NFL Flexible Scheduling Watch: Week 14

Well, here we are. I warned the league back in May that the surfeit of divisional games CBS was getting in Week 15 that were rematches of games on other networks, none of which were even slated for the lead late game, could end up depriving viewers of marquee games while resulting in questionable games being played in primetime, and the situation is arguably worse than I thought with Colts-Seahawks playing second fiddle in the late window. Sunday’s results actually did a lot to mitigate the problem, with the Bengals’ loss all but eliminating them from the playoffs and the Chiefs’ loss giving them too much of a hill to climb, but Chargers-Chiefs is still going to steal a good chunk of Bills-Patriots’ thunder.

The first person I saw on The Site Formerly Known As Twitter to complain about this situation, a Buffalo-area sports radio host, made an interesting point about how it could have been avoided and why CBS might have been willing to relinquish control of one of their divisional games:

Because if they did that you'd just be splitting the map between two great games instead of three. Probably doesn't make a dent for them

— Sneaky Joe (@SneakyJoeSports) December 3, 2025

We know that the Sunday afternoon networks can decide to relinquish control over a game they have the right to keep under the division-rivalry rule, because Mike North said as much last year, and his argument was similar to the above: that the network would still have plenty of games with major implications without the game they’d be losing. But the specific scenario he laid out involved the Sunday afternoon network getting the Cowboys back, even though there was a worse game in another primetime window at the time those comments were made, which suggests the level of compensation the league would have to have given CBS to make it worth their while – namely, that it would likely have to have involved Vikings-Cowboys in the Sunday night window, not Dolphins-Steelers on Monday night. In both cases NBC would have screamed bloody murder at losing a Cowboys game even if the game they were getting back had more playoff implications, which gets to the real obstacle with this scenario: if a game is valuable to one network, it’s valuable to the other.

But how valuable is a game to a network, really, if it’s buried on the depth chart and overshadowed by other games? Even before the Bengals lost this week CBS had slated Ravens-Bengals to be called by Spero Dedes and the network’s fifth-tier broadcast team. Let ESPN have that game in place of Dolphins-Steelers and you not only free up distribution for Bills-Patriots and Chargers-Chiefs, but you get back a team with a substantial regional and national fanbase as well.

Ignore for the moment that such a trade would have actually have involved ESPN trading down to a worse game based on the records of the worse teams, and that CBS would have been much less likely to be willing to relinquish Bills-Patriots or Chargers-Chiefs this way. The real problem is that, as much as the networks want marquee games in their windows, every game has value to them even if they have regional distribution, at least as long as the fans in the teams’ home markets are interested in the game. Typically the late afternoon window draws the largest audience of any single window of the week (regardless of whether it’s showing a single full national game or not), but the early doubleheader and singleheader windows combine to draw a larger audience than even that.

As much as fantasy football, gambling, and just interest in the league as a whole drive interest in the best games, NFL fandom is still largely parochial and regional, with people being interested in their own teams first and foremost. There’s a reason “Cowboys uber alles” exists: networks would rather have a Cowboys game than a game involving any other team, even if the Cowboys game is only marginally relevant to the playoff picture. Increasing the distribution of CBS’ divisional games might be what’s best for the league, but for CBS it doesn’t outweigh the loss of the Ravens and Bengals audiences unless they’re getting bigger fanbases with similar interest in their teams’ playoff hopes back, and if that’s the case it’s probably not worth flexing out in the first place, or at least the network losing it probably doesn’t want to lose it. (Witness the incident in 2016 where both CBS and NBC would have preferred to air Pats-Jets over a clearly superior Chiefs-Broncos game before the Chiefs became near-Cowboys-level popular, resulting in a bewildering swap of the late doubleheader and Sunday night windows.) Yes, two years ago the league was able to give ESPN Texans-Colts in Week 18 when the first game between the teams was on Fox, and this year Cardinals-Seahawks was scheduled to have one matchup on CBS and the other on TNF, but Week 18 is always a weird exception to the rules and the latter case was decided before the season under the assumption that Cardinals-Seahawks would bring little value (even though it was a borderline Tier 6 matchup). In the middle of the season, when games’ value is established, it takes a lot of doing to make a swap worth a network’s while.

I made this same point two years ago, the last time there was a game buried in the early window glaring enough and attracting enough complaining for me to dedicate the opening section to explaining it, specifically to explain why CBS kept an inferior Bengals-Chiefs game in the late window over a Dolphins-Ravens game to determine the AFC’s 1 seed. That’s not a factor here; to hear some people talk Packers-Broncos is a potential Super Bowl preview. But earlier this year I wondered what flexible scheduling actually meant to Monday and Thursday Night Football considering the restrictions on them and some of the games that were scheduled for supposedly-flexible windows, and this same line of thinking has me thinking about the league’s scheduling philosophy more generally. Because the league talks a good game about “playing your way into primetime”, and more generally making sure there’s a good game in every window, yet this situation was so predictable that I have to wonder how much the league even cares about allowing people to watch big games.

I called out this week’s schedule before the season (see the primetime appearance counts link below) because I recognized that CBS had no fewer than three games that were rematches of games on other networks, all of them potentially marquee games and all of them in the early window – Chargers-Chiefs was a Tier 2 game while Ravens-Bengals was the one Tier 1 game not scheduled for a marquee window. (Meanwhile, Fox’s best early-window game was expected to be Cardinals-Texans, on the border between Tiers 5 and 6, and with the Cardinals not performing particularly well none of Fox’s early-window games pit two teams with records better than 3-10, so while CBS has a surfeit of marquee games, Fox can’t help but bring you a game expected to be either a blowout or just terrible on Sunday afternoon – their only game with a spread of less than a touchdown is Trumps-Giants.) The Patriots weren’t expected to be good enough to make any of my tiers, but the idea that they might be a playoff team with Mike Vrabel, a coach who’d been successful in the past with the Titans, coaching Drake Maye wasn’t entirely out of the question, even if no one could have predicted they’d be this good. At the very least, the fact that you considered Patriots-Bills good enough to put on Sunday night suggests that it should be good enough to put in a marquee window under other circumstances. It’s the same frustration I had with Seahawks-Rams: if it’s good enough for a featured window, it’s good enough to get better treatment on a Sunday afternoon than this.

To be sure, CBS and Fox are not obligated to put every divisional game that’s a rematch of a primetime game on in the late doubleheader window – leaving aside that that’s not always possible, they tend to prioritize marquee teams and big markets in the late afternoon window more than the primetime packages. I think CBS’ streak of putting Ravens-Bengals on at 1 PM and not 4:25 is disrespecting the appeal of two of the marquee quarterbacks in the league, though Burrow’s injury issues and the Bengals’ struggles to put together a good record in the first two-thirds of the season has muted its appeal in recent years from what it should be on paper. But the league should at least be able to minimize how many of those games are trapped on the late singleheader or air on the same network in the same window in the same week.

I don’t blame Fox or the NFL for not making Seahawks-Rams a lead late doubleheader game considering the name value and expected quality of the Seahawks, and while I’d have preferred if it had been scheduled for a doubleheader week so Fox could maximize its distribution if desired, I understand that that might not universally be possible. But in a general sense, any divisional matchups that are guaranteed to CBS and Fox because the other half is scheduled for a primetime window – not those scheduled for Week 18 or the other Sunday afternoon network, unless it’s the other network’s lead late game – need to be distributed as evenly as possible throughout the season, and if any week must have three such games, one of them has to be the lead late doubleheader game, rather than the lead late game being a non-divisional game that’s still Tier 2 or 3. (Preferably, this would be the case if there were just two such games, but that might be too common to be avoidable.) Two years ago I suggested the league should schedule all divisional games as evenly as possible, which I recognized even then was probably a bridge too far for them, but it really is these rematches of primetime games that represent the biggest unforced error the league potentially makes in constructing the schedule.

When I put together my mock schedules, the only rule I have regarding how divisional matchups are scheduled goes the other way: a game that’s the lead late game on CBS or Fox needs to have its return match on another network. That’s because the goal of my mock schedules is to maximize distribution of the games expected to be best and avoid situations where the league would want to pull a flex if the season played out exactly as expected, not to minimize potential heartache involving lower-tier or untiered games placed in primetime windows just to fill out the schedule; the rule that all Tier 1 games and West Coast Tier 2 games must be placed in featured windows, and that any game in the top three tiers must at minimum be named lead 1 PM games with no other competition of that level, would be sufficient to avoid this particular situation, and West Coast Tier 3 games that don’t make any featured windows are actually required to go in the late singleheader, it’s just that they have to go in loaded weeks where there isn’t room for them in the main featured windows, or at least where the singleheader network has a bigger game to justify the late window’s lower distribution.

This situation, though, has me wondering if I should expand the purpose of the mock schedule to identify weeks and windows for the return match of every divisional matchup I place in primetime to ensure an even distribution of those games and avoid situations like this week. (Note that I placed Bills-Patriots on TNF and Rams-Seahawks in Week 18 without identifying specific weeks for their return matches, meaning if the league had adopted my mock schedule both games would likely have played, or been expected to play, second fiddle in their respective weeks and Rams-Seahawks would likely have been trapped as a late singleheader or secondary late doubleheader game.) I count 17 such games on my mock schedule, just enough for one return match a week, though realistically I’d have to schedule two in some weeks, and it takes me long enough to put together the mock schedule as it is that I don’t know if I’d be able to fit this in on top of that. But it might be worth considering if I have time 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 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.

Week 16 final schedule commentary (Week 13 post): Patriots-Ravens being flexed in over Jaguars-Broncos, after the Jaguars won and the Ravens lost, is stunning to me, to the point that if it came in the SNF-only flex scheduling era it would probably make my 10 Worst Flex Scheduling Decisions; as was pointed out, the Jaguars and Broncos combined have fewer losses than the Ravens alone. It makes me wonder if I’m underrating just how much the Jags are ratings poison, which could have an impact on the Week 17 Monday night game; I’ve been thinking it’s been Jags-Colts’ to lose (most of the below section was written before the flex came in), but it’s possible it’s going to be whichever one of the Saturday games doesn’t go to Saturday no matter what the teams’ records are after next week. Frankly I wonder if Jags-Broncos would have gotten the nod if Travis Hunter was healthy, adding some star power to the matchup.

There are two scenarios in which this makes sense beyond the Jags being just that undesirable. One is if Fox protected Jaguars-Broncos over Chargers-Cowboys, after which the league would have gone with the game involving a team with a half-game worse record than the Cowboys but which has a better shot at the playoffs with the Steelers’ mediocre record. But it makes almost zero sense to me that Fox would protect a game trapped in the late singleheader over the almighty Cowboys – unless they’re allowed to submit protections with such little notice that they guessed the league wouldn’t take Chargers-Cowboys over Patriots-Ravens anyway. Even then, it would underscore the point I made in the opening section about how CBS and Fox want games with meaning for their fanbases even if they have limited distribution. (Also, the former tentative game in Bengals-Dolphins now becomes CBS’ least bad early window game as the only one not involving a team with double-digit losses, although both teams are far enough outside the playoffs that Bills-Browns and Chiefs-Titans are likely to get better distribution and the Eagle and Harlan teams. If the league is concerned about maximizing the quality of games in the singleheader and both doubleheader windows, either flexible Fox game would have been a better choice.)

The other explanation I saw speculated about on The Site Formerly Known As Twitter was that the league wants to maximize the Broncos’ rest and preparation before their Christmas night clash with the Chiefs. That feels like it comes from absolutely nowhere, almost the sort of thing I would only associate with a certain commenter of mine. I have seen people talk about Sunday night teams having short rest before playing on Thanksgiving, but that’s because they had to play on Thanksgiving the week after a Sunday night game. In 2018 the Bears hosted the Vikings on Sunday night and went on the road four days later to play the Lions, just as the Broncos would have had to follow up a Sunday night home game with a Thursday game, except the Broncos’ Thursday game would be a night game and not the Lions’ Thanksgiving game that had the earliest kickoff time of any game until it was moved to 1 PM ET this year. And the Bears went on to win both games, so it’s not as though it was such a disaster for them as to warrant a change in the league’s flexing rules!

However, I can’t fully rule out a change in the league’s flexing priorities or rules here. On Monday I got in an argument on The Site Formerly Known As Twitter with someone who claimed that if I had just known the flexing rules I obviously would have known this was going to happen, noob. This person never provided any actual evidence that a Jaguars-Broncos flex would have been against the rules, and despite their telling me to “follow [their] feed” never mentioned this flexing situation outside of replies where someone simply following them wouldn’t necessarily see them (and what I do see on their feed suggests they’re a Broncos fan in New England so might be led more by their personal biases and frustration than any actual info they have, and even in replies I don’t see them predicting CBS’ unprotected game would be flexed until the day the decision came down, but I do see them suggesting CBS would protect Patriots-Ravens which further casts doubt on them knowing anything).

But for all I know there is an actual rule involved here that me and everyone I know who obsessively looks for information on how flexing works missed (or that they didn’t miss and I would know about if the 506sports Discord hadn’t been paywalled at the start of the season), and if that’s the case it’ll affect how I approach things going forward. I already note when teams play on Thursday the following week on my charts because that does rule them out of a Monday flex, but I might also have to further note when they’re the road team in the Thursday game. (If this rule does exist, though, I think the league would have pulled a six-day hold if the Bengals had beaten the Bills and left open the possibility of sticking with Bengals-Dolphins if the Bengals pulled the sweep over the Ravens.) Hopefully whatever actually happened here gets reported (by a reliable source with actual inside information) at some point so I know how to adjust my expectations going forward.

2025 Week 17 Flex Schedule Watch Through Week 14 | morganwick.com
	8-5	9-4
	9-4	9-4	6-day flex
	10-3	4-9
2 of These Games to Saturday 12/27
	8-5	9-4
	10-3	7-6
	6-7	9-3-1
	3-10	4-9
Sunday Afternoon Flex Candidates (12/28)
	9-4	8-5
	7-6	6-7

Week 17: After wondering if I might be calling Jags-Colts moving to Monday night with a full two weeks to spare before the deadline two weeks ago, I actually thought it was decidedly unlikely that I’d be making that call even now when I made last week’s post, but the Ravens losing would seem to snuff out any doubt there – although things got more complicated than that pretty quickly. I wrote a lot of analysis about various scenarios that might happen for this space and wound up heavily rewriting most of it shortly before posting this because of how my analysis of what might happen changed.

I had said that Jags-Colts would move to Monday night as long as it was in the top three standalone windows, because the league would want to put the three best games in featured standalone windows, and I still think that, for the most part (more on that in a bit). But I also said that if things shook out such that Jags-Colts, Seahawks-Panthers, and Ravens-Chargers all involved teams at 8-6, the league would pick out two games for the Saturday doubleheader and then take the game left behind for Monday night. When the league has taken a game from the Saturday pool to backfill a weak Sunday night game they’ve typically taken the best available game, because Sunday night is a marquee window and the Saturday NFL Network games have just been sort of there. That’s less the case now that the league has an actual rights-paying partner airing one of the Saturday games, but the point is that I had several paragraphs written in this section before I even considered the possibility of Texans-Chargers being the game that moved to Monday night.

That’s especially relevant because neither Seahawks-Panthers nor Ravens-Packers would be a particularly good choice for Monday night, perhaps especially in the scenario where things break down best for the worse team in each game. Both teams are one of two realistic contenders for the worst division in their respective conferences, and both play the other realistic contender in Week 18, so scheduling either one for Monday night means greatly complicating the Week 18 schedule and, more importantly, disqualifying them from moving to Saturday (and Panthers-Bucs seems particularly likely to suffer the fate of Titans-Jaguars 2022). So while putting a Saturday game on Monday night would minimize the moving parts on that week‘s schedule, neither Seahawks-Panthers nor Ravens-Packers would be a good choice for optimizing the Week 18 schedule – which the league hasn’t always taken into account in the past, but the situation here is cut and dried enough that they should. And the division is the only realistic path for either team to make the playoffs, meaning division title games are their respective only hopes, so that pretty much keeps them out of the running for Monday night.

That leaves Jags-Colts and Texans-Chargers as the only realistic Monday night options, and it’s notable that they actually have identical pairs of records. For the reasons I already laid out, I would give the edge to Jags-Colts in most circumstances since Texans-Chargers can move to Saturday and Jags-Colts can’t, and at worst Jags-Colts can be matched by Seahawks-Panthers and stay ahead of Ravens-Packers. The exception would be if the Jags win and Colts lose this week. If the teams both win or both lose, the Colts would be at worst two games back with two to play and would hold the division record tiebreaker if they came back to tie the Jags, but if the Jags take a two-game lead this week they can clinch the division the following week and render Jags-Colts mostly meaningless, except possibly for seeding for the Jags. In that case the nod would go to Texans-Chargers.

If it is Jags-Colts that goes to Monday and Texans-Chargers that goes to Saturday, that leaves the question of whether it’s Seahawks-Panthers or Ravens-Packers that joins the latter, and that’s where things get complicated. If the Ravens win and Panthers lose the better name value of Ravens-Packers would surely get the nod; if the reverse happens, the gap between the teams would be too much to ignore and Seahawks-Panthers would make the move. But what happens if both teams win or both teams lose? Would the league look past the team with the better record to put in the game with better name value with an actual paying rightsholder having one of the games?

The league does try to ensure that the Saturday games have playoff implications, for both teams if possible, so name value is arguably less important than it would be earlier in the season. Given the situation the Panthers and Ravens are in fighting for their respective divisions, a lot may depend as much on what the Steelers and Bucs do as the teams themselves. The Panthers have a leg up in that regard in that they’re tied for the division lead while the Ravens’ loss puts them a game back at the moment; as such, the Ravens would need a Steelers loss and Bucs win to be equally as close to the playoffs as the Panthers. (In fact, when I initially updated the Playoff Picture graphics shortly after the Bucs game ended Sunday without properly updating my Cheat Sheet, I screwed up and thought the Bucs and Panthers were tied on common games and didn’t mentally update the conference record I was looking at for the Bucs’ loss, which led to me putting the Panthers in the division lead based on strength of victory.) The Bucs and Panthers haven’t played yet so any other games the Panthers play won’t affect their playoff chances much; on the other hand, the Ravens just played the Steelers and lost, which means even if they are equally as far from the playoffs, the Ravens would already be down in head-to-head and need to make up ground in the division record tiebreaker.

If both teams win they should remain very much alive for their respective divisions, in no worse position than they’re in now. Both NFC South teams have identical 2-1 division records, play division opponents this week, each other in Weeks 16 and 18, and non-division opponents in Week 17. If the Panthers win and Bucs lose this week, and the Panthers beat the Bucs the following week, they clinch the division with an unbeatable edge in the division record tiebreaker, and Seahawks-Panthers only matters for seeding on the Panthers’ part. If both teams win this week their Week 17 games are guaranteed to have some meaning; the Bucs would win the common games tiebreaker so if they beat the Panthers a win or Panthers loss would suffice to clinch the division, but that would still give Seahawks-Panthers some meaning for the Panthers, while if the Panthers beat the Bucs they’d come into Week 17 with a chance to clinch the division with a win and Bucs loss. As for the Ravens, beating the Bengals would suffice to ensure they can do no worse than tie in the division record if they win Week 18, and they’d hold the edge in common games; even if the Steelers win, and win again while the Ravens lose the following week, the Ravens would still have an outside chance of catching the Steelers and winning the division. All told, I think Ravens-Packers would have the edge.

If both teams lose, the question of whether they’re still alive for the playoffs has bearing on their selection for Saturday. If the Ravens and Steelers both lose they still can’t be worse than two back with two to play and the common games tiebreaker in hand, but if the Steelers win they have a shot to clinch the following week. Similarly, if the Bucs and Panthers both lose and the Bucs win the following week, the Panthers would need a win and a Bucs loss to set up the rematch for the division title (otherwise the Bucs’ common-games edge becomes too much to overcome), but if the Bucs beat the Falcons a win over the Panthers sews up the division. So if both division leaders win and both of the trailing teams lose, the situation might end up depending on what the games could mean for the Seahawks and Packers, similar to Chargers-Patriots last year. I think the nod still goes to Ravens-Packers in that case, but things could develop in unexpected ways.

With so many moving parts, I can’t make much of a prediction at the moment. I do think Jags-Colts moves to Monday night if the Colts win or Jags lose, though what happened with the Week 16 flex gives me pause, but if the Jags take a two-game lead over the Colts – the most likely scenario given their respective opponents – that gives the edge to Texans-Chargers, with Seahawks-Panthers and Ravens-Packers both moving to Saturday. I also think, as mentioned, that if one of the Ravens and Panthers win while the other loses, the team that wins is headed to Saturday, and if they both win Ravens-Packers gets the nod, but if they both lose, and Jags-Colts does get flexed into Monday night leaving Texans-Chargers to take one of the Saturday spots, the situation becomes harder to call. I was going to make a contingent prediction for the Monday night game, while leaving the Saturday situation for a Last-Minute Remarks post in the event the Colts do win while the Jags lose, but then the league threw another curveball at me in the form of a Wednesday night flex announcement.

Actual decisions:

• Houston Texans @ Los Angeles Chargers to Saturday on NFLN; Baltimore Ravens @ Green Bay Packers to Saturday on Peacock. This is the sort of move you’d expect based on name value alone, that the league thinks the name value edge of the Ravens and Packers so outweighs that of the Seahawks and Panthers that they’re not even going to wait for the weekend’s results. (And they can do that; last year I was able to get a Last-Minute Remarks post in with Saturday predictions.) I would think this presages the league flexing Jags-Colts to Monday night, but…
• No changes to MNF. The press release linked above claims to be a “final” Week 17 schedule yet still has Rams-Falcons on MNF, which frankly, is more shocking than the Sunday night flex. At least that was actually a flex; if you told me that between Week 16 Sunday night and Week 17 Monday night, one of the tentatives was going to keep its spot, I absolutely would have guessed Bengals-Dolphins. Frankly this is a slap in the face to both the Jaguars and Panthers; at least Seahawks-Panthers ends up on CBS where it might well get Nantz and Romo, so at least some audience will have their choice of both games, but for ESPN and the league to stick with a Falcons team that’s eliminated from the playoffs when there are games perfectly capable of moving to Monday is, frankly, indefensible. Even more than what happened with Dolphins-Steelers, it makes Monday night flexing feel superfluous.
  
  The one defense you could make is a similar one to the one I made to rule out Seahawks-Panthers and Ravens-Packers from Monday night; namely, that both Jags-Colts and Texans-Chargers have the problem that Colts-Texans has a decent chance of being a candidate for a standalone window, and that window has a very high chance of being Saturday. That’s actually a pretty good reason, but it ultimately underscores the problem with the Week 17 Monday night game even existing and how it complicates setting the Week 18 schedule, and it makes me wonder if the league intentionally scheduled a team expected to be mediocre in that window to minimize the chances it would complicate the Week 18 schedule logistics. (The other option is what a commenter on last week’s post suggested, that ESPN just wants to have a chance to showcase the Rams that much, but that still feels like a slap in the face to the Jags and Panthers.)

Week 18: If Week 18 were this week Panthers-Bucs and Ravens-Steelers would be division title games while Colts-Texans and Lions-Bears would be for the last wild card spots in their respective conferences, creating a situation that one might have thought was eliminated with the introduction of the Saturday doubleheader: CBS or Fox getting guaranteed win-and-in, lose-and-out games. I was going to go into more detail about the week’s games compared to past weeks, but it was Wednesday night by the time I even finished the other sections and the Week 17 flex announcement made me want to just get this done as quickly as possible; completing the Week 17 section did clarify a lot of the situations surrounding the two main division title games, which is especially important with the Bucs playing on Thursday as it gives me that much of a head start putting together the spreadsheet to calculate the percentage chances Panthers-Bucs is at least a candidate for Sunday night (even though as mentioned they’re highly unlikely to actually get the nod).

The Chargers have a tough schedule the next few weeks, but their win over the Eagles does at least raise the possibility that they can still be a playoff-caliber team without Joe Alt (their best Alt-less win before then was against the Steelers), and winning the first game against Denver means they only need to make up one game for Chargers-Broncos to be a division title game. With an undefeated division record, they could even clinch the division before Week 18 if they win their next three while the Broncos lose their next three. The only other games realistically in the running for Sunday night, besides the ones in the above paragraph, fall into the “win and in, lose and fall behind the winner of another game” category, specifically Titans-Jaguars, Packers-Vikings, and Cardinals-Rams. Seahawks-Niners could end up deciding the order of finish between them, but unless the Rams completely collapse the next few weeks it’s probably destined for Saturday.

Most other games have at least a chance of ending up on Saturday as well; unless the Bengals win out the Dolphins are likely to be in the back of the AFC wild card tiebreaker order, meaning Dolphins-Patriots is likely to be in the running if a) the Pats’ seed is already locked in, b) the Broncos’ or Chargers’ seed is already locked in, c) Chargers-Broncos is a division title game, or d) the Pats could fall behind the yet-to-be-decided AFC South winner. (If the Patriots haven’t yet locked up the division, the Bills would also need to still have at least seeding, and possibly a playoff spot at all, to play for.) Browns-Bengals and Chiefs-Raiders are also games involving teams near the back of the wild card pecking order, with Chiefs-Raiders likely to get the nod for an earlier time slot than Dolphins-Patriots only if the Dolphins are already eliminated or the Pats have nothing to play for. (Even then, if they both move to Saturday Chiefs-Raiders would get the late slot for being on the West Coast and given the attractiveness of the Chiefs.)

In the NFC, Cowboys-Giants would be difficult to keep ESPN’s hands off of if the Cowboys are alive for anything at all, and past experience suggests that even if the Eagles’ seed would be locked in with a Cowboys loss, the league would be fine with that with Washington having nothing to play for. Trumps-Eagles could be a candidate for a Saturday spot itself, especially if the Cowboys are still alive for a wild card spot, but the main remaining candidate for a Saturday spot might be Jets-Bills if the Bills collapse, are still alive for the division (and the Pats would still have seeding to play for), or if the pickings are slim enough that a game with wild card seeding implications only is the best the league can give ESPN.

More in-depth analysis, and percentage chance of games being eligible for Sunday night, coming next week. I want to say the situations should be fairly straightforward, but there is a chance the more marginal Sunday night candidates could bedevil me.