As he did last year, NFL Vice President of Broadcast Planning Mike North spoke with Rob Tornoe of the Philadelphia Inquirer about Eagles-adjacent flex scheduling situations. So you don’t have to use up any limited free article views on the Inquirer website before running into a paywall, here are the key takeaways.
First, North confirmed that the league is considering a Packers-Vikings for Eagles-Cowboys swap in Week 17. In Tornoe’s words, North said “there’s a ‘reasonable’ chance a move could happen if Eagles-Cowboys ‘doesn’t still warrant 100% of the country watching the game'”, but “maybe Dallas is on a five-game winning streak, and we keep that game right where it is”. Apparently the league has until Christmas Eve to make a decision, which is actually shorter than I thought – the Tuesday before the games would be played. The previous times the league pulled a “six-day hold” out of its ass for Sunday nights (before it became an official part of the league’s contracts), the announcement came on Sunday.
What may be more notable is the prospect of the league flexing out Bucs-Cowboys in Week 16, and if that doesn’t sound Eagles-adjacent, North begs to differ. He acknowledges that Fox has the right to keep Eagles-Swing States, but that the league could strike a deal with Fox if the situation warranted:
I’m not saying we’re going to do this, but in theory, you could make a case that if Fox were to lose the Philly-Washington game that day, get back the Tampa-Dallas game, still have a Detroit-Chicago game in the early window and Minnesota-Seattle in the late window, Arizona playing for something, Atlanta playing for something, it’s hard to say Fox’s Sunday afternoon would be ruined. Our partners are nothing if not amenable to a conversation.
North also said that “I would not be stunned if Tampa-Dallas stays on Sunday night”, but my view remains going beyond “not being stunned” to expecting it to stay put after the Cowboys’ current winning streak seemingly put to bed the notion that the Cowboys were just going to tank the rest of the season. I still don’t quite think I have a handle on when things get bad enough for the league to flex out of a Cowboys game, but as long as the game has playoff implications at least for the Bucs I would expect it to keep its spot. And while Fox would love to get a Cowboys game back, I also think Fox would much rather part with Vikings-Seahawks, whose distribution is necessarily limited by being in the late window, than Eagles-Swing States.
That said, I’m not willing to rule out a scenario where Fox parts with both Eagles-Swing States and Vikings-Seahawks – I just don’t think it involves Bucs-Cowboys being flexed out, and with Fox having already parted with Broncos-Chargers it would be tough to convince them of it. Read on.
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 16: Regardless of what happens this week, there’s a scenario where the Saints enter the week a loss and/or Falcons (and/or Washington) win away from being eliminated from the playoffs. In that scenario, keeping Saints-Packers on Monday night could be unfair to the teams fighting with the Packers for wild card positioning if the Falcons (and/or Washington) win and eliminate the Saints before the game is played when the Saints would have still been alive if the game was flexed out. But with the Seahawks set to face the Bears on Boxing Day on Thursday night, Vikings-Seahawks almost certainly can’t move to the preceding Monday night, and unless CBS and the league want to move Niners-Dolphins to Monday night, the only other options would, ordinarily, involve teams with worse records than the Saints. That’s where the possibility of Fox releasing Eagles-Swing States comes in: move that game to Monday night and allow Fox to get back a Packers game, which isn’t quite as desirable as the Cowboys but is still pretty attractive. But under the circumstances, I doubt the league would be able to convince Fox to do that, especially if they’re also talking about sending Vikings-Seahawks to CBS to replace Niners-Dolphins in the late doubleheader window when that’s the one decent game Fox has that needs to be protected, so let’s talk about that.
Typically, the late doubleheader doesn’t care so much about how good the teams are than the primetime windows, focusing more on the brand value of the teams, and the Dolphins and certainly Niners have strong enough brands to anchor the window no matter what. But there’s also the league’s stated desire for games with playoff implications in their marquee windows, and both teams are far enough out of the playoffs that they could very well be eliminated by game time. With Broncos-Chargers falling in Week 16 even before the TNF move, even if the Dolphins win and Chargers lose to give the Dolphins another team they can catch, the Dolphins could still end up hanging on to a playoff spot by a thread, and if either of those results don’t happen they could be eliminated entirely. The Niners are in a bit better situation as they’re two games back in the NFC West instead of two and a half games out, and they’re in good shape to hold the conference games tiebreaker if they managed to catch Washington for the wild card; if the Cardinals and Niners were to both win this week, the Niners would be guaranteed to still be alive for the playoffs as long as they don’t fall two games behind any NFC West teams (or Washington) that get scheduled to play earlier than them.
If the Dolphins, Chargers, Cardinals, and Niners games all go the right way, the Niners and Dolphins are at 6-7, the Cardinals and Seahawks (and possibly the Rams) are tied for the NFC West lead at 7-6, and all three AFC wild card spots are 8-5 with two of the teams in those spots playing each other. With both teams guaranteed to still be alive for the playoffs by kickoff (barring a Broncos-Chargers tie), as long as any teams that could eliminate them play at the same time or later, maybe the league commits to Niners-Dolphins keeping its spot and focusing on Eagles-Swing States trading places with Saints-Packers – especially given the possibility of a Washington loss to the Saints the following week keeping the Niners alive in the wild card hunt even with a loss to the Rams, possibly freeing up the Cardinals and Rams to remain in the early window. (I also considered the possibility of a chained flex where it’s Niners-Dolphins that goes to Monday night, but even if all of these results go the right way there’s a scenario where the Niners get eliminated by the preceding Sunday’s results.)
If Fox would still rather trade Vikings-Seahawks for Niners-Dolphins and keep Eagles-Swing States as its main singleheader game, is there a scenario where Niners-Dolphins keeps its spot regardless? The good news is that if a decision on Eagles-Cowboys doesn’t need to be made until the preceding Tuesday, the same should be the case with Niners-Dolphins, so let’s take the above scenario and see what the best case would be for the following week. If the Niners and Dolphins win again while the Seahawks lose, the Niners, Dolphins, and Seahawks are all at 7-7 with the Niners holding the conference games tiebreaker over the Seahawks and the prospect of Vikings-Seahawks being lopsided. I think Niners-Dolphins absolutely keeps its spot in that scenario, and given what I’ve referred to in the past as the tentative game bias, it might keep its spot even if one or two of those results over the next two weeks don’t go their way.
I think the prospect of Eagles-Swing States moving to Monday night can happen if everything breaks down right for Niners-Dolphins this week, but I’m not going to predict it, especially because that’s not the context in which North brought up the prospect of Fox releasing its hold on the game, so I’m ultimately predicting Saints-Packers keeps its spot. But I‘m going to hold off on making any predictions for the Sunday schedule this week and see if Vikings-Seahawks really is the sort of game the league would want to bring to a larger audience at all costs, and/or if Niners-Dolphins might end up not having much if anything in the way of playoff implications.
Week 17: If the Dolphins can be eliminated from the playoffs before their Week 16 game with the Niners they’re all the more likely to be eliminated before their game with the Browns, certainly if it remains on Sunday night with the Broncos and Chargers potentially playing as early as Saturday, while the Browns are just one loss away from elimination themselves – yet the only viable replacements would force NFL Network to air games involving teams that have already been eliminated. 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 Bucs are the only team involved in any of them not at 4-8 or worse, with their game also being the only one that doesn’t involve a team that’s already been eliminated.
On top of that, the Falcons’ mediocrity and Washington’s struggles mean that Cardinals-Rams is becoming as viable a candidate for a move to Sunday night as Falcons-Palpatines. The latter would have the hot storyline of Jayden Daniels’ sensational rookie season (if it hasn’t completely derailed), but if Washington’s win over the Titans heralds them getting back on track it could not only make the game lopsided but allow Washington to sew up a playoff spot. Certainly whichever game doesn’t end up on Sunday night would be a viable anchor for the NFL Network tripleheader.
Because NBC is more important than NFL Network, and because I think the league would want all four games to have playoff implications for at least one team, I think at this point they will flex in one of the NFL Network games to Sunday night. Chargers-Patriots would probably be the favorite to lead off the tripleheader right now as the Colts’ playoff hopes fade, but Colts-Giants could get the nod if the Colts are still in the hunt for the division or a wild card spot and the Chargers’ result would have an impact on whether the Dolphins (or, for that matter, the Colts) are still alive.
As for the question of whether Packers-Vikings switches places with Cowboys-Eagles and becomes Fox’s new lead game, by the time the league has to make the decision, not only could the Cowboys be eliminated from the playoffs, the Eagles could have the division sewn up and be playing solely for the 1 seed. But if the Cowboys are still alive for the playoffs, especially if Washington manages to knock off the Eagles, I wouldn’t count out the chances for Cowboys-Eagles to keep its spot.
Week 18: There’s at least a game and a half of separation between the teams in the wild card hunt and the teams out of it, and the 6-6 teams in the NFC all have better chances to win their respective divisions, so it’s looking increasingly like the drama in terms of which teams make the playoffs is going to come down to the NFC South and West. Unfortunately, those divisions might not produce games suitable for standalone windows; the South is looking like it’s going to come down to the Falcons and Bucs who don’t play each other, and while Seahawks-Rams looks like a decent choice at the moment, there are enough divisional games left to play (and the Seahawks have a tough enough schedule down the stretch, with a trip to Arizona followed by three straight NFC North teams) that it’s just as likely Niners-Cardinals is the superior option, or that both games have to be played at the same time at 4:25. Ultimately, Vikings-Lions to decide the NFC North is at least as likely to be the Sunday night game as anything else.
If the NFC West doesn’t cooperate to produce suitable games for standalone windows, and there isn’t any drama left in the wild card races, that could leave ESPN with a problem in the Saturday windows. As North acknowledged to Tornoe, Giants-Eagles could be an option if the Eagles have the division locked up and a chance to nab the 1 seed with the Lions still needing to win the division; if the Eagles don’t have the division locked up, Natives-Cowboys could go first. If things break down right, Bengals-Steelers and/or Browns-Ravens could be options if whichever home team is playing later can’t be deprived of having anything substantial to play for. Otherwise the league could be stuck throwing on games that only matter for seeding that the teams questionably care about: Texans-Titans, Chargers-Raiders, or Bears-Packers. Chiefs-Broncos could be in the running as well if the Bills still have to defend the 2 seed, or conversely Bills-Patriots if the Bills take the lead there.