NFL Flexible Scheduling Watch: Week 13

So far this season we haven’t had any “real” flexes, in the sense that none of the official flex-scheduling windows in primetime have seen any of their games flexed out. That will change as we enter the home stretch of the season, and for a season that hasn’t had any flexing so far, it’s hard to think of a season seeing so much December flex drama.

The storyline of this season is that no one seems to look particularly good; each week the league’s pundits look for a team to anoint as the best of the league, only for that team to take an upset loss against a team with no business beating them, most recently the Rams falling to a Panthers team that has alternated wins over good teams with losses to the likes of the lowly Saints. The Rams still look like the team that would “make the most sense” winning the Super Bowl, but it’s hard to tell if that’s a result of no one wanting to believe that the best team in the league has Sam Darnold or a second-year player at quarterback. The Packers looked like the Super Bowl favorites in the first third of the season, only to take losses to the likes of the Browns, the aforementioned Panthers (at home this time, as opposed to the Rams losing on the road), and the Eagles right as they seemingly forgot how to play offense – and now people are talking about them as Super Bowl contenders again, if only because they can’t figure out who else to put in the 5 spot of their power rankings.

For flex scheduling purposes, what this means is that there’s rarely a reason to give up on a tentative game. To be sure, this past Monday’s Giants-Patriots game was absolutely deserving of a flex and likely would have been if it were a Sunday game, but most other games on the slate involve teams with at least outside shots at the playoffs. Things are only getting more dramatic as the season comes down to the wire; no fewer than three teams, the Cowboys, Bengals, and Dolphins, that spent the entire season to this point nowhere near the playoff picture are now hoping to make late charges to sneak into the playoffs, while the mighty Chiefs, after making it at least to overtime of the AFC Championship Game every year of Patrick Mahomes’ career, might have to act like those teams just to make the playoffs. 23 teams have realistic shots at claiming one of the 14 playoff spots, meaning just about every game has playoff implications.

I’ve complained in the past about the league being careless with scheduling divisional games that are locked to their respective conference’s network in the main flex period, and I’m going to do it again next week with a bounty of big divisional games on Sunday afternoon and Dolphins-Steelers lucking into not being a disaster thanks to the Dolphins’ late push. But in a broader sense, there are so many divisional games in December – this week also has a bunch of divisional games locked into regional distribution, most glaringly Colts-Jaguars – that it greatly complicates figuring out what things might look like down the stretch, what games might be important and how, especially in Week 18. There’s a lot of variation as it is in trying to figure out what Week 18 might look like too many weeks out, but the variation seems especially wide this year. Of the three games that, in my view, look likeliest to be division title games, two haven’t played their first matchup yet and the third only played its first matchup this week. There’s a lot of variation in possible outcomes for a lot of teams, especially when it comes to who might win the AFC North and South and NFC West (and to a lesser extent NFC North), all divisions with three teams with a realistic shot to win them. The next two to three weeks will make a big difference on what the playoff picture looks like, and with it, what the Week 18 schedule might look like.

With regards to the next two weeks, the team that will make the most impact on flex scheduling is the Jacksonville Jaguars, who could see games flexed into primetime in consecutive weeks. Traditionally, the Jags are such ratings poison that in the last year of the SNF-only flex scheduling regime, when Titans-Jaguars was a division title game, the league passed on it for the SNF finale in favor of a Packers-Lions game where the Lions would be eliminated before game time, lucking into the Lions playing hard and beating the Packers anyway. But that year the AFC South struggled to get to .500 and seemed destined to be swept out of the playoffs by a superior wild card team only for the Jags to mount a historic comeback to knock out the Chargers.

This time around, few teams exemplify this season of inconsistency and flawed teams from top to bottom like the Jags: a marquee Monday night win over the Chiefs, not to mention wins over the Texans, Niners, and Chargers, but also a nasty loss to the Bengals where Joe Burrow got hurt and the Bengals came back to win after the injury when Jake Browning came in, and the only games they’ve played against teams we’re sure are good were a home loss to the Seahawks and a blowout loss in their second home of London to the Rams. Now they’re sitting in the 3 seed with a pair of matchups with the Colts looming on top of one more big showdown against the current 2 seed, one that has the biggest point in its favor for a potential flex: the prospect of being locked into the late singleheader. These are the games that will prove whether the Jags are for real, a real threat to make a deep run in the playoffs, and in the case of the first Colts game, whether they can “play their way into primetime” twice over – and at least one Jags fan is already calling his shot when it comes to the flexing stakes of this week’s Colts game.

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.

Jaguars are 8-4
Broncos are 10-2
FOX is gonna protect Chargers/Cowboys in week 16

If the Jaguars win next week against the Colts… this is your Sunday Night Football game https://t.co/NcnvzMsliT

— JaguarGator9 (@JaguarGator9NFL) December 1, 2025

2025 Week 16 Flex Schedule Watch Through Week 13 | morganwick.com
	9-3	9-3	Too late to flex
	6-6	7-5	DET: Xmas
	4-8	5-7	6-day flex
	9-4	8-4
Sunday Afternoon Flex Candidates (12/21)
	8-4	10-2	DEN: W17 TNF
	8-4	6-5-1	DAL: 6 PT DAL: Xmas
	7-5	7-6	@TB: W18
	11-2	6-6

Week 16: This could end up being one of the most fascinating flex decisions in recent memory. Based on the rules of thumb I traditionally use to make predictions, even if the Jaguars lose their next two and the Bengals win their next two, Jaguars-Broncos would still have a good enough edge to overcome the tentative game bias. Even if the Bengals were to win their next two, they could be eliminated from the division, and with that their most realistic shot at a playoff spot, by game time if the Steelers win their next three; the Jags’ losing streak in this scenario could actually end up being the main thing keeping them alive for the playoffs. Yet bailing on Bengals-Dolphins would mean bailing on the storyline of whether either of these teams could come back from bad starts and Joe Burrow’s injury to make a miracle playoff run – especially since it would require the Bengals to beat a team currently in wild card position in the Bills, as well as beat the Ravens twice.

I think either the Bengals or the Dolphins losing either of their next two will doom the game to being flexed out; the Dolphins don’t have the division as a fallback option to potentially make the playoffs at 9-8 or 8-9. In that instance, what could end up being relevant is that the Dolphins’ Week 15 game against the Steelers is a Monday night game, and I don’t know if the league can take MNF into account when making decisions on six days’ notice; I think the game could still have a shot at keeping its spot just because the Dolphins are the team in the tentative with the better record, but the Steelers beating the Ravens could knock out Bengals-Dolphins all on its own. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that everything breaks Bengals-Dolphins’ way; the Bengals and Dolphins each win their next two, and the Ravens beat the Steelers so the Bengals can’t be eliminated from the division by game time. Is the tweet above correct that the Jaguars beating the Colts would be enough to pull the flex despite all of that? I wasn’t quite sure when I first saw it, but I’m inclined to say yes, especially in the wake of this week’s Bengals-Bills game being yanked from the late doubleheader the same day people started wondering if Burrow would return as soon as the Patriots game; I don’t really get the sense the league is in the business of keeping a tentative with middling teams because of this sort of speculative storyline, and a Jaguars team with a top-three seed in control of the AFC South facing another division leader with another top-three seed could be difficult to pass up, especially in a game that would otherwise be trapped in the late singleheader. (If the Jaguars went on to beat the Jets and the Broncos lose just one of their next two games – one of which is against a suddenly resurgent Packers squad – suddenly this game is for control of the 2 seed.)

Things could get hairier if the Jaguars lose; Burrow is probably the biggest star in either game, and while the Broncos probably have the largest fanbase of the four teams, there’s a chance NBC and the league decide the Jags are too much ratings poison and stick with Bengals-Dolphins. It would still be difficult to pass up Jaguars-Broncos if the Jags beat the Jets, but I might still have to think about it, and if the Jags were to lose to the lowly Jets after losing to the Colts, I’m kind of inclined to think the league would straight-up say no to Jags-Broncos. But I emphasize that this is all dependent on the Bengals and Dolphins both continuing to win; if either lose, the game isn’t keeping its spot.

The other question is whether Patriots-Ravens still has a chance to catch Jaguars-Broncos as the potential flex candidate. Even if the Ravens win their next two and the Jaguars lose their next two, they’d have identical 8-6 records and I’ve suggested in the past that the edge would go to Jaguars-Broncos in that instance because of the late singleheader factor and the desire not to leave CBS’ early-window cupboard completely bare. (Right now if Patriots-Ravens were flexed in Bengals-Dolphins would become CBS’ best early game, edging out Bills-Browns.) I wouldn’t rule out Patriots-Ravens getting the nod in this instance given the Jags’ name value deficiencies and the possibility of the team collapsing down the stretch making Jaguars-Broncos uncompetitive, though, and as such, I’m not going to predict Jaguars-Broncos being flexed in just because of the Bengals or Dolphins losing.

I’m going to make the unusual move of making a conditional prediction that has a possibility of not actually making a prediction at all. Right now the scale would seem to be heavily tipped towards Jaguars-Broncos, but it’s not a sure thing just yet. And while I’m officially predicting a six-day hold if the Jaguars lose and Ravens win, I also reserve the right to make a Last-Minute Remarks post in that circumstance if the Bengals or Dolphins lose.

Final prediction:

• Jacksonville Jaguars @ Denver Broncos to SNF (if the Jaguars win or the Steelers beat the Ravens);
• No decision until six days’ notice otherwise.

2025 Week 17 Flex Schedule Watch Through Week 13 | morganwick.com
	8-4	8-4
	9-3	9-4	6-day flex
	9-3	4-8
2 of These Games to Saturday 12/27
	7-5	8-4
	9-3	7-6
	6-6	8-3-1
	3-9	4-8
Sunday Afternoon Flex Candidates (12/28)
	8-4	8-4
	7-5	5-7

Week 17: And then there’s the Jaguars-Colts rematch the following week and the prospect of it moving to Monday night to replace a game involving a Falcons team that just lost to the lowly Jets. There’s no question that game’s getting flexed out, with the only question being whether any other game can beat out Jags-Colts.

Last week I said that Jags-Colts would move to Monday night ahead of any of the Saturday games as long as it would rank in the top three Saturday games. At worst, if the Colts-Jags loser were to lose the following week, the Ravens win their next two, and the Panthers beat the Saints when they come back from bye next week, while the Texans did no worse than split, those three games would all be tied. In that case I’d think Texans-Chargers and Ravens-Packers would be the Saturday games, and Seahawks-Panthers might get the nod for Monday night just to simplify the moving parts involved. But it’s telling that all of that would have to break down right to keep Jaguars-Colts out of Monday night, and Bucs-Dolphins, which has snuck onto the table in recent weeks with the Dolphins’ resurgence, can’t catch Jaguars-Colts with the Dolphins being 7-7 at best when the decision has to be made.

I’ve also said that as long as Texans-Chargers remains one of the top three Saturday games it’ll get the Saturday nod even if that’s at the expense of a game with a better pair of records to avoid condemning it to 4:05 purgatory or playing second fiddle to Eagles-Bills, and that’s all but confirmed at this point with the Cardinals getting knocked out of the playoffs. (I’ve straight-up removed Giants-Raiders from the table with both teams being eliminated from the playoffs and plenty of better options available.) That means it should come down to Seahawks-Panthers and Ravens-Packers for the remaining spot. 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.

Week 18: If Week 18 were this week Panthers-Bucs and Ravens-Steelers would be division title games, and suddenly, Colts-Texans looks like the most likely game to join them. The games that might decide the other divisions’ champions are increasingly looking like they might have to settle for Saturday at best, and even then only if the division winners are fighting for seeding; Lions-Bears and Chargers-Broncos have a bit of a leg up in that regard, since they could both decide seeding for the home team on one hand and whether the road team makes the playoffs at all, and Dolphins-Patriots could join them if the Dolphins keep winning. Trumps-Eagles is also worth keeping an eye on in this category, but Packers-Vikings and Jets-Bills might only affect wild card seeding. The most likely division to produce standalone games that aren’t division title games is the NFC West, whose games should at least be contenders for Saturday, especially if Seahawks-Niners would decide the order of finish between them; even if the Niners completely collapse out of the playoffs, the games would only be completely out of the running if the division winner’s seed is more or less locked in. Chiefs-Raiders, meanwhile, could determine the viability of the Chiefs’ playoff hopes, and Cowboys-Giants could also fall into that category if the Cowboys keep winning; conversely, Titans-Jaguars could end up there if the Jaguars collapse. Finally, keep an eye on Bengals-Browns if the Bengals keep winning. I’m planning on starting to look at more specific scenarios, at least in a preliminary sense, next week.