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Week 16: No announcement was made on the Week 16 slate on Sunday, which is a change from past “six-day hold” situations. This sort of limbo can end up getting the 506sports Discord stir-crazy and wondering if Fox held the line enough on keeping Vikings-Seahawks to force CBS to stick with Niners-Dolphins as its lead game, but the most likely explanations are a) continued horse-trading involving what sort of compensation to give Fox and b) holding off so the league can make announcements for Weeks 16 and 17 at once. We saw with the Thursday night flex that the league can make a decision regarding a flex before they actually announce it. It’s worth noting that NBC advertised the Bucs-Cowboys game for Sunday night during last night’s game, after CBS and Fox did not advertise their slates for next Sunday at all – and it’s also worth noting that on-screen, though not verbal, advertisements for Bucs-Cowboys started showing up at halftime but were absent from NBC’s ticker during pregame, which may suggest NBC was informed that they would be keeping the game sometime during the first half. To my knowledge, however, as I write this nothing has leaked regarding any time or network changes.
Right now the playoff hopes of both the Niners and Dolphins are hanging by a thread, although the Chargers’ loss means that both a Chargers win and Dolphins loss would be needed to eliminate the Dolphins. If I were the czar of the NFL schedule I’d move Niners-Dolphins to the 1 PM ET window so the Rams can’t eliminate the Niners before game time; moving Rams-Jets late only dilutes the distribution of Niners-Dolphins, as it likely can’t move to the same network as Giants-Falcons. But moving any game other than Niners-Dolphins or Eagles-Swing States to 4:05 means moving a game involving a team already eliminated from the playoffs, and the next-best game on the Sunday afternoon slate, Lions-Bears, sees the Bears enforcing a blackout on CBS in the Chicago market, so moving it late means depriving the #3 market from the feature game. Jaguars-Raiders, the only other 4:25 PM ET game, might be the worst game of the entire season, let alone the week’s slate, so it’s not a good choice to move to Fox either. Given that, and given the time constraints if the schedule hasn’t already been finalized without our knowledge, a straight swap of Niners-Dolphins for Vikings-Seahawks seems most likely. (Hey, maybe in light of the Geno Smith injury, there’s a last-minute push to get Fox to give up Eagles-Swing States instead! Eh, probably not.) Final prediction: Minnesota Vikings @ Seattle Seahawks to 4:25 CBS.
Week 17 thoughts after the jump!
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Week 17: I bet the NFL is really regretting not flexing out Falcons-Raiders right about now, because a decision on the Saturday games likely has to be made by the end of the day on Monday and a Falcons loss would put them in a two-game hole with three games to play, and raises the possibility that they could be eliminated as soon as next week – or worse, eliminated before the game is played, when they wouldn’t be on Saturday, if it’s flexed into Sunday night and the Bucs beat the Panthers earlier in the day. Granted, there’s a risk of Arizona being eliminated before Sunday night as well if they lose to the Panthers, and that might be more likely than the Raiders beating the Falcons the way the Panthers had been playing before the Cowboys game (though the Raiders have been playing feisty of late and the way the Falcons have been playing it’s a bit of a wonder they’ve been able to beat anybody).
But if the league can, I could see them make a selection contingent on tonight’s results. If they can’t, I still think they’ll give NBC the game with the stronger fanbases, better storylines, no risk of putting the same team on in consecutive weeks (Natives-Cowboys might have a very slim chance of being eligible for “Game 272” but it’s possible that even if it is, it would still go to Fox as part of their compensation for surrendering Vikings-Seahawks), and less risk of the Week 18 schedule hinging on the result – though I honestly wouldn’t be surprised by either option. (For that matter, the only reason Broncos-Bengals isn’t in the running is because the state of the NFC West and South puts the Cardinals and Falcons closer to the playoffs than their records would otherwise suggest.)
Final prediction:
- Los Angeles Chargers @ New England Patriots for 1 PM ET Saturday.
- Denver Broncos @ Cincinnati Bengals for 4:30 PM ET Saturday.
- Arizona Cardinals @ Los Angeles Rams for 8 PM ET Saturday.
- Atlanta Falcons @ Washington Palpatines for SNF.
I’m tentatively targeting Thursday for the next Flex Schedule Watch post even though I don’t expect the Sunday night percentage chances to take too long. I’m considering looking at percentage chances for Saturday games as well, even though not only could that be exponentially more difficult, I haven’t had a good record at predicting those to begin with so I don’t know what is or isn’t acceptable to the league.