NFL Flexible Scheduling Watch: Week 15

Note: This post does not incorporate the result of the Thursday night or Saturday games (mostly).

So despite my use of a “cheat sheet” after what happened in 2021 this post came pretty close to going the same way. I’m inclined to blame it on the problems I ran into trying to fly to Seattle, but I still didn’t spend any time working on this on Friday. Maybe I should see if I can find a way to start working on this another week in advance? But the combinations involved multiply exponentially another week out.

One thing that occurred to me while I was working on the Week 17 section (before Thursday’s news) was that the eight-game minimum that applied to Cowboys games on Fox almost certainly doesn’t apply across the board. Only eleven out of 30 teams on my primetime appearance count list were scheduled to air on their respective conference’s network more than eight times, which would severely limit the league’s ability to pull the flex; notably, the Seahawks are among the teams scheduled for only eight Fox games, so flexing them in for Chiefs-Patriots would seem to have put them below the minimum. It had always been reported that CBS and Fox could choose a certain number of teams to air a minimum number of times on their air, but without any firm measure of what those numbers are I think there was a tendency to assume that the former number would apply across the board just to simplify things, avoid having to figure out what those teams were, and align with CBS and Fox maintaining their overall conference affiliations (and I think some things some executives said may have contributed to that perception), but clearly there is a discretionary element involved here. (That said, I suspect there is a smaller minimum that does apply across the board.) Eight games makes sense as the overall minimum to apply to the teams the networks choose, and the number of teams they can choose is probably pretty low for the Steelers to be scheduled for only seven CBS games, but even before Swiftmania came to Kansas City the Chiefs were probably one of the teams CBS did choose, which has relevance to the Week 17 flex because it removes any remaining doubt that they protected Dolphins-Ravens.

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 Peacock 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 17: After an upset win over the Chiefs, the Packers have lost two straight to mediocre-at-best teams, and may be providing the league with a solution to their Dolphins-Ravens problem in the process. Certainly I consider the Sunday night game being flexed out to be significantly more likely than CBS swapping it in for Bengals-Chiefs at this point, if only because CBS would likely prefer the Chiefs, probably one of the three biggest draws in the entire league at this point, over anything else. (It’s worth noting, though, that all four teams in the top games CBS controls at the moment were scheduled for eight CBS games before the season, and if the eight-game minimum that allowed Fox to leave Cowboys-Bills unprotected this past week applies across the board, that would insulate CBS from any flex situation here. But it would also have insulated Eagles-Seahawks from a flex, so it’s more likely that the networks get to pick the teams that are subject to the minimum.)

The Packers would hold a tiebreaker against any team at 7-7, even if they lose and every 7-7 team wins this week, except the Bucs, who are likely to win the NFC South, and Seahawks, so they can’t be eliminated from the playoffs this week, and with the Saints and Bucs playing each other and the Packers playing the Vikings Week 16, that further narrows the range of scenarios where the Packers could be eliminated by game time… but it doesn’t close it entirely, especially since the Packers would also lose a tiebreaker to the Falcons.

With a Packers loss, the Rams, Bucs, Saints, and Seahawks could all clinch an outright better record than the Packers by game time by winning their next two, and the Falcons could clinch a lead based on tiebreakers the same way, as could the Seahawks by merely splitting. That means any of the Rams, Bucs, Saints, or Falcons winning would put the Packers at risk of being eliminated by game time… and the Saints and Rams play each other on Thursday night. A Saints win comes with the caveat that if the Saints win the division their finish relative to the Packers is moot; if the Bucs were to lose this week, and then beat the Saints next week, they’d hold a tiebreaker over the Saints who would be only one game ahead of the Packers if they beat the Vikings. So if the Packers lose and either the Rams, Bucs, or Falcons win, that would put the Packers at risk of being eliminated by game time.

Of course, all this would require the Packers to lose to the lowly Panthers; win, and a win against the Vikings is sure to leave you tied at worst with the Saints-Bucs loser, leaving only a Rams team you win a tiebreaker against, and a Seahawks team that loses the tiebreaker to them, to potentially sit at least a game ahead of you entering the final week. That leaves the 1-seed situation itself, which is actually far from a sure thing to be all that relevant; the Ravens are the middle leg of a murderer’s row of opponents for the Dolphins in the last three weeks, sandwiched between the Cowboys and Bills, the latter of which may well decide the division (more on that below). The Chiefs have comparatively easier games bracketing the Bengals game against the Raiders and Chargers, so they’re still very much alive for the 1-seed themselves, or at least for finishing ahead of a Dolphins team they beat in Frankfurt. If the Dolphins lose to the Cowboys while the Ravens beat the Niners, the game between them becomes much less determinative; but if the Dolphins win, especially if the Chiefs lose, that may result in a situation where the league sends CBS an ultimatum: switch Dolphins-Ravens with Bengals-Chiefs or we’re going to send the former to NBC. (The early doubleheader is nowhere near the sort of purgatory the late singleheader is, but Dolphins-Ravens may turn out to be too good a game even for that.) The timing of the games, though, doesn’t work in the league’s favor here: Cowboys-Dolphins the lead late doubleheader game, Raiders-Chiefs and Ravens-Niners on Christmas. Both times the league used the “six-day hold” before it officially became an option, they announced any flexes before the end of any late afternoon games on Sunday; even if making it officially an option puts it on par with the Week 18 flex, that means that the league would only have the Dolphins result in hand before it’s time to make a decision. It’s possible that the Dolphins game may be the only one that determines whether or not Dolphins-Ravens, in the league’s mind, is too important to leave in the early doubleheader window.

If the Cowboys beat the Dolphins, but the Packers are still at risk for elimination before game time, could the league swap out Packers-Vikings for a different game? It’s possible, but a delicate balancing act since the next-best available games are on Fox. Certainly Saints and Bucs wins would set up what could end up being an effective NFC South title game, and what would be assured to be one if the Falcons lose (even if it’s only the Saints who win), and Fox would probably prefer to have Packers-Vikings anchoring their singleheader than… whatever they choose to anchor it as it stands. (Saints-Bucs is their best game, but is lacking enough in buzz that I could see them going with Rams-Giants or even sending their lead team to Steelers-Seahawks.) Problem with that, though, is the ReliaQuest Bowl scheduled for the same stadium at noon on New Year’s Day, and we saw last year the problems that can arise when an NFL game and a bowl game are set to be played too close to each other. (Seriously, there’s no reason for the league to schedule Bucs home games for New Year’s Eve or Day, certainly now that Week 17 isn’t the last week of the regular season, yet it seems to happen often enough when one of those days falls on a Sunday that I wonder if the Bucs request it.)

Steelers-Seahawks is trapped in the late window, but for all I know the Eagles-Seahawks flex prevented the league from taking another Seahawks game away from Fox, and even if not it’s entirely possible Fox protected the game. If Seattle loses while the Rams and Vikings win, both the Rams and Vikings would win tiebreakers over the Seahawks, so both of them winning the following week would eliminate the Seahawks – which would mean that if Packers-Vikings were to be flexed out at all, either it or Rams-Giants should probably be moved to the late window to ensure the Seahawks’ hopes stay alive at least until their game starts, though I’m not confident the league would actually do that as neither CBS nor Fox would want to do that to those games. The Raiders would win tiebreakers over any team currently at 7-7 except the Bills (they’d also lose a tiebreaker to the Dolphins should the Bills run them down for the division), so if they beat the Chiefs this week and the Bengals, Texans, and either the Colts or Bills lose, Raiders-Colts could also be an option. (If the Bengals or Texans win and the other loses along with the Colts and Bills, the winning team winning the following week along with the Bills would be enough to knock the Raiders out.) But they’d also lose a tiebreaker to the Steelers, who play the Bengals this week, so if all the 7-7 teams lose the Steelers and Bills could still win the following week and that would be enough to knock the Raiders out. After that you’re scrounging around for games involving 5-9 teams in Chargers-Broncos, Rams-Giants, and Falcons-Bears, and even with the weak NFC wild card situation I don’t think any of those would work; it might almost be better if the 5-9 team is already eliminated coming out of the week.

Final prediction:

• Miami Dolphins @ Baltimore Ravens to SNF (if the Dolphins win, or if the Packers and Seahawks lose and the Rams and Vikings win).
• Pittsburgh Steelers @ Seattle Seahawks to SNF (if the Dolphins and Packers lose and either the Saints win along with the Bucs or Falcons, or the Rams win but either the Seahawks win or Vikings lose).
• No changes otherwise.

Actual decision: No changes. This came out on Thursday much like the Eagles-Seahawks flex did, and I suspect it was the result of similar back-and-forth negotiation where CBS effectively told the league “we’re not giving up Dolphins-Ravens and we’re not switching it with Bengals-Chiefs and that’s final”. After what happened last year I can’t be too surprised that the league would be willing to stick with Packers-Vikings even if the Packers end up being eliminated from the playoffs, though Fox protecting Steelers-Seahawks, or the league being unable to flex in another Seahawks game, may have also come into play. The timing suggests the league at least considered a “protection override”, but it’s still likely that I consider the game more of a must-watch than the league does – especially since the game wasn’t scheduled for a featured window to begin with despite being Tier 2 in the scheme I introduced a couple weeks ago and #4 on my list of the Games That Should Be Nationally Televised But Aren’t. (If I were putting together the schedule, networks can screw around with big-name teams the rest of the year, but in late December if not the whole month, the games scheduled for national windows are the best games on paper in their respective weeks, full stop. New Year’s Eve may be a throwaway night for NBC and the NFL, but Packers-Vikings always looked like it was going to be significantly less relevant.)

More generally, CBS and Fox seemingly pulling a fast one on the league’s other partners, if not the league itself, is the story of flex scheduling in the first year of the new contracts. The appearance minimums and requirements for one game of each division rivalry proved to greatly box in the league and made it more difficult to flex out of dog games. I would not be surprised to see the league play it safer in scheduling primetime games, especially in the main flex period, going forward – more Cowboys and fewer teams with “potential” but with sportsbook win totals putting them below .500.

Week 18: Cowboys-Sheriffs, Bucs-Panthers, and Texans-Colts are all rematches of games that aired on the wrong conference’s network, so the league would probably prefer to avoid moving them to Saturday or Sunday night if possible. Any NFC games outside the NFC South and Vikings-Lions likely hinge on Bears-Packers, unless the Bucs take a commanding lead in the NFC South but Falcons-Saints is still sufficiently relevant in the wild card race. If the Bucs and Falcons both win their next two and the Saints beat the Rams, the Bucs will have a one-game lead over the Saints and Falcons with tiebreakers over both, clinching the division while allowing the Saints and Falcons to continue to fight for a wild card spot. The Falcons could even split their next two and still hold the tiebreaker over the Saints. The Vikings beat both teams, so they’d need to either lose their next two or be the only team ahead of them in the pecking order.

As for Bears-Packers, any scenario where the Packers lose to the Vikings, as long as the Bears don’t lose two while the Packers beat the Panthers, would allow the Bears to take the division tiebreaker with a win; if the Packers beat the Vikings, a Bears win over the Cardinals would mean the Packers would hold the common-games tiebreaker while a loss would give the Bears the edge in conference games, so the Bears would need to beat the Falcons, the Packers lose to the Panthers, and then the Cardinals result is only relevant with regards to the teams that need to sort out tiebreakers. In other words, the Packers can be no better than 7-9, which is a problem when four teams (not counting the Bucs) are currently at 7-7 and the Packers play one of them. (Put it this way: if the Vikings beat the Packers they’re guaranteed to finish ahead of them in the pecking order.) Worse, both teams lose a bunch of tiebreakers to other teams at 7-7 and the Saints and Rams playing each other means one of them is guaranteed to enter the final week at least a game ahead of the Bears at 8-8 at worst. It all adds up to, while the Packers and Bears can facilitate Sunday night moves for the Bucs and Rams (not the Seahawks, who lose any tiebreaker to the Rams and would have trouble winning one over the Vikings, or Vikings, who would win a tiebreaker over the Bears even if they lose to the Packers), the game itself can do no better than move to Saturday.

In the AFC, Texans-Colts looks like it could end up in a stronger position to set up games with wild card implications for Sunday night; that would involve the Texans and Colts having the same record the next two games, the Colts being a game worse, or the Colts winning their next two while the Texans split and, if they lose to the Titans, clinching the strength-of-victory edge. It could even be for the division if the Jaguars stumble too much down the stretch. Note that if the Texans win their next two that would include a win over the Browns, resulting in a best-case scenario of all four teams entering the week tied at 10-6, and since the Texans beat the Bengals as well, a decently high chance of them making the playoffs even with a loss. On that note, don’t sleep on Browns-Bengals being the game that other games get compared to, which might need both teams to slip down the stretch, and Broncos-Raiders improbably remains a dark horse. But right now the overwhelming favorite for a Sunday night spot, despite the teams being two games apart at the moment, might be Bills-Dolphins for the AFC East, owing to the difficulty of the Dolphins’ schedule and the ease of the Bills’.

I’m not calculating percentage chances of each game because this post is late enough already and going through strength of victory scenarios, and even just the individual combinations of games involved in each scenario, would take too long. Note that this discussion is as of before the Thursday and Saturday games; scenarios that those results obviated (through Bengals-Steelers) are stricken out. Also note that these scenarios are for games to be suitable for a move to Sunday night only; I’m not covering Saturday scenarios or making contingencies for the league pulling something like they did with Lions-Packers last year. In addition to the below, games that could move to Saturday include Cowboys-Sheriffs or Eagles-Giants, if the road team losing would clinch the division for the other road team but that team still has seeding to fight for, and Chiefs-Chargers, which similarly could have an impact on seeding among AFC division winners. I might be streaming myself watching RedZone (hopefully with the audio low enough it doesn’t come through) at twitch.tv/morganwick42 during at least the late afternoon games Sunday afternoon, if my computer cooperates, as I start trying to work through the updated scenarios; follow me on Twitter for updates.

• Bills-Dolphins: The Bills only need to win one more game than the Dolphins down the stretch to set up a potential division title game. With the Dolphins playing a pair of Super Bowl contenders while the Bills play a pair of free-falling non-playoff teams, this might be the likeliest scenario; I can tell you that plugging in ESPN Analytics’ “matchup predictor” probabilities for each of the teams’ remaining games gives me a chance of this happening of 61.7%. All the other scenarios probably fit into the remaining 38.3%.
• Vikings-Lions: The Vikings no longer control their own destiny to steal the division and now need to win out and have the Lions lose out; luckily that means only three results need to go their way, two of which they have control over, to set up a division title game. The Lions should still be favored over the Vikings so this has only a 13.4% chance, independent of Bills-Dolphins. Alternately, if the Vikings and Saints split while the Falcons win their next two, the Vikings would be tied with both with wins over both; problem there is that the Lions would need to have nothing to play for, requiring them to be at least a game behind the Eagles and Cowboys (at minimum requiring the Cowboys to beat them) and, if only one game behind and the Eagles would hold the strength of victory tiebreaker over the Cowboys, they’d need to hold it over the Lions as well. (Detroit 67-87 or 74-94; Philadelphia 74-80/72-82 or 77-91) But the Eagles already hold the edge there at the moment; the real problem is that the Vikings hold tiebreakers over virtually everyone else in the wild card race, so either the Seahawks or Packers need to win their next two (as the Packers would hold the division record tiebreaker with a win over the Vikings).
• Saints-Falcons: The Falcons won the first meeting between them and would hold the common games tiebreaker; the Saints can only hold the division-record tiebreaker by beating the Bucs, and it’s impossible to do that and enter the week behind the Falcons, so the teams would need to either be tied, or the Saints would need to maintain their current one-game lead. For this to be a division title game, at minimum, the Saints would need to beat the Bucs and maintain at least a one-game lead over them, so either the Saints and Falcons need to win their next two regardless of the Bucs’ result this week (if the Bucs beat the Jags and the Falcons and Bucs win in Week 18, the Falcons would win the three-way tiebreaker by having the only sweep over either of the other two), or if the Saints split, the Bucs need to lose their next two and the Falcons win at least once. For this to be for a wild card spot, the Falcons need to win their next two while the Rams need to lose to the Giants, as they would hold the conference games tiebreaker over the Falcons, and the Packers need to do no better than split as they beat the Saints but lost to the Falcons, then either the Seahawks or Vikings need to lose their next two.
• Texans-Colts: The Jaguars swept the Colts and would win any tiebreaker over the Texans, so they need to be at least a game behind the worse record in the game for this to be a division title game. For the wild card, any scenario where the Browns beat the Texans, the Bengals win at least once, and either the Texans beat the Titans or the Colts split, will result in this game determining the order of finish between them with at most one wild card spot up for grabs. Alternately, the Texans could beat the Browns, but then the Browns beat the Jets, the Texans lose to the Titans, the Colts do no better than split, and the Bengals win their next two. Then other teams have to be irrelevant, and the Dolphins need to be included in that calculus. Both teams would have conference record edges over Buffalo but not Miami, so the Bills just need to not be ahead of them and not be alive for the division. The Steelers lost to both teams so can be tied with them, and the Broncos similarly lost to the Texans. If the Colts lose to the Raiders but beat the Falcons while the Broncos win their next two, the Colts would need to have clinched the strength-of-victory edge. Alternately, either the Browns or Bengals could falter while the Bills surge into their place. This might be the likeliest of the three rematches of games that aired on the wrong conference’s network to cause problems, even though NBC is unlikely to end up with it in any case.
• Browns-Bengals: The Bengals are winless in the division, including losing to the Browns the first time, and have two division games left while the Browns already have three division wins, so the Bengals need to do at least a game better than the Browns for this game to determine the order of finish between them. If the Browns lose their next two while the Colts or Bills win their next two and the Bengals split, that would put the Texans and Colts or Bills in the wild card spots. Whichever of the Colts or Bills doesn’t win their next two can still split, but the Steelers and Broncos can’t win their next two as they would win tiebreakers over the Bengals and Browns respectively. There may also be a scenario where the Browns have clinched the 5 seed and the Bengals would be in with a win but fall behind the Texans-Colts winner with a loss.
• Steelers-Ravens: First, the Ravens need to beat the Dolphins and either beat the Niners or have the Chiefs lose at least once; that would lock up the 1 seed for them. Then, have the Steelers win their next two while the Texans and Colts lose their next two; then a Steelers win would put all four AFC North teams in the playoffs while a loss would drop them behind the Texans-Colts winner. Alternately, take the Browns-Bengals scenario above and have the Steelers win their next two. Note that if the Broncos win their next two as well, they’d hold the edge in common games so they need to lose at least once.
• Rams-Niners: Two things need to happen here: first, the Niners need to not have anything to play for. They beat the Eagles and Cowboys and would hold a conference-games tiebreaker over the Lions, so that just requires them to maintain their current one-game edge for the 1 seed. Then the Rams need to be in a win-and-in, lose-and-fall-behind-the-winner-of-another-game situation. The Packers beat the Rams and the Bears would win a conference-games tiebreaker, so the Rams and Packers just need to lose one game relative to the Bears, requiring the Bears to win their next two while the Rams and Packers split. Then things need to set up for the Packers, Bears, or a team winning a tiebreaker over them to get in at 8-9 but not the Rams, meaning among other things the Seahawks need to do no better than split. The Vikings would hold any tiebreaker over the Rams so any scenario that puts any other team ahead of the Rams requires the Vikings to lose their next two, which in turn requires the Packers to lose to the Panthers (and the Niners to win at least once to stay ahead of the Lions). If the Saints beat the Rams, either the Bucs need to lose their next two, the loser of the NFC South between them needs to be the only team ahead of the Rams in the pecking order, or the Rams need to clinch the strength of victory tiebreaker over the Bucs, where they have a pretty big lead.
• Broncos-Raiders: If the Raiders win their next two and the Colts, Texans, Bills, and Steelers lose their next two, the Raiders would have the edge in conference games against the Texans and Bills and would have a win over the Colts in hand. (The Bengals can’t lose their next two because the Steelers beat the Raiders and would have to account for one of the Bengals’ losses.) The Broncos’ loss to the Texans means they’d need to win their next two as well. More likely, if the Broncos win their next two and the Texans and Colts lose their next two, the game could be in the running with the Raiders eliminated if the Colts can clinch the strength of victory edge; or if the Broncos win their next two, the Browns lose their next two, the Bengals split, and any two of the Colts, Texans, and Bills surge into the wild card spots, the Broncos would hold tiebreakers over both AFC North teams. In those circumstances it doesn’t matter what the Steelers do.
• Jaguars-Titans: As noted above the Jaguars would hold tiebreakers against both the Texans and Colts, so if the relative record between them remains the same as it is now this would decide whether or not the Jaguars win the division. There may also be a scenario where the Jaguars lose their next two, the Raiders win their next two, and the Jaguars have to win just to snag a wild card.
• Seahawks-Cardinals: As noted, the Seahawks can’t set themselves up to beat the Packers-Bears winner. If the Seahawks and Saints split while the Falcons win their next two, the Seahawks would win the conference-games tiebreaker over either team. This requires either the Vikings or Rams to lose out, and if the Packers win out, either the Seahawks’ win needs to come against the Steelers to get the edge on common games, or the Seahawks need to clinch the strength of victory tiebreaker.
• Buccaneers-Panthers: Beat the Saints and the Bucs would hold the tiebreaker over them, requiring them to lose while the Saints win this week to fall into a tie entering the final week; then the Falcons would need to win their next two as if they only split, then win while the Bucs lose, the Bucs would still hold the common-games tiebreaker over them. Lose to the Saints after winning this week while the Saints lose, and you enter Week 18 with a common-games edge over the Saints, but this time the Falcons can split the intervening games as they would win the three-way tiebreaker. Alternately, if the Bucs lose their next two, the Bears win their next two, and the Packers split, the Bucs beat the Packers and Bears so would hold a tiebreaker for playoff position, and the Bucs also hold tiebreakers over the Vikings (head-to-head), Rams (conference games) and Falcons (common games), so either the Rams or Vikings need to win once to ensure the Bucs can’t sneak in even with a win (the Falcons can’t win their next two as they play the Bears). (Note also that if the Giants win their next two, they can’t beat both the Bears and Bucs in strength of victory.) Even ignoring that Fox is owed a game between these teams, though, the league would much prefer to avoid featuring the lowly Panthers in “Game 272” if at all possible.