Twice under the old flex scheduling regime, the NFL and its partners agreed to hold off on deciding the Sunday night game for the penultimate week of the season until the week before, later than the 12-day window they were technically allowed to make changes in. Both cases involved extraordinary circumstances and saw decisions made in the middle of the day on Sunday that were, in my view, less than ideal. With the new contracts, NBC got an explicitly-spelled-out six-day window for flexes in the last month-plus of the season. Based on how this provision was described in the press releases on the new contracts and continues to be described in the league’s flex scheduling primer and my own rules spiel below, you might think this tightening of the window to make flexing decisions is a matter of course, that flexing decisions in December that only involve Sunday games will regularly be made a week in advance, albeit probably before the end of the preceding Sunday night game. But there’s a reason flex scheduling didn’t originally incorporate six-day windows outside the final week of the regular season, even though college football, which NFL flex scheduling was modeled on, had always had “six-day holds” even before the initial contracts for Sunday night flex scheduling were signed in 2005.
On Tuesday CBS sent a message to its affiliates stating that “the NFL will likely wait to announce the Week 16 schedule on a 6-day basis” and that CBS would inform affiliates of what games they’d get once the schedule was finalized, with knock-on effects on other related procedures such as station requests to change games. It’s a reminder that making schedule changes on such short notice is not a trivial matter. Normally JP Kirby, the proprietor of the 506sports website, posts preliminary versions of his maps showing what game each part of the country is getting on the corresponding Discord on the preceding Sunday night, but the stations themselves may not know what games they’re getting at that point, or even what games each network has on their slate. That’s not even getting into the logistical issues of rescheduling the work shifts of stadium grounds crew, security personnel, and other people whose work revolves around when each game is played, or the changes in plans that fans might have to make. As tempting as it can sometimes be to see the NFL as a TV show where games can be moved around freely, 12-day flex scheduling can be exasperating enough for fans trying to attend in person as it is without cutting the advance notice in half.
The attitude on the 506sports Discord leading up to CBS’ notice was that six-day flex windows would be used sparingly and as a last resort, with people anticipating the league making a final decision on the schedule before the end of the business day until the CBS notice confirmed that there would be no final decision until next week. I don’t think the league is going to be quite so reluctant to perform six-day flexes as they were when they weren’t actually part of the rules – for one thing, this situation seems straightforward enough that they could pull the flex right now if they wanted to – but there will be circumstances where I’ll make a Sunday flex prediction two weeks in advance even if the league still technically has another week.
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: There’s some talk that, with the Seahawks improving to 8-5, Vikings-Seahawks has now entered the territory of a game too good to be trapped in the late singleheader, and it does now have the exact same pair of records as Eagles-Swing States to enter into a tie for the best game of the week outside the Saturday slate. That just might justify flexing it in to Sunday night, Cowboys or no Cowboys, if the circumstances don’t favor swapping it for Niners-Dolphins – and both of those teams picked up wins to keep their own hopes alive.
The problem, though, is that any network would prefer a Cowboys team that’s already been eliminated from the playoffs (the Cowboys technically haven’t yet, but it’s hanging by a thread) playing a team in the thick of the division race than a game involving two teams on the outside looking in. So in order for Vikings-Seahawks to be flexed in for Bucs-Cowboys instead of Niners-Dolphins, the latter game needs to be compelling enough in its own right to justify it. A Niners win and Seahawks loss would cut the Niners’ deficit to the Seahawks to a single game, but that Niners win would come against the Rams, which would mean the Seahawks would maintain the outright division lead. The Dolphins could also climb within a single game of the playoffs with a win, but that still doesn’t seem compelling enough on its own. Even if both the Niners and Dolphins win, it would be difficult to argue that a game between two .500 teams on the outside looking in should keep its spot while Bucs-Cowboys should be flexed out. So the only way I see Bucs-Cowboys being flexed out is if Fox insists that getting the Cowboys back is the only way they’re going to give up Vikings-Seahawks, and I don’t think that’s the case.
The best thing that could happen to Niners-Dolphins would be the Seahawks losing, which would take the air out of the notion that Vikings-Seahawks is too big a game to stay in the late singleheader. If both the Niners and Dolphins win on top of that, suddenly the Seahawks are only a game better than either team currently scheduled for the late window, which would normally be where the tentative game bias would kick in for me (not that that’s necessarily held up this year). On the other hand, if the Niners lose the league might want to move them into the early window so the Rams can’t eliminate them from the playoffs before they take the field, in which case Vikings-Seahawks probably gets plugged in to the late doubleheader window no matter what (though that would also mean Fox can’t simply plug Niners-Dolphins into its late singleheader; Rams-Jets could move to the late window instead, but it can’t move to Fox because the Giants are already playing there, so it would just have the effect of depriving the two largest markets of Vikings-Seahawks). The Dolphins might be able to survive a loss because the Broncos-Chargers game means they can’t be eliminated before they take the field; in that case the main thing in Niners-Dolphins’ favor is that late doubleheader changes are pretty rare in general, because CBS and Fox tend to care more about the brand value of the teams than how good they are, and Sam Darnold vs. Geno Smith isn’t exactly the quarterback matchup of network executives’ dreams, record aside.
In the end, though, the Seahawks’ win could end up outweighing the Niners and Dolphins’ wins in terms of the chance that Niners-Dolphins keeps its spot.
Final prediction:
- Minnesota Vikings @ Seattle Seahawks to CBS (if the Seahawks win or the 49ers lose);
- No changes otherwise.
Week 17: The NFL is going to have to air at least one team that’s been eliminated from the playoffs in a standalone window in the penultimate week of the season, yet the worst option they have might well still be the game in the Sunday night window, as the Browns are already out of the playoffs and the Dolphins could join them as early as their game against the Niners. 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 5-8 or worse, with their game also being the only one that doesn’t involve a team that’s already been eliminated.
The question of which game between Falcons-Palpatines and Cardinals-Rams gets flexed into Sunday night and which serves as the anchor game of the NFL Network tripleheader is very much an open question; it’s entirely possible for both games to have the exact same pair of records by this time next week. Right now the Washington game is more lopsided, but has the biggest brand across the four teams, a Rookie of the Year candidate at quarterback, and potentially another rookie on the other side, plus the Cardinals are the team furthest from the playoffs of the four. I also don’t think NBC or the league would be inclined to feature the Rams in consecutive weeks (see below). But the three non-Washington teams are all pretty close together, and if the Falcons lose to the lowly Raiders while the Bucs upset the Chargers, I could easily see the argument that Cardinals-Rams is the more relevant game with a hot quarterback matchup of its own. A lot can change in a week’s time, and it would be weird if a season as active on the flexing front as this one never had a Last-Minute Remarks, so I’m going to withhold my final prediction until Monday – though no later, as the games that move to Saturday will determine what ends up on Sunday night.
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. (Someone on the 506sports Discord suggested that both Falcons-Palpatines and Cardinals-Rams could go to Sunday to give the league an additional week to decide what game they want to go with, but I’m not sure that’s so pressing as to leave NFL Network saddled with a game where the better team would likely be hanging by a thread while burying whichever game doesn’t end up on Sunday night – though I guess it could happen if teams in both games are at risk of being eliminated entirely by the end of the week.)
The Cowboys’ chances of making the playoffs are hanging by a thread following their heartbreaking loss to the Bengals, and a loss and Washington win would snuff them out entirely. If Falcons-Palpatines were to move to Saturday, Cowboys-Eagles may well be swapped with Packers-Vikings regardless of what happens the following week due to the risk that the Cowboys might already be eliminated (and the same could be the case if Washington loses and the Cowboys win, but the Rams also win to add another team that could eliminate the Cowboys that would be the alternative to Washington on Saturday), and if it were any other team than the Cowboys in this spot a swap would be a sure bet. But the game is still vitally important for the Eagles in their quest for the 1 seed and to lock up the division, so I think Fox would want to hold on to it if there’s still the slightest possibility the Cowboys can come back to make the playoffs. Don’t be surprised if I make a prediction on this front in the Last-Minute Remarks, though.
Week 18: The Sunday night game is almost assuredly going to come from the NFC. Two of the AFC’s divisions are already decided, the top contenders in the other two divisions don’t play each other, and in the divisions with multiple teams alive for the wild card those teams don’t play each other either (and the Bengals can’t catch the Steelers). Lions-Packers a couple years ago aside, you can’t have a Sunday-night-suitable game without a game between two teams alive for the playoffs, even if that game isn’t the one that’s Sunday-night-suitable. This may be the earliest we’ve known what conference the final week’s Sunday night game would come from with this degree of certainty in the all-division-games era.
The good news is that the NFC is in good shape to produce a suitable game. We’ve talked about Vikings-Lions in the past, but Seahawks-Rams now looks decidedly likely to decide the NFC West, and a few other games have outside shots. Either NFC South game could be in the running depending on what the Saints do the next few weeks, and Bucs-Saints has a narrow shot at being in the running even if the Saints are irrelevant if the Panthers win their next three games. If the Cowboys somehow manage to keep their playoff hopes alive all the way to the final week, you could even see Natives-Cowboys get the nod.
Any of those games, or Niners-Cardinals as the other NFC West game, could end up on Saturday, plus other games that can be played before the bulk of the Sunday slate. 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. Dolphins-Jets or Jaguars-Colts could be options if the Dolphins or Colts are still alive for the wild card. 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. If the race for the top three seeds in the AFC is close enough, Chiefs-Broncos could be in the running if the Bills still have to defend the 2 seed from the AFC North winner.