NFL Flexible Scheduling Watch: Week 16

It’s the last Flex Scheduling Watch of the year, the end of what has been a wild and unpredictable NFL regular season, and a much more interesting potential Week 18 schedule than we had last year. It’s also the end of a Flex Schedule Watch season that saw me experiment with the format of this feature, and the results have left me torn.

This year I rolled out new HTML tables to replace the old static images accompanying each week’s analysis, but thanks to WordPress’ sketchy table support, I accomplished very few of the goals I had hoped the new format would achieve. I had to manually edit each table’s HTML to get it to look the way I wanted, and not only did that lead to me still using the classic editor for the body of the post, I resorted to including custom CSS classes WordPress normally only uses for images in the classic editor to get the body text to look nice on mobile. Even then, after the Packers-Cowboys tie, the table didn’t quite fit right on mobile, in some cases even after I reduced the font size of the Packers and Cowboys’ records. On top of that, when I attempted to comment out games that were just on the wrong side of the borderline to appear in the table so I wouldn’t have to recreate those games’ rows from scratch if the teams in them started winning again, WordPress inserted massive amounts of blank space between each line in the commented-out section (lines WordPress created itself between each cell), which I had to clean up each time I wanted to update those games.

The end result was that, while the tables might have played nicer with screen readers, the main effect on my end was to increase the amount of work involved for little benefit. Even with all of that, though, the biggest reason I might ditch the tables is that WordPress interprets the hexadecimal codes in the HTML, which determines what color the right-hand column should be if it’s to fill the role of the Buzzmeter, as hashtags, resulting in the bottom of each post being filled with gobbledygook, and I don’t know if there’s any way to get it to stop.

And yet, there are some benefits to me that make me reluctant to ditch the tables entirely and go back to the static images. For one thing, the static images could sometimes be a pain to update themselves as I move games back and forth, especially with how borders interact with images and row heights in Excel. The former meant I had to create boxes separate from the actual cells to keep each game separate, which didn’t always move with the game they were supposed to; the latter meant that every cell in a row had to have the same width of their top and bottom borders, restricting my ability to arrange everything and requiring some weeks to be placed in a completely different set of rows from the others. The space I allocated for notes was also an awkward fit, and as more and more constraints made themselves apparent, became increasingly inadequate; if I do go back to static images, I’m probably going to rearrange some things to create more note space. And this is a relatively minor consideration, but I really like how the team logo images I created turned out and it would be a shame if I didn’t have any use for them after this season.

I might play around a little bit with table formatting after the season ends and see if there are some other ways to overcome these issues, or if updating to a new WordPress version or adding an add-on would help with hex codes being interpreted as tags, or if an add-on might make the whole process of editing the tables easier. If I can’t get it to be worth the effort, I’ll probably switch back to a modified version of the static images I was using before, but I might incorporate elements of this format in the new version.

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: This week’s games greatly shook up the race for the Week 18 standalone windows, with what had been the two most likely options for Sunday night taking big hits. Steelers-Ravens now needs both teams’ results to go its way, and Bears-Lions seems to be out of the running entirely. Panthers-Bucs, Chargers-Broncos, and Seahawks-Niners are now all better than 50/50 shots to be eligible for Sunday night (based on ESPN’s Matchup Predictor Tuesday morning at around 2:45 AM PT); I still think the Matchup Predictor is overvaluing the Chiefs which would drag down Chargers-Broncos’ chances considerably, but the Chargers only need to beat the Texans for the game to be for the division. Regardless, Seahawks-Niners is now the favorite for Sunday night. Sunday night candidates are mostly listed in the order that I gave for NBC and the NFL’s preferences in last week’s post.

Potential Sunday night games

• Steelers-Ravens to SNF if: The Ravens win AND the Steelers lose. Heading into the week there was a chance that Steelers-Ravens could be guaranteed to be a division title game with a week to spare, but instead the Ravens’ chances of making the playoffs are on life support, requiring them to win out and the Steelers to lose out. I still think that being a historic rivalry, not involving a team in the Week 17 Sunday night game, and potentially being Aaron Rodgers’ last game would all give this the edge over any alternatives. (Also helping: I suspect the winner of this game will play in the Monday night wild card game. Those have gone to the NFC’s 4/5 games I believe since their inception, but this year the AFC North brings more star power compared to the NFC South teams and their likely opponents, especially if the Bills end up with the 5 seed. Also, Fox has a second wild card game this year, and the last time that happened the NFC’s wild card games were stretched across all three days, which ultimately resulted in a divisional round game being played with a two-day rest gap between the teams; I think if the league can avoid that, it will, though Fox might be a little more accepting of taking an AFC game than back then.)
• Seahawks-Niners to SNF if: The Seahawks win AND the Niners win, OR the Rams lose AND (the Seahawks lose OR the Niners win), AND the Steelers-Ravens scenario doesn’t happen. As long as you don’t have the Seahawks win and Niners lose – admittedly a very real possibility – this game will determine the order of finish between them, so the question becomes how the Rams result would affect the stakes. A Rams loss would eliminate them from the division, making this a potential division title game, but if the Rams win and Seahawks lose this week the Rams would hold the common games tiebreaker over them, leaving the Seahawks fighting for wild card seeding at best if the Rams won again. Then the Bears-Niners result would determine how the division would be won, as explained below. Note that if the Seahawks lose, the games below might jump it in the pecking order so that the league can just punt the game to Saturday without waiting for the result of the Monday night game.
• Chargers-Broncos to SNF if: The Broncos lose OR the Chargers win, AND the above scenarios don’t happen. As a reminder, the Chargers beat the Broncos the first time these teams met so they only need to maintain the current gap between them, but Broncos-Chiefs could be a blowout in the Broncos’ favor and the Texans are going to be a very tall order for a banged-up Charger offense. But if it’s not an SNF game, this game might actually have a better chance to go to Saturday if it’s not a division title game. See below.
• Panthers-Bucs might go to SNF if: The Panthers lose OR the Bucs win, AND the above scenarios don’t happen. The Panthers winning the first matchup was the better outcome for a division title game not only because it requires only one game to go the Bucs’ way this week, but because those games are the more likely outcomes, with the Bucs playing the eliminated Dolphins and the Panthers playing the current #1 seed in the NFC, resulting in this game having a better than 90% chance of being a division title game. If so, though, it’s probably destined for Saturday and ESPN. I do think that if none of the other games determining order of finish pan out that this would go to Sunday night, but there’s a scenario where the Panthers beat the Seahawks while the Niners, Rams, and Bucs win, resulting in a three-way tie at the top of the NFC West, and if that happens I could see the league go with Seahawks-Niners even if the Seahawks could be eliminated from the division if the Rams win. And if that Niners win becomes a loss…
• Cardinals-Rams might go to SNF if: The Rams win AND the Seahawks lose AND the Niners lose AND the Steelers-Ravens and Chargers-Broncos scenarios don’t happen. Also known as the “win to win the division, lose and the Seahawks-Niners winner does” scenario. I’ve felt that the league would prefer a game with meaning for both teams over a game with meaning for only one, but if the Bucs win I’m honestly not sure whether the league would go with Bucs-Panthers or Cardinals-Rams for the Sunday night game; the fact that Cardinals-Rams can’t move to Saturday, while Bucs-Panthers can, might tip things in its favor. I do think they would go with Cardinals-Rams over a Seahawks-Niners game that could be for wild card seeding alone, but the difference between playing the NFC South winner and probably playing the Eagles could be considerable enough for the league to decide the latter is worth it.

As mentioned last week, the league is generally fine with a Saturday game running the risk of giving a team in a Sunday game nothing to play for as long as their opponent also has nothing (other than draft position) to play for, and sometimes not even that’s a requirement. In the scenarios below, the “my preference” section indicates what requirements I would have for each game under my old rules where I try to preserve every team having something to play for that has something to play for entering the week. All of the above games and their respective situations, except Cardinals-Rams, should also be considered candidates for Saturday regardless of their presence in the lists below.

Potential NFC Saturday games

• Trumps-Eagles may go to Saturday if: The Eagles win AND the Seahawks lose OR (the Bears lose AND the Packers win OR the Lions lose), OR the Eagles lose AND the Panthers (and preferably Bucs) win. (My preference: if the Bears lose, the Packers and Lions also lose.) The preferred scenario here is for the Seahawks to lose to keep the Eagles’ hopes for a first-round bye alive. The other options are for the Bears to lose to give the Eagles a shot to at least leapfrog them for the 2 seed and potentially keep the Packers in the division race (though the Lions being eliminated might be enough for this game to be acceptable, or for the Eagles to be at risk of falling to the 4 seed with the Panthers stealing the 3, but those would probably only be picked as last resorts if there aren’t any other games safe to move to Saturday with division, wild card, or first-round bye implications.
• Bears-Lions may go to Saturday if: The Seahawks lose OR the Rams and Bears win, OR the Bears lose AND the Packers win OR the Lions win. (Realistically this means that if the Bears win, or the Packers and Lions lose, the Seahawks need to lose, because the league isn’t waiting for Monday night to announce the Saturday games. My preference: Seahawks lose or Rams and Bears win, Packers win or Lions lose, if the Packers win the Bears also win.) Any scenario where the Bears and Seahawks finish tied would give the first-round bye to the Bears on conference record, so the Bears just need to maintain their current gap with the Seahawks, and the Seahawks need to have not clinched the division so they have something to play for if the Bears lose. If the Bears lose and Seahawks win to clinch the bye for the NFC West winner, the attraction would then become either whether the Bears can clinch the division or open the door for the Packers, or whether the Lions can keep their own playoff hopes alive and force the Packers to win to make the playoffs.
• Packers-Vikings may go to Saturday if: The Packers win AND the Bears lose AND the Seahawks lose. The problem with Packers-Vikings is that there’s always the risk that the result of the game would give either the Bears or Lions nothing to play for in the game against the other. In this scenario, the Lions would already be eliminated from the playoffs, the Packers would be alive for the division, and even if the Packers lose the Bears would still have a shot at the first-round bye. This could allow Bears-Lions to go to Saturday as well; if both games were to go to Saturday, Packers-Vikings would likely need to go first.
• Seahawks-Niners may go to Saturday if: The Seahawks lose OR the Niners win. (My preference: if both results happen, the Rams lose.) As mentioned before, unless the Rams win and Seahawks lose, or the Seahawks win and Niners lose, this is a division title game, and even in the former scenario, if the Niners also lose, Cardinals-Rams determines whether the Rams win the division and this game determines who would win if the Rams lose. Where things get chintzy is if the Rams and Niners win while the Seahawks lose, forcing a three-way tie and potentially leaving the Rams locked into the 5 seed if the Niners win, but that would likely still be acceptable to the league.

Potential AFC Saturday games

• Dolphins-Patriots may go to Saturday if: The Broncos lose OR the Bills win. (My preference: the Bills win and Patriots lose.) The Bills have a better conference record than the Broncos as it stands, so they just need to maintain their current gap with the Broncos to have a chance to win the first round bye. Of course that also depends on being able to win the division, but the Bills would hold the division record tiebreaker if the Patriots lose to the Jets and the conference record tiebreaker if the Patriots win. so they also only need to maintain their current gap with the Patriots.
• Jets-Bills may go to Saturday if: The Broncos and Patriots lose OR the Patriots and Bills win. (My preference: if the Broncos and Patriots lose, the Bills also lose.) The Broncos have already swept all the games they have in common with the Patriots. I’m assuming the Patriots, if they’ve clinched the division, would only care about their game if they could get the first round bye, but the league would otherwise still want to maintain the integrity of the seed order between the Jaguars and Patriots.
• In addition to the scenario above, Chargers-Broncos may go to Saturday if: The Jaguars win OR the Patriots win OR the Bills win. (My preference: if the Patriots win, the Bills also win.) If Chargers-Broncos isn’t a division title game, and stays in the late afternoon window on Sunday, it’s entirely possible that all the other games with relevance to the AFC playoff picture have to join it there, so that the Broncos don’t get locked into the 1 seed by the Patriots, Bills, and/or Jaguars results, or that the Chargers’ seed doesn’t get locked by the Bills and/or Texans results. That would make the late window crowded enough with games from the weaker conference that I think the league would rather just move this game to Saturday if there’s anything at all worth playing for. (By contrast, the only game that might have to be played simultaneously with the NFC West games might be Bears-Lions, and that might move to the late window anyway if the Lions are still alive for the playoffs.) If the Broncos win, any other team that wants a first-round bye has to win to keep pace; I explained why the Bills can get it above, while the Jaguars obviously just picked up the head-to-head tiebreaker. (The Jaguars would actually also hold a better conference record than the AFC East winner, unless they lose this week.)
• Colts-Texans may go to Saturday if: The Texans win OR the Colts beat the Jaguars. (My preference: If the latter happens, the Texans and Broncos also lose.) Technically the Colts can still catch the Texans but they’re clinging to the strength of victory tiebreaker, but unlike Seahawks-Rams last year the Colts have a real shot to win this one. The Texans’ unique wins would be against the Ravens, Niners, Bills, and Chiefs, while the Colts’ would be against the Dolphins, Broncos, Chargers, and Falcons; that sounds like it should favor the Texans, but the Dolphins and Falcons’ records are good enough (6-9 each) while the Ravens and Chiefs are bad enough (Ravens 7-8, Chiefs 6-9) that they’re actually even, although the Broncos and Chargers playing each other Week 18 hurts the Colts’ chances. What may be more important: the Texans would hold the division record tiebreaker over the Jaguars, so if they finish tied they win the division, so as long as you don’t have the Jaguars win and Texans lose, this game has division title implications.
• Titans-Jaguars may go to Saturday if: The Broncos lose OR the Jaguars win AND (the Patriots, Bills, or Chargers win OR Chargers-Broncos is played first). (My preference: Chargers-Broncos being played first isn’t sufficient for this game to be picked.) As laid out last week, this would be a scenario where the Jaguars remain alive for the first-round bye, and if the Broncos win this week, a Jaguars loss wouldn’t clinch the bye for them because they’d have to hold off the AFC East winner or just win the division. If the Jaguars are the only team the Broncos have to hold off, they could still play in the early window, and because a Chargers loss would imply a Texans win, the Jaguars would still need to lock up the division.

The league’s preference order for Saturday games

I assume that, in general, the league prefers games that determine what teams make the playoffs at all, then games that determine what teams win divisions, then games that determine who might win the 1 seed and first-round bye. Games that only matter for seeding amongst teams playing in the wild card round would only come into play as a last resort, since it’s not clear that the teams themselves care about those things. But those tiers can get muddled if a game with division implications has higher-profile teams than a game with who-makes-the-playoffs implications, or if other circumstances favor taking a particular game, and my general preference is to put SNF candidates ahead of non-SNF candidates. I’m also assuming that if the AFC North title game happens, it’s going to SNF, not Saturday. Note that this order doesn’t necessarily indicate the order in which the listed games would be played; that would be the order that most preserves what teams have to play for in the late game, then the game where both teams have something to play for goes in the late slot, then the game with the bigger names goes in the late slot.

• Seahawks-Niners in any scenario where it determines the order of finish between them
• Bears-Lions if the Lions are still alive for the playoffs
• Chargers-Broncos as a division title game
• Panthers-Bucs
• Chargers-Broncos if it’s not a division title game
• Colts-Texans if the Colts are still alive for the playoffs (this moves down if the strength of victory tiebreaker favors the Texans too heavily)
• Bears-Lions or Packers-Vikings if the Bears haven’t clinched the division
• Dolphins-Patriots or Jets-Bills if the AFC East hasn’t been decided
• Colts-Texans or Titans-Jaguars if the Jaguars haven’t clinched the division
• Trumps-Eagles if the Eagles are still alive for the first-round bye
• Bears-Lions if it only has first-round bye implications
• Dolphins-Patriots if the Patriots have clinched the division
• Titans-Jaguars if the Jaguars have clinched the division

Last year I actually did succeed in doing a live stream during the Sunday afternoon games keeping track of all the possibilities, and I’ll attempt to do the same this year, but there are two potential problems. First, my mom got kittens that are only just learning how to interact with me, which could be a distraction; second, the last time I attempted a live stream, for the NFL schedule release, I got a tweet saying there wasn’t any audio. Regardless, expect me to at least attempt a stream at twitch.tv/morganwick42 on Sunday (if nothing else it’ll help me troubleshoot any problems as I’ve now set up my Twitch account to archive livestreams), though I’ll only be covering the early games as the late window has only two games and one of them is between the two worst teams in the league; I’ll also keep everyone up to date on the Week 18 schedule scenarios (including any evolution in my thinking) after each set of games on The Site Formerly Known As Twitter, as well as laying out each game’s schedule implications before the games.