NFL Flexible Scheduling Watch: Week 11

Note: This post does not incorporate the result of the Thursday night game (mostly).

Last week Joe Burrow suggested that he’d like to return on Thanksgiving night against the Ravens. This week he showed enough progress in his recovery from injury as to raise the prospect of returning sooner than that.

On both Wednesday and Thursday, Burrow was noted as a full participant in practice, which – certainly in the aftermath of the trouble the Ravens got into with their (mis)use of the “full participant” designation earlier this year – should mean not only that he put in as much work as he normally would, but that he did so with the first-team unit. In a radio interview on Thursday morning, Bengals coach Zac Taylor didn’t rule out the possibility that Burrow could start as soon as this Sunday against the Patriots. It’s a bit surprising that the Bengals would even think about bringing back Burrow that quickly with a short week immediately afterwards – I saw it suggested that one reason the Ravens didn’t trot out Jackson against the Bears despite his “full participation” was to avoid his having a short week immediately afterwards and instead have his return be on a Thursday night – but the Bengals are also dealing with a shoulder injury to Joe Flacco that has left him a limited participant in practice, so they may feel they might as well maximize the continuity at the position by bringing back Burrow rather than trot out a backup for one week.

It might be a fair question to ask why the Bengals are considering bringing Burrow back at all; at 3-7 the Bengals are a full three games back of the wild card, too far back to even show up on my playoff picture graphic, and the same distance back of the division which would seem to be the Ravens’ for the taking, so you couldn’t blame the Bengals for simply deciding to shut down for the season. But last year the Bengals were sitting at 4-8 at the start of December and won their last five down the stretch to just fall short of the playoffs, so they may feel they can do it again with a healthy Burrow and both of their games against the Ravens coming up – and it’s hard to find any wild card contenders other than the Bills and Chiefs that inspire any confidence (and in both of their cases, there’s a reason they’re not leading their divisions). But neither the Patriots on Sunday, nor the Ravens on Thanksgiving night, are going to be easy, and they may need to win at least one, maybe both, to keep their playoff hopes alive. (And it’s an open question how much Burrow can overcome the Bengals’ defense in any case; in their last three games before the bye the Bengals scored 33, 38, and 42 points, and lost two out of three with the win coming by two points. The offense has held up decently well with Flacco at the helm.)

Whatever happens, pay close attention to what the Bengals do the next few weeks. If he can stay upright and start the Bengals going on a run, it’ll be interesting to see if he can save the Bengals’ appearances in featured windows down the stretch. It’s too late for one of them, though, because on the same day the prospect of a Sunday comeback for Burrow came up, the league pulled the first significant flex-scheduling move of the year, at the Bengals’ expense.

How NFL flexible scheduling works: (see also the NFL’s own page on flex schedule procedures)

• Up to two games in Weeks 5-10 (the “early flex” period), and any number of games from Week 11 onward, may be flexed into Sunday Night Football. Any number of games from Week 12 onward may be flexed into Monday Night Football, and up to two games from Week 13 onward may be flexed into Thursday Night Football. In addition, in select weeks in December a number of games may be listed as “TBD”, with two or three of those games being assigned to be played on Saturday. Note that I only cover early flexes if a star player on one of the teams is injured.
• Only games scheduled for Sunday afternoon, or set aside for a potential move to Saturday, may be flexed into one of the flex-eligible windows – not existing primetime games or games in other standalone windows. The game currently listed in the flex-eligible window will take the flexed-in game’s space on the Sunday afternoon slate, generally on the network that the flexed-in game was originally scheduled for. The league may also move Sunday afternoon games between 1 PM ET and 4:05 or 4:25 PM ET.
• Thursday Night Football flex moves must be announced 21 days in advance. Sunday and Monday Night Football moves must be announced 12 days in advance, except for Sunday night games in Week 14 onward, which can be announced at any point up until 6 days in advance.
• CBS and Fox have the right to protect one game each per week, among the games scheduled for their networks, from being flexed into primetime windows. During the early flex period, they may protect games at any point once the league tells them they’re thinking of pulling the flex. It’s not known when they must protect games in the main flex period, only that it’s “significantly closer to each game date” relative to the old deadline of Week 5, but what evidence exists suggests they’re submitted within a week or so of the two-week deadline; what that means for Thursday night flexes that are due earlier is unclear.
• On paper, CBS and Fox are also guaranteed one half of each division rivalry. However, in 2023 some Week 18 games (see below) had their other halves scheduled for the other conference’s network, though none were scheduled for primetime, and this year there’s another such matchup and another matchup that has one game on the other conference’s network and the other in primetime.
• No team may appear more than seven times in primetime windows – six scheduled before the season plus one flexed in. This appears to consider only the actual time the game is played, that is, Amazon’s Black Friday game does not count even though the rest of their TNF slate does. This post contains a list of all teams’ primetime appearances entering the season.
• Teams may play no more than two Thursday games following Sunday games, and (apparently) no more than one of them can be on the road without the team’s permission.
• In Week 18 the entire schedule, consisting entirely of games between divisional opponents, is set on six days’ notice, usually during the previous week’s Sunday night game. One game will be scheduled for Sunday night, usually a game that decides who wins the division, a game where the winner is guaranteed to make the playoffs while the loser is out, or a game where one team makes the playoffs with a win but falls behind the winner of another game, and thus loses the division and/or misses the playoffs, with a loss. Two more games with playoff implications are scheduled for Saturday on ABC and ESPN, with the remaining games doled out to CBS and Fox on Sunday afternoon, with the league generally trying to maximize what each team has to play for. Protections and appearance limits do not apply to Week 18.
• Click here to learn how to read the charts.

2025 Week 14 Flex Schedule Watch Through Week 11 | morganwick.com
	4-5-1	6-4	Too late to flex
	3-7	7-3
	5-5	5-5	6-day flex
	8-2	7-4	“Funday Football”
Sunday Afternoon Flex Candidates (12/7)
	7-3	6-3-1	TNF-safe (CHI BF, GB TG)
	8-2	6-4	@IND: FOX
	6-4	5-5	@PIT: W18

Week 14: Fox’s triumphant embrace of an all-AFC matchup in their featured window has run headlong into the reality of yet another injury to Joe Burrow. The Bengals’ losses in their last three games before the bye were by a combined eight points, but losses they remain, and they came out of the bye with a blowout loss to the Steelers. The last loss before the bye coming to the Bears especially hurts because Bears-Packers is the most likely game to replace it in the late afternoon window.

As it happens, the Texans might be able to keep their head just enough above water to avoid Texans-Chiefs being flexed out of Monday night. As it stands Bears-Packers is one of only two games on the Sunday slate pitting two teams above .500, and the only one that can be flexed. That would seem to make the decision of what game to protect and what schedule changes to make an easy one, but what happens if Burrow comes back, the Bengals are still on the outskirts of the playoff picture, and the Texans stumble a couple more times? What decision would Fox make regarding what game they want to keep and what game they want to let NBC have? Could we see Bears-Packers replace Bengals-Bills in the late afternoon… as Bengals-Bills moves to Sunday night? With this being the first week where SNF flexes can be made on six days’ notice, this one could come down to the wire and hinge on the results over Thanksgiving weekend.

Actual selection: Chicago Bears @ Green Bay Packers to 4:25 Fox. This isn’t the first time the NFL announced a schedule change on Thursday that didn’t involve the Thursday night game (and I might have gotten this post in before then if I weren’t sick – or waiting for more Burrow news), but the timing is still eyebrow-raising, coming the same day that there started being scuttlebutt about Burrow potentially returning as soon as this Sunday. (It’s also a week too late for it to be prompted by the league threatening to send Bears-Packers to Thursday night if Fox didn’t protect it, which might have been an empty threat anyway; Fox would love to get a Cowboys game back to anchor the early window.)

I’d wonder if this wasn’t necessarily the end of the flexing, if there was still a possibility of Bengals-Bills or any other game being flexed to Sunday night, but the league’s press release called it the “final” Week 14 schedule. The Bengals could only match the Texans’ record by the time a final decision needed to be made, but I could easily see the league sending Bengals-Bills to NBC in that scenario given the marquee quarterback matchup involved and the prospect of the Bengals making a late-season comeback like last year. But that likely depended on the Texans losing their next two and the Bengals winning their next two, and the Texans just knocked off the Bills on Thursday night. Had the league not already made an announcement I’d have held off on making a prediction and not even guaranteed a Last-Minute Remarks was on the way, but it’s apparent the league is fine with a potential Burrow-Allen showdown settling for the lead early doubleheader window, and the Texans’ win means that’s probably not going to change. Final prediction/actual decision: no further changes.

2025 Week 15 Flex Schedule Watch Through Week 11 | morganwick.com
	3-7	6-4
	6-4	8-2	LAR: W16 TNF
	6-3-1	9-2	GB: W16 Sat
	4-6	4-5-1	6-day flex
	4-7	6-4
Sunday Afternoon Flex Candidates (12/14)
	8-2	7-3	SEA: W16 TNF
	7-3	9-2	@BUF: SNF
	7-4	5-5	v. LAC: YT

Week 15: Back in May, I mentioned that the Sunday slate this week was so riddled with games that couldn’t be flexed that the only reason it didn’t represent a failure by the league to schedule with flex scheduling in mind was because of the principle of “Cowboys uber alles”. Thankfully for NBC, the Cowboys have been more respectable than a lot of people expected after the Micah Parsons trade, and even if they weren’t and “Cowboys uber alles” wasn’t a thing, the Colts’ surprising season means the league actually would have a viable alternative to flex in. But no one may be happier to see the Dolphins win three of their last four than ESPN, because their game against the Steelers might be even more difficult to replace.

I was worried about CBS having a number of marquee divisional matchups they wouldn’t need to protect, but when it comes to Monday night CBS doesn’t even need to protect their hottest non-divisional matchups. All told, here is the complete list of all games that can move to this Monday night: Jets-Jaguars, Cardinals-Texans, Titans-Niners, Panthers-Saints. All of those games involve at least one team with a worse record as the Dolphins. Even if the Dolphins’ recent surge isn’t a mirage, ESPN would probably be stuck with them.

At this point, Falcons-Bucs has become a worse game than Dolphins-Steelers, but the only games that can be moved to Thursday night without complications are Cardinals-Texans, Titans-Niners, and Panthers-Saints, all of which were noted as being eligible for a Monday move as noted above; Jets-Jaguars would be in the running if the Jets agreed to have two road short-week games. So the Thursday night game is in just as bad of a position with no better options. As much as Week 11 did, this week is what really raised the question of what flex scheduling means to Monday and Thursday nights, and also what the league’s philosophy is towards these “double doubleheader” weeks.

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

Week 16: Suddenly the question of whether Bengals-Dolphins keeps its spot may hinge more on the Bengals than the Dolphins. The Dolphins might have started going on a late-season run, while the Bengals are simply hoping Joe Burrow can start one.

Fox has no fewer than three games involving only teams with better records than either of the teams in the Sunday night tentative (although one of them probably can’t move because the two teams have a rematch Week 18), and I’d still expect them to protect the weakest of the three because Cowboys – and that’s not even getting into Patriots-Ravens. That game may be emerging as the primary alternative if the Ravens keep winning, but the league might be more inclined to throw a bone to the early doubleheader window, and the Jags’ blowout win over the Chargers suggests that their game against the Broncos won’t give up pole position for a potential flex without a fight. Assuming, of course, there does end up being a flex.

2025 Week 17 Flex Schedule Watch Through Week 11 | morganwick.com
	8-2	7-3
	7-3	7-4	6-day flex
	8-2	3-7
2 of These Games to Saturday 12/27
	7-3	6-5
	5-5	7-4
	5-5	6-3-1
	3-7	3-7
	2-9	2-8
Sunday Afternoon Flex Candidates (12/28)
	6-4	8-2
	6-4	4-7

Week 17: For a while it looked like the league’s effort to put forth a slate of potentially big games for the Saturday doubleheader, right as Peacock was taking over one of those games, had crashed and burned against a spate of slow, injury-laden starts, but right now three of the potential Saturday games pit two teams at .500 or better when there are only two Saturday windows. And just in time, too, because with Michael Penix’s injury the Falcons’ season is as good as over, leaving ESPN hoping for an alternative.

Jaguars-Colts is still a better game than any of the potential Saturday games, but it’s hanging on to that status by a thread, and if Fox does lose that game to Monday night it could get a more than capable replacement to anchor its early doubleheader. As such, I suspect that as long as Texans-Chargers remains a matchup of two teams at or above .500, it’s going to be part of the Saturday doubleheader – or, possibly, flexed to Monday night – even if it’s at the expense of a game with a better pair of records, simply because it’s locked to the late window and so can’t replace Jaguars-Colts in the early doubleheader.

(Unfortunately, Burrow and the Bengals can’t be much help here, because the Cardinals are as much a part of the problem with their game as the Bengals are, and there isn’t much reason to think the Cardinals are about to go on a run – especially since their next game against a sub-.500 team is the week before this game.)

Week 18: If Week 18 were this week Chargers-Broncos and Panthers-Bucs would be division title games, and Ravens-Steelers arguably qualifies for that as well; there’s a very real possibility the Ravens catch the Steelers before their first matchup Week 14. Lions-Bears would decide the order of finish between those two teams, but whether it’s for the division title (at least for the Lions) would depend on the result of Packers-Vikings, where the gap between those two teams is widening. Trumps-Eagles could be a long-shot contender for a Saturday spot if it has seeding implications for the Eagles compared to the other division winners, while Chiefs-Raiders could determine the viability of the Chiefs’ playoff hopes, and the NFC West games should at least be contenders for Saturday, especially if Seahawks-Niners would decide the order of finish between them, unless the Niners fall too far out of the playoffs and the division winner’s seed is more or less locked in. The AFC East and South are likely to have their games scheduled simultaneously to decide their respective division titles, though seeding implications could scramble that; if the Broncos, Chargers, and Colts all enter Week 18 with identical records and in their respective division leads, Colts-Texans could be an enticing Saturday candidate, and it might even have an outside shot at becoming a division title game. (When it comes to Saturday, I don’t think the league would worry about whether the Jaguars have anything to play for as long as they aren’t playing another playoff contender.) Finally, if Burrow and the Bengals go on another run like last year Bengals-Browns could yet have a shot at Saturday.