NFL Flexible Scheduling Watch: Week 6

All right, let’s start the Flex Schedule Watch for real this time! I wrote most of this post this morning but held off on posting it to see if there would be a change in the Week 8 schedule, and sure enough Bears-Windbags will switch places with Eagles-Bengals and the showdown of big-market star rookie quarterbacks will now be the main late doubleheader game. As I explain below, I may have screwed up a little last week in a way that underestimated the chances for certain games being flexed out, but I still don’t think they’re particularly likely – and our best chance for a flex may well come from Thursday night. This despite the fact that the Browns may well almost be trying to get flexed out of their primetime games.

I’m hoping I’ve gotten things arranged such that your comments should only need to be approved once, but if not I’m going to have to try another anti-spam plugin. I’m also finding the post is getting smushed on mobile as text is no longer automatically clearing the images; if I can’t find a solution for that I may have to adopt another format next year.

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.

Week 9 (SNF early flex ): Okay fiiiiine, I’ll talk about the possibility of flexing out Jaguars-Eagles. I’m telling you, everyone thought Bears-Chargers was going to be flexed out last year and it didn’t happen (and while it would have required some additional back-and-forth moves it’s not like it wouldn’t have been worth it to the league if it fell in the main flex period), and in the aftermath Mike North repeatedly noted that even a team that looks truly terrible now could conceivably turn it around down the stretch, so you have to look at the early flex as being specifically about getting away from games with injured star players. So no matter how dire the Jaguars may look, I really don’t see the league going away from them, and I certainly don’t see them doing so if they pick up a second win, even against the lowly Patriots, this week. Now if the Jags manage to lose to the Patriots, then we can talk, but even then I’m not expecting anything to happen.

The good news is that if the league does decide to pull the flex, they might not be lacking in options, though Trumps-Giants doesn’t look like the obvious choice it did a couple weeks ago, and while CBS will need to leave two games involving teams at 2-4 or better unprotected they don’t look terribly impressive. That said, I would expect them to protect Bears-Cardinals under most circumstances as a game involving a big-market NFC team they don’t get to show very often, so if the Vikings remain undefeated their game against the Colts could be an attractive flex candidate despite potential lopsidedness, and Broncos-Ravens could be more attractive than you might think as a showcase for Bo Nix, not to mention the Lamar Jackson factor. If the Colts and Broncos both lose this week, though, the league will have to decide if the Jaguars are really so terrible to be worth pulling the early flex to bring in a below-.500 team (which could include Raiders-Bengals in addition to Colts-Vikings, Broncos-Ravens, and Trumps-Giants).

Basically, if there were to be a flex, I would expect it to be Broncos-Ravens with a Broncos win, and Colts-Vikings if both of those teams win and the Broncos lose, all contingent on the Jaguars losing. Any other scenario would result in Jaguars-Eagles keeping its spot. I certainly think this is in the realm of possibility; maybe the logistical issues surrounding Bears-Chargers last year were a bigger obstacle than I thought, and maybe the league is fine with exposing North as a liar who was just covering for the Bears-Chargers non-flex while delivering the utter indignity of telling the Jaguars “yeah, we’re willing to write you off after only seven weeks after North said you can’t do that last year”. But color me skeptical that it would actually happen (and frankly when I put it that way, even if everything breaks down right the league still might not pull the flex unless Doug Pederson gets fired, since that would be a signal that the Jags themselves have given up). Final prediction: No changes.

Week 11: Colts-Jets is not looking great at the moment, but the best available game that’s even eligible for a flex is Falcons-Broncos, which isn’t exactly the sort of game you’d expect to pop a rating, certainly not a bigger one than a game involving Aaron Rodgers no matter how mediocre his team is. That’s not even getting into its being the game Fox is most likely to protect at the moment, given how their only other flex-eligible games are Rams-Patriots and Browns-Saints. Under the old rules whichever game CBS didn’t protect between Chiefs-Bills and Ravens-Steelers might be in line for a flex if the Jets continue to underperform, though even then there might be considerable horse-trading involved.

Week 12: The options this week are pretty slim with a number of good teams on bye and a number of Sunday afternoon divisional matchups where the return match is either on the wrong network or in Week 18. Lions-Colts certainly looks better in terms of records, but the lack of name value (especially with the Colts who also decidedly lack star power) and relatively smaller markets may be killer; NBC may well prefer to keep Eagles-Rams even with the Rams getting off to a slow 1-4 start.

Week 13: I thought Browns-Broncos was a questionable choice to schedule for Monday night in the main flex period, but I doubt very many people predicted that it would be the Browns, not the Broncos, dragging it down. But many of the best teams are off the table due to Thanksgiving, and some of the teams I expected to produce viable Fox games have underperformed as well, leaving the best option on the table a Chargers-Falcons game the league would likely be very reticent to flex in and give the Chargers consecutive Monday night games. Any other options involve teams, at best, only a game better than the Browns. But the Browns might be giving up on the season, so desperate times may end up calling for desperate measures.

Week 14: Even if the Bengals continue to struggle as the season continues, it would still take highly exceptional circumstances for the Cowboys to be flexed out. I may have screwed up a bit last week; when writing last week’s post I mentally read any indication in the bottom-right area other than a game being TNF-eligible as a sign that CBS or Fox wouldn’t have to protect that game, but that doesn’t apply to teams having six primetime appearances, since that just means that they would be maxed out if they’re flexed in, not that they’re maxed out now. So Fox may well still feel obligated to protect Bears-Niners even with how much the Niners are struggling and how good Falcons-Vikings looks at the moment, putting an intriguing flex option on the table. But again, Cowboys.

Week 15: Keep an eye on how the Colts and Broncos do over the next month or so, because the Rams’ slow start is opening up the possibility of our first Thursday night flex, and while there’s only one TNF-eligible game on the whole week’s slate, it could well be the best unprotected option overall. Remember that TNF flexing was (officially) instituted as a two-year pilot program, so the league may be especially motivated to get a test of it out of the way. If the Rams continue to falter while the Colts manage to maintain at least a basic level of competence, they may get their chance. (This also assumes CBS can’t protect Colts-Broncos without relinquishing their ability to protect Bills-Lions, so if either of those teams turns out to be more mediocre than thought or the Raiders maintain their own mediocrity, reducing the risk of losing the game to primetime, that may take the Thursday night flex off the table again. But it’s also worth noting that there’s some doubt over the one-road-short-week-game rule, which would open up the possibility of both Bucs-Chargers and Sinners-Saints being TNF-eligible as well.)

Week 16: Or maybe the league’s opportunity for a TNF flex could come this week with both Ohio teams stumbling to 1-4 starts, though while this is another case where the flex situation looks better than I thought with the Niners still needing to be protected, note the lack of any TNF-eligible options (or any other CBS games) on the table, as all the TNF-eligible games involve 1-4 or 1-5 teams. (Eagles-Swing States is technically TNF-eligible, but the first matchup between them is already scheduled for TNF.)

Week 17: Washington’s blazing start has seemingly made their game against the Falcons a near-lock to anchor the NFL Network Saturday tripleheader, but if the Bengals start looking more like what we’ve come to expect from them, Broncos-Bengals could be an alternate anchor if the league decides to sacrifice Falcons-Voters to save NBC from having to show the aforementioned possibly-tanking Browns. Still, that would leave NFL Network needing to air a game involving a team only a half-game better than the Browns at best. The problem is that only three games on the Fox and CBS slates aren’t divisional rematches of games on the wrong network, and the only one of those games not involving a one-win team is the only one of the three scheduled for Fox (that is, the only one they need to protect). If the Browns don’t start miraculously turning things around, the league is going to have some tough decisions to make.

Playoff picture charts and Week 18 coverage begin Week 9.

12 thoughts on “NFL Flexible Scheduling Watch: Week 6”

  1. Nice to see the flex of some games in Week 8. 🙂 Welcome back Morgan! It’s going to be a fun flex season. Go Pack Go this week at Lambeau vs. the Texans.

  2. Christmas comes early as Morgan releases his thoughts on a Tuesday! Looking forward to my second season with you guys.

  3. Regarding Week 9, this is how I see things going:

    With a Colts victory, a flex is likely in my opinion, as either IND/MIN or DEN/BAL would be a solid choice to replace the squalid Jags.

    Jags-Eagles might just stay if Indianapolis loses to Miami this Sunday, along with Jacksonville and Philly winning. This is because CBS likely protects Ravens-Broncos if this happens, being their best game of the week, and I don’t think 3-4 is better enough to warrant a flex.

    If Jacksonville loses though, a 3-4 team being flexed to SNF is a real possibility. If that has to be the case, then WAS/NYG would be the frontrunner for SNF, with CHI/ARZ not far behind, provided Arizona and New York win this week.

    If Arizona and New York both lose this week, then I’m not sure what the NFL would end up doing if the Jags lost this week as well. Maybe Colts-Vikings? Hell, I’d maybe even suggest Miami-Buffalo provided they beat Indy, but no can do, as the first matchup was on Prime Video.

  4. Hey guys off topic question but since the Indiana Washington game is getting college gameday do u think the game will be flexed from 12 to something else

  5. Does anybody have any idea if there is a time deadline for when the NFL has to announce the flex? I know it’s 12 days for a SNF matchup, but is there a time as well (ie- 1pm or 11:59pm)? Thanks!

  6. I Will Not Watch Colts Vikings Cause I Am Not A Fan of the Colts Or the Vikings Don’t Watch This Game. But I Hope Colts Jets Gets Flexed Out In 2 Weeks

  7. I Will Not Watch Colts Vikings Because I Don’t Like The Colts Or Vikings Don’t Watch This Game. I Hope Colts Jets Gets Flexed Out. But I Could Be Right About That.

  8. Colts/Vikings Flexed into SNF week 9! Jags/Eagles bumped to 4:05.

    Likely done to eventually move the Week 11 Colts/Jets SNF game…

  9. For week 11 Colts Jets, assuming CBS protected Chiefs Bills, leaving Ravens Steelers unprotected, seems like an absolute lock to be flexed in to primetime

  10. Interesting move for SNF Week 9 flex scheduling. We already have quite a bit more flexing going on than last season.

  11. Jags-Eagles flex doesn’t surprise me, and we get an interesting Colts-Vikings game for SNF. The Vikings deserve the slot. Maybe a 33 point comeback is in the works, who knows.

    Ravens-Steelers isn’t going to move to SNF because the Steelers are on TNF week 12. No team has played SNF then TNF since at least 2016. FOX will protect Packers-Bears and CBS will protect Chiefs-Bills. This leaves us with a few okay options – Falcons-Broncos, Seahawks-49ers, and Bengals-Chargers. I’m not sure if Seahawks-49ers will be flexed in since they were on TNF, but you never know (Chargers-Chiefs was TNF in 2022 then was flexed into SNF on the other half). The one I’m really eyeing is Bengals-Chargers. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bengals picked up two more wins by the decision time, and I’m sure the Chargers can do the same. This would be an attractive option to bump off Colts-Jets.
    Then we have to deal with Browns-Broncos, surely the NFL doesn’t keep this right? We have a few viable options. Chargers-Falcons, Steelers-Bengals, and Cardinals-Vikings could all end up being better choices.
    Falcons-Raiders week 15 is somewhat flexible but seems unlikely at this point that it will happen. I could see Colts-Broncos and Bucs-Chargers possibly overtaking this.
    The Week 16 TNF game between Browns-Bengals seemingly has to go. Prime Video will already see both teams before week 16 and won’t have an issue with letting the Bengals go. They’ll be happy to drop the Browns. I think Broncos-Chargers is the only possible option to replace it.
    Week 17 SNF Dolphins-Browns also has to go. For the Saturday games, Broncos-Bengals, Cardinals-Rams, and Falcons-Commanders look like the best options. I’m thinking Packers-Vikings has to move to SNF since FOX will probably protect Cowboys-Eagles. We could also see a scenario where Falcons-Commanders becomes SNF similar to 2022 when Giants-Commanders was a Saturday TBD game but ended up moving to SNF.
    Keeping an eye on Commanders-Cowboys, Vikings-Lions, Bears-Packers, and 49ers-Cardinals for Week 18.

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