I’ve complained in the past about how much I often tend to struggle with filling out this opening section. That hasn’t been quite so much the case this year, but in some ways it’s grown more acute. The 506sports Discord locked itself behind Patreon at the start of the season, meaning I don’t have an antidote to the insanity of my comment section (or at least of one particular commenter), and I don’t have as much exposure to any developments or reporting that might have bearing on flex scheduling. (Though some quick Googling suggests that Mike North hasn’t done any in-season interviews of the sort he’s done the last few years.)
Here’s an example of something that might fill out this section but which would mostly be repeated in the weekly capsules: in the second installment of this year’s iteration of this feature, I noted the Dolphins’ woeful start and how it would, or wouldn’t, affect flex scheduling this year. Since then they’ve gone 3-1, with the only loss coming in Lamar Jackson’s comeback followed up by a big home win over the Bills (Miami’s first win over the Bills in three years and second in seven), and ascended to the level of mere mediocrity rather than outright disaster. Will that save their primetime appearances?
We’ll see. Part of the point of my bringing them up in Week 7 was that it was virtually impossible to flex them out of their Monday night game against the Steelers given the limited number of games capable of making that move and the questionable quality of the teams in those games, meaning that game was likely to keep its spot no matter what. More interesting would be their Sunday night tilt against the Bengals, which depends as much on what the Bengals do with Joe Burrow back as on the Dolphins. With games against the woeful Saints and Jets the next two weeks, there’s a very good chance the Dolphins will end up at 6-7 by the time the decision needs to be made (assuming the league can’t wait for the Monday night result when making a decision with six days’ notice), which I hear gets the kids all excited. Would that be enough to avoid a flex when the Bengals are already guaranteed to be worse than that?
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 21 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, but what evidence exists suggests they’re submitted within a week or so of the two-week deadline; what that means for Thursday night flexes that are due earlier is unclear.
- On paper, CBS and Fox are also guaranteed one half of each division rivalry. However, in 2023 some Week 18 games (see below) had their other halves scheduled for the other conference’s network, though none were scheduled for primetime, and this year there’s another such matchup and another matchup that has one game on the other conference’s network and the other in 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. 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 without the team’s permission.
- 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.
| 2025 Week 15 Flex Schedule Watch Through Week 12 | morganwick.com |
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|---|---|---|---|
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 4-7 |
6-5  |
Too late to flex |
 |
 7-4 |
9-2  |
LAR: W16 TNF |
 |
 7-3-1 |
9-2  |
GB: W16 Sat |
 |
 4-7 |
5-5-1  |
6-day flex |
 |
 4-7 |
6-5  |
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| Sunday Afternoon Flex Candidates (12/14) | |||
 |
 8-3 |
8-3  |
SEA: W16 TNF |
|
 7-4 |
10-2  |
@BUF: SNF |
|
 7-4 |
6-5  |
v. LAC: YT |
Week 15: The Dolphins’ comeback, coupled with J.J. McCarthy looking increasingly like a bust, means that on paper, Vikings-Cowboys is as much of a flex candidate at this point as Dolphins-Steelers. If it weren’t for the identity of the home team in that game, it absolutely would be flexed out for Colts-Seahawks, and with that game being played on the West Coast it can’t anchor an early window and would otherwise be trapped behind Packers-Broncos. As it stands, though, I fully expect “Cowboys uber alles” to carry the day – though I would still keep an eye out for the possibility of the league pulling the flex.
All told, here is the complete list of all games that can move to this Monday night: Jets-Jaguars, Cardinals-Texans, Titans-Niners, Panthers-Saints. All of those games involve at least one team with a worse record as the Dolphins. At best, the Cardinals can match the Dolphins with a win and a Dolphins loss, and that still wouldn’t overcome the tentative game bias, especially since Cardinals-Texans lacks the star power and big fanbase of Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers – and don’t neglect the potential storyline of whether the Dolphins’ recent success is a mirage borne of playing bad teams and an inconsistent Bills squad that was due for a letdown game coming off of beating the Chiefs, or if they can beat a feisty but also inconsistent Steelers team on the road. Final prediction: no changes.
| 2025 Week 16 Flex Schedule Watch Through Week 12 | morganwick.com |
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|---|---|---|---|
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9-2 |
8-3 |
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6-5 |
7-4 |
DET: Xmas |
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 3-8 |
4-7 |
6-day flex |
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 8-4 |
8-3 |
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| Sunday Afternoon Flex Candidates (12/21) | |||
 |
 7-4 |
9-2 |
DEN: W17 TNF |
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10-2 |
6-5  |
|
|
7-4 |
5-5-1 |
DAL: 6 PT DAL: Xmas |
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6-5 |
6-6  |
@TB: W18 |
Week 16: Suddenly the question of whether Bengals-Dolphins keeps its spot may hinge more on the Bengals than the Dolphins. The Dolphins might have started going on a late-season run, while the Bengals are simply hoping Joe Burrow can start one. Unfortunately a Burrow-less loss to the Patriots means they can do no better than 9-8, which probably won’t be enough for a playoff spot after it just barely fell short last year. They probably have to beat the Ravens tonight, the Bills next week, and the Ravens again in two weeks, to have a chance for this game to keep its spot; color me skeptical that 5-9 and a guaranteed losing record will be enough when the Jaguars will be 7-7 at worst.
Fox has no fewer than three games involving only teams with better records than either of the teams in the Sunday night tentative (although one of them probably can’t move because the two teams have a rematch Week 18), and I’d still expect them to protect the weakest of the three because Cowboys – and that’s not even getting into Patriots-Ravens. That game may be emerging as the primary alternative if the Ravens keep winning, but the league might be more inclined to throw a bone to the early doubleheader window, and the Jags’ blowout win over the Chargers suggests that their game against the Broncos won’t give up pole position for a potential flex without a fight. Tonight’s Bengals-Ravens game may be of paramount importance for determining what happens here.
| 2025 Week 17 Flex Schedule Watch Through Week 12 | morganwick.com |
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|---|---|---|---|
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 8-3 |
7-4 |
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 8-3 |
8-4 |
6-day flex |
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9-2 |
4-7 |
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| 2 of These Games to Saturday 12/27 | |||
 6-5 |
7-4 |
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| 6-5 |
7-3-1 |
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| 8-3 |
6-6 |
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 3-8 |
3-8 |
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 2-10 |
2-9  |
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| Sunday Afternoon Flex Candidates (12/28) | |||
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7-4 |
8-3 |
|
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6-5 |
4-7 |
|
Week 17: Order has officially been restored among the candidates for Saturday moves with two games involving only teams above .500 bumping Seahawks-Panthers to third in the pecking order. Jaguars-Colts is still a better game than any of them, but it’s hanging on to that status by a thread. And in the midst of all that is ESPN staring at a Falcons team whose season might be as good as over following Michael Penix’s injury.
As we look at what might happen here over the next few weeks, I’m going to be following a few basic principles. First, as long as Jaguars-Colts would rank in the top three Saturday games, it will move to Monday night ahead of any of the Saturday games. The league would want to put the three best available games in standalone windows, which the Saturday games can get without moving to Monday night, but which Jags-Colts can’t. Fox would be losing the anchor of their early doubleheader window, but they’d likely get a more than capable replacement in the third Saturday game – as long as it isn’t pinned to the late window and forced to be played at 4:05 or play second fiddle to Eagles-Bills. As such, the second principle is that, as long as Texans-Chargers remains a matchup of two teams at or above .500, or even just stands as one of the three best Saturday games, it’s going to be part of the Saturday doubleheader – or, if applicable, flexed to Monday night – even if it’s at the expense of a game with a better pair of records.
Take those two things together, and the only real drama going on at the moment is whether Ravens-Packers or Seahawks-Panthers takes pole position for the second spot on the doubleheader. Given the name value of the teams I would favor Ravens-Packers to get the spot if the worse teams in those games have identical records and maybe even if the Ravens are slightly worse; the Ravens might have to completely collapse, and maybe have Jackson get injured again, to cough up their Saturday spot. Meanwhile, the Jaguars having a better record than any of the worse teams in the Saturday games doesn’t make their flex position as solid as you might think given how tight these teams are, but two of their next three games are against teams that are basically looking forward to the draft at this point. Win this week to ensure you can’t have a worse record than the Panthers, and I might well predict a Jags-Colts flex as soon as next week, though that would likely depend on the Falcons losing to the woeful Jets.
Week 18: If Week 18 were this week Panthers-Bucs and Ravens-Steelers would be division title games, with the Ravens having officially caught the Steelers for the division lead with a week to spare before their first matchup. Lions-Bears would decide the order of finish between those two teams, but whether it’s for the division title (at least for the Lions) would depend on the result of Packers-Vikings, where the gap between those two teams is widening. Chargers-Broncos increasingly looks like its best hope is that it has enough seeding implications for one or both teams to warrant a Saturday spot (or whether the Chargers make the playoffs at all); Trumps-Eagles could similarly have seeding implications for the Eagles relative to the other division winners, while Chiefs-Raiders could determine the viability of the Chiefs’ playoff hopes. The NFC West games should at least be contenders for Saturday, especially if Seahawks-Niners would decide the order of finish between them, unless the Niners fall too far out of the playoffs and the division winner’s seed is more or less locked in. The AFC East and South are likely to have their games scheduled simultaneously to decide their respective division titles, though seeding implications could scramble that. Colts-Texans could be an enticing Saturday candidate if it has seeding implications for the Colts, and it might even have an outside shot at becoming a division title game. (When it comes to Saturday, I don’t think the league would worry about whether the Jaguars have anything to play for as long as they aren’t playing another playoff contender.) Finally, if Burrow and the Bengals go on another run like last year Bengals-Browns could yet have a shot at Saturday.