Note: This post does not incorporate the result of the Thursday night game.
I’ve got a brand new computer that’s barely two days old and I’m ready and raring to go for another year of the Flex Schedule Watch! Aaaaaaand I forgot that I was only going to start it in Week 6 going forward. Whoops. Well, consider this a test (or at least a way for my work on the graphics not to go to waste) as I’m still finding myself needing to approve comments more often than I’d like despite updating WordPress, so I might have to go hunting for an anti-spam solution that actually means I don’t have to approve each person’s comments more than once, because I generally don’t look at people’s comments or even see that there are any needing approval until I sit down to work on a new post, and I wouldn’t want to drive people away by having the rate of commenting accidentally die down (even if the level of sanity presented by the comments… tends to vary).
(Also, part of the original assumption behind starting in Week 6 was that protections would come in five weeks in advance based on how Thursday night flexing works, but then we got evidence last season that they could come in later, although with some caveats. At one point I suggested not even starting the Watch until Week 8, which I’m not sure I could have actually followed through on. I think next year I’m going to go ahead and start Week 6 if I remember to, partly because that marks the exact one-third mark of the season, partly because there’s still a lot of uncertainty even from week to week this early on, as seen by a number of the write-ups below being very brief.)
I’ve seen some scuttlebutt about Jaguars-Eagles Week 9 being flexed out because the Jags are just so terrible that obviously they should be flexed out – never mind that we thought the same about the Bears last year and it didn’t happen. After that, I became convinced the early flex would only ever be used if a star player is injured, not because a team is simply bad on their own. As Mike North said in the aftermath, “it’s hard to say anybody’s season is over in Week 8, 9, 10”, so the league will give teams, even those as bad as the Jaguars, every opportunity to show they aren’t as bad as they might look through five or six games. I’m not sure if this scuttlebutt has died down since the Jags won a couple weeks ago and removed the possibility of them entering the game at 0-8, but put me down as being skeptical of a flex happening, certainly not if the Jags win one of their two London games. (The fact that Trumps-Giants seemed to have the most support as a flex option, but the Giants are now below .500 and seem decidedly mediocre, doesn’t help.)
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, last year some Week 18 games (see below) had their other halves scheduled for the other conference’s network, though none were 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 11: As I said back in May, the question of whether the seven appearances the Chiefs were scheduled for on CBS is a hard minimum that allows CBS to go without protecting any of their games is one that very much hangs over this week, but it likely doesn’t matter at the moment because the best available game it would free up has the exact same pair of records as Colts-Jets in the Sunday night window. I’m going to assume it is a hard minimum, however.
Week 12: The options this week are pretty slim with a number of good teams on bye and a number of Sunday afternoon divisional matchups where the return match is either on the wrong network or in Week 18. As a result, NBC might be stuck with the 1-4 Rams in the Sunday night window. Fox may well still feel obligated to protect Cowboys-Non-Natives, but Lions-Colts would be a pretty underwhelming option for a flex and NBC may well prefer the bigger markets in its current game.
Week 13: I thought Browns-Broncos was a questionable choice to schedule for Monday night in the main flex period, but I doubt very many people predicted that it would be the Browns, not the Broncos, dragging it down. But many of the best teams are off the table due to Thanksgiving, and some of the teams I expected to produce viable Fox games have underperformed as well, leaving the best option on the table a Chargers-Falcons game the league would likely be very reticent to flex in and give the Chargers consecutive Monday night games. Any other options involve teams, at best, only a half-game better than the Browns.
Week 14: The Bengals are in borderline crisis mode at the moment, but the Cowboys aren’t likely to be flexed out except in very exceptional circumstances and the only options on the table likely involve teams with losing records (though I suppose Fox could protect Saints-Giants over Falcons-Vikings).
Week 15: Keep an eye on how the Colts and Broncos do over the next month or so, because the Rams’ slow start is opening up the possibility of our first Thursday night flex, and while there’s only one TNF-eligible game on the whole week’s slate, it could well be the best unprotected option overall. Remember that TNF flexing was (officially) instituted as a two-year pilot program, so the league may be especially motivated to get a test of it out of the way. If the Rams continue to falter while the Colts manage to maintain at least a basic level of competence, they may get their chance. (This also assumes CBS can’t protect Colts-Broncos without relinquishing their ability to protect Bills-Lions, so if either of those teams turns out to be more mediocre than thought or the Raiders maintain their own mediocrity, reducing the risk of losing the game to primetime, that may take the Thursday night flex off the table again. But it’s also worth noting that there’s some doubt over the one-road-short-week-game rule, which would open up the possibility of both Bucs-Chargers and Sinners-Saints being TNF-eligible as well.)
Week 16: Or maybe the league’s opportunity for a TNF flex could come this week with both Ohio teams stumbling to 1-4 starts, though CBS’ best game that’s not immune to being flexed at all involves a team only a half-game better, and the only better non-immune game on the slate a) isn’t TNF-eligible and b) still involves a team with a losing record.
Week 17: Washington’s blazing start has seemingly made their game against the Falcons a near-lock to anchor the NFL Network Saturday tripleheader, but they’ll still have to put on at least one game involving a team that’s currently 1-4, and it could be two if the league decides to sacrifice Falcons-Voters to save NBC from having to show a Browns team in freefall. Only three games on the Fox and CBS slates aren’t divisional rematches of games on the wrong network, and all three of those games involve 1-4 teams as well. The league is really hoping the Browns can turn things around or they’re going to have some tough decisions to make.
Playoff picture charts and Week 18 coverage begin Week 9.