Sports

Note: This post (mostly) does not incorporate the result of the Thursday night game. Hey, at least I didn’t skip it entirely like last year.

Since it started in its current format as the NFL’s main primetime package in 2006, the defining feature of NBC’s Sunday Night Football has been the use of flexible scheduling to ensure the best matchups and showcase the best teams as the season goes along. Well, that’s the theory, anyway; the reality has not always lived up to the initial hype and has at times seemed downright mystifying. Regardless, I’m here to help you figure out what you can and can’t expect to see on Sunday nights on NBC.

A full explanation of all the factors that go into flexible scheduling decisions can be found on my NFL Flexible Scheduling Primer, but here’s the Cliffs Notes version with all the important points you need to know:

• The season can be broken down into three different periods (four if you count the first four weeks where flexible scheduling does not apply at all) for flexible scheduling purposes, each with similar yet different rules governing them: the early flex period, from weeks 5 to 10; the main flex period, from weeks 11 to 17; and week 18. In years where Christmas forces either the Sunday afternoon slate or the Sunday night game to Saturday in Week 16, flex scheduling does not apply that week, and the main flex period begins week 10. Note: This year NBC’s press release indicated that the main flex period begins in Week 11 even though Christmas falls on Sunday. I’m assuming this is correct and the result of NBC still being able to have six weeks in the main flex period despite this because of the expansion of the season.
• In all cases, only games scheduled for Sunday may be moved to Sunday night. Thursday and Monday night games are not affected by Sunday night flexible scheduling (discounting the “flexible scheduling” applied to Saturdays in December in recent years – see below).
• During the early and main flex periods, one game is “tentatively” scheduled for Sunday night and listed with the Sunday night start time of 8:20 PM ET. This game will usually remain at that start time and air on NBC, but may be flexed out for another game and moved to 1, 4:05, or 4:25 PM ET on Fox or CBS, no less than 12 days in advance of the game.
• No more than two games can be flexed to Sunday night over the course of the early flex period. If the NFL wishes to flex out a game in the early flex period twelve days in advance, CBS and Fox may elect to protect one game each from being moved to Sunday night. This is generally an emergency valve in situations where the value of the tentative game has plummeted since the schedule was announced, namely in cases of injury to a key star player.
• CBS and Fox may also each protect games, historically in five out of six weeks of the main flex period, but all of those protections must be submitted after week 5, week 4 in years where the main flex period begins week 10 (so it is always six weeks before the start of the main flex period).
• No team may appear more than six times across the league’s three primetime packages on NBC, ESPN, and Fox/NFL Network, and only three teams are allowed to appear that often, with everyone else getting five. In addition, no team may appear more than four times on NBC. All teams’ number of appearances heading into this season may be seen here.
• According to the league’s official page, teams are notified when “they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.” However, they rarely make this known to the fans, and the list of each network’s protections has never officially been made public. It used to leak fairly regularly, but has not leaked since 2014.
• In all cases, the NFL is the ultimate arbiter of the schedule and consults with CBS, Fox, and NBC before moving any games to prime time. If the NFL does elect to flex out the Sunday night game, the network whose game is flexed in may receive the former tentative game, regardless of which network would “normally” air it under the “CBS=AFC, Fox=NFC” rules, keeping each network’s total number of games constant. At the same time, the NFL may also move games between 1 PM ET and 4:05/4:25 PM ET. However, this feature focuses primarily if not entirely on Sunday night flexible scheduling.
• In Week 18, the entire schedule is set on only six days notice, ensuring that NBC gets a game with playoff implications, generally a game where the winner is the division champion. More rarely, NBC may also show an intra-division game for a wild card spot, or a game where only one team wins the division with a win but doesn’t win the division with a loss, but such situations are rare and 2018 and 2020, respectively, were the first times it showed such games. If no game is guaranteed to have maximum playoff implications before Sunday night in this fashion, the league has been known not to schedule a Sunday night game at all. To ensure maximum flexibility, no protections or appearance limits apply to Week 17. The NFL also arranges the rest of the schedule such that no team playing at 4:25 PM ET (there are no 4:05 games Week 17) could have their playoff fate decided by the outcome of the 1 PM ET games, which usually means most if not all of the games with playoff implications outside Sunday night are played at 4:25 PM ET, except for two games moved to Saturday to be simulcast on ESPN and ABC.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Read moreSunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 15

Week 17 (January 1):

• Tentative game: LA Rams @ LA Chargers
• Prospects: Effectively flexed out already with the Chargers now maxed out on primetime appearances without it. The Rams’ surprisingly woeful season has sealed its fate.
• Likely protections: Vikings-Packers (CBS) and Saints-Eagles, Jets-Seahawks, or nothing (FOX).
• Other possible games mentioned on last week’s Watch and their records: Jets (7-7)-Seahawks (7-7), Dolphins (8-6)-Patriots (7-7), Steelers (6-8)-Ravens (9-5), Browns (6-8)-Maroons (7-6-1), Niners (10-4)-Raiders (6-8), Panthers (5-9)-Bucs (6-8).
• Impact of Monday Night Football: Miniscule but not nonexistent; the Rams technically still haven’t been eliminated from the playoffs, and the league’s options are limited enough there’s a slim chance they decide to have this game keep its spot, effectively giving the Chargers a seventh pre-Week 18 primetime appearance a year early. The more relevant factor, at least for when the league might announce a flex, is probably how comfortable CBS is with Vikings-Packers as their standalone late national game.
• Analysis: The NFL has a tough decision to make, as nearly every game got worse; you might think all the losses would cancel each other out and Jets-Seahawks, still only a game worse on one side of the ledger than Dolphins-Patriots but pinned to the late singleheader otherwise, would still have the edge, but neither team looks particularly deserving of a playoff spot at the moment – yet the same could be said of the Patriots after the mess their game ended in. (Did that finish firmly shut the door, if the last two seasons of Brady greatness and Patriot mediocrity didn’t already, on Belichick being in the “greatest of all time” conversation?) The real winner might have been Panthers-Bucs, as the Bucs now only have a one-game lead over the other three teams in the division, the Panthers actually control their own destiny, and even if they lose next week a win over the Bucs would give them the head-to-head tiebreaker. If the league and NBC don’t want to showcase the NFC South tire fire (at least before Week 18), or if Fox would rather keep Panthers-Bucs to anchor its own singleheader, Dolphins-Patriots probably carries the least risk of a team being eliminated from the playoffs by game time otherwise, but barring a crossflex losing Dolphins-Patriots would leave CBS with Steelers-Ravens as their best early game, though the situation isn’t quite as dire as when Eagles-Giants was in a similar situation some weeks back, as the Steelers are at least on the periphery on the playoff picture and Fox has Browns-Maroons, Panthers-Bucs, and now Saints-Eagles available in the early window, with both the Steelers and Browns creeping closer to .500 and staying at least on the periphery of playoff contention this week.Appearing on NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football” two weeks ago, NFL Vice President of Broadcast Planning Michael North suggested that the Week 18 schedule might not be set until after the Bills-Bengals Monday night game in Week 17, and while that likely applies more to the Sunday afternoon slate (which has been held until after the Monday night game in the past) than the Saturday or Sunday night games, it’s not like the league has much of a history of taking that sort of thing into account when setting the penultimate Sunday night game anyway. With the Bengals holding a game’s lead over the Ravens but the Ravens having won the first matchup between the teams, Ravens-Bengals has a very good chance of deciding the AFC North and may well be off-limits for a move to Saturday with the quick turnaround the Bengals would have, so the league may figure it doesn’t matter what game is on Sunday night when it comes to when they can set the Week 18 schedule, if they even take it into account. But if they do want to minimize the chance of needing to wait for the Sunday night game to set, at minimum, the Saturday games (themselves dependent on the Sunday night game), or even just want to minimize the chances that a team could be eliminated from the playoffs by Sunday night, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them pull another six-day hold out of their ass, though that would require deferring the decision to either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day when league officials would really prefer not to have to be working.

  If they make the decision now? Jets-Seahawks would be easiest logistically, but if the Jets and Seahawks lose while the Dolphins, Chargers, and Other Washington win next week, there’s a very real chance both teams could be eliminated from the playoffs by Sunday night. A six-day hold would be a signal that the league really wants to keep Jets-Seahawks in contention, in my view. Panthers-Bucs could be an embarrassment and the potential to feature the NFC South two weeks in a row might be a bridge too far for the league and NBC, even if Brady (in the last two games of his career???) would be involved both times, and anchoring the Fox singleheader might be a more fitting fate unless Fox would rather go with Saints-Eagles. Dolphins-Patriots might leave CBS’ cupboard bare in the early window, and if the Packers lose tonight there’s a chance CBS wants to make Dolphins-Patriots their new late feature game, but the Dolphins’ playoff spot is the one the Patriots can more easily steal so the playoff implications are pretty much guaranteed, and Fox, at this point, has no shortage of games they can crossflex to CBS to backfill the early window – assuming Steelers-Ravens isn’t good enough as is.

• Final prediction (if no six-day hold is used): Miami Dolphins @ New England Patriots.
• Prediction (if a six-day hold is used): New York Jets @ Seattle Seahawks (if (the Jets win OR no more than one of the Dolphins and Chargers win) AND (the Seahawks win OR Washington loses)), Carolina Panthers @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers (if the Jets-Seahawks scenario doesn’t happen AND the Bucs win AND the Panthers win AND the Falcons lose), Miami Dolphins @ New England Patriots (if neither of those scenarios happen). Not marking this as a final prediction because I reserve the right to change it as I look deeper into the Week 18 scenarios (and whether there are games that would be dependent on potential Sunday night candidates), whether Dolphins-Patriots would still be tenable if too many of the Browns, Steelers, Panthers, and Saints lose (my thinking is the scale would tip back to Panthers-Bucs at that point), and whether games involving 6-8 AFC teams could actually be flex candidates given the additional opportunity of a six-day hold.

Since it started in its current format as the NFL’s main primetime package in 2006, the defining feature of NBC’s Sunday Night Football has been the use of flexible scheduling to ensure the best matchups and showcase the best teams as the season goes along. Well, that’s the theory, anyway; the reality has not always lived up to the initial hype and has at times seemed downright mystifying. Regardless, I’m here to help you figure out what you can and can’t expect to see on Sunday nights on NBC.

A full explanation of all the factors that go into flexible scheduling decisions can be found on my NFL Flexible Scheduling Primer, but here’s the Cliffs Notes version with all the important points you need to know:

• The season can be broken down into three different periods (four if you count the first four weeks where flexible scheduling does not apply at all) for flexible scheduling purposes, each with similar yet different rules governing them: the early flex period, from weeks 5 to 10; the main flex period, from weeks 11 to 17; and week 18. In years where Christmas forces either the Sunday afternoon slate or the Sunday night game to Saturday in Week 16, flex scheduling does not apply that week, and the main flex period begins week 10. Note: This year NBC’s press release indicated that the main flex period begins in Week 11 even though Christmas falls on Sunday. I’m assuming this is correct and the result of NBC still being able to have six weeks in the main flex period despite this because of the expansion of the season.
• In all cases, only games scheduled for Sunday may be moved to Sunday night. Thursday and Monday night games are not affected by Sunday night flexible scheduling (discounting the “flexible scheduling” applied to Saturdays in December in recent years – see below).
• During the early and main flex periods, one game is “tentatively” scheduled for Sunday night and listed with the Sunday night start time of 8:20 PM ET. This game will usually remain at that start time and air on NBC, but may be flexed out for another game and moved to 1, 4:05, or 4:25 PM ET on Fox or CBS, no less than 12 days in advance of the game.
• No more than two games can be flexed to Sunday night over the course of the early flex period. If the NFL wishes to flex out a game in the early flex period twelve days in advance, CBS and Fox may elect to protect one game each from being moved to Sunday night. This is generally an emergency valve in situations where the value of the tentative game has plummeted since the schedule was announced, namely in cases of injury to a key star player.
• CBS and Fox may also each protect games, historically in five out of six weeks of the main flex period, but all of those protections must be submitted after week 5, week 4 in years where the main flex period begins week 10 (so it is always six weeks before the start of the main flex period).
• No team may appear more than six times across the league’s three primetime packages on NBC, ESPN, and Fox/NFL Network, and only three teams are allowed to appear that often, with everyone else getting five. In addition, no team may appear more than four times on NBC. All teams’ number of appearances heading into this season may be seen here.
• According to the league’s official page, teams are notified when “they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.” However, they rarely make this known to the fans, and the list of each network’s protections has never officially been made public. It used to leak fairly regularly, but has not leaked since 2014.
• In all cases, the NFL is the ultimate arbiter of the schedule and consults with CBS, Fox, and NBC before moving any games to prime time. If the NFL does elect to flex out the Sunday night game, the network whose game is flexed in may receive the former tentative game, regardless of which network would “normally” air it under the “CBS=AFC, Fox=NFC” rules, keeping each network’s total number of games constant. At the same time, the NFL may also move games between 1 PM ET and 4:05/4:25 PM ET. However, this feature focuses primarily if not entirely on Sunday night flexible scheduling.
• In Week 18, the entire schedule is set on only six days notice, ensuring that NBC gets a game with playoff implications, generally a game where the winner is the division champion. More rarely, NBC may also show an intra-division game for a wild card spot, or a game where only one team wins the division with a win but doesn’t win the division with a loss, but such situations are rare and 2018 and 2020, respectively, were the first times it showed such games. If no game is guaranteed to have maximum playoff implications before Sunday night in this fashion, the league has been known not to schedule a Sunday night game at all. To ensure maximum flexibility, no protections or appearance limits apply to Week 17. The NFL also arranges the rest of the schedule such that no team playing at 4:25 PM ET (there are no 4:05 games Week 17) could have their playoff fate decided by the outcome of the 1 PM ET games, which usually means most if not all of the games with playoff implications outside Sunday night are played at 4:25 PM ET, except for two games moved to Saturday to be simulcast on ESPN and ABC.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Read moreSunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 14

Since it started in its current format as the NFL’s main primetime package in 2006, the defining feature of NBC’s Sunday Night Football has been the use of flexible scheduling to ensure the best matchups and showcase the best teams as the season goes along. Well, that’s the theory, anyway; the reality has not always lived up to the initial hype and has at times seemed downright mystifying. Regardless, I’m here to help you figure out what you can and can’t expect to see on Sunday nights on NBC.

A full explanation of all the factors that go into flexible scheduling decisions can be found on my NFL Flexible Scheduling Primer, but here’s the Cliffs Notes version with all the important points you need to know:

• The season can be broken down into three different periods (four if you count the first four weeks where flexible scheduling does not apply at all) for flexible scheduling purposes, each with similar yet different rules governing them: the early flex period, from weeks 5 to 10; the main flex period, from weeks 11 to 17; and week 18. In years where Christmas forces either the Sunday afternoon slate or the Sunday night game to Saturday in Week 16, flex scheduling does not apply that week, and the main flex period begins week 10. Note: This year NBC’s press release indicated that the main flex period begins in Week 11 even though Christmas falls on Sunday. I’m assuming this is correct and the result of NBC still being able to have six weeks in the main flex period despite this because of the expansion of the season.
• In all cases, only games scheduled for Sunday may be moved to Sunday night. Thursday and Monday night games are not affected by Sunday night flexible scheduling (discounting the “flexible scheduling” applied to Saturdays in December in recent years – see below).
• During the early and main flex periods, one game is “tentatively” scheduled for Sunday night and listed with the Sunday night start time of 8:20 PM ET. This game will usually remain at that start time and air on NBC, but may be flexed out for another game and moved to 1, 4:05, or 4:25 PM ET on Fox or CBS, no less than 12 days in advance of the game.
• No more than two games can be flexed to Sunday night over the course of the early flex period. If the NFL wishes to flex out a game in the early flex period twelve days in advance, CBS and Fox may elect to protect one game each from being moved to Sunday night. This is generally an emergency valve in situations where the value of the tentative game has plummeted since the schedule was announced, namely in cases of injury to a key star player.
• CBS and Fox may also each protect games, historically in five out of six weeks of the main flex period, but all of those protections must be submitted after week 5, week 4 in years where the main flex period begins week 10 (so it is always six weeks before the start of the main flex period).
• No team may appear more than six times across the league’s three primetime packages on NBC, ESPN, and Fox/NFL Network, and only three teams are allowed to appear that often, with everyone else getting five. In addition, no team may appear more than four times on NBC. All teams’ number of appearances heading into this season may be seen here.
• According to the league’s official page, teams are notified when “they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.” However, they rarely make this known to the fans, and the list of each network’s protections has never officially been made public. It used to leak fairly regularly, but has not leaked since 2014.
• In all cases, the NFL is the ultimate arbiter of the schedule and consults with CBS, Fox, and NBC before moving any games to prime time. If the NFL does elect to flex out the Sunday night game, the network whose game is flexed in may receive the former tentative game, regardless of which network would “normally” air it under the “CBS=AFC, Fox=NFC” rules, keeping each network’s total number of games constant. At the same time, the NFL may also move games between 1 PM ET and 4:05/4:25 PM ET. However, this feature focuses primarily if not entirely on Sunday night flexible scheduling.
• In Week 18, the entire schedule is set on only six days notice, ensuring that NBC gets a game with playoff implications, generally a game where the winner is the division champion. More rarely, NBC may also show an intra-division game for a wild card spot, or a game where only one team wins the division with a win but doesn’t win the division with a loss, but such situations are rare and 2018 and 2020, respectively, were the first times it showed such games. If no game is guaranteed to have maximum playoff implications before Sunday night in this fashion, the league has been known not to schedule a Sunday night game at all. To ensure maximum flexibility, no protections or appearance limits apply to Week 17. The NFL also arranges the rest of the schedule such that no team playing at 4:25 PM ET (there are no 4:05 games Week 17) could have their playoff fate decided by the outcome of the 1 PM ET games, which usually means most if not all of the games with playoff implications outside Sunday night are played at 4:25 PM ET, except for two games moved to Saturday to be simulcast on ESPN and ABC.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Read moreSunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 13

Week 15 (December 17-18):

• Tentative SNF game: New England (6-6) @ Las Vegas (5-7). On the one hand the Raiders won again, but on the other hand the Pats didn’t exactly look ready for prime time in a listless Thursday night loss to the Bills. Apparently if this game were to be flexed out, it would force the Las Vegas Bowl the previous day into an afternoon timeslot, but considering that even before the season these teams were only expected to be around .500, it seems like it would have been a better choice for a Monday night game than Sunday night.
• Tentative CBS 4:25 game: Cincinnati (8-4) @ Tampa Bay (5-6).
• 3 of these games to be moved to Saturday on NFL Network: Dolphins (8-4)-Bills (9-3), Ravens (8-4)-Browns (5-7), Colts (4-8-1)-Vikings (10-2), Falcons (5-8)-Saints (4-8), Giants (7-4-1)-Riveras (7-5-1).
• Likely protections: Probably Titans-Chargers (CBS) and Cowboys-Jaguars, Eagles-Bears, or nothing (FOX).
• Impact of Monday Night Football: A Saints win would tie them with the Falcons only a half-game back of the NFC South, giving the game between them potentially huge divisional implications. A Saints loss, by contrast, would give the Bucs a game-and-a-half lead with the Saints another game behind that, giving Falcons-Saints much less juice. On the other hand, the Bucs getting back to .500 would make whether or not I’m correct about the protections a matter of paramount importance.
• Analysis: As mentioned on last week’s Watch, I was ridiculed on the 506sports Discord for daring to suggest that CBS might have protected Titans-Chargers over Bengals-Bucs at all, let alone that they “probably” did so, but I don’t think we’d have been hearing about a potential Saturday game moving to Sunday night these last few weeks if Titans-Chargers were available (though all the factors leading to Dolphins-Chargers being flexed in the previous week suggests the league may have felt that was a more important Chargers game to flex in than the Titans). My view is that putting a potential Saturday game on Sunday night is only really worth it if the worst game going to NFLN would still be better than putting the Raiders on; NBC’s rights fees are more valuable to the league than games on NFL Network, but there’s still a question of whether the overall set of games getting national exposure is a net positive (though I did have it suggested to me that NFLN really only needs a single “anchor” game to prop up the rest of the slate), and the Raiders getting overtime wins the last two weeks, including against a team currently in the playoffs with the best home field advantage in the NFL, and following that up against a divisional opponent with playoff hopes of their own, suggests Patriots-Raiders may not be the disaster it was looking like earlier in the year. I’m actually not sure the game would be flexed out for Bengals-Bucs even if the Bucs win tonight; the Bucs would have the same record as the Patriots and only a game better record than the Raiders, and their game would technically be more lopsided. The problem, though, is that the Patriots may not necessarily be holding up their end of the bargain, even though they still technically have a better record than the Raiders.

  The Browns won to get to the same record as the Raiders, but their game with the Ravens looks to be more lopsided, and if the Bucs win tonight that would be only the second Saturday game if one of them gets flexed in to Sunday night. A Saints win might make the league feel better about flexing in one of the Saturday games, but I’m not sure it makes them feel all that great. Moreover, the league might not be able to wait for after the Monday night game to make decisions about which games get flexed to Saturday, though it sounds like they could announce the slate during the Monday night game (and they might be able to announce Saturday games conditional on the Monday night game, something they’ve done for Sunday night games in the past). As far as which game gets flexed in, I could honestly see it going either way; the Dolphins lost to put them a game back of the Bills and creep the game closer to the NFC East tilt, which would now determine which team would win a tiebreaker that would likely be just the two of them… but there’s also a question of whether we want to showcase a game that could just slog its way to a tie again. I’d still be inclined to pick the NFC East game, but I’m not as confident about it.

  That’s especially the case because before the Sunday slate even started, someone uncovered an FCC request for a satellite uplink in Buffalo that included “NBC NFL SNF” as one of the dates for it to be used. Seems odd for the decision to be made that early and without publicly announcing it, but I’m almost tempted to go with that, because I could honestly see any of four games ending up on Sunday night otherwise. Leaving that aside, what may end up being the determining factor is that Patriots-Raiders is another West Coast game that can only go in the late afternoon window, and if it ends up going to CBS, the network it would “normally” go to and the one that, as the doubleheader network, has more need for games, it would enter an already crowded late DH window unless Bengals-Bucs either moves to the early window or gets flexed into SNF. If one of the Saturday games gets flexed to SNF, I would look for Patriots-Raiders to be “crossflexed” to Fox’s late singleheader.

• Final prediction for SNF: Cincinnati Bengals @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers (if unprotected or CBS is convinced to give it up, and the Bucs win tonight), New England Patriots @ Las Vegas Raiders (no change) (if not).
• Final prediction for Saturday: New York Giants @ Washington Commanders (8 PM ET), Miami Dolphins @ Buffalo Bills (4:30 PM ET), Atlanta Falcons @ New Orleans Saints (1 PM ET, if the Saints win tonight), Baltimore Ravens @ Cleveland Browns (1 PM ET, if the Saints lose tonight or the league really can’t make the game dependent on the result of the Monday night game). (If the Saints lose and a Saturday game gets plugged into SNF, my first instinct is to go with Colts-Vikings over Falcons-Saints for the third Saturday game, even though it’s badly lopsided, as a game with playoff implications for one team at least. But I could see the league thinking differently, especially with the likelihood of the Vikings clinching the division this week, and if they can’t wait for the Monday night result I would expect them to go with Falcons-Saints in the late afternoon window, justified with the Saints being on Central time.)

Week 14 (December 11):

• Tentative game: Kansas City @ Denver
• Prospects: 9-2 v. 3-8. The Broncos are not living up to the hype of Russell Wilson’s arrival, and this game is probably too lopsided to keep around.
• Likely protections: Jets-Bills or Dolphins-Chargers (CBS) and Bucs-49ers or Eagles-Giants (FOX).
• Confirmed or implied protections (see below): Jets-Bills (CBS) and Bucs-49ers (FOX).
• Other possible games mentioned on last week’s Watch and their records: Eagles (10-1)-Giants (7-4), Jets (7-4)-Bills (8-3), Dolphins (8-3)-Chargers (6-5), Bucs (5-6)-Niners (7-4).
• Impact of Monday Night Football: None.
• Original analysis as of 11/27: Everything depends on what the protections are. Eagles-Giants actually has a decent chance to be unprotected, as while Bucs-Niners was a battle of 3-2 teams at the time Brady’s star power and the relative expectations surrounding the teams involved might still have favored it. With the Bucs losing to the lowly Browns, though, I don’t expect them to be flexed in. Jets-Bills is the next-best game on the slate but is probably protected, which brings us to Dolphins-Chargers, which as the late singleheader is the type of game the league tends to go to bat for to flex in (especially with the tentative being a West Coast game that can be plugged in to the slot), and with Rams-Chargers increasingly likely to be flexed out Week 17 the Chargers becoming maxed out on appearance limits after being flexed in earlier in the year shouldn’t be an issue. (Though the possibility of Titans-Chargers being flexed in next week could be a bigger issue, though I doubt it; more on that in the next full Flex Schedule Watch.) I didn’t think it was so compelling as to be absolutely necessary to be flexed in, but with the Chargers beating the Cardinals it’s actually only a game worse in the worse team’s record than Jets-Bills, and while the teams don’t have as much name value the quarterback matchup of Tua v. Herbert might be more compelling. I don’t know if it’s bumping out Eagles-Giants, which might be too good to be consigned to the early doubleheader but can’t displace the West Coast-based Bucs-Niners as Fox’s featured game (the Eagles would be maxed out on primetime appearances but their games the next two flexible weeks aren’t factors to be flexed in). If it’s protected Dolphins-Chargers should easily be the pick, but if it isn’t I could see it going either way. Does the name value, big markets, and better records of a pair of NFC East teams trump its lopsidedness (and general sense of the Giants wilting against good teams) and Dolphins-Chargers being in a worse time slot? I think Eagles-Giants comes out on top in that comparison, but I’m not confident about it. (Frankly, I’m not even sure Eagles-Giants’ name value trumps lopsidedness if the comparison is with Jets-Bills; if the latter game gets picked I’d be more surprised it was left unprotected than that it was picked.)
• UPDATE 11/28 2:45 PM PT: In his Football Morning in America column Monday, Peter King suggests that the league could decide between Eagles-Giants, Dolphins-Chargers, and Bucs-Niners, with the last involving Fox relinquishing its protection. Brady is compelling, the Niners are compelling, and the Bucs are managing to lead the NFC South despite being below .500, but I still feel like if Fox insists on keeping Eagles-Giants it would be better and simpler to simply flex in Dolphins-Chargers, especially since King doesn’t even mention Fox moving Eagles-Giants into the late slot, instead suggesting they’d like to get a Mahomes game back (and you know how I feel about SNF tentatives becoming lead DH games). The problem is, the cupboard is pretty bare in Fox’s early window without Eagles-Giants (I mentioned Vikings-Lions as a dark horse flex possibility but that was contingent on the Lions getting to 5-6 at best and now if the Vikings don’t clinch the division this week that game would be to do so, and Texans-Cowboys might get more distribution anyway); King points out that Fox would have only two games in the early window if Eagles-Giants moved to SNF or even 4:25, and Dolphins-Chargers, Bucs-Niners, and Chiefs-Broncos are all West Coast games that can’t fill the void, so Fox would need CBS to crossflex them a game to have a viable early window and that would still involve teams at 4-7 at best (Browns-Bengals? Ravens-Steelers if the Steelers win tonight? Jaguars-Titans???), except the AFC teams are a half-game further out of the wild card.

  I don’t think crossflexing a game to Fox is a problem necessarily (giving AFC North territory outside the home markets of the crossflexed game the ability to watch both games would be a tangible benefit to moving one to Fox), and I had seen people on the 506sports Discord speculate that flexing in Eagles-Giants would require a crossflex, but hearing it from King carries more weight for me than the randos there (no offense, you’re still better than my commenters!) and this was the first I’d heard of the problem being more than just the poor quality of the games. I had just barely decided to go with Eagles-Giants over Dolphins-Chargers, but this has me thinking that Fox would be more insistent on keeping Eagles-Giants than CBS would be on keeping Dolphins-Chargers, and if the league is seriously considering having Fox relinquish its Bucs-Niners protection that would further tip me towards Dolphins-Chargers. Even then, though, I’m not really any more confident about it. (And this is probably the last time I put up a Last-Minute Remarks post shortly after the Sunday night game as opposed to Monday afternoon.)

• Final prediction (revised): Miami Dolphins @ Los Angeles Chargers.