NFL

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 6

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NBC’s Sunday Night Football package gives it flexible scheduling. For the last seven weeks of the season, the games are determined on 12-day notice, 6-day notice for Week 17.

The first year, no game was listed in the Sunday Night slot, only a notation that one game could move there. Now, NBC lists the game it “tentatively” schedules for each night. However, the NFL is in charge of moving games to prime time.

Here are the rules from the NFL web site (note that even with the bit about the early flexes, this was written with the 2007 season in mind, hence why it still says late games start at 4:15 ET instead of 4:25):

  • Begins Sunday of Week 5
  • In effect during Weeks 5-17
  • Up to 2 games may be flexed into Sunday Night between Weeks 5-10
  • Only Sunday afternoon games are subject to being moved into the Sunday night window.
  • The game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night during flex weeks will be listed at 8:15 p.m. ET.
  • The majority of games on Sundays will be listed at 1:00 p.m. ET during flex weeks except for games played in Pacific or Mountain Time zones which will be listed at 4:05 or 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • No impact on Thursday, Saturday or Monday night games.
  • The NFL will decide (after consultation with CBS, FOX, NBC) and announce as early as possible the game being played at 8:15 p.m. ET. The announcement will come no later than 12 days prior to the game. The NFL may also announce games moving to 4:05 p.m. ET and 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • Week 17 start time changes could be decided on 6 days notice to ensure a game with playoff implications.
  • The NBC Sunday night time slot in “flex” weeks will list the game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night.
  • Fans and ticket holders must be aware that NFL games in flex weeks are subject to change 12 days in advance (6 days in Week 17) and should plan accordingly.
  • NFL schedules all games.
  • Teams will be informed as soon as they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.
  • Rules NOT listed on NFL web site but pertinent to flex schedule selection: CBS and Fox each protect games in five out of six weeks starting Week 11, and cannot protect any games Week 17. Games were protected after Week 4 in 2006 and 2011, because NBC hosted Christmas night games those years and all the other games were moved to Saturday (and so couldn’t be flexed), but are otherwise protected after Week 5. As I understand it, during the Week 5-10 period the NFL and NBC declare their intention to flex out a game two weeks in advance, at which point CBS and Fox pick one game each to protect.
  • In the past, three teams could appear a maximum of six games in primetime on NBC, ESPN or NFL Network (everyone else gets five) and no team may appear more than four times on NBC. I don’t know how the expansion of the Thursday Night schedule affects this, if it does. No team starts the season completely tapped out at any measure; ten teams have five primetime appearances each, but only the Packers, Bears, 49ers, Steelers, and Saints don’t have games in the main flex period, and all have games in the early flex period. I don’t know if both of the games scheduled for 12/20 count towards the total, or only the one in primetime. A list of all teams’ number of appearances is in my Week 5 post.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Week 11 (November 16):

  • Tentative game: New England @ Indianapolis
  • Prospects: 4-2 v. 4-2; hard to imagine it losing its spot.
  • Likely protections: Probably nothing, but if anything Bengals-Saints (CBS) and 49ers-Giants or Eagles-Packers (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Besides Fox’s unprotected game, Lions-Cardinals is a possibility, and Texans-Browns is a dark horse.

Week 12 (November 23):

  • Tentative game: Dallas @ NY Giants
  • Prospects: 5-1 v. 3-3. This game could start looking lopsided, but the Cowboys being flexed out of SNF would probably be a harbinger of the apocalypse, especially when they’re not the ones dragging it down.
  • Likely protections: Dolphins-Broncos (CBS, confirmed) and Cardinals-Seahawks or Lions-Patriots (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Basically, the only real option is whatever game Fox didn’t protect, although Bengals-Texans is a dark horse.

Week 13 (November 30):

  • Tentative game: Denver @ Kansas City
  • Prospects: 4-1 v. 2-3. Also could start looking lopsided, and doesn’t have the Cowboys invulnerability factor.
  • Likely protections: Chargers-Ravens or Patriots-Packers (CBS) and Saints-Steelers (FOX, confirmed).
  • Other possible games: Thanksgiving weekend, paucity of good games, especially with Eagles-Cowboys on Thanksgiving. Browns-Bills is a dark horse, but CBS’ unprotected game is really the only good option. Would that overcome the chance to have Peyton Manning on?

Week 14 (December 7):

  • Tentative game: New England @ San Diego
  • Prospects: 4-2 v. 5-1. Very strong to keep its spot.
  • Likely protections: Steelers-Bengals (CBS, confirmed) and Seahawks-Eagles (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Colts-Browns is an option, and Bills-Broncos is a dark horse, but none of those are particularly appealing, especially given the tentative they’d have to unseat.

Week 15 (December 14):

  • Tentative game: Dallas @ Philadelphia
  • Prospects: 5-1 v. 5-1 and an NFC East showdown. If form holds, this game has a mortal lock on this spot.
  • Likely protections: Chargers-Broncos (CBS, confirmed) and 49ers-Seahawks (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Bengals-Browns is the only unprotected game involving two teams over .500, and it would require an absolute collapse by one or both tentative teams and that still might not be enough (as many Cowboys games past have shown). Packers-Bills and Texans-Colts are dark horses.

Week 16 (December 21):

  • Tentative game: Seattle @ Arizona
  • Prospects: 3-2 v. 4-1 makes for a pretty strong game, all things considered, especially given the alternatives.
  • Likely protections: Colts-Cowboys (CBS) and almost certainly nothing, but if anything Lions-Bears (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Browns-Panthers is the only real option at the moment, and it hardly is one. Ravens-Texans and Lions-Bears are dark horses.

Week 17 (December 28):

  • Playoff positioning watch begins Week 9.

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 5

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NBC’s Sunday Night Football package gives it flexible scheduling. For the last seven weeks of the season, the games are determined on 12-day notice, 6-day notice for Week 17.

The first year, no game was listed in the Sunday Night slot, only a notation that one game could move there. Now, NBC lists the game it “tentatively” schedules for each night. However, the NFL is in charge of moving games to prime time.

Here are the rules from the NFL web site (note that even with the bit about the early flexes, this was written with the 2007 season in mind, hence why it still says late games start at 4:15 ET instead of 4:25):

  • Begins Sunday of Week 5
  • In effect during Weeks 5-17
  • Up to 2 games may be flexed into Sunday Night between Weeks 5-10
  • Only Sunday afternoon games are subject to being moved into the Sunday night window.
  • The game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night during flex weeks will be listed at 8:15 p.m. ET.
  • The majority of games on Sundays will be listed at 1:00 p.m. ET during flex weeks except for games played in Pacific or Mountain Time zones which will be listed at 4:05 or 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • No impact on Thursday, Saturday or Monday night games.
  • The NFL will decide (after consultation with CBS, FOX, NBC) and announce as early as possible the game being played at 8:15 p.m. ET. The announcement will come no later than 12 days prior to the game. The NFL may also announce games moving to 4:05 p.m. ET and 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • Week 17 start time changes could be decided on 6 days notice to ensure a game with playoff implications.
  • The NBC Sunday night time slot in “flex” weeks will list the game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night.
  • Fans and ticket holders must be aware that NFL games in flex weeks are subject to change 12 days in advance (6 days in Week 17) and should plan accordingly.
  • NFL schedules all games.
  • Teams will be informed as soon as they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.
  • Rules NOT listed on NFL web site but pertinent to flex schedule selection: CBS and Fox each protect games in five out of six weeks starting Week 11, and cannot protect any games Week 17. Games were protected after Week 4 in 2006 and 2011, because NBC hosted Christmas night games those years and all the other games were moved to Saturday (and so couldn’t be flexed), but are otherwise protected after Week 5. As I understand it, during the Week 5-10 period the NFL and NBC declare their intention to flex out a game two weeks in advance, at which point CBS and Fox pick one game each to protect.
  • In the past, three teams could appear a maximum of six games in primetime on NBC, ESPN or NFL Network (everyone else gets five) and no team may appear more than four times on NBC. I don’t know how the expansion of the Thursday Night schedule affects this, if it does. No team starts the season completely tapped out at any measure; ten teams have five primetime appearances each, but only the Packers, Bears, 49ers, Steelers, and Saints don’t have games in the main flex period, and all have games in the early flex period. I don’t know if both of the games scheduled for 12/20 count towards the total, or only the one in primetime. NBC appearances for all teams: GB 3 (2 semi-flexible), SEA 3 (1 flexible), IND 2 (1 flexible), DEN 3 (1 semi-flexible, 1 flexible), CHI 2 (1 semi-flexible), SF 3 (1 semi-flexible), PIT 2 (1 semi-flexible), CAR 1, NO 2 (1 semi-flexible), DAL 3 (2 flexible), CIN 1, NE 3 (2 flexible), NYG 2 (1 flexible), PHI 3 (1 flexible, 1 ?), BAL 1 (semi-flexible), KC 1 (flexible), SD 1 (flexible), ARI 1 (flexible). All primetime appearances for all teams: GB 5 (2 semi-flexible), SEA 4 (1 flexible), IND 5 (1 flexible), DEN 5 (1 semi-flexible, 1 flexible), CHI 5 (1 semi-flexible), SF 5 (1 semi-flexible, 1 ?), PIT 5 (1 semi-flexible), CAR 3, NO 5 (1 semi-flexible), DAL 5 (2 flexible), CIN 3, NE 5 (2 flexible), NYG 5 (1 flexible), PHI 4 (1 flexible), BAL 3 (1 semi-flexible), KC 3 (1 flexible), SD 4 (1 flexible, 1 ?), ARI 3 (1 flexible), DET 1, NYJ 3, WAS 4 (1 ?), STL 2, HOU 2, TEN 2, MIA 2, ATL 2, all other teams 1.

Briefly, here are the current early-season games and their prospects for being flexed out:

  • Week 7: San Francisco (3-2) @ Denver (3-1). The 49ers started out 1-2, but now that they’ve climbed back above .500 I don’t think you waste an early flex on this. No chance of being flexed out.
  • Week 8: Green Bay (3-2) @ New Orleans (2-3). A bit chintzy, but it is still two name teams and it’s still Aaron Rodgers v. Drew Brees.
  • Week 9: Baltimore (3-2) @ Pittsburgh (3-2). Again, not a great game, but still a marquee rivalry between two teams above .500.
  • Week 10: Chicago (2-3) @ Green Bay (3-2). Basically the same situation as Packers-Saints, except Chicago isn’t quite as big a name (but still a big market) and Jay Cutler isn’t Drew Brees. The Bears would need to look pretty bad for this game to lose its spot, but if the NFL still has one or both early flexes left they could easily burn it on this.

I held off on making this post because I wanted to find out how the new “cross-flex” system affected how protections worked, if at all; the purpose of protections is to protect the afternoon packages, so it seems to defeat the point of protections if you can protect a game from NBC only to lose it to CBS or Fox. On the other hand, that would seem to defeat the point of the cross-flex system, whose main purpose was billed as beefing up the late spot of the doubleheader, which would seem to be difficult to do if you can only move games you could move to SNF anyway (although the tentative game bias would seem to produce at least a few candidates). And then there’s the fact that some games in the flex period have already been picked for cross-flexing, meaning they could be protected by networks that wouldn’t normally have them… Regardless, for now I’m going to assume protections work as they have in seasons past, and as such here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Week 11 (November 16):

  • Tentative game: New England @ Indianapolis
  • Prospects: 3-2 v. 3-2, about the same as the remaining early-flex games. Obviously this rivalry isn’t as hot as in the Brady-Manning days, but it’s still Brady v. Luck.
  • Likely protections: Bengals-Saints if anything (CBS) and 49ers-Giants or Eagles-Packers (FOX).
  • Other possible games: With no unbeaten teams after just five weeks, you see a lot of mediocrity in the standings, as the early-flex games and this first tentative show. Besides Fox’s unprotected game, Lions-Cardinals is a possibility, and Texans-Browns is a dark horse.

Week 12 (November 23):

  • Tentative game: Dallas @ NY Giants
  • Prospects: 4-1 v. 3-2. The NFC East is hardly last year’s tire fire, and for once the Cowboys don’t look quite so mediocre as in years past.
  • Likely protections: Dolphins-Broncos, Bengals-Texans, or nothing (CBS) and Cardinals-Seahawks or Lions-Patriots (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Basically comes down to whatever games CBS and Fox don’t protect.

Week 13 (November 30):

  • Tentative game: Denver @ Kansas City
  • Prospects: 3-1 v. 2-3. Possibly the most vulnerable of the tentatives, yet still has a pretty good chance to keep its spot on its own merits.
  • Likely protections: Chargers-Ravens or Patriots-Packers (CBS) and Saints-Steelers if anything (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Thanksgiving weekend, paucity of good games, especially with Eagles-Cowboys on Thanksgiving. Browns-Bills is a dark horse, but CBS’ unprotected game is really the only good option. Doubtful that’d overcome the chance to have Peyton Manning on.

Week 14 (December 7):

  • Tentative game: New England @ San Diego
  • Prospects: 3-2 v. 4-1. Very strong to keep its spot.
  • Likely protections: Steelers-Bengals, Bills-Broncos, or nothing (CBS) and Seahawks-Eagles (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Besides CBS’s unprotected game, Ravens-Dolphins and Colts-Browns are dark horses. None of those are particularly appealing.

Week 15 (December 14):

  • Tentative game: Dallas @ Philadelphia
  • Prospects: 4-1 v. 4-1 and an NFC East showdown. If form holds, this game has a mortal lock on this spot.
  • Likely protections: Chargers-Broncos (CBS) and 49ers-Seahawks (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Packers-Bills and Texans-Colts, both of which would require an absolute collapse by one or both teams and that still might not be enough (as many Cowboys games past have shown). Bengals-Browns and Dolphins-Patriots are dark horses.

Week 16 (December 21):

  • Tentative game: Seattle @ Arizona
  • Prospects: The NFL sometimes seems to put throwaway games in Week 16 and this may have seemed like one of them, but at 3-1 v. 3-1 it’s nearly on par with the previous week.
  • Likely protections: Colts-Cowboys (CBS) and Lions-Bears but more likely nothing (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Ravens-Texans is the only real option at the moment, and it hardly is one. Browns-Panthers is a dark horse.

Week 17 (December 28):

  • Playoff positioning watch begins Week 9.

What is the Sports Blackout Rule the FCC Just Repealed?

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On Tuesday the FCC voted unanimously to repeal its 40-year-old sports blackout rule, a move that means a lot less than its coverage in the media has made it look like. This is not, in itself, the rule that prohibits the broadcasting of NFL games that don’t sell out or the rule that frustrates MLB Extra Innings subscribers so much, but it is related to the former. As this Awful Announcing piece explains, the blackout rule essentially provides a backstop for the NFL’s blackout rule by prohibiting cable providers from airing games blacked out on local broadcast stations. (It technically applies to all leagues, but the NFL is both the only league with a blackout policy this would apply to and the only league that hasn’t seen virtually all its games migrate to cable anyway in recent decades.) It was never particularly a matter of good policy, with the FCC putting a foot on the scales of private enterprise, but its weird specificity (which betrays its vintage from an almost unthinkably different time not only in the NFL, but in the cable business and the television business more generally) dulls its effect enough that it’s hard to see its repeal changing anything, at least in the near term, given the NFL’s existing contracts.

Despite this, AA itself has inflated the rule’s importance in subsequent reporting on the debates on the issue, and the NFL warned that repealing the rule could force the league to abandon broadcast television and move to cable. It’s hard to see how a rule that keeps games from airing on broadcast, one the NFL could easily repeal its end of tomorrow and obviate the effect of the repeal of the FCC rule, is protecting the presence of games on broadcast, but the FCC’s response, noting the league’s current contracts run through 2022, is worrisome to me, because it doesn’t cover what happens after that, given cable’s unfair advantages, or the fact that the Big Four networks have made clear they would abandon over-the-air television themselves if they could.

Could cable providers air games the NFL has blacked out on local stations? Maybe, but if such isn’t covered by the NFL’s exclusive deal with DirecTV for Sunday Ticket the NFL could still police it, with a potential last resort of holding NFL Network and NFL RedZone over their heads. It may or may not affect DirecTV’s own ability to show blacked-out games, assuming DirecTV blacks out games on Sunday Ticket that are blacked out on the local station, but if so it’s likely that’s guaranteed in their contract as well and the league could continue to police it. The repeal of the FCC’s rule might change the economic incentives for the league going forward, but again the prospect of blacked-out games airing on cable undermining their presence on broadcast is a problem of the league’s own making through their imposition of the blackout rule in the first place. If the NFL declares in their next TV contract – and I’m assuming the impossible, that by the end of this decade the content landscape is exactly as it is today – that the repeal of the FCC rule is forcing them to abandon their commitment to broadcast TV and move their games to cable, it would call into question their motivations for making that commitment to begin with. Protecting gate attendance, no matter what way you slice it, seems to have little to do with protecting the league’s presence on broadcast television, and anyone who thinks there’s a serious prospect of the league eventually abandoning broadcast should be paying more attention to the broken economics of the television industry and the prospect of broadcast being permanently if not terminally crippled by the upcoming incentive auctions. All told, the repeal of the FCC’s blackout rule is a purely symbolic gesture not worth the ink spilled on it, but it does give some indication that the FCC is willing to stand on the side of the consumer and good policy – at least, if they can also stand on the side of the cable companies and against broadcasting at the same time.

An important announcement on plans for Da Blog and my life going forward

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Except for around Christmas (including the annual blog-day post), this is the last post I will make on Da Blog from the Seattle area for the foreseeable future.

In my last blog-day post, I mentioned the possibility that my work on Da Blog would be “directly supported and nurtured”; now I can say a bit more about what that was referring to. Over the Labor Day weekend, I will be moving down to live with my dad in Los Angeles. We’ve been talking for several years about this; the plan is for Dad to support me and allow me to work on Da Blog without being distracted by school, a job, the people I live with, or the school I’ve lived across the street from for the past three years, with Dad as my “boss” to keep me focused and try to actually get an audience going and increase exposure to my writings. (While this is going on, the “Da Blog in LA” category will only be used for LA-specific posts I couldn’t have made if I weren’t there, which is to say it probably won’t be used at all.) At one point we talked about us living together for about two years; I don’t know if that’s still the plan, but I have the site’s hosting locked down through June of 2016, and if we still don’t have anything going by then – if we’re at the same place we’ve always been throughout what will then be nine and a half years of Da Blog – it may be time to give up on actually making anything of Da Blog.

Some things have been settled already, but most of the details will be fleshed out on the drive down. I may have another post after the weekend is over detailing any substantial changes coming to Da Blog in the near term as a direct result of this move.

In the meantime, I’ve updated the lineal titles in preparation for football season. It seems I never actually updated the lineal titles before last year, despite what I said in last year’s post. Both of last year’s new college football lineal titles got merged with others; the BCS title was merged with 2006 Boise State pretty quickly, while Ohio State’s claim was merged with 2009 Boise State at the Rose Bowl. This year starts with three lineal titles; Alabama went undefeated until the Miracle at Jordan-Hare and Auburn went on to the BCS Title Game, so 2006 Boise State starts the year with national champion Florida State. You can see what happened to the NFL lineal title on the history page accessible from the category page.

CBS Releases Announcer Pairings for the 2014 NFL Season

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The retirements of Dan Dierdorf and Marv Albert from NFL coverage, and the move of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms to covering Thursday Night Football, have forced a shakeup of the announcer teams for CBS’ NFL coverage for the coming season.

Nantz and Simms and the team of Ian Eagle and Dan Fouts are the only teams that remain intact from last year. As previously reported, Eagle and Fouts will move to the broadcast team and will call CBS’ top game on weeks when Nantz and Simms do not.

Greg Gumbel will drop to the team and work with Trent Green, who directly replaces Dierdorf, while the remaining teams will consist of Kevin Harlan and Rich Gannon, Spero Dedes and Solomon Wilcots, and a three-man booth of Andrew Catalon, Steve Beuerlein, and Steve Tasker. Previously, Gannon worked with Albert, Harlan worked with Wilcots, Tasker worked with Bill Macatee, and Dedes worked with Beuerlein. Late in the season when an eighth team became necessary, Catalon worked some games with Adam Archuleta.

A seventh team has not been defined, but Brian Anderson and Tom McCarthy will work play-by-play during the season, alongside analysts Archuleta and Chris Simms, Phil’s son. Anderson is another in a line of Turner Sports talent to cross over and work for CBS since the alliance between the two entities for the NCAA Tournament; Albert also started working NFL games after the alliance started, and Harlan has long juggled NBA coverage for Turner with NFL duties for CBS. McCarthy is the Philadelphia Phillies’ play-by-play announcer and has called NFL games for Westwood One.

It is not clear why Macatee is no longer calling NFL games for CBS, but he does have numerous other duties for the network.

CBS will also bring sideline reporters back to its broadcasts full-time. Tracy Wolfson will move from SEC duties, where she will be replaced by Allie Laforce, to working NFL games alongside Nantz and Simms, and Jenny Dell and Evan Washburn will also work the sidelines for CBS.

Report: Ian Eagle, Dan Fouts to be Promoted to #2 Broadcast Team for NFL on CBS

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“The Bird and the Beard” are moving up in the world. Sports Illustrated‘s Richard Deitsch reports that CBS will name Ian Eagle and Dan Fouts its broadcast team for the upcoming NFL season.

Eagle and Fouts had received widespread acclaim over the past few seasons as CBS’ team from both the media and fans. CBS’ previous team consisted of Greg Gumbel and Dan Dierdorf; Dierdorf retired from broadcasting after this past season. Deitsch reports that Gumbel and Trent Green are expected to be the new team. The full NFL on CBS announcing lineup will be released later this week.

The broadcast team is a big step up from the team; when their network has the doubleheader, they will usually call the most prominent of the early games, leaving the big late game for the top team, and Eagle and Fouts will now call a divisional-round game for CBS in years when CBS has two divisional games. (Starting this season, NBC will have one divisional game, with CBS and Fox alternating between one and two games.) The spot is even more plum at CBS this year, as Eagle and Fouts will now call the top game of the singleheader, as the top team of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms focus on their new Thursday Night Football duties.

2014 NFL TV Schedule

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Here is the schedule of games on Fox, NBC, CBS, ESPN, and NFL Network for the 2014 season, which will kick off with the Packers visiting the Seahawks.

There are several changes to the NFL’s TV landscape this season. ESPN will air a Wild Card playoff game for the first time, while NBC will trade in one of its Wild Card games for a Divisional round game (the full postseason schedule will be announced at a later date). NBC will be able to flex in games as early as Week 5, but will be able to flex in no more than two games before Week 11. CBS and Fox will be able to air games from the other network’s conference, allowing this year’s Thanksgiving slate to consist entirely of NFC divisional matchups. Finally, CBS will simulcast the first half of the Thursday night slate with NFL Network, in addition to producing the entire slate.

Games marked with an asterisk (*) may be flexed out for any of the CBS or Fox games earlier in the day. Games marked with a cross (†) may also be flexed out, but no more than two games with a cross may be flexed out in this fashion. Follow the SNF Flex Scheduling Watch category for more information throughout the season. Games may also move to the network marked with a 4:25 ET start time. Networks in bold are cable. All times Eastern.

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Making sense of the Thursday Night Football deal

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After over two years of speculation, the NFL has finally sold half of its Thursday Night Football slate… in a way no one could have anticipated.

As the NFL started ramping up the bidding process for the new package over the past month, some of the details that started coming out were head-scratching. The NFL expressed its preference to put the games on broadcast, not cable, which eventually grew to the point of basically insisting on it. The NFL also expressed its desire to simulcast the games on NFL Network.

Neither of these made any sense to me. The whole point of selling the games, I would have thought, was to get networks like NBCSN or FS1 to pony up the subscriber-fee-backed dough to take on programming that could boost those subscriber fees to the moon, to say nothing of ESPN protecting its own turf or Turner propping up TruTV or giving a boost to TNT. Broadcast networks have started catching up to cable with their retransmission consent fees, but the possibility of cord-cutting, or technologies like Aereo, could always be lurking in the background, and their owners continue to put their emphasis on cable wherever possible; the first twelve years of the college football playoff, after all, will still be on ESPN. Certainly the big four broadcast networks would fall over themselves to get the package, though it’s still the bank of crappy games NFLN has had for the past two seasons, but they wouldn’t pay nearly as much as cable networks would. And what did the NFL expect to gain by simulcasting games on NFL Network? Did they really think Time Warner Cable and Cablevision were so stupid they would treat NFLN as though it still had a full-season schedule despite the fact they could get 6-8 of its games anyway on a broadcast network? The NFL seemed to want it both ways.

I wonder if the key to the NFL’s thinking was the fact that this was a one-year deal (although the eventual deal also contains an option for a second year). I wonder if the NFL was floating a trial balloon to see how much money the Thursday package was worth, while also seeing what the reaction of cable companies might be to NFLN losing a bunch of games without actually having NFLN suffer too much – perhaps not wanting to lose people used to turning on NFLN on Thursday nights. The NFL might also want to see how much of TNF’s ratings, which are substantially behind those of the NFL’s other packages, are because of NFLN’s limited distribution or the crappy bank of games, while trying to build an audience for the games on the broadest distribution platform available and get more people used to watching the NFL on Thursday night. Perhaps they floated out feelers to Comcast, Fox, Turner, and ESPN and didn’t like the potential bids they got, so they decided on a different approach that could boost the value of the package and help them determine what balance of rights fees to boosting NFLN to strike. Depending on what the ratings are on CBS and NFL Network for each half of the package, as well as what the reaction of cable companies will be, the NFL may decide to sign a longer-term deal with a cable network, or keep more games on NFL Network again, or something else entirely.

But I can’t help but wonder if this marks a turning point in the bigger picture. The last few years have seen more and more events move from broadcast to cable and the accompanying explosion of the sports TV wars. Now the kingpin of American sports has seemingly moved in the opposite direction, and put a package on broadcast that might otherwise have seemed destined for cable. It may be a small step, but I hold out hope that when we look back, it marks the point the tide started to turn in broadcast’s favor – though the NBA could end up having a bigger impact on that later this year.

(I am surprised at CBS’ win, not because of their strong Thursday primetime lineup, but because of the same reason I didn’t see FS1 winning the package: it was just too awkward for CBS to take on a conference-agnostic package alongside having all the non-primetime AFC games. I thought NBC was the favorite, more because of synergy with their Kickoff and Thanksgiving night games than because of their weak Thursday primetime lineup, with ABC being second favorite by default.)

2014 Pro Football Hall of Fame Watch – The Top 50 Active Resumes

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Surefire first-ballot players:

  1. QB Peyton Manning
  2. QB Tom Brady

These two stand far and away on top of the pack.

Borderline first-ballot players:

  1. TE Tony Gonzalez
  2. S Ed Reed
  3. CB Champ Bailey
  4. QB Drew Brees
  5. DT Kevin Williams

Tony Gonzalez, who just completed his last season, is by most standards, the greatest tight end of all time. Will that be enough to get him into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot?

The problem is not merely that no tight end has done so before, the problem is that pretty much every tight end had to wait multiple years to get in. Shannon Sharpe was snubbed twice before finally being inducted. John Mackey placed about three spots ahead of Gonzalez when the NFL Network did their “Top 100 Greatest Players” some years ago, after Sharpe’s first snub but before he got in, but didn’t get into the Hall of Fame until twenty years after he retired, when his eligibility was close to up. Gonzalez has likely passed Mackey in the intervening time, and I doubt Gonzalez will have to wait any later than the second ballot, but will the voters be willing to take that big a leap?

On the other hand, Sharpe’s first snub attracted considerable outrage in several corners, suggesting there’s considerable support for the notion of voting a tight-end in first ballot, support that would be even stronger for Gonzalez. For the Hall of Fame voters to continue their past position on tight ends ignores the nature of the position in today’s NFL, where it has basically become a variant of the wide receiver position (see: the ongoing controversy over what position Jimmy Graham would be franchised under). If any tight end merited the honor represented by first-ballot Hall of Fame status, it would likely be Gonzalez. I would be very surprised, maybe even shocked, if Gonzalez didn’t go in first ballot. But I can’t say it’ll happen with absolute certainty. We’re talking about unprecedented territory here, both with the player and the circumstance we’re ascribing to him.

Surefire Hall of Famers:

  1. TE Antonio Gates
  2. S Troy Polamalu
  3. CB Charles Woodson
  4. TE Jason Witten
  5. DE Julius Peppers
  6. DE Dwight Freeney
  7. LB DeMarcus Ware
  8. RB Adrian Peterson
  9. WR Andre Johnson

I was torn on whether or not to keep Richard Seymour on the list; rumors swirled around him potentially being sought out by teams as late as October, but he’d also indicated he was fine with retiring if he wasn’t picked up at any point in the season. My thinking is that Seymour’s career is almost certainly over, but the main thing that convinced me to remove his name from the list was to remove some awkwardness on the Players to Watch list.

Borderline Hall of Famers:

  1. WR Larry Fitzgerald
  2. WR Steve Smith
  3. WR Wes Welker
  4. DE Jared Allen
  5. WR Calvin Johnson
  6. QB Aaron Rodgers
  7. WR Reggie Wayne
  8. LB Patrick Willis
  9. OT Joe Thomas
  10. RB Jamaal Charles
  11. DE Haloti Ngata
  12. DE John Abraham
  13. CB Darrelle Revis
  14. RB LeSean McCoy
  15. QB Eli Manning
  16. QB Michael Vick
  17. P Shane Lechler
  18. WR Brandon Marshall
  19. RB Arian Foster
  20. QB Ben Roethlisberger
  21. QB Philip Rivers
  22. FB Vonta Leach
  23. KR Devin Hester
  24. K Adam Vinatieri
  25. RB Maurice Jones-Drew

You may be wondering why Calvin Johnson and Aaron Rodgers aren’t on the surefire list, when you probably see them as first-ballot guys. This is what’s so interesting about looking at players’ resumes if they retired right now. Johnson could threaten several of Jerry Rice’s records, but he’s only made the Pro Bowl (without getting in as an alternate) four of his seven years in the league – pretty good, and his less-good years can be chalked up to playing for bad Lions teams (much as with Fitzgerald and the Cardinals), but he might need one more good year to make the leap (certainly the surefire list could use him). Rodgers is especially interesting, and a possible cautionary tale for Johnson, as he had shockingly elevated himself in just a few years into one of the best QBs in the league and a surefire first-ballot HOFer if he kept it up… but one wonders if he’s starting to get overshadowed. He had a Pro-Bowl-caliber year in 2012, but a far cry from his masterful 2011, and missed a good chunk of 2013. Both could still end up being remembered as flashes-in-the-pan who were, for a brief time, two of the best at their positions in the entire league, Johnson inspiring people to mention his name in the same sentence with Rice, Rodgers a figure on par with Brady and Manning who picked up a ring along the way, and two of the great what-could-have-been stories. Would that be enough to get them into the Hall of Fame? Maybe… but it’d be a pretty long wait.

Even more interesting would be Vinatieri: very few non-quarterbacks have been propelled into the Hall of Fame on the strength of their Super Bowls… but Vinatieri could be one of them, despite being a kicker, a position with only one other representative in the Hall at all. And while every quarterback with multiple Super Bowl wins is in the Hall of Fame except Jim Plunkett, they all have substantially better resumes than Roethlisberger (who has only two Pro Bowl selections), which is why he’s so low.

Need work:

  • RB Chris Johnson
  • RB Marshawn Lynch
  • DT Justin Smith
  • S Adrian Wilson
  • OT Jahri Evans
  • LB Lance Briggs
  • CB Nnamdi Asomugha

When I put Maurice Jones-Drew on the “borderline” side of the list I agonized endlessly over what side of the line he fell on. Chris Johnson was on the “players to watch” list with an exclamation mark next to his name last year and I believe the year before as well. Now that it was time for him to graduate off that list, I realized he had the same or better resume than Jones-Drew. (Keeping Jones-Drew off the Players to Watch list may have played a part in my motivation.) But when I started this I swore that I would never bump anyone down a category once they made it to a given category (except for “needs work” players falling out of the top 50) or to move anyone up a category unless they actively improved their standing, and neither happened. On the other hand, I’m no longer sure how much Ray Rice ever deserved his exclamation mark last year…

Players to watch for the future (exclamation marks indicate players with resumes already strong enough to be among the top 50):

  • LB Clay Matthews (5th year)
  • DE Cameron Wake (5th year)
  • DT Ndamukong Suh (4th year)
  • C Maurkice Pouncey (4th year)
  • TE Jimmy Graham (4th year)
  • LB Navarro Bowman (4th year)
  • S Earl Thomas (4th year)!
  • QB Cam Newton (3rd year)
  • LB Von Miller (3rd year)
  • WR A.J. Green (3rd year)
  • DE J.J. Watt (3rd year)
  • LB Aldon Smith (3rd year)
  • CB Patrick Peterson (3rd year)!
  • CB Richard Sherman (3rd year)
  • QB Andrew Luck (2nd year)
  • QB Russell Wilson (2nd year)
  • WR Josh Gordon (2nd year)
  • LB Luke Kuechly (2nd year)
  • RB Eddie Lacy (Rookie)
  • WR Keenan Allen (Rookie)

No rookies wowed everyone the way they have the past few years, with the possible exception of Eddie Lacy.

Players to watch for the Class of 2018:

  • LB Ray Lewis
  • WR Randy Moss
  • DT Richard Seymour
  • LB Brian Urlacher
  • CB Ronde Barber
  • G Steve Hutchison

This is a loaded class even if Seymour’s career isn’t over. Lewis is a surefire first-ballot guy, and as explained last year that’ll provide cover for the voters to hold Urlacher back a year when he doesn’t really have a first-ballot resume anyway; Moss has a chance to join him, depending on how the voters feel about his extracurricular activities and the state of the WR backlog, but Seymour does not. Barber and Hutchison were the two names at the very back of the surefire list last year, so they may have lengthy waits.

Predictions for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2014

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The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s selections are performed by a panel of 44 leading NFL media members including representatives of all 32 NFL teams, a representative of the Pro Football Writers of America, and 11 at-large writers.

The panel has selected a list of 15 finalists from the modern era, defined as playing all or part of their careers within the last 25 years. A player must have spent 5 years out of the league before they can be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame. Players that last played in the 2008 season will be eligible for induction in 2014.

During Super Bowl Weekend, the panel will meet and narrow down the list of modern-era finalists down to five. Those five will be considered alongside two senior candidates, selected by a nine-member subpanel of the larger panel last August, for a total of seven. From this list, at least four and no more than seven people will be selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

My prediction for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2014 is:

Andre Reed
Michael Strahan
Derrick Brooks
Jerome Bettis
Will Shields
Ray Guy

Hall of Fame Game: Steelers v. Giants