Note: This post does not incorporate the result of the Thursday night game… mostly. See the Week 13 section for how late-breaking news could affect flex decisions in the very near term.
On Tuesday 49ers beat reporter Matt Maiocco tweeted that Fox “plans to protect” the Week 13 Niners-Eagles game. This was noteworthy not so much for the news itself – considering the game was already slated to be Fox’s lead late doubleheader game even before last year’s NFC Championship Game participants became the last two unbeaten teams in the league and remain the top two teams in the conference, it was pretty much an inevitability – as the timing of the tweet, coupled with the “plans to protect” phrasing indicating that Fox hadn’t already done so.
Based on my reading of the words of Mike North and Michael Mulvihill – especially North’s claim that CBS and Fox submit protections “before we even start to think about” flexing out games – I had figured that while protections in the main flex period were no longer due in Week 5, they weren’t necessarily due at the same time the league needed to make the decision like with the early flex. At minimum, I figured that with TNF flexing in place, protections in the main flex period had to kick in at the same time as the deadline for that, five weeks in advance. But if Fox only “plan[ned] to protect” Niners-Eagles now, less than 19 days before game time, that suggests that the deadline for protections is no earlier than three weeks in advance, and more likely runs right up to the point where the league itself needs to make a decision.
I don’t know how this interacts with the TNF flex, though it is notable that the league’s contracts with CBS and Fox were negotiated without any assumption that the TNF flex (still first publicly floated less than a year ago) would be a thing, and recent history has shown that the NFL prefers to make sure all three of the Sunday afternoon windows – the early doubleheader as well as the singleheader and late DH – have at least half-decent games anchoring them even though the doubleheader network still has only one protection, so CBS and Fox could well be protected against losing games that are too good without any formal protections at all, especially given the restrictions on what games can be flexed into TNF. But that seems doubtful, so does this mean the league can force CBS and Fox to protect games earlier than they’d otherwise like by floating the possibility of a TNF flex, or does it mean CBS and Fox can change what game they elect to protect, so they can protect one game from TNF and another game from SNF and MNF even if the game protected from TNF isn’t in the running to be flexed in? And how does this interact with the six-day SNF flex, do networks still need to protect games two weeks in advance or can they still do it right up until a decision has to be made?
I’m going to keep waiting on any more clarification on how protection works now before committing to any changes to the Flex Schedule Watch until the start of next season’s Watch, and I’m actually still going to adhere to the five-week window for the remainder of this season, but absent any further information I am going to work under the assumption of a two-week protection window starting next season, without any firm protection commitments associated with the TNF flex.
How NFL flexible scheduling works: (see also the NFL’s own page on flex schedule procedures)
- Up to two games in Weeks 5-10 (the “early flex” period), and any number of games from Week 11 onward, may be flexed into Sunday Night Football. Any number of games from Week 12 onward may be flexed into Monday Night Football, and up to two games from Week 13 onward may be flexed into Thursday Night Football. In addition, in select weeks in December a number of games may be listed as “TBD”, with two or three of those games being assigned to be played on Saturday. Note that I only cover early flexes if a star player on one of the teams is injured.
- Only games scheduled for Sunday afternoon, or set aside for a potential move to Saturday, may be flexed into one of the flex-eligible windows – not existing primetime games or games in other standalone windows. The game currently listed in the flex-eligible window will take the flexed-in game’s space on the Sunday afternoon slate, generally on the network that the flexed-in game was originally scheduled for. The league may also move Sunday afternoon games between 1 PM ET and 4:05 or 4:25 PM ET.
- Thursday Night Football flex moves must be announced 28 days in advance. Sunday and Monday Night Football moves must be announced 12 days in advance, except for Sunday night games in Week 14 onward, which can be announced at any point up until 6 days in advance.
- CBS and Fox have the right to protect one game each per week, among the games scheduled for their networks, from being flexed into primetime windows. During the early flex period, they may protect games at any point once the league tells them they’re thinking of pulling the flex. It’s not known when they must protect games in the main flex period, only that it’s “significantly closer to each game date” relative to the old deadline of Week 5. My assumption is that protections are due five weeks in advance, in accordance with the 28-day deadline for TNF flexes. Protections have never been officially publicized, and have not leaked en masse since 2014, so can only be speculated on.
- Supposedly, CBS and Fox are also guaranteed one half of each division rivalry. Notably, some Week 18 games (see below) have their other halves scheduled for the other conference’s network, though none are scheduled for primetime.
- No team may appear more than seven times in primetime windows – six scheduled before the season plus one flexed in. This appears to consider only the actual time the game is played; Amazon’s Black Friday game does not count even though the rest of their TNF slate does, and NBC’s Saturday afternoon game Week 16 doesn’t count but their Peacock game that night does. This post contains a list of all teams’ primetime appearances entering the season.
- Teams may play no more than two Thursday games following Sunday games, and (apparently) no more than one of them can be on the road.
- In Week 18 the entire schedule, consisting entirely of games between divisional opponents, is set on six days’ notice, usually during the previous week’s Sunday night game. One game will be scheduled for Sunday night, usually a game that decides who wins the division, a game where the winner is guaranteed to make the playoffs while the loser is out, or a game where one team makes the playoffs with a win but falls behind the winner of another game, and thus loses the division and/or misses the playoffs, with a loss. Two more games with playoff implications are scheduled for Saturday on ABC and ESPN, with the remaining games doled out to CBS and Fox on Sunday afternoon, with the league generally trying to maximize what each team has to play for. Protections and appearance limits do not apply to Week 18.
- Click here to learn how to read the charts.
Week 13: Niners-Eagles may be out, but could we be looking at Chiefs-Packers being flexed out regardless? It seemingly becomes more plausible with every loss the Packers take, making them look more and more unimpressive and making the game more and more lopsided. Lions-Saints isn’t great with the Saints being at .500, but it does have playoff implications for both teams and it’s not too lopsided, all things considered. The Saints are on bye this week, but if the Packers take another loss to the underperforming Chargers to go to 3-7, you’d think a flex should at least be under consideration. But the Chiefs and Packers still have two of the best name values outside the NFC East, which can’t be said about the Lions and Saints, neither of which really have much star power to make up for that (sorry, Jared Goff), and the prospect of a Taylor Swift sighting at Lambeau might be too enticing to pass up. I just don’t think a two-game gap between the Packers and Saints is going to be enough to overcome that. Besides, even in a worst-case scenario Chiefs-Packers probably becomes Fox’s new lead early game, and while it’s not as pressing as with the late game, I’m still not a fan of flexing out a game to become the new lead game in its time slot.
What could be more interesting is the situation with the Bengals and Joe Burrow’s season-ending injury, which probably effectively ends their season considering how crowded the AFC playoff picture is; we saw earlier this season how bad the Bengals could be with a hobbled Burrow, so how bad could they get with no Burrow? Of course that’s not to rule out the Ewing Theory kicking in and the Bengals going on a miracle Super Bowl run, but with the Bengals’ game this week already behind them, the league doesn’t have time to figure out what the Bengals look like with Jake Browning under center and not playing the Ravens. The Monday Night clash between the Bengals and Jaguars was supposed to have the compelling storyline of two of the league’s hottest young QBs in Burrow and Trevor Lawrence going head to head and two of the premier contenders in the AFC, but without Burrow it’s just a showdown of two small-market teams with one of them running a backup and probably out of the playoff picture. Does the league bail out of that for Lions-Saints, or do they not want to be seen as panicking and overreacting? (And make no mistake: Lions-Saints is the only game that can be flexed into either window, as CBS has no reason to protect any game other than Broncos-Texans, and while the Space Forces could win to get to 5-6, their game against the Dolphins seems too uninspiring to be worth a flex.)
I’m going to stick a pin in that and let it marinate over the weekend. A part of me is leaning towards an MNF flex, but it’s also worth noting that if the Lions beat the lowly Bears this week, the gap between them and the Saints becomes three games, and that’s enough to trigger my lopsidedness alarm. I don’t think there’s any way it gets flexed in for either game in that scenario. Even if the Lions get upset and move to 7-3, I think Chiefs-Packers is the only game it could be flexed out for (and remember, I don’t think it’s enough to overcome the name value gap even there) unless the Space Forces win to get to 5-6 and make their game with the Dolphins a passable anchor game for Fox’s early window.
Week 14: It’s getting to the point in the season where the Titans sitting at only 3-6 is becoming a serious cause for concern. The Titans will have a game against the lowly Panthers by the time the decision has to be made, but it’s not like 4-7 is all that inspiring either. I said last week that any alternative game would have to blow the league away to unseat Titans-Dolphins and Jaguars-Browns didn’t qualify, but the Titans and Dolphins don’t have so much name value that it can afford to have one of its teams slip below mediocrity, 6-3 v. 6-3 looks fairly compelling, and while they don’t show up on the list of flex candidates, Texans-Jets and even Bucs-Falcons are viable alternatives to anchor CBS’ early window. The Titans and Jaguars play this week in a game that could make a huge difference in which game is the favorite to play on Monday night.
Week 15: Despite the Rams not exactly playing all that great in recent weeks, I have CBS protecting their game against Washington given Texans-Titans as an alternative and Jets-Dolphins effectively being pre-protected. It doesn’t much matter as the only change in the primetime windows this week remains likely to be Eagles-Seahawks for Chiefs-Patriots; it does seem a bit unbelievable that a pair of teams with as much name value as those two would be in line to be flexed out, but the Pats’ season at this point seems too dire, and Eagles-Seahawks too good a matchup. At this point a clear set of favorites has emerged for the NFL Network Saturday tripleheader, and the Bears and Panthers are bad enough that recent events might not change which games get picked, but they could affect the order of how compelling they are and in which they’re played.
Week 16: Part of the reason I decided not to change my approach to protections this year was because a) I’d already put together the Week 15 graphic above and b) the week after that is this week where only the Thursday night game is flexible, so it would only really affect Week 17. Those circumstances make things difficult for the league: a Vikings-Lions division title game Week 18 remains too realistic a possibility to lock it to Fox by flexing the game in Minneapolis to Thursday night, the Sunday and Monday night games being non-flexible means CBS has no reason not to protect Browns-Texans, and any other flex-eligible games involve teams no better than a game better than the Rams, and the only team that’s that good are the Falcons who are on bye this week. Even if the Rams lose to go to 3-7, Amazon’s probably stuck with them. The league might consider a flex if the Lions win and Vikings lose to raise the prospect of the Lions pulling away with the division again, but do they really want to take that chance? Final prediction: No changes.
Week 17: Other flex candidates have emerged in recent weeks, but Packers-Vikings was my second choice to be flexed out at the beginning of this year’s edition of this feature, and as the Packers have continued to fade into irrelevance it’s remained a strong possibility. Dolphins-Ravens is a good game that’s likely to be unprotected, but the question is whether that would leave CBS with too weak of an early window with Raiders-Colts and Patriots-Bills, with Chargers-Broncos getting an honorable mention; Packers-Vikings may well end up being CBS’ lead early game. (More on how the Burrow situation could affect this week, next week.) At this point, though, what seems more likely is that Fox leaves Steelers-Seahawks unprotected in favor of Niners-Commies or Saints-Bucs, since it’ll be pinned to the late singleheader with limited distribution. Speaking of Saints-Bucs, that game could have significant playoff implications if that outweighs the ease of scheduling Falcons-Saints. If the Jets lose the next two weeks to fall to 4-7, we could get a demonstration of why I thought protections had to come in at least five weeks in advance, especially since Saints-Bucs might not realistically be movable to Thursday since its eligibility depends on being able to give the Saints a full week off when the Bucs wouldn’t. Let me plant this thought in your head in that scenario: the third of three TNF-eligible games this week is that Chargers-Broncos game that’s currently trapped behind Bengals-Chiefs.
Week 18: Cowboys-Sheriffs, Bucs-Panthers, and Texans-Colts are all rematches of games currently scheduled for the wrong conference’s network. It’s kinda starting to look like the NFC South winner is the only NFC playoff spot that isn’t locked up, so that division’s games and Vikings-Lions are probably the main contenders from that conference, at least for a spot on NBC. The AFC is more chaotic; the AFC North games are obviously contenders, as are Texans-Colts and Bills-Dolphins, with Broncos-Raiders and Jaguars-Titans having outside shots. Funny how I said last week that Cowboys-Sheriffs was the only game seemingly locked to a Sunday afternoon window that wasn’t in contention for an NBC or ESPN window otherwise and now it’s the only one that I don’t say is, although at the moment it’s the most likely play-in game for an NFC wild card spot if the Cowboys slip too much and Washington stays in contention (and it could still be desirable for an ESPN window without that), and Bucs-Panthers is a long shot that would require the Bucs to take the lead in the division but fall behind the Saints-Falcons winner with a loss (and also be desirable for an ESPN window without that).