Week 13: Given the name value that both teams in the Sunday night game bring, the Packers’ win likely shuts the door on what little chance there was that it would be flexed out, leaving the Burrow-less Bengals against the Jaguars on Monday night. You could make the argument that the three-game gap between the Lions and Saints isn’t disqualifying and that it’s silly for me to think it would be better for the team with the better record to be worse when the worse team is still .500. The bigger problem, though, is that with Washington’s loss to the lowly Giants, flexing in Lions-Saints would leave Falcons-Jets and Dolphins-Trumps as Fox’s best options in the early window.
The other option would be to see if CBS can be convinced not to protect Broncos-Texans; the rest of the CBS slate is weak enough that Bengals-Jaguars might well be the best game on their slate if it’s flexed to them, but I’m not sure it’s worth it for any of the parties involved, especially since CBS would need a replacement 4:05 game. (In fact that might be the best argument in favor of a flex, as Broncos-Texans is clearly the second- or third-best of the Sunday afternoon games, and the best CBS game by a mile, but is limited in its distribution in the late singleheader; perhaps the LA teams can switch networks to improve Niners-Eagles’ distribution?) I could be wrong but I’m not sure the league is quite satisfied with the options available to them to pull the trigger on the first Monday night flex in a purely speculative move, even if we have pretty good reason to think the Bengals will stink without Burrow; the league has always been pretty conservative in its flexing decisions. Final prediction: No changes.