Note: This post does not incorporate the result of the Thursday or Saturday night games.
Perhaps predictably, over the past week social media has erupted with people moaning about why Dolphins-Ravens, the game likely to determine the #1 seed in the AFC, is trapped in the early singleheader, why it wasn’t moved to 4:25 or Sunday night. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened in recent years, and CBS sure is trying its best to show it to as much of the country as possible, but it is notable that even leaving aside the jockeying between networks and the increased protections CBS and Fox get in the new contracts, this game could have easily been moved to the late afternoon and stayed on CBS. Instead, before any of last week’s games were even played CBS opted to stick with the Burrow-less disappointing Bengals against the Chiefs. Lo and behold, once the week’s results played out the Bengals’ win streak with Jake Browning at quarterback had come to an abrupt halt, leaving the Bengals hanging on to the possibility of a playoff spot by a thread, and the Chiefs had stumbled to the Raiders, keeping the silver and black’s own threadbare playoff hopes alive and nearly locking the Chiefs into the 3 seed, especially when coupled with Dolphins and Ravens wins against two of the best teams in the NFC.
It’s a reminder that as much as the NFL has a nationalized fanbase, the people who want to watch the best, most important games between the best teams, at least in the regular season, are still a distinct minority compared to those that just want to watch the teams they’re fans of or the most attractive, biggest-name teams. A Chiefs game this year always carries the possibility of a Taylor Swift bump, but even without the Swift factor the Chiefs are one of the three most attractive teams in the league right now, by far the most attractive in the AFC, the most dominant team in the league in recent years with some of its biggest stars. They’re not the Cowboys – if the Chiefs-Patriots game that got flexed out earlier this year for Eagles-Seahawks had been Cowboys-Patriots I think it keeps its spot – but they are one of those teams that can pop a rating by their mere presence. On the flip side, let’s not forget that the Dolphins produced one of the worst December Sunday Night Football ratings ever when they were flexed in down the stretch of last season – contributing to the league’s decision to plug Lions-Packers into Sunday night of Week 18 instead of a game that wouldn’t become meaningless for one team by the time it kicked off. Couple that with the Bengals and Chiefs still being very much in the playoff hunt, and that’s why my prediction last week was that if Dolphins-Ravens was going to be moved to a later time at all, it would be into Sunday night, not the late afternoon window.
That being said, while the games scheduled for featured windows before the season are determined as much by popularity as by how they’re expected to perform, the flexible scheduling regime is still governed by how good the teams are. The game originally scheduled for a primetime window will keep its spot unless there’s a compelling reason to move out of it, but if it is flexed out the game that replaces it will generally be determined by what game has the best pair of records, and there have been times when a passable game scheduled for Sunday night has nonetheless been flexed out in favor of a game that seemed to be too good to be as weakly distributed as it otherwise would have been. Mike North has repeatedly stated in recent seasons that the league wants to give every playoff team exposure in national windows before the playoffs so that audiences have some familiarity with the team before the playoffs hit – obscure, unpopular, yet good teams aren’t going to become more popular if they continue to languish in obscurity. So the NFL does try to put the best games in the best windows.
Well, Dolphins-Ravens ranked #4 on my list of Games That Should Be Nationally Televised But Aren’t that I wrote before the season, where I even raised the prospect of it being flexed in for Packers-Vikings. In my tier structure based on preseason win totals at sportsbooks I introduced a few weeks ago, it was a Tier 2 game, meaning if the best games of the year were distributed evenly, it would be the second-best game of its week. Given the poor ratings for the Dolphins on SNF last year and the perception that the AFC North was still the Bengals’ to lose, I can’t completely fault the league for not putting the game in a featured window to begin with, but I can fault the league for scheduling it this late in the season but punting it to the early doubleheader while giving the Sunday night timeslot to a game involving a Packers team expected to finish below .500, New Year’s Eve or no. The league had to be aware that if things played out exactly as expected, CBS would have two games between big-time playoff contenders with win totals no lower than 9.5 while SNF would have a game involving a team on the fringes of the playoff picture at best, yet because CBS was scheduled for only eight Chiefs appearances the league wouldn’t be able to flex either one in. To be sure, the league and CBS couldn’t have figured that, while CBS would have the game between the AFC’s two best teams, it wouldn’t be the one they thought it’d be. Still, I feel like while the league and its TV partners can mess around with games involving popular teams for the first three months of the season, once December hits they need to stop messing around. If the flexible windows don’t contain what are expected to be the best games of their respective weeks, not counting games in featured inflexible windows, then the games that are the best need to be in a position where they can be flexed in, period. At the very least, if they’re serious about “playing your way into primetime” they need to minimize the risk of something like this happening.
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 18: Cowboys-Sheriffs, Bucs-Panthers, and Texans-Colts are all rematches of games that aired on the wrong conference’s network, so the league would probably prefer to avoid moving them to Saturday or Sunday night if possible. The good news is that all but one of the games I would normally consider to be suitable for SNF are in the AFC, so Packers-Vikings won’t affect what gets chosen there (something that can’t be said for Dolphins-Ravens if it had been flexed into SNF), and the lack of a Monday night game means the Week 18 schedule can be set right after the Sunday night game at the latest (indeed the only late-window game with impact on the SNF game is Steelers-Seahawks in the late singleheader, which starts earlier than the late doubleheader games). The bad news is that NBC is really hoping the Ravens beat the Dolphins as both of the SNF-suitable games that are most attractive, by a wide margin, depend on that, so a Dolphins win may leave the league in a similar position to last year sending NBC a game with less than ideal scenarios surrounding it but involving more attractive teams than the alternatives (namely the AFC South games or Bucs-Panthers… and only one of those games doesn’t have the excuse of needing to give CBS or Fox one half of a division rivalry).
In the below scenarios, if I say a game should move to SNF, that means it’s a game I would have considered suitable for SNF prior to last year, but that may yet be passed over for a less suitable game. If I say a game may move it means that the attractiveness of the game and what other games are available and suitable would come into play, and I would need to know more about how Sunday’s results play out to figure out what games I actually would move and what games the league might move. Finally, a game that might move would need to overcome the fact that it’s a rematch of a game that aired on the wrong network, so is obligated to CBS or Fox unless that network can be convinced to release it, and the league likely would only move it if there was no other option (and as we saw last year, the league will look wherever they can for an option if they need one).
Sunday Night games
- Bills-Dolphins to SNF if: The Ravens beat the Dolphins AND the Bills win. The Dolphins beating the Cowboys was a bit of a surprise, and the Ravens are only 3.5-point favorites with ESPN’s Matchup Predictor giving them only a 56-44 edge, but the Cowboys have tended to underperform against good teams, the Ravens are carrying momentum off their win over the Niners, and the Bills are playing the lowly Patriots, so an AFC East title game remains the likeliest option.
- Steelers-Ravens to SNF, and Texans-Colts might go to Saturday, if: The Ravens win AND the Steelers win AND the Texans, Colts, and Bills lose. The first result ensures the Ravens have locked up the 1 seed and so have nothing to play for; featuring a team eliminated from the playoffs is one thing, but featuring a team in the playoffs that’s locked into a specific seed is something the league would prefer to avoid if the team would have something to play for if the game were played earlier in the day. Similarly, Bills-Dolphins would have the edge if both games were options as a game with importance to both teams. The remaining results set up a situation where the Steelers would be in the playoffs with a win but would fall behind the Texans-Colts winner with a loss.
- Jaguars-Titans should go to SNF if: The Jaguars, Texans, and Colts all win; OR the Jaguars lose AND the Raiders beat the Colts AND (the Texans lose OR the Broncos win AND the Steelers and Bengals lose). The Jaguars win tiebreakers over the Texans and Colts so if they all remain tied the Jaguars would win the division with a win but fall behind the Texans-Colts winner with a loss; similarly, Texans-Colts is only a division title game if the Jaguars lose and the Texans and Colts both win. The scenario where the Jaguars lose might be a bit different from what I posted last week as I don’t think I fully took into account the standings as they now exist.
- Texans-Colts might go to SNF if: The Jaguars lose AND the Texans and Colts win. Shouldn’t there be a scenario where this is for a wild card? Well, yes, but it’s not what I laid out last week or on Twitter afterwards, as I was unprepared for the weekend’s results to play out the way they did (I might have caught it if I’d done the full percentage chances). The big problem is that the Bengals beat the Colts, so if the Colts lose, even if the Steelers and Bengals lose as well, the risk is that the Steelers lose again while the Bengals win, and then the Bengals would keep the Colts out of the playoffs regardless of the Colts result. The Colts would hold the conference-record tiebreaker if the Texans beat them after falling behind a game, so both teams would need to win, and if the Jaguars won in that case I would favor Jaguars-Titans as it doesn’t involve depriving CBS of a division rivalry.
- Buccaneers-Panthers might go to SNF if: The Saints beat the Buccaneers. Regardless of the Falcons result, this would create a circumstance where the Bucs would win the division with a win, but with a loss it would go to the Saints-Falcons winner. If the Bucs beat the Saints they clinch the division right then and there.
NFC Saturday games
- Bears-Packers may go to Saturday if: The Vikings beat the Packers AND the Saints beat the Buccaneers AND the Rams or Seahawks lose. The fact that all the teams on the outside looking in on the NFC wild card race are in two divisions both simplifies and scrambles the race for the Saturday games. In particular, the Bears and Packers play each other as do the Saints and Falcons, but looking at the Packers’ tiebreaker situation, the Packers beat the Bears the first time they played, but lost to the Falcons, but beat the Saints. In general, my preference in setting the order of the Saturday games is to go from the back to the front in the tiebreaker order, since any contender winning is likely to eliminate the teams behind them, but in this case if the Packers, Saints, and Falcons all lose, they’d likely have to play simultaneously as the Bucs would have clinched the division and the Falcons would be eliminated by a Bears win, but the Saints would be eliminated by a Packers win, but the Packers would be eliminated by a Falcons win, but the Bears would be eliminated by a Saints win. Got it? The end result is that, in this instance, it doesn’t actually matter whether or not the Bears are still alive for the playoffs; what matters is that the Packers are clearly behind the NFC South teams in the pecking order.
- Alternately, Bears-Packers may go to Saturday if: The Packers beat the Vikings AND the Rams and Seahawks win. In this instance, the Packers have eliminated the Vikings, sit behind the Falcons in the pecking order should the Falcons win, and what the Saints do doesn’t matter because if they win, they still have the NFC South to play for. On that note:
- Saints-Falcons may go to Saturday if: The Saints beat the Buccaneers AND if the Packers and Falcons both win, Packers-Bears is the early game. The Vikings beat both teams, so if they beat the Packers they’d be sitting ahead of the winner with a win; a Packers win, as before, situates them behind the Falcons but ahead of the Saints.
- Vikings-Lions may go to Saturday if: (The Packers beat the Vikings AND the Rams or Seahawks lose AND the Saints beat the Buccaneers) OR (The Vikings beat the Packers AND the Rams and Seahawks win), AND (the Lions lose OR the Niners win). The Lions currently being the 3 seed is actually good for this game’s chances to move to Saturday, as the same rule about being in the back of the pecking order for tiebreakers applies (and they don’t even have to be behind the Eagles as if the Eagles lose out and the Cowboys beat Washington, the Cowboys would take the division based on division record), but the Vikings need to cooperate by being the last team in the wild card pecking order that isn’t still alive for their division.
- Seahawks-Cardinals may go to Saturday if: The Seahawks lose AND (the Packers beat the Vikings AND Vikings-Lions is the first game) OR (the Vikings beat the Packers AND the Packers clinch the strength of victory tiebreaker over the Seahawks AND Packers-Bears is the first game). The Seahawks are playing the Steelers in a cross-conference game, so their conference record entering this game will remain at 6-5. If the Vikings and/or Bears are a game back a win would allow them to catch a losing Seahawks team on conference games; if the Packers would do the same the tie would come down to strength of victory, which is currently pretty close between them and a win over the Bears wouldn’t swing it too much, only tipping it in the Packers’ favor where the Seahawks currently lead.
- Rams-Niners may go to Saturday if: The Rams lose AND the Seahawks win AND the game involving the Vikings-Packers loser is the first game AND the Niners have the opposite result to the Lions (winning while the other loses or losing while the other wins). Same deal here, except the Rams are actually playing a conference game where a loss drops them to 6-5 in conference, and if the Packers win to catch the Rams from a game back, the Packers beat them head-to-head. Ideally the Niners should be clearly behind the Lions in the pecking order or have already eliminated them from the 1 seed, but the same isn’t the case with the Eagles if they still have to shake off the Cowboys for the division.
- Eagles-Giants may go to Saturday if: The Eagles lose AND the Cowboys beat the Lions AND the Niners lose AND, optionally, Vikings-Lions is the first game. The Cowboys took a “better” loss, from a tiebreaker perspective, losing to the Dolphins than the Eagles would losing to the Cardinals, as now a Cowboys win would give them the edge on conference games. An Eagles loss to clinch the division for the Cowboys would still leave the ‘Boys with the 1 seed to play for, with Dallas having lost to the Niners so the Niners would need to enter the week tied with the NFC East leaders.
- Cowboys-Sheriffs might go to Saturday if: The Cowboys beat the Lions AND the Eagles win; OR the Lions beat the Cowboys AND the Eagles and Niners lose. The Niners also beat the Eagles so Philadelphia still has the 1 seed to play for regardless of the Cowboys result as long as the Niners don’t take a one-game lead. The Eagles could also have the 2 seed to play for but if the Eagles lose, Lions win, then those results reverse Week 18, the tie between them would be broken by strength of victory, which I really don’t want to count on for a situation where teams are playing for a seed that, while it would convey home-field advantage in the divisional round, doesn’t convey a bye. Because of the situation where the first game between these teams was on CBS on Thanksgiving, this would unfortunately (for ESPN) be a last resort.
AFC Saturday games (note that outside the AFC South games these scenarios may not properly account for the possibility of the Jaguars being in the wild card race)
- Broncos-Raiders may go to Saturday if: The Raiders beat the Colts AND the Steelers lose AND the Texans win. I’m just throwing up my hands at this one. The Colts beat the Steelers who beat the Raiders who would have beaten the Colts, and any three-way tie between them would result in the three having identical conference records, with the Patriots being the only common game the three have aside from each other. Right now the Steelers would have a substantial edge over the other two in strength of victory so it might be preferable if it were the Colts in this spot (or at least if other games allowed the league to forgo putting on this game and instead schedule it along with the Colts and Steelers in the late afternoon window) but I don’t think that’d stop them, although the Texans would have a worse conference record than any of the others so they should preferably hold the last wild card spot entering the final week or else a Raiders or Steelers win would eliminate them.
- Browns-Bengals may go to Saturday if: The Bengals, Texans, Steelers, and Colts all win OR the Bengals, Texans, Steelers, and either Colts or Bills all lose, AND the Browns win OR the Bills lose OR the Ravens beat the Dolphins. The Bengals have a winless division record, including being swept by the Steelers, and a relatively woeful conference record. What they do have is a win over the Colts, and because the Colts would hold the conference-record tiebreaker over the Texans if they follow up a win with a loss to the Texans, the Bengals can afford to drop a game back of them and still have at least an outside shot at the playoffs. That would actually mean a Bengals win would eliminate the Texans unless the Bills lose to potentially open up another playoff spot for them to take. Speaking of the Bills, the Browns would hold the conference record tiebreaker over the Bills so we ideally want to avoid them competing for the 5 seed, or if they are, at least give the Bills a division title game; if the Browns are still alive for the division it means the Ravens are fighting the Dolphins for the 1 seed, so the Browns can play before them. (The Browns have filled this part of it at least.)
- Steelers-Ravens may go to Saturday if: The Steelers win AND the Colts win AND the Texans and Bengals lose AND (the Bills win OR the Texans are guaranteed to finish behind the Bills or Steelers in strength of victory) AND the Ravens beat the Dolphins. The Steelers lost to both the Colts and Texans, so we need to eliminate one of them for the Steelers to be last in the pecking order behind the other; as above, that could be accomplished by having the Colts win and Texans lose so the Colts would win the tiebreaker either way. But if the Bills lose out, the Steelers lose, and the Texans beat the Colts, then the Colts would get the 6 seed and the tie between the Steelers, Bills, and Texans would be broken by strength of victory. Meanwhile, if the Ravens lose then the Dolphins will have clinched the division and another Ravens loss would give them the 1 seed, so the Ravens need to have already locked up the 1 seed themselves.
- Bills-Dolphins may go to Saturday if: The Bills lose AND the Ravens beat the Dolphins AND the Bengals beat the Chiefs AND the Texans lose AND (the Colts win, OR the Steelers win AND Texans-Colts is the early game). The Bills’ late-season surge has masked the fact that their tiebreaker situation for wild card positioning still isn’t great; their conference record would be worse than the Colts, Texans, or Steelers, and they have a head-to-head loss to the Bengals. All they need is for two teams to tie them and they’d be right back out of the playoffs and in the back of the pecking order for tiebreakers, and the Bengals beating the Chiefs would also help give the Dolphins nothing to play for that would require them to play at the same time as another division winner (though without a bye, the 2 seed might not be enough of a thing to play for for the league to take it into consideration). As with the Steelers, the Colts and Texans playing each other complicates things, and again the solution is that only the Colts should be tied with the Bills.
- Jaguars-Titans may go to Saturday if: The Jaguars lose AND the Texans and Colts win AND the Steelers win. The Jaguars have wins over the Steelers and (should they lose) Bills, but lost to the Bengals, so this sets them up a game behind the teams they beat, and even if the Bengals and Bills both win they can still get the edge for the last playoff spot if the Steelers and Bengals both lose.
- Chiefs-Chargers may go to Saturday if: The Chiefs lose AND the Jaguars win AND at least one of the Texans and Colts win AND if the Broncos win, they aren’t eliminated from the wild card. In this scenario the Chiefs need to win to clinch the 3 seed, but if they lose the Jaguars still need to worry about winning the division at all. The Chiefs might not actually care about the 3 seed, but this could still fill space on the schedule if needed, if ESPN wants a quick Chiefs/Swiftie ratings bump, or just to keep from needing to move too many games into the late afternoon window.
- In addition to the scenario in the Steelers-Ravens SNF section, Texans-Colts might go to Saturday if: The Jaguars, Texans, and Colts win AND (the Bengals win OR the Steelers win OR the Bills lose); OR the Texans win AND the Raiders beat the Colts AND the Broncos lose AND (the Bills lose, OR the Jaguars lose AND the Steelers win AND the Bengals lose); OR the Texans and Colts lose AND the Jaguars lose OR the Bengals win OR the Bills lose. In each of these scenarios this game determines the order of finish between the teams involved; the remaining results attempt to ensure the game doesn’t affect whether other teams have anything to play for, with the main concern being the Bengals as already covered – making sure they’re either already eliminated or have a path to the playoffs no matter the result, possibly by the Bills losing to open up a spot.
Even though my attempt at streaming last week ended up getting cut short, I’m seriously tempted to start streaming again tomorrow afternoon, following all the scenarios as they develop, at twitch.tv/morganwick42; either way, I’ll keep everyone updated on Twitter.