After a week riddled with upsets, it’s looking surprisingly plausible that we might not have any flexes this year. It had started to look like we had a pretty firm group of “bad teams” – in no particular order, the Giants, Bears, Patriots, Broncos, Cardinals, and Panthers, with the possible addition of the Jets – but most of those teams won this past weekend, many against teams perceived to be good, and now the Cardinals and Panthers are the only two teams without multiple wins, and neither was expected to be good enough to warrant primetime appearances – meaning every other team would be 3-4 or better if just one result had gone the other way, which would be strong enough to keep their spot if they had any games in flexible feature windows and even to be in the running to be flexed in. (The last NFC wild card spot is currently held by the 3-3 Bucs in a weak NFC South. That means the Giants and Bears are only a game and a half out of the playoffs.) There’s now a firmer group of the league’s “elite” teams – the Chiefs, Eagles, and 49ers, and after Monday night I’m not so sure about the Niners – than there is a group of firmly “bad” teams.
Of course, in all likelihood the “bad” teams will go back to form in future weeks, but considering the constraints on what games could be flexed in, it’s still looking like a potentially lighter year for flex scheduling than you might think considering the number of games that had been given to mediocre-to-bad teams.
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, some Week 18 games (see below) have their other halves scheduled for the other conference’s network, though none are 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 Peaco*ck 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 10 (SNF early flex): A week ago, after Aaron Rodgers was seen throwing on the field before the Jets’ game against the Eagles, an injury expert told CBSSports.com that Rodgers was on an “unprecedented timeline” in his recovery from an Achilles tear and, after Jets head coach Robert Saleh had said shortly after the injury happened that he was done for the year, now Rodgers had a chance to get back on the field and play for the Jets as soon as Week… 15. Sorry, but you’re stuck with Zach Wilson when the Jets take the field against the Raiders. (For the record, the Jets’ Week 15 and 16 games are CBS singleheader games that seem unlikely to be flexed in for various reasons, and I have my doubts that Rodgers would parachute in as late as Week 17.)
Even though I just mentioned we might be in for a flex-free year, there is a possibility for this game to be flexed out after the Raiders made the Bears, once thought to be the worst team in the league, look like at least a playoff contender with Tyson Bagent at the helm. The Jets would need to similarly faceplant against the 2-5 Giants, and the Raiders would probably need to go down to the Lions as well, and at least one of the games pitting teams at 4-2 or better would need both teams to win, and Fox might not need to protect Giants-Cowboys so you’d probably need another game in there, and the league probably doesn’t want to put Deshawn Watson in primetime if it can avoid it. (Also, I considered setting the Buzzmeter for Browns games as though they had a .500 record in protest of the extremely questionable calls they’ve benefitted from the past two weeks, but didn’t end up doing it. Just keep in mind that their record might be a mirage.) But if Fox decides to protect “The Battle for the Real Washington” to create a split-national window (or even Saints-Vikings), leaving a 6-2 v. 6-2 Niners-Jaguars game available to replace a 3-4 v. 3-5 Jets-Raiders matchup pitting Zach Wilson against Jimmy Garoppolo, does the league take it? (There are some AFC teams Fox might be willing to protect, but I don’t know if the Jaguars, even with Trevor Lawrence and playing the Niners, are one of them.) Note that if the Jets win, I won’t bother with Last-Minute Remarks and will assume the game keeps its spot.
Week 11: This is the sort of situation the league has to deal with in most weeks where a game might be flex-out material on paper. Even if CBS needed to protect Jets-Bills, there won’t be any alternative available that doesn’t involve a team at 3-4 or worse, the same record as the Vikings and a game better than the Broncos. Raiders-Dolphins would be more lopsided, and I’m not sure Seahawks-Rams involves teams with bigger fanbases than Vikings-Broncos (mostly because of the Rams). That could change, but there’s not a lot of time to do so – only two weeks’ worth of games.
Week 12: The first Monday Night Football game ever to be eligible to be flexed out may well be flexed out, but this is the week where in years past I’d be saying “Thanksgiving week, paucity of good games”, and sure enough the options don’t exactly look encouraging. All the games involve teams at 3-3 or worse, the Raiders didn’t exactly scream primetime material this week, and the other games on the chart are divisional games whose return matches either aren’t or might not be on their respective conference’s network. (Fox might still protect Saints-Falcons just to make absolutely sure they have one-half of the rivalry, but if not… I dunno, Pats-Giants?) Bucs-Colts is still in the running, but even leaving records aside doesn’t scream flex-in material.
Week 13: There’s not really a pressing need to flex out any of these games, especially given the lackluster alternatives once you get past the potential NFC Championship preview. Now, if Green Bay goes into the tank and any of these 3-3 or 3-4 teams go on a tear, that could be another matter, but Chiefs-Packers should draw even if the Packers are bad and there are no viable flex-out alternatives, and after all three of the teams that were 3-3 last week and had games lost, color me skeptical that any of them actually will go on a tear.
Week 14: I wasn’t sure there were any viable replacements for Pats-Steelers last week and that’s even more the case now that the Pats knocked off the Bills. A battle of 3-3 teams between the Texans and Jets isn’t exactly appetizing, especially since it might be the last week before Aaron Rodgers comes back, but it looks like it’ll be the best game available if the “no more than one road TNF game” rule is a thing; Rams-Ravens might be in the running if the Rams can get to and stay above .500, but right now they’re only a game better than the Pats. Even if that rule isn’t a thing, Jags-Browns and Bucs-Falcons aren’t much better, and it may well turn out they’re needed more to backfill a Monday night game involving a Titans team that’s only a half-game ahead of the Pats and might end up not being all that good. (On that note, I forgot to mention last week that Titans-Dolphins is part of an MNF split doubleheader with Packers-Giants, and that game is technically flexible too, but since there are currently games being played at MetLife Stadium on both Sunday and Monday, it can only be flexed out if Texans-Jets was flexed in in its place, and given the name value gap between the teams and Texans-Jets’ eligibility for a TNF flex, that would only happen if the Texans and Jets were two of the best teams in the league and one of the Packers or Giants was an absolute disaster.)
Week 15: What’s bad for NBC, ESPN, and Amazon might well be great for NFL Network; they’re guaranteed to have at least four games reserved for a Saturday move pitting teams with multiple wins! If this is the start of the Bears or Broncos shedding their bad starts to go on tears, the Saturday slate may well approach respectability! Just ignore the Colts losing to cause all five games to involve teams with losing records…
On top of that, the Patriots’ win didn’t do much to improve the chances of Chiefs-Patriots keeping its spot. Fox has two games involving teams at 4-3 (two games ahead of the Pats) or better that aren’t divisional matchups, and one is a West Coast game that’s likely to be buried behind the other. So despite what I said in the intro, this week still has a pretty good chance to see a flex.
Week 16: In the past I’d have skipped this week with NBC abandoning Christmas Eve night to NFL Network and playing non-flexible games on Saturday instead, but by all appearances TNF flexing is in place even if shorter-distance flexes aren’t. Saints-Rams isn’t a great game, but it’s not so bad as to demand a flex without a truly overwhelming alternative, and the best option available to the league right now involve teams with the same 3-4 record as the teams in that game. (Note that if you ignore the return match coming in Week 18, Lions-Vikings would be eligible for a Thursday night flex regardless of the existence of a one-road-game rule… if Broncos-Lions were picked for a move to Saturday the previous week.)
Week 17: This could be an interesting situation if the Packers and Vikings continue to underperform, and a case where the slate of upsets may have materially reduced the chances of a flex. The Lions look to be running away with the division, so this isn’t a tire fire situation where a game between two below-.500 teams somehow has playoff implications, but it also might not be so bad as to absolutely demand a flex-out, especially if its lack of playoff implications works in its favor by allowing the Week 18 slate to be announced before the end of the game, and it is a classic NFC North rivalry between two teams with solid fanbases. (Notably, as mentioned above, the Vikings are only a half-game out of the playoffs.)
Dolphins-Ravens is a good game that’s likely to be unprotected, but the question is whether that would leave CBS with too weak of an early window with Raiders-Colts and Patriots-Bills. You could also see Fox leave Steelers-Seahawks unprotected in favor of Niners-Commies or even Saints-Bucs, since it’ll be pinned to the late singleheader with limited distribution. Speaking of Saints-Bucs, if the NFC South is shaping up to be the tire fire the North isn’t, that game could have significant playoff implications if that outweighs the ease of setting the Week 18 schedule. If the Jets and/or Browns go into the tank, the Thursday and Sunday night deadlines being three weeks apart could leave the league, and Fox, in an odd position, especially since Saints-Bucs might not realistically be movable to Thursday since its eligibility depends on being able to give the Saints a full week off when the Bucs wouldn’t.
Playoff picture charts and Week 18 coverage begin Week 9.
