Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 10

Since it started in its current format as the NFL’s main primetime package in 2006, the defining feature of NBC’s Sunday Night Football has been the use of flexible scheduling to ensure the best matchups and showcase the best teams as the season goes along. Well, that’s the theory, anyway; the reality has not always lived up to the initial hype and has at times seemed downright mystifying. Regardless, I’m here to help you figure out what you can and can’t expect to see on Sunday nights on NBC.

A full explanation of all the factors that go into flexible scheduling decisions can be found on my NFL Flexible Scheduling Primer, but here’s the Cliffs Notes version with all the important points you need to know:

• The season can be broken down into three different periods (four if you count the first four weeks where flexible scheduling does not apply at all) for flexible scheduling purposes, each with similar yet different rules governing them: the early flex period, from weeks 5 to 10; the main flex period, from weeks 11 to 17; and week 18. In years where Christmas forces either the Sunday afternoon slate or the Sunday night game to Saturday in Week 16, flex scheduling does not apply that week, and the main flex period begins week 10. Note: This year NBC’s press release indicated that the main flex period begins in Week 11 even though Christmas falls on Sunday. I’m assuming this is correct and the result of NBC still being able to have six weeks in the main flex period despite this because of the expansion of the season.
• In all cases, only games scheduled for Sunday may be moved to Sunday night. Thursday and Monday night games are not affected by Sunday night flexible scheduling (discounting the “flexible scheduling” applied to Saturdays in December in recent years – see below).
• During the early and main flex periods, one game is “tentatively” scheduled for Sunday night and listed with the Sunday night start time of 8:20 PM ET. This game will usually remain at that start time and air on NBC, but may be flexed out for another game and moved to 1, 4:05, or 4:25 PM ET on Fox or CBS, no less than 12 days in advance of the game.
• No more than two games can be flexed to Sunday night over the course of the early flex period. If the NFL wishes to flex out a game in the early flex period twelve days in advance, CBS and Fox may elect to protect one game each from being moved to Sunday night. This is generally an emergency valve in situations where the value of the tentative game has plummeted since the schedule was announced, namely in cases of injury to a key star player.
• CBS and Fox may also each protect games, historically in five out of six weeks of the main flex period, but all of those protections must be submitted after week 5, week 4 in years where the main flex period begins week 10 (so it is always six weeks before the start of the main flex period).
• No team may appear more than six times across the league’s three primetime packages on NBC, ESPN, and Fox/NFL Network, and only three teams are allowed to appear that often, with everyone else getting five. In addition, no team may appear more than four times on NBC. All teams’ number of appearances heading into this season may be seen here.
• According to the league’s official page, teams are notified when “they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.” However, they rarely make this known to the fans, and the list of each network’s protections has never officially been made public. It used to leak fairly regularly, but has not leaked since 2014.
• In all cases, the NFL is the ultimate arbiter of the schedule and consults with CBS, Fox, and NBC before moving any games to prime time. If the NFL does elect to flex out the Sunday night game, the network whose game is flexed in may receive the former tentative game, regardless of which network would “normally” air it under the “CBS=AFC, Fox=NFC” rules, keeping each network’s total number of games constant. At the same time, the NFL may also move games between 1 PM ET and 4:05/4:25 PM ET. However, this feature focuses primarily if not entirely on Sunday night flexible scheduling.
• In Week 18, the entire schedule is set on only six days notice, ensuring that NBC gets a game with playoff implications, generally a game where the winner is the division champion. More rarely, NBC may also show an intra-division game for a wild card spot, or a game where only one team wins the division with a win but doesn’t win the division with a loss, but such situations are rare and 2018 and 2020, respectively, were the first times it showed such games. If no game is guaranteed to have maximum playoff implications before Sunday night in this fashion, the league has been known not to schedule a Sunday night game at all. To ensure maximum flexibility, no protections or appearance limits apply to Week 17. The NFL also arranges the rest of the schedule such that no team playing at 4:25 PM ET (there are no 4:05 games Week 17) could have their playoff fate decided by the outcome of the 1 PM ET games, which usually means most if not all of the games with playoff implications outside Sunday night are played at 4:25 PM ET, except for two games moved to Saturday to be simulcast on ESPN and ABC.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Week 11 (November 20):

• Selected game: Kansas City @ LA Chargers.

Week 12 (November 27):

• Selected game: Green Bay @ Philadelphia (presumably).

Week 13 (December 4):

• Tentative game: Indianapolis @ Dallas
• Prospects: 4-5-1 v. 6-3. You can’t give the Colts too much credit for beating the lowly Raiders, and it might not be a good idea to feature a team that fired its coach, but the Colts are only a game out of the playoffs and a good Cowboys team is almost certainly not being flexed out.
• Likely protections: Jets-Vikings, Chiefs-Bengals, or nothing (CBS) and Titans-Eagles or Dolphins-49ers (FOX).
• Other possible games: Jets-Vikings, Titans-Eagles, and Dolphins-Niners all involve two teams over .500 with Chiefs-Bengals probably being disqualified due to the Chiefs being maxed out (though Chiefs-Broncos next week is decently likely to be flexed out), and Genericnames-Giants isn’t far behind. Time (and continued mediocrity-at-best for the inferior teams) has probably run out on Broncos-Ravens and Seahawks-Rams.
• Analysis: Despite some very good alternatives, I’m honestly not sure this game would be flexed out even if one of the teams involved weren’t the Cowboys. If the Colts can pull the upset this week against the Eagles they’d not only climb back to .500 and in the thick of the playoff race they’d raise the prospect of going on a late-season run, and I definitely don’t think this is getting flexed out then. If the Colts lose to make it 4-6-1 v. 7-3 or 6-4, the most relevant comparison, in terms of demonstrating the unlikelihood of this game being flexed out, might be Week 12 of 2014, when a 7-3 v. 3-6 game kept its spot in the face of two monster unprotected alternatives, both of them locked to a Fox singleheader and one of them being a 4:05 late game. That game involved the Giants, much more of a name team than the Colts, but Jets-Vikings and Titans-Eagles should get decent distribution in the early slot and Dolphins-Niners isn’t so compelling that being locked in the late singleheader is woefully unjust, so I don’t see the league going above and beyond to flex any of these games in.
• Final prediction: Indianapolis Colts @ Dallas Cowboys (no change).

Week 14 (December 11):

• Tentative game: Kansas City @ Denver
• Prospects: 7-2 v. 3-6. The Broncos are not living up to the hype of Russell Wilson’s arrival, and this game is probably too lopsided to keep around.
• Likely protections: Jets-Bills or Dolphins-Chargers (CBS) and Bucs-49ers or Eagles-Giants (FOX).
• Other possible games: Eagles-Giants and Jets-Bills would be surefire picks to be flexed in at the moment if they’re left unprotected, and Dolphins-Chargers would be in the running as well if the Chargers weren’t maxed out. Bucs-Niners is good enough to be picked if the two surefire picks are both protected, even if it’s a .500 team against a team barely over that mark, but it’s not the only Bucs game that’s getting into the running with the Bucs climbing back to .500 and the Bucs would be maxed out on primetime appearances with one game being flexed in. Ravens-Steelers and Vikings-Lions are emerging as dark horses but the Steelers and Lions can only get to 5-6 at best by the time the decision has to be made.

Week 15 (December 17):

• Tentative game: None (3 games to be moved to Saturday). The NFL’s schedule page only says that the Saturday games will be released “at a later date”, but I don’t believe these Saturday flexes have been announced any later than four weeks prior to game day. That being said, I believe when Monday night flex scheduling is instituted next year games will be able to be flexed two weeks in advance, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the decision was delayed for at least one more week.
• Possible games: Dolphins (7-3)-Bills (6-3), Ravens (6-3)-Browns (3-6), Colts (4-5-1)-Vikings (8-1), Falcons (4-6)-Saints (3-7), Giants (7-2)-Riveras (5-5).
• Analysis: In his Football Morning in America column this week, Peter King floats the possibility that the NFL might keep Dolphins-Bills on Sunday to save NBC from a mediocre-at-best tentative (see below). As such I’m not going to make a formal prediction here in order to see if the league is thinking the same way. If the decision had to be made right now Colts-Vikings and Giants-Riveras would likely be picked, and if Dolphins-Bills doesn’t make the move the league would have a hell of a time picking between the two remaining games. They could really use a Browns or Saints win this week to make them feel better about leaving Dolphins-Bills on Sunday, though as long as one of them has a better record than the Raiders there’s still an argument to be made to justify it.

Week 15 (December 18):

• Tentative game: New England @ Las Vegas
• Prospects: 5-4 v. 2-7, failing to live up to what was already surprisingly modest expectations for a Sunday night game in a week with flexed-in Saturday games; both these teams were expected to be around .500 based on their win totals in Vegas, but the Raiders are one of the worst teams in the league and the Patriots’ record isn’t holding up as well as expected with the Jets being as good as they are.
• Likely protections: Probably Titans-Chargers (CBS) and Cowboys-Jaguars, Eagles-Bears, or nothing (FOX).
• Other possible games: See above; this game may not be lucking out as well as I thought. The problem is that Titans-Chargers (now doubly out of the running) is the only game stuck on Sunday involving two teams above .500, though Bengals-Bucs may yet bail the league and NBC out here, with the caveat, as above, that it would max the Bucs out on primetime appearances. Cardinals-Broncos and Lions-Jets are dark horses.

Week 17 (January 1):

• Tentative game: LA Rams @ LA Chargers
• Prospects: 3-6 v. 5-4. Decidedly mediocre, and might start getting lopsided. Not too long ago I thought this game might be relatively safe, but it’s definitely in the danger zone now given the alternatives.
• Likely protections: Vikings-Packers (CBS) and Saints-Eagles, Jets-Seahawks, or nothing (FOX).
• Other possible games: Jets-Seahawks is a game between two six-win teams that’s currently pinned to the late slot of the singleheader, which means the league is probably more likely to flex it in than Dolphins-Patriots. Colts-Giants, Cardinals-Falcons, Steelers-Ravens, Broncos-Chiefs, and Browns-Snyders are dark horses.

Week 18 (January 8):

• Tentative game: None (NBC will show game with guaranteed playoff implications).
• Games to watch: Bucs-Falcons, Patriots-Bills, Ravens-Bengals, Jets-Dolphins, Giants-Eagles, Cowboys-NotIndians, Chargers-Broncos, Rams-Seahawks, Cardinals-Niners.