NFL Flexible Scheduling Watch: Week 15

The Jacksonville Jaguars are the red-headed stepchild of the NFL.

The league’s decision to put an expansion franchise in Jacksonville was considered questionable even in 1995 – the expansion group had actually pulled themselves out of the running a year earlier – and might not have happened if St. Louis had an ownership group that had its act together, with Jacksonville being announced a full month after the Carolina Panthers. Any expectation that Jacksonville would grow large enough to justify the league’s investment didn’t pan out to the degree needed, and today, the Jaguars not only represent the fourth-smallest market in the league, but in all of professional sports – but unlike New Orleans, Buffalo, and Green Bay, don’t get to rely on a significant chunk of their state to pull in fans, and have never gotten the chance to pull in a significant fanbase beyond that.

For many years, the only thing keeping the Jags from being in the running to move to Los Angeles seemed to be a 30-year lease with an ironclad clause making it basically impossible to terminate it early, and the Jags seemed to be running out the clock until the lease ran out and they could move to a bigger market, especially once they effectively made London their second home. That ended once Shad Khan bought the team and committed to keeping the team in Jacksonville, eventually securing a new stadium deal, but one that, according to polls, residents of the city aren’t entirely happy with. Jacksonville has embraced the Jaguars more than Las Vegas has embraced the Raiders (#LARaidersVegasChargers), and there are plenty of worse markets when it comes to fan passion, but the team still doesn’t pull the numbers you’d want to justify having a team in a market of its size. (In the year the linked tweet covers, the three teams in smaller markets than the Jaguars all drew more than double the household rating, including the Packers in Milwaukee.)

As far as the league is concerned, the Jaguars seem to be the team they regret, the team with the smallest fanbase and the least amount of juice to justify putting them in featured windows. Over the last three years, the only Tier 1 games not to be placed in featured windows other than Ravens-Bengals have been Jaguars games in 2023, including a game against the mighty Chiefs the league evidently considered the most disposable of the Chiefs’ games against quality opponents. Last week the league announced two flexes in three days, and in both cases they passed up games involving the 9-4 Jaguars for flexing. Each decision was at least somewhat explicable on its own – maybe Fox protected Jaguars-Broncos over Chargers-Cowboys figuring the league wouldn’t flex in the latter, maybe there’s a rule prohibiting the Broncos from being flexed into Sunday night the week before a Thursday road game, maybe the prospect of Colts-Texans being a Saturday game Week 18 made the league rule out flexing in Jaguars-Colts (to say nothing of the Colts playing on Monday night the previous week, which was an oversight for me not to note on the table at any point). But on the surface, taken together, they sent an unmistakable message about just how little the league and its network partners see the Jaguars.

When I link new posts on Mastodon and Bluesky, I go beyond simply posting the title of each post and instead write short blurbs teasing and previewing them. For last week’s Flex Schedule Watch post, I said that the week’s developments seemed to show that the Jaguars were the Bizarro Cowboys: whereas the Cowboys would never be flexed out of primetime, the Jaguars were doomed never to be flexed in. The last time the Jaguars were flexed into a featured window still felt like a slap in the face: a Titans-Jaguars division title game punted to ESPN on Saturday of Week 18 in favor of a Lions-Packers game where the Lions were at risk of being, and were, eliminated before game time. I don’t know if the Jaguars have ever been flexed into primetime where there was an existing tentative game.

To be sure, it’s not that it’s surprising that the league treats the Jags as ratings poison; I’ve effectively kept the Jags out of the running for flex spots even when their record would otherwise justify it. As far as I can tell, before this month I’d only once predicted a Jaguars game would be flexed into primetime: Week 8 of 2023, and that was under the assumption that Fox would protect Rams-Cowboys. The league decided to stick with a game involving a 1-5 Bears team, and just like with last week’s flexes, the decision was explicable on its own, if only because flexing in any game other than Rams-Cowboys would have involved some crossflexes between networks, and the league had other options that were clearly better than the tentative, so it’s possible the league just didn’t want to deal with the logistical hurdles any flex would involve. That convinced me that the league would never use an early flex for any reason other than a star player being hurt, only for that to be disproven the following year when the league flexed out a game involving… the Jaguars. But now I have to wonder: how much of this decision was because the league wanted to avoid flexing in the Jags, which boasted the best available alternative game, at all costs?

I’ve said before that the league’s claims that flex scheduling means that teams can “play their way into primetime” was a sick joke for some teams that had much higher hurdles to “play their way into primetime” than others. But it may well be that for the Jaguars, it’s an out-and-out lie.

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 18: If Week 18 were this week Panthers-Bucs and Ravens-Steelers would be division title games, but all the other playoff spots would probably be locked in, likely leaving the second ESPN game to be one with division or first-round bye implications. But there’s actually a decent chance that multiple games would be suitable for Sunday night, allowing ESPN to get whatever games aren’t chosen for NBC; Ravens-Steelers has a better than 2/3 chance to be for the division, while Panthers-Bucs and Lions-Bears are both over 40%, Chargers-Broncos is over 25%, and the NFC West games are each over 10%. That’s not even getting into whether any of those games would be suitable for Saturday but not Sunday night, though the Saturday situation might be a bit thornier past that.

If I had to guess, the preference NBC and the league would have for potential Sunday night games would go in this order:

• Steelers-Ravens: Historic rivalry, but what gives it the edge over the game immediately below is the prospect of it being Aaron Rodgers’ final game, plus the league would want to avoid putting the Bears or Niners on SNF in consecutive weeks
• Lions-Bears: Classic rivalry from one of the league’s most popular divisions
• Seahawks-Niners: Somewhat heated rivalry that could be for the division or a playoff spot (see below for a scenario where this could be picked over Lions-Bears)
• Chargers-Broncos (as a division title game): A division title and home playoff game on the line; I might have this underrated because it wouldn’t put a team on SNF in consecutive weeks
• Colts-Texans: If they’re both fighting for the division or the last playoff spot
• Panthers-Bucs: As I’ve said in recent weeks, this game seems especially likely to get the “Titans-Jaguars 2022” treatment, punted to Saturday while a game that may or may not only be meaningful for one team gets the Sunday night nod because of the bigger names involved
• Cardinals-Rams: LA’s enthusiasm for its local teams seems kind of muted, with SoFi Stadium infamous for having mostly road team fans in the stands (though that’s more the case with the Chargers), but the level of interest here should nonetheless be higher than for the games below
• Chargers-Broncos (as a game with wild card implications for the Chargers alone): Less interest in the Chargers than the Rams and the sight of a Broncos team resting their starters is not one the league wants to inflict in a national primetime game to end the regular season, though I’m willing to admit if I’m wrong
• Titans-Jaguars: see below

That’s my assessment of the level of preference the league and NBC have, but what are the chances they’d actually get the best available games? Note that in most cases the below percentages are independent of one another – they measure how likely a game is to be eligible for a Sunday night move, not how likely it is to actually be picked – but for most games I’ve also calculated how likely a game is to not only be eligible for a Sunday night move, but to actually be the most attractive game based on the above list (assuming the league doesn’t pull another “Packers-Lions 2022” and pick a game that I wouldn’t normally actually consider a viable option, but every game on the above list from the Chargers-Broncos division title game on up should be picked if they’re an option). Percentages are based on ESPN’s Matchup Predictor as of Thursday afternoon.

Potential Sunday night games

• Chances of Steelers-Ravens: 69 percent. The Steelers face the Browns in Week 17, while this game is the Ravens’ only remaining divisional game; the Ravens would also hold any common games tiebreaker. The Ravens only need to maintain the current gap with the Steelers, but this would also be a division title game if the Ravens had a one-game lead over the Steelers, so if the Steelers lose and Ravens win this week, their Week 17 games against the Browns and Packers, respectively, are meaningless except for potential seeding and maybe a remote chance at a wild card berth. (So naturally CBS is sending Nantz and Romo to Steelers-Browns over Seahawks-Panthers.)
• Chances of Lions-Bears: 40 percent. The Lions won the first game between them so the Bears having a one-game lead would suffice for this to determine the order of finish between them. That means the Lions only need to make up a one-game gap, while the NFC West teams stay ahead of both of them, though the league could still pick this game if there’s a risk of it only being for seeding and there aren’t any appealing options. The Bears and Niners currently hold the same record and play Week 17, so at minimum the Niners should beat the Bears. Should that happen, the Packers lose their next two, and the Lions win their next two, this becomes a division title game. Otherwise, if the Bears beat the Packers and the Rams-Seahawks loser loses the following week, the Bears would hold a conference record tiebreaker over that team, so either the Rams-Seahawks loser needs to win the following week or the Packers need to beat the Bears. Note that if the Bears lose their next two, the Lions win their next two, and the Packers lose to the Ravens, Packers-Vikings determines whether the Packers win the division or whether this is a division title game, but this game becoming win-and-in, lose-and-out for both teams regardless of that result should trump that. (I kind of suspect the Matchup Predictor giving the Packers a 58.6% chance of beating the Bears might not fully take into account the Packers’ injuries, which would bring these chances down considerably.)
• Chances of Panthers-Bucs: 45 percent; chances of actual selection: 6 percent. In the event the two teams split this week and Week 18, the Bucs would have the edge on common games. Obviously if this week’s winner wins next week while the loser loses, that would clinch the division for the winner right then and there, but if the Bucs win the Panthers would actually need to beat the Seahawks and have the Dolphins beat the Bucs.
• Chances of Chargers-Broncos: 27 percent; chances of actual selection: 5 percent. The Chargers would hold the head-to-head sweep with a win, so they only need to make up one game on the Broncos over the next two weeks for this to be a division title game – the problem being that the Broncos are favored in each of their next two games (and Matchup Predictor might not be factoring in the Chiefs being without Mahomes and likely resting most of the rest of their starters) while the Chargers’ next two games are considered coin flips. There’s also a chance this game is win-and-in, lose-and-out for the Chargers relative to the loser of the Colts-Texans game; if they lose their next two while the Colts win their next two, they’d have lost to both of the participants in that game, so if the Texans lose to the Raiders, the Chargers would be behind both teams in the wild card pecking order but would leapfrog the loser with a win. But that might also require the Broncos’ seed to be locked in. That means the Broncos need to avoid losing ground to the Patriots, avoid a loss to the Jaguars unless they win and the Jaguars lose the following week, and avoid a loss to the Chiefs unless the Bills lose to the Eagles the same week or otherwise can’t catch up to them.
• Chances of Seahawks-Niners: 15 percent; chances of actual selection: 5 percent. With the Lions’ loss this can’t be a guaranteed win-and-in, lose-and-out game for a wild card spot, so it’s division title game or bust here. The Niners got the win over the Seahawks in the first game and can do no worse than tie on divisional record, so the Seahawks having a one-game lead would suffice to determine the order of finish between them. At minimum, the Seahawks need to beat the Rams this week, which would suffice to give the Niners the division record tiebreaker over the Rams should they finish tied, as well as allow the Niners to win a three-way tie should such happen with the Niners beating the Seahawks, so the Niners would just need to make up a single game on the Rams. Should the Rams win and Seahawks lose next week, and both teams win Week 18, the Rams would hold the edge on common games, so you’d need either the Seahawks to win their next two (requiring the Niners to do the same) or the Rams to lose their next two. Note that if this game is guaranteed to be a division title game entering the Week 17 Sunday night game, while Bears-Lions’ suitability depends on the result of that game, Seahawks-Niners could get the nod just so it can be announced as soon as possible.
• Chances of Cardinals-Rams: 11 percent; chances of actual selection: 3 percent. This would be a scenario where a Rams win would win the division but a loss would drop them behind the Seahawks-Niners winner. Even if the Seahawks beat the Rams and the teams have the same result Week 18, forcing a tie in division record, the Rams would still hold the edge in common games, so those two teams would need to enter Week 18 tied. The tiebreaker situation with the Niners is more complicated. If the Rams beat the Seahawks and then both teams win Week 18, the Rams would hold the edge on common games in a scenario involving the Niners beating the Bears, but if the Niners lose to the Bears yet manage to tie the Rams anyway, they’d hold the conference record tiebreaker. And if the Seahawks beat the Rams, or the Rams lose and Niners win Week 18, then the Niners would hold the division record tiebreaker, potentially over both teams. So the Niners would either have to be a game behind the Seahawks and Rams, or tied with them after beating the Bears and the Rams beating the Seahawks. What this means is that the Rams-Seahawks winner should lose the following week, the Rams-Seahawks loser should win the following week, and the Niners either need to match that 1-1 record over the next two weeks if the Seahawks beat the Rams, or if the Rams win they just need to beat the Colts and then the Bears result doesn’t matter.
• Chances of Colts-Texans: 4 percent, assuming Steelers-Ravens can’t happen; chances of actual selection: 2 percent. If the Colts lose to the Jaguars next week the Texans would hold the edge on division record even if the Colts beat them, so the Texans would need to lose the other two games while the Colts win this week. If they beat the Jaguars, Houston would hold the edge on conference record with a win in either of their next two games. So no matter what, you’d either need the teams to be tied or have the Colts take a one-game lead, meaning no more than one Colts loss or Texans win – the problem being that the Colts are playing two playoff teams while the Texans are playing the lowly Raiders this week.
  
  Should both teams enter at 10-6, an additional complication is that Houston has beaten the Bills while the Colts have beaten the Chargers, so those two teams need to not lose their next two; if the Colts win their next two while the Texans lose their next two, the Bills would hold the edge over the Colts on common games, so they could still lose their next two without opening the possibility of either team still making the playoffs with a loss. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a possibility of the AFC North loser having a record as good as 10-7 (if the Ravens win out and the Steelers win their next two before losing to the Ravens); the Steelers would have a head-to-head win over the Colts in that instance, so if the Colts split while the Texans lose their next two, the Steelers and Ravens can’t both win their next two. (Of course, that part’s academic because if that were to happen Steelers-Ravens would have the edge as the Sunday night game regardless, and this factor would be harmless for a Colts-Texans game being played on Saturday. Still, this is why the baseline percentage still assumes Steelers-Ravens doesn’t happen.)
• Chances of Titans-Jaguars: 5 percent. Calling this right now: this ain’t happening, and if the scenario that sets it up happens, it’s being played on Saturday if not in the afternoon on CBS, as at minimum the scenario that sets it up would also set up Colts-Texans as a win-and-in, lose-and-out game barring a collapse by the Chargers or Bills. Even if such a collapse happened, the league would much rather pull a “Titans-Jaguars 2022” than put on a game where the Bizarro Cowboys play to win the division against a team that might be playing for the first overall pick; if worst came to worst they’d put on Colts-Texans even if it turned out to be for seeding alone. But for completeness: Jacksonville would lose a division record tiebreaker to the Texans, so if they maintain their current gap a loss and Texans win would send the division to the Texans. The Colts would also hold a division record tiebreaker if they beat the Jags and Texans while the Jaguars lost again to the Titans. So this would require the Colts to beat the Jaguars after the two teams had the same result the previous week, and Houston to match the Jaguars’ record. This actually comes out to a higher baseline chance than that recorded for Colts-Texans because I’m not assuming anything about the Bills, Chargers, or Steelers creating a scenario where both teams could either make or miss the playoffs.

Potential Saturday games

The good news for the league is that there’s actually a decent chance that multiple Sunday candidate games end up coming to fruition, in which case any excess games can usually be punted to Saturday. The bad news is that, unless the Ravens run the table and the Steelers win their next two, there are only two teams outside the playoffs fighting for wild card spots, one in each conference, both of which are playing teams in the playoffs Week 18, meaning a lot of the crutches I might otherwise lean on to fill out the Saturday schedule aren’t available. There aren’t any long-shot teams in the back of the tiebreaker order the league can go to, and if multiple wild card spots are available in a conference, going with a team that’s not playing another playoff contender could leave one or both teams in the game between two playoff contenders without anything to play for.

I think I’ve developed a bit better sense of what games the league considers acceptable to move to Saturday; generally, games I wouldn’t approve of putting on Saturday in the past have been deemed acceptable to the league as long as any teams at risk of having nothing to play for aren’t playing teams that have something to play for. This didn’t stop them from putting on Chiefs-Raiders in 2022, but it at least helps to explain everything else. But I also would like to think the league would still prefer games that don’t affect whether any team has something worth playing for as long as they’re attractive enough to be worth it, so next week I’ll note scenarios that would make a game completely safe in addition to scenarios that only avoid giving teams unfair advantages. All of the games in the above list should also be considered candidates for Saturday even if they’re not listed below.

• Packers-Vikings: See above for a scenario where this game determines whether the Packers win the division or whether Bears-Lions decides it. Otherwise, unless the Lions win their next two and one of the NFC West teams loses its next two, the Packers need to hold the division lead for this to be an option, which means at minimum they need to beat the Bears this week, and then avoid losing while the Bears win the following week. (If Bears-Lions ends up being a division title game and the Packers and Niners both lose their next two, they need to play at the same time, or alternately Seahawks-Niners can be picked for Saturday.) The ideal scenario is for the Packers and Bears to both win or both lose while the Lions make up a game on the Bears over the course of the two weeks; then the Packers are playing to potentially lock up the division but the Bears and Lions are playing to decide the order of finish between them regardless, even if the Lions can’t win the division themselves. The question then becomes whether the league is worried about teams that might otherwise have been playing for the 1 seed resting, but if the Rams beat the Seahawks the league might be more willing to overlook their result the following week, while if the Seahawks win, they can’t lock up the division without locking up the 1 seed anyway.
• Trumps-Eagles: If the Eagles win their next two and the Rams-Seahawks winner loses the following week, the Eagles would actually hold a tiebreaker over either team, having beaten the Rams and holding a better conference record than the Seahawks, and could sneak into the first-round bye as a result. (Things get chintzy if the Niners could win the division, though.) If the Eagles lose their next two and the Cowboys win their next two there’s a chance Cowboys-Giants gets picked, but it feels iffy to me even with “Cowboys uber alles”; I think the league might prefer to have the Eagles try to finish off the division themselves than run the risk of the Eagles not playing anyone despite the question of whether they get the 3 or 4 seed still up in the air, and even that might assume that there’s an NFC South title game.
• Seahawks-Niners: Any scenario where this game would determine the order of finish between the teams, meaning they have the same record the next two weeks or the Niners are a game better, would suffice to qualify this for Saturday as long as there’s something worth playing for. That means, in addition to the division title game scenario, any scenario where the Rams are still alive for but haven’t won the division, or a scenario where both teams lose their next two and the Lions win their next two so the Niners and/or Seahawks are at risk of missing the playoffs entirely, assuming the Lions have something to play for regardless of the result. There may or may not be a scenario where Cardinals-Rams isn’t certain to be for the Rams to win the division but both the Seahawks and Niners have something to play for anyway, or where the Rams can clinch the first-round bye but the NFC North is still in flux, but the Rams playing on Monday night should disqualify them from a Saturday game.
• AFC East games: If the AFC East hasn’t been decided, either Jets-Bills or Dolphins-Patriots could be chosen if the team in the other game is still alive for the first-round bye. Jets-Bills could also be chosen if the Bills have fallen enough to be at risk for missing the playoffs, but either the Colts would have something to play for regardless of the result, or the Texans have locked up a playoff spot and have nothing to play for anyway.
• Chargers-Broncos: There are a few more options available for this game on Saturday, in particular if the Broncos haven’t locked up the 1 seed but the AFC East (or South) is still in flux; however, the scenario where this is win-and-in, lose-and-out for the Chargers just to get a wild card only works if Colts-Texans goes first.
• Colts-Texans: The scenarios where this determines the order of finish between the teams but it’s not suitable for Sunday night due to the Bills or Chargers collapsing would work here, though if it’s the Chargers collapsing, it would only work if the Chargers would get in over the loser of this game either way, or if the Broncos have locked up the division and whether or not they have the first-round bye.
• Titans-Jaguars: See above, but also a Jaguars win over the Broncos would put them in position to potentially get a first-round bye so long as the next week doesn’t see the Jaguars lose and Broncos win, which would be a twist on being in the back of the pecking order for wild cards. That would only work if the Broncos would have something to play for regardless, though. On the flip side, there are scenarios where a Jaguars win isn’t guaranteed to win them the division, but it won’t matter because Colts-Texans will determine the order of finish between them.