As he did last year, NFL Vice President of Broadcast Planning Mike North spoke with Rob Tornoe of the Philadelphia Inquirer about Eagles-adjacent flex scheduling situations. So you don’t have to use up any limited free article views on the Inquirer website before running into a paywall, here are the key takeaways.
First, North confirmed that the league is considering a Packers-Vikings for Eagles-Cowboys swap in Week 17. In Tornoe’s words, North said “there’s a ‘reasonable’ chance a move could happen if Eagles-Cowboys ‘doesn’t still warrant 100% of the country watching the game'”, but “maybe Dallas is on a five-game winning streak, and we keep that game right where it is”. Apparently the league has until Christmas Eve to make a decision, which is actually shorter than I thought – the Tuesday before the games would be played. The previous times the league pulled a “six-day hold” out of its ass for Sunday nights (before it became an official part of the league’s contracts), the announcement came on Sunday.
What may be more notable is the prospect of the league flexing out Bucs-Cowboys in Week 16, and if that doesn’t sound Eagles-adjacent, North begs to differ. He acknowledges that Fox has the right to keep Eagles-Swing States, but that the league could strike a deal with Fox if the situation warranted:
I’m not saying we’re going to do this, but in theory, you could make a case that if Fox were to lose the Philly-Washington game that day, get back the Tampa-Dallas game, still have a Detroit-Chicago game in the early window and Minnesota-Seattle in the late window, Arizona playing for something, Atlanta playing for something, it’s hard to say Fox’s Sunday afternoon would be ruined. Our partners are nothing if not amenable to a conversation.
North also said that “I would not be stunned if Tampa-Dallas stays on Sunday night”, but my view remains going beyond “not being stunned” to expecting it to stay put after the Cowboys’ current winning streak seemingly put to bed the notion that the Cowboys were just going to tank the rest of the season. I still don’t quite think I have a handle on when things get bad enough for the league to flex out of a Cowboys game, but as long as the game has playoff implications at least for the Bucs I would expect it to keep its spot. And while Fox would love to get a Cowboys game back, I also think Fox would much rather part with Vikings-Seahawks, whose distribution is necessarily limited by being in the late window, than Eagles-Swing States.
That said, I’m not willing to rule out a scenario where Fox parts with both Eagles-Swing States and Vikings-Seahawks – I just don’t think it involves Bucs-Cowboys being flexed out, and with Fox having already parted with Broncos-Chargers it would be tough to convince them of it. Read on.
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, last year some Week 18 games (see below) had their other halves scheduled for the other conference’s network, though none were 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, that is, 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 either. 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.