The NFL schedule is set to be released on Wednesday, and as I did last year, I’m attempting to put together the sort of schedule the league should be constructing, with the goal of maximizing distribution of the best games and minimizing the likelihood of flexes being desirable but impossible due to CBS and Fox being guaranteed one half of each division rivalry as well as a minimum number of games involving their most desired teams in their respective conferences.
As a review of my philosophy governing this exercise, at least down the stretch of the season, if the three main featured windows (the late doubleheader, Sunday night, and Monday night) don’t contain the three best games of the week, any game that is among the three best but is buried as an undercard should not be set up to be protected. In other words, they can’t be the most desirable game on the singleheader network, and if they’re on the doubleheader network then the main late game can’t be a divisional game where the other matchup is on another network, or a game involving the Cowboys or Chiefs – and such situations should generally be avoided during the main flex period in general, or at least avoiding having games with teams with significantly worse expected records hogging spots while games between teams expected to be .500 or above can’t or won’t be flexed in. Creating a situation where the league would want to pull a flex if teams perform exactly as expected is already something of a failure of schedule construction, as flexible scheduling should only come in if teams don’t perform as expected; creating a situation where the league would want to pull a flex but can’t should be completely unacceptable.
Details on how I put this together, as well as the schedule itself, after the jump.