Assessing the 2024 NFL Schedule from a Flex Scheduling Perspective

At first glance, you might think the NFL deserves credit for scheduling more games between good teams for featured windows. Only one game I identified as a Tier 1 game isn’t scheduled for a featured window – though it feels like an insult to the drawing power of Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow that the two games between them are slated for the early doubleheader (with a Tier 2 game in the same window) and Thursday Night Football, the least of the league’s three primetime packages. This success, though, is tempered by the fact that the Jaguars had a high enough win total to qualify for Tier 1 status last year, and of the three Tier 1 games on last year’s Games That Should Be Nationally Televised But Aren’t, two were Jags games and the third was Ravens-Bengals again. So the league scheduled its best games in virtually the same way, they just had one fewer ratings poison team expected to be among the top handful in the league. And when you take a closer look at how they scheduled games in the flex scheduling period, you can tell they learned nothing from last year’s flexing paralysis.

In the past I’ve rolled my eyes at people attempting to assess flex scheduling prospects before the season even begins. After all, the whole point of flex scheduling is that we don’t know how teams will actually do, and while we have some data to work with to figure out how plausible a flex is in the latter two-thirds of the season, we have none whatsoever in May. But I was stunned to see last year that one of the Games That Should Be Nationally Televised had a very real chance to be in line for a flex even if the teams involved in both that game and the Sunday night game played exactly as expected – and then when the time came, and Dolphins-Ravens was set to determine the #1 seed in the AFC, it couldn’t be flexed because CBS didn’t have to protect its late doubleheader game of Chiefs-Bengals. It was surprising to see the league create this sort of situation to begin with, where teams performing exactly as expected would create a situation where the league would want to pull a flex, but to set things up so you’d want to pull the flex but can’t should have been completely unacceptable. My takeaway from last season was that the league needed to take a lot more care in the construction of the schedule to set themselves up for success – to ensure that, even if the games in featured windows aren’t necessarily the best ones on the slate, if you want to flex games in they can be flexed in. There are always unforeseeable scenarios where the league gets screwed and a marquee game ends up underdistributed, but there shouldn’t be scenarios that are entirely foreseeable that end up screwing the league over.

With this post, I’m going to take a look at each week in the main flex period and see how well the league has set itself up for success – whether it’s created any scenarios where it would want to pull the flex if the teams involved perform exactly as expected, and if so, whether or not they can actually do so. But first, I’ll present the list of each team’s primetime appearances as well as the teams restricted from being flexed in to Thursday Night Football because they either already have two short-week games (including those teams playing on Saturday and again on Christmas Wednesday, but not the Black Friday game or anything else involving more than three days rest) or one short-week game that’s on the road. 

The primetime appearance list mostly follows the same rules as in the past; the main change is that games on Peacock or in the afternoon are still counted towards the Sunday night appearance count, so the first three columns list all games for each team being broadcast by any outlet owned by NBC, ESPN, or Amazon. The total column, however, only counts games that are actually being played in primetime, so Black Friday and NBC’s Saturday afternoon game don’t count there, and neither do Netflix’s Christmas games. Games in flex scheduling windows are totaled in the Flex column, with a plus sign indicating SNF games in the early flex period, and the “SuAf” column lists how many games each team has on their respective conference’s network – CBS for the AFC, Fox for the NFC.

There are a number of oddities this year, especially compared to last. The Chiefs getting credit for four NBC games is something that rarely if ever happens, and I’m guessing their Saturday afternoon game the weekend before Christmas isn’t counting for that purpose, especially since that game is being played before Fox’s game the same day (which suggests I shouldn’t have counted it towards the SNF total but whatever).

The real headscratcher, though, is the number of games the Sunday afternoon networks are getting from each team, where there’s a lot more variance than last year. Last year only two teams had as little as seven games on their respective conference’s network, one from each conference. There’s still only one NFC team with seven Fox games, but there’s a very surprising number of AFC teams with only seven CBS games. The big shocker in that group are the Chiefs, which have the aforementioned four NBC games, two MNF games, one TNF game, one Fox game, and one Netflix game, for nine of their first 16 games on networks other than CBS. It’s especially surprising because of the Sunday afternoon networks’ repeatedly-reported ability to request a certain number of games from a certain number of teams, and while neither number was reported entering last year, by the end of the year it looked like Fox was guaranteed eight Cowboys games – explicitly before Week 18 – given the horse-trading required to get them not to protect, or release the protection on, Eagles-Seahawks. The Chiefs have become such a ratings magnet that it’s absolutely stunning that CBS wouldn’t demand eight Chiefs games, and I can’t imagine what other team they’d have put in a request for eight games in their place. (Meanwhile, Fox has picked up nine Cowboys games, which may be a way for the league to force them to protect Cowboys games, but which means CBS’ only Cowboys game is, surprisingly enough, a divisional game with the Eagles.)

As for the teams restricted from flexing into TNF:

• Multiple short-week games (can’t be flexed in without a game being flexed out): Jets, Cowboys, Giants, Dolphins, Rams, 49ers, Browns, Bengals, Ravens, Steelers, Texans, Seahawks, Bears
• One road short-week game (only home games can be flexed in): Bills, Patriots, Buccaneers, Broncos, Vikings, Washington, Chiefs
• Completely unrestricted: Packers, Falcons, Saints, Eagles, Lions, Chargers, Jaguars, Cardinals, Titans, Colts, Raiders, Panthers

That leaves the following games as possible flex candidates, not considering any restrictions on CBS and Fox’s end:

• Week 14 (Packers-Lions): Falcons-Vikings, Saints-Giants (only because Giants played on Thanksgiving, highly unlikely), Panthers-Eagles, Raiders-Bucs, Jaguars-Titans
• Week 15 (Rams-Niners): Colts-Broncos
• Week 16 (Browns-Bengals): Cardinals-Panthers, Titans-Colts, Eagles-Washington, Jaguars-Raiders
• Week 17 (Seahawks-Bears): Chargers-Patriots, Falcons-Washington, Titans-Jaguars, Packers-Vikings, Raiders-Saints, Panthers-Bucs

We’ll use the same graphics I use for the regular Flex Schedule Watch; the Buzzmeter is calibrated to the median win total of each team at the league’s three official sportsbook partners, Caesars, DraftKings, and FanDuel, as of last weekend. The top bar is green if the league would feel no need to flex out any games if all teams live up to expectations, yellow if it would end up flexing out a game, and red if it would want to flex out a game but can’t.

Week 11: Browns-Saints and Seahawks-Niners are also games involving teams at the same 7.5 win total as the Steelers, but Niners-Seahawks is on TNF so that’s not an improvement. Overall the situation is a bit worse than the graphic implies, and the question of what’s going on with CBS’ lack of Chiefs games may be of paramount (no pun intended) importance. If there’s a hard floor of seven on the number of appearances any AFC team must make on CBS, the league’s screwed if the Colts or Jets underperform since CBS won’t need to protect the Chiefs or Bengals and can instead protect Jags-Lions – and either team underperforming is a very real possibility (the consensus on the 506sports Discord is that the league is taking a big risk by giving the Jets the full six primetime appearances and counting on Aaron Rodgers not getting injured again, and this is the Colts’ only primetime game). If CBS must protect Chiefs-Bills, the league could have an opportunity to bring an underdistributed undercard late-afternoon game to a larger audience in Bengals-Chargers, but I’m not sure I’m willing to rule out the possibility that they don’t have to. Even looking past the lack of name value, the league might be reticent to flex in Jags-Lions as the Lions are playing on Sunday night the previous week.

Week 12: A lot of good teams are on bye this week, so there’s not a whole lot of risk involved. Even a game as uninspiring as Eagles-Rams is likely to keep its spot if the Rams underperform and Lions-Colts is looking good, especially with the Lions and Colts already featured on Sunday night the past two weeks. But there are a lot of teams with win totals of 6.5 in divisional games where the return match is either on the wrong network or in Week 18, so if worst comes to worst there won’t be a lot of options available.

Week 13: Now things start getting a little eyebrow-raising. Thanksgiving weekend normally means a paucity of good games, but the league scheduled a Broncos team with basically no expectations for Monday night, and while the very best teams are mostly playing on Thanksgiving or otherwise are already in featured windows, the Broncos could be bad enough that even rather mediocre teams could be an upgrade. ESPN would probably most want Steelers-Bengals, but the return match for that would be Week 18; nonetheless there should be at least two Fox games available involving teams a full two wins better than the Broncos at sportsbooks. The Seahawks and Saints have win totals that would put them below .500 and yet they’d still be a clear upgrade over the Broncos. Almost any non-Broncos team overperforming could doom this game to be flexed out.

Week 14: The prospect of Jets-Dolphins being trapped on the singleheader with a potentially worse game on SNF (and the late doubleheader for that matter) is eyebrow-raising, but it would likely be trapped under the old rules as well, and this is really on the decision not to put it in a late doubleheader window, which I can’t exactly blame the league and CBS for given the uncertainty around Rodgers and the Dolphins’ questionable ability to pop a rating. This is basically an acceptable set of featured-window games, but if any of the teams disappoint CBS likely won’t even have to protect two of the best games on the slate, leaving the league hoping a team in one of Fox’s games overperforms.

Week 15: I’ve never been a fan of the Monday night “doubleheaders” – an obvious kludge to give ABC exclusive games without giving ESPN an extra package so ABC and ESPN can each get a package to themselves – but this shows why it’s really not a good idea to have them in the flex period. You have two games of questionable quality involving teams with win totals of 6.5, which is bad enough. But a number of the best games on the slate involve teams scheduled to play the following Saturday followed by a short week before Christmas. That’s an example of the league’s naked greed trumping player safety as it stands; I don’t think they’re going to make it worse by taking away one of the teams’ days of rest before the Saturday game.

What’s funnier is that the win totals of the Vikings and Raiders are so weak that it wouldn’t take much underperformance for Bucs-Chargers to be a better option while being unprotected – and the Seahawks also have a win total under .500, so Dolphins-Texans or Chiefs-Browns could very easily be flexed into Sunday night even if they’re off-limits to Monday night. (As it stands the Dolphins and Texans are each a full two games better than the Seahawks, so this is a case where teams performing exactly as expected would still lead to a flex.) One potential problem with that, though, is that as it stands CBS has three games in each of the early and late windows, and a network having more games in the late window than early is exceedingly rare, generally only happening under exceptional circumstances, so flexing out Packers-Seahawks for a CBS game that’s not on the West Coast would likely require some back-and-forth crossflexing as well. In any case, it’s very likely that you’d be looking at a decent-to-good game trapped in the early window while a game involving a mediocre-at-best team remains trapped in the Monday night doubleheader.

Week 16: Titans-Colts and Vikings-Seahawks involve teams with the same 6.5 win total as the Giants and Raiders; however, Eagles-Washington can’t be flexed as it’s a rematch of a game on TNF so Fox has to keep it. Each network has a game in the early window that looks to be slightly better than the games in the main primetime windows, but if teams live up to expectations it wouldn’t be a disaster if they stayed in their current windows, and in any case a Cowboys game losing its spot would (still) be a sign of the apocalypse. I do have to question a Cowboys game against an opponent this questionable getting a primetime window this late in the season, though, and if Fox doesn’t have to protect Lions-Bears either that could greatly complicate the league’s ability to flex in another Fox game. Rams-Jets should be available, however, as CBS would likely still need to protect Niners-Dolphins.

Week 17: First of all, I didn’t put any special effort into placing marquee games in this week to potentially move to NFL Network when I did my mock schedule, so it’s not like I expect any potential worldbeaters here, but this is a decidedly uninspiring slate of potential Saturday games. The league is really hoping one or more teams with win totals of 6.5 or less end up overperforming, or else they’re going to be putting on three teams at the 6.5 mark and maybe less if one or more of them underperform. The teams not at 6.5 might end up determining which games move to Saturday.

What’s worse, outside the potential Saturday games, realistically the only game that can be flexed into any primetime window is whichever game between Titans-Jaguars and Panthers-Bucs CBS doesn’t protect. All the other games on the Sunday afternoon slate are divisional rematches of games on the wrong network, or in the case of Raiders-Saints, the only game Fox needs to protect. Which makes the choice of Dolphins-Browns as the Sunday night game, and especially Seahawks-Bears as the Thursday nighter, rather perplexing, as both involve teams expected to be right around .500 where it wouldn’t take much underperformance for the league to be looking for an out and not finding any. Jets-Bills is only a game better than Dolphins-Browns, isn’t suitable for a move to Thursday anyway, and CBS would likely still protect it if it weren’t for the guaranteed-divisional-rivalry rule, but their win total involves quite a bit of variance with the status of Aaron Rodgers. If he stays healthy, I can already hear the howls of protest over the game being trapped on the singleheader, despite potentially deciding the division, while NBC has an underwhelming, and possibly underperforming, Dolphins-Browns contest. The league might be fine with minimizing the use of flexing around the holidays, but this isn’t setting them up for success.