal damage at different rheological stages, in particular, it is capable of depicting the accelerated rheological stage of the sandstone, providing a good ability to describe the creep behavior of rocks under thermal‐mechanical coupling.