All right, let’s start the Flex Schedule Watch for real this time! I wrote most of this post this morning but held off on posting it to see if there would be a change in the Week 8 schedule, and sure enough Bears-Windbags will switch places with Eagles-Bengals and the showdown of big-market star rookie quarterbacks will now be the main late doubleheader game. As I explain below, I may have screwed up a little last week in a way that underestimated the chances for certain games being flexed out, but I still don’t think they’re particularly likely – and our best chance for a flex may well come from Thursday night. This despite the fact that the Browns may well almost be trying to get flexed out of their primetime games.
I’m hoping I’ve gotten things arranged such that your comments should only need to be approved once, but if not I’m going to have to try another anti-spam plugin. I’m also finding the post is getting smushed on mobile as text is no longer automatically clearing the images; if I can’t find a solution for that I may have to adopt another format next year.
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, that is, 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 either. 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 9 (SNF early flex #1): Okay fiiiiine, I’ll talk about the possibility of flexing out Jaguars-Eagles. I’m telling you, everyone thought Bears-Chargers was going to be flexed out last year and it didn’t happen (and while it would have required some additional back-and-forth moves it’s not like it wouldn’t have been worth it to the league if it fell in the main flex period), and in the aftermath Mike North repeatedly noted that even a team that looks truly terrible now could conceivably turn it around down the stretch, so you have to look at the early flex as being specifically about getting away from games with injured star players. So no matter how dire the Jaguars may look, I really don’t see the league going away from them, and I certainly don’t see them doing so if they pick up a second win, even against the lowly Patriots, this week. Now if the Jags manage to lose to the Patriots, then we can talk, but even then I’m not expecting anything to happen.
The good news is that if the league does decide to pull the flex, they might not be lacking in options, though Trumps-Giants doesn’t look like the obvious choice it did a couple weeks ago, and while CBS will need to leave two games involving teams at 2-4 or better unprotected they don’t look terribly impressive. That said, I would expect them to protect Bears-Cardinals under most circumstances as a game involving a big-market NFC team they don’t get to show very often, so if the Vikings remain undefeated their game against the Colts could be an attractive flex candidate despite potential lopsidedness, and Broncos-Ravens could be more attractive than you might think as a showcase for Bo Nix, not to mention the Lamar Jackson factor. If the Colts and Broncos both lose this week, though, the league will have to decide if the Jaguars are really so terrible to be worth pulling the early flex to bring in a below-.500 team (which could include Raiders-Bengals in addition to Colts-Vikings, Broncos-Ravens, and Trumps-Giants).
Basically, if there were to be a flex, I would expect it to be Broncos-Ravens with a Broncos win, and Colts-Vikings if both of those teams win and the Broncos lose, all contingent on the Jaguars losing. Any other scenario would result in Jaguars-Eagles keeping its spot. I certainly think this is in the realm of possibility; maybe the logistical issues surrounding Bears-Chargers last year were a bigger obstacle than I thought, and maybe the league is fine with exposing North as a liar who was just covering for the Bears-Chargers non-flex while delivering the utter indignity of telling the Jaguars “yeah, we’re willing to write you off after only seven weeks after North said you can’t do that last year”. But color me skeptical that it would actually happen (and frankly when I put it that way, even if everything breaks down right the league still might not pull the flex unless Doug Pederson gets fired, since that would be a signal that the Jags themselves have given up). Final prediction: No changes.
Week 11: Colts-Jets is not looking great at the moment, but the best available game that’s even eligible for a flex is Falcons-Broncos, which isn’t exactly the sort of game you’d expect to pop a rating, certainly not a bigger one than a game involving Aaron Rodgers no matter how mediocre his team is. That’s not even getting into its being the game Fox is most likely to protect at the moment, given how their only other flex-eligible games are Rams-Patriots and Browns-Saints. Under the old rules whichever game CBS didn’t protect between Chiefs-Bills and Ravens-Steelers might be in line for a flex if the Jets continue to underperform, though even then there might be considerable horse-trading involved.
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. Lions-Colts certainly looks better in terms of records, but the lack of name value (especially with the Colts who also decidedly lack star power) and relatively smaller markets may be killer; NBC may well prefer to keep Eagles-Rams even with the Rams getting off to a slow 1-4 start.
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 game better than the Browns. But the Browns might be giving up on the season, so desperate times may end up calling for desperate measures.
Week 14: Even if the Bengals continue to struggle as the season continues, it would still take highly exceptional circumstances for the Cowboys to be flexed out. I may have screwed up a bit last week; when writing last week’s post I mentally read any indication in the bottom-right area other than a game being TNF-eligible as a sign that CBS or Fox wouldn’t have to protect that game, but that doesn’t apply to teams having six primetime appearances, since that just means that they would be maxed out if they’re flexed in, not that they’re maxed out now. So Fox may well still feel obligated to protect Bears-Niners even with how much the Niners are struggling and how good Falcons-Vikings looks at the moment, putting an intriguing flex option on the table. But again, Cowboys.
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 while this is another case where the flex situation looks better than I thought with the Niners still needing to be protected, note the lack of any TNF-eligible options (or any other CBS games) on the table, as all the TNF-eligible games involve 1-4 or 1-5 teams. (Eagles-Swing States is technically TNF-eligible, but the first matchup between them is already scheduled for TNF.)
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 if the Bengals start looking more like what we’ve come to expect from them, Broncos-Bengals could be an alternate anchor if the league decides to sacrifice Falcons-Voters to save NBC from having to show the aforementioned possibly-tanking Browns. Still, that would leave NFL Network needing to air a game involving a team only a half-game better than the Browns at best. The problem is that only three games on the Fox and CBS slates aren’t divisional rematches of games on the wrong network, and the only one of those games not involving a one-win team is the only one of the three scheduled for Fox (that is, the only one they need to protect). If the Browns don’t start miraculously turning things around, the league is going to have some tough decisions to make.
Playoff picture charts and Week 18 coverage begin Week 9.