Football

TGTSTG Bonus Content: The Saga of the Longhorn Network

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ESPN and Fox had saved the Big 12. Their commitment to pay the Big 12 the same with 10 schools as with 12 schools, coupled with virtually the entire college football world outside the Pac-10 converging to try to prevent conference realignment Armageddon, enabled Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe to offer Texas, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma enough of a financial inducement to stay in their conference and not defect to the Pac-10. Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds effectively said as much, though not in so many words. Though a Longhorns network was “really important” to the school, and a move to the Pac-10 would have precluded that by forcing the school to surrender their rights to the conference for their own network, it wasn’t the “deal-breaker” to back out of the deal. Chris Plonsky, who headed the school’s women’s sports, similarly said that the ability to start a network wasn’t the “linchpin” that kept them in the Big 12, but it was a “very important variable”. Certainly it was a key element allowing the math to work out, and was widely perceived as the bedrock on which the foundation of the entire conference would be built going forward. Unlike other conferences that could plausibly claim to have an all-for-one, one-for-all mentality, the Big 12, it was just made clear, existed only because Texas allowed it to exist, and Texas allowed it to exist because it could collect much more money than the conference’s other schools, with many millions staked on a Longhorn network, an entire network dedicated to one school and potentially beamed directly into the campuses of many of its conference rivals, that would prevent the Big 12 from even considering going down the conference network path their peers were headed down. But Texas, despite having one of the biggest brand names and fan bases in college sports, was about to learn starting their own network would not be easy.

If anyone was as disappointed in the outcome as Larry Scott and the Pac-12, it was probably cable operators and satellite providers across the country. The formation of a handful of superconferences at least would have kept to a minimum the number of networks each of them would have tried to launch. Now, however, Texas, Oklahoma, and even Missouri were each talking about launching their own networks, and it wasn’t clear whether or not SEC or ACC schools would try to follow suit. There seemed to be a sense that launching a network was an automatic ATM guaranteed to let the money flow in. Cable operators wanted to make clear that things were not that easy and that they would take steps to protect their bottom line, and potentially, their customers’ bills. And they intended to make an example out of a Longhorn network.

Perhaps sensing the uphill battle ahead, Texas planned to invest no money in the enterprise and carry no risk if it failed. It would find a partner that could help with distribution and was willing to shoulder all the risk. Fox seemed to be the early leader in the clubhouse; it held most of the rights a new network would need and could conceivably use FSN’s existing deals with cable operators and satellite providers to get the network widely distributed right from the start. Fox also had experience partnering with the Big Ten on the Big Ten Network, something the other major contender, ESPN, had no experience in. But ESPN was able to make a renewed push to score the rights to, and full ownership of, the Longhorn Network. It would have to launch the network from scratch and go through all the bruising battles with cable operators, but as it turned out, if Texas did have to launch the network from scratch, it couldn’t ask for a better partner than ESPN.

The road was very bumpy to start. Even before engaging in high-level negotiations with cable operators, the network had an early misstep when ESPN decided it would be a good idea to air high-school football game, only for other schools to wonder whether that might violate NCAA recruiting rules or otherwise give Texas a recruiting advantage above and beyond that represented by the network itself. That, coupled with ESPN securing the rights to a conference football game, caused some to wonder whether the conference was on the brink of collapse again, and helped push Texas A&M and Missouri to jump ship to the SEC.

Meanwhile, ESPN went to distributors asking for 40 cents a subscriber, expensive for a cable channel but chump change compared to major-conference and regional sports networks (BTN started out charging 70 cents). Nonetheless, as the launch approached the network was far apart in talks with Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, and Comcast, in part because of the uncertainty surrounding high school and conference games, and in DirecTV’s case, because they wanted to wait for conference realignment to settle down (A&M was actively engaged in negotiations with the SEC as the network launched). It did have a deal with Verizon, but lacking a deal with TWC meant most people in Austin and a substantial proportion of people across the state wouldn’t be able to watch Texas’ 2011 home football opener against Rice. With even Verizon’s deal not kicking in until about a week after the network launched, the Longhorn Network opened in just 20,000 households. For all the controversy the network had engendered, almost no one, even within Austin let alone the state of Texas, could see it, and in a prelude to the CSN Houston and SportsNet LA showdowns to come, cable and satellite operators were remaining steadfast; by June, TWC and DirecTV weren’t even talking about carrying the network.

The network added AT&T U-Verse in time for the 2012 season, but the network was starting to look like folly; Oklahoma had gone deep into negotiations with Fox on a branded network, but what eventually emerged was merely a block of programming on Fox’s existing regional sports networks, while football coach Mack Brown, always uncomfortable with the level of access LHN wanted, seemed to imply that the distractions and added intelligence LHN provided may have contributed to Texas’ slow start that season. By 2013, it looked like LHN would enter a third season still without coverage on the largest distributors, casting a shadow over ESPN’s efforts to launch the SEC Network.

But just as the season prepared to begin, ESPN finally reached an agreement for Time Warner Cable to carry the Longhorn network. In March 2014, Disney reached a wide-ranging deal with Dish Network that included carriage for the Longhorn and SEC Networks, with DirecTV doing the same in December. What, exactly, changed to cause such a breakthrough, and whether it was a concession more on ESPN’s part or with distributors, may never be known, but one thing that is clear is that ESPN’s leverage with its panopoly of other networks was key to securing deals, certainly with satellite providers. Would the Longhorn Network have been able to overcome its early struggles to secure deals with distributors with any other partner, or certainly if Texas had opted to go it alone? It’s a question worth asking, and it helps explain why the ACC is still thinking about pursuing a network as a conference rather than individual schools looking into their own networks. Ultimately, the Longhorn Network’s success, as qualified as it is, may have more to do with the power of ESPN’s brand than Texas’.

Note: I’m probably not going to finish this initial series of Bonus Content posts this week; among other things, I still need to help put the finishing touches on the paperback. Hopefully the entire series will be done by the end of next week with whatever other posts I want to put together coming out over the rest of the month.

A Last-Ditch Case for Moving the Raiders, Not the Rams or Chargers, to Los Angeles

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It’s looking increasingly like Los Angeles’ long national NFL-less nightmare is coming to an end. A week ago, the Chargers, Raiders, and Rams all filed paperwork to move their respective teams to the Los Angeles area. The Los Angeles Times reports momentum is building behind a proposal to have the Chargers and Rams share a stadium in Inglewood backed by Rams owner E. Stan Kroenke. Chargers owner Dean Spanos is sticking by his own proposal for a stadium in Carson shared with the Raiders, but there seems to be a lot more momentum behind the Inglewood project among the league’s other owners.

Which is good! The notion that half the AFC West would be playing in the same stadium always seemed kind of harebrained to me; that works in the NBA where the only division and conference divisions are geographical, but it smacks of absurdity in the NFL, where New York, the Baltimore-Washington corridor, and most two-team states are evenly balanced between AFC and NFC. It would also cause a television nightmare forcing a large number of crossflexes and/or primetime games to allow LA to see both teams (though they are the only two Pacific-time teams in the division, so Denver and Kansas City could play early when hosting one of them). I’m not convinced LA can actually support two teams, but if it is the second team was pretty much always going to be the Rams.

I also understand why the Chargers and not the Raiders are the AFC team with momentum behind a move to LA. All three markets have turned against the publicly-funded stadium charade and have done little to nothing to help any of the teams secure a new stadium in their home market, and don’t seem to have much support even among fans; in all likelihood, at least one of the teams was going to have to go back to a still-unsettled stadium situation. The Chargers have long seemed further apart with San Diego on a new stadium than the Raiders have with Oakland, and the Raiders have long been the black sheep of the league thanks to their rowdy fans; even LA politicians don’t seem to want the Raiders to return to LA.

But it’s at least conceivable that the NFL might still have a future in San Diego or certainly St. Louis. I’m not sure the NFL has a future in Oakland. The Times suggests that any deal that kept the Raiders in Oakland would include streamlining the process for them to move somewhere else, namely San Diego, St. Louis, or the 49ers stadium in Santa Clara. If it were the Chargers forced to stay put, St. Louis would be their only option. Only the Raiders can make the Bay Area a two-team market; for any other team, it’s not worth it. If a team is going to leave a market for another market, only for a team from a third market, already under consideration for moving to the second market, to fill the void in the first market, what was the point? Why not move the third market’s team to the second market to begin with?

Moreover, the Raiders’ problems seem deeper than those of the Chargers or Rams. The Raiders probably need a change of stadium more than any other team; they’re the last team to share their stadium with a baseball team, and that stadium is a literal sewage dump. Qualcomm Stadium and the Edward Jones Dome have their own problems, but by comparison with the Raiders, they smack of just another couple of owners upset that their stadiums don’t allow them to wine and dine the 1% enough. Even beyond the stadium situation, the Raiders seem to be slowly divorcing themselves from the Bay Area. A few years ago, a brawl between fans at a preseason game between the Raiders and 49ers resulted in the termination of the Raiders-49ers preseason series. Without a geographic rivalry preseason game, there’s barely any point to sharing a market.

While Angelenos themselves seem to want the Rams to return more than any other team, the Raiders certainly place second in terms of teams with roots in the area; the Chargers may have been based in LA their first few years in the AFL, but today’s Angelenos have no connection to them despite the best efforts of the Spanos family, while Ice Cube made an entire documentary a few years ago about the degree to which the Raiders became part of the identity of the city during their relatively brief time there. More than the importance of the Raiders to LA’s identity, though, is the importance of LA to the Raiders’ identity. As much as the suit-and-tie executives running the other teams or calling the shots in LA politics may not like the Raiders’ image, it’s one of the few remaining marks of authenticity in an increasingly corporatized league, and the Raiders would not be the Raiders outside Oakland or Los Angeles. The Raiders’ identity is wrapped up in their working-class roots and West Coast, California attitude; moving them to San Diego or St. Louis just because those cities are free would betray that (San Diego is enough of a vacation spot to undermine its other virtues), and moving them to Levi’s Stadium with its wall of luxury boxes also would mark the corporatization of the team, even if it happened against the Davis family’s wishes. (Besides the fact it would likely mean teams called “San Francisco” and “Oakland” would be playing in a stadium located in neither city, an outcome nearly as absurd as two AFC West teams in the same stadium.)

To be clear, I would, all things considered, be fine with the Chargers and Rams moving to LA, certainly compared to an all-AFC move, but I do think it would likely result in one of the teams angling to leave within a decade. But please, NFL owners, don’t let your quest to take advantage of the loyalty of NFL fans to appeal to corporate suits at all costs and desire to still have a “relocation magnet” city (which the deteriorating situations with these teams suggests is becoming a less potent tactic anyway) blind you to the facts on the ground. For once, let common sense reign. If you move two teams to LA, please, at least give serious consideration to restoring the status quo ante 1995.

Predictions for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2016

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The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s selections are performed by a panel of 46 leading NFL media members including representatives of all 32 NFL teams, a representative of the Pro Football Writers of America, and 13 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 2010 season will be eligible for induction in 2016.

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, and one contributor (not players or coaches), selected by another nine-member subpanel, for a total of eight. From this list, at least four and no more than eight people will be selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

My prediction for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2016 is:

Brett Favre
Marvin Harrison
Orlando Pace
Tony Dungy
Kevin Greene
Eddie DeBartolo
Dick Stanfel
Ken Stabler

Hall of Fame Game: Colts v. Packers

In Defense of the New Year’s Eve College Football Playoff Semifinals (sort of)

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The results are in, and while most people who weren’t among college football’s dealmakers (or otherwise employed in the sports media industry) expected large declines for the College Football Playoff on New Year’s Eve, blowouts resulted in the declines being bigger than pretty much anyone expected. The Cotton Bowl between Michigan State and Alabama drew 18.552 million viewers, while the Oklahoma-Clemson Orange Bowl drew 15.640 million. After last year’s semifinals topped all four BCS Championship Games on ESPN, both games this year did worse than every game of the NBA Finals and not only did worse than ESPN’s NFL Wild Card game, the Orange Bowl had fewer viewers than the Bengals-Broncos regular season game three days earlier (and would have done worse than more games if ESPN’s MNF slate weren’t so underwhelming this year). In the valuable adults 18-49 demographic, the games drew ratings of 5.5 and 4.7 respectively; last year’s games had ratings of 8.9 and 8.3, resulting in overall declines of about 40% in both measures. Were the Rose Bowl not itself a blowout (and didn’t involve questionably-attractive Iowa), I wouldn’t be surprised if it embarrassed college football’s power brokers by doing better than one or both semifinals. According to Sports Media Watch, the games were the lowest-rated games with championship implications dating all the way back to the 1992 establishment of the Bowl Coalition.

Pretty much everyone that isn’t among college football’s power brokers, from fans to sportswriters and even ESPN itself (which tried and failed to move the semifinals to January 2 this year), thinks holding the semifinals on New Year’s Eve two out of every three years is a monumentally stupid idea. Many people work on New Year’s Eve and can’t catch the mid-afternoon game (or on the West Coast, the late game), and after they get off work they want to go out to a party (where Nielsen’s ratings don’t reach) to watch the countdown, not a college football game, no matter how important. Especially for those who thought the hatred for college football’s kingpins would die down once we finally got a playoff, the hatred being leveled at the New Year’s Eve semis is hard to fathom; Richard Deitsch went so far as to compare it to New Coke. But unlike New Coke, and despite the catastrophic declines, Bill Hancock says there’s no plans to change anything going forward. This seems unfathomable to pretty much everyone outside the offices of the College Football Playoff. The New Year’s Eve semis are universally reviled, seemingly destined to fail, and eminently disastrous. Why would college football’s power brokers want to double down on that?

The glib, short answer – the answer that’s partly the one the power brokers give when pressed on the issue – is that they are trying to establish a “new tradition”, or rather, two new traditions. The one they bring up is the notion of the New Year’s Six as a unit, as a two-day celebration of college football, across New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. That notion is eminently flawed by itself for the same reason, but even with that, you could still have semifinals in the early afternoon and night of New Year’s Day, bracketing the Rose Bowl, as many have suggested. The problem with that is the other tradition college football is trying to establish: the notion of the Sugar Bowl between the SEC and Big 12 champions as a tradition on par with the Rose Bowl. Moving it around the schedule like the other New Year’s Six games (not to mention holding it on New Year’s Eve two out of three years) isn’t exactly conducive to establishing a new tradition.

The long answer begins with how this relates specifically to why the CFP rejected ESPN’s request to move the CFP semifinals to January 2. In July Ilan Ben-Hanan, vice-president of programming and acquisitions for ESPN, told Deitsch they wanted to make the change to take advantage of a “one-year-only opportunity” created by a quirk in the calendar: the fact that January 2 would fall on a Saturday. Had it not been the second year of the playoff and New Year’s Six (and had ESPN made the suggestion earlier, when it would have been easier to move around stadium bookings), the CFP may have very well accepted the offer. But all parties knew that changing viewer habits in order to establish a new tradition on New Year’s Eve would be a tall order, and a task that would only be undermined by holding off on playing playoff games on New Year’s Eve the first two years and depriving New Year’s Eve of New Year’s Six games entirely in the second. In order to firmly establish New Year’s Eve as belonging to college football and as one of college football’s three biggest dates in the minds of most Americans, college football had to make sure it stayed the course and kept putting big college football games, like clockwork, on New Year’s Eve every year, not switch things up and move it to the first and second the second year with the semifinals on the second, confounding expectations.

As Ben-Hanan alludes to, the January 2 “solution” is one very specific to a calendar that has New Year’s Eve on a Thursday. Next year, because 2016 is a leap year, it’s New Year’s Eve that falls on a Saturday, which makes it the superior option to the day after the New Year’s bowls (which tradition and the NFL dictate get bumped to the second when New Year’s Day is a Sunday) for the semifinals to be held. And pretty much any other year, New Year’s Eve is pretty much always the better time to hold the semifinals than January 2. There may be plenty of people working when New Year’s Eve is a weekday, but there are certainly fewer people working and people working fewer hours than on January 2, or any other weekday in the general vicinity of New Year’s that’s not New Year’s Day itself. There’s no reason for the CFP to really reconsider anything until 2019, and with New Year’s Eve 2018 falling on Monday, there may be more people getting that day off than normal as a bridge to New Year’s Day, meaning fully half the CFP’s 12-year contract may pass before they have any reason to really reconsider anything. If anything, I would argue the CFP’s sin was in not considering the calendar when it set the initial rotation; 2017-18 is not a year that should be the Rose and Sugar Bowls’ turn in the semifinal rotation, because if you apply the no-NYD-bowl-on-Sunday rule to New Year’s Eve, then the absolute best-case scenario comes when New Year’s Eve falls on a Sunday, when the New Year’s Eve bowls not only fall on a weekend but on a day where people aren’t going out at the end of the night. And while people watching the games at work or at a party may be a problem with regards to ratings now, that’s changing as we speak; Nielsen hopes to have its new “total audience measurement” integrated with its main ratings in time for next year’s New Year’s Six, and ESPN apparently worked with Nielsen to measure even people watching at bars and parties, though those numbers won’t be available for a few weeks at the moment.

What this really tells me is the tension between the two traditions college football is trying to establish, between college football’s past and its future, and just how committed college football’s power brokers really are to the playoff. When the SEC-Big 12 bowl was announced, I wondered if it would end up undermining the playoff, and in a way it is. While the CFP is finding college football’s existing bowl tradition inconvenient to their plans, the power conferences find themselves more attached to the Rose Bowl tradition than the playoff, doubling down on it by giving the plum New Year’s Day spots to the Rose and Sugar Bowls, making four out of five power conferences invested in that tradition and forcing the CFP to work around it.

The concept of the New Year’s Six was always sort of a harebrained idea to get to that point (unless the idea was to set the playoff up to fail). Not only does it force the semifinals to conflict with New Year’s Eve two out of three years, it actually undermines the Rose and Sugar Bowls those years, because the best teams will play in the most meaningful games, the playoff semifinals, before those two games and interest will fall off a cliff after that until the national championship. The playoff was always going to undermine the bowl system, and the emphasis on conference champions means that at least two of the four teams that would play in the Rose and Sugar Bowls will always be taken away for the sake of the playoff, so committing to those games as the finale of the New Year’s Six was always a bit of a losing proposition. Then there’s the fact that the remaining two New Year’s Six games are played in the early afternoon, hardly a time that screams “marquee game” and forcing the Fiesta Bowl to be played at 11 AM Mountain, and the Citrus and Outback Bowls haven’t cleared out from occupying that time slot on New Year’s Day, forcing whatever NY6 bowl ends up there to face more and better competition than pretty much any other bowl on the entire slate.

Any better solutions, however, would be limited, because you still want to communicate the notion of the New Year’s Six as a unit and, while you’d like to end the New Year’s Six with the semifinals when possible, you can’t move them too far away from the Rose and Sugar Bowls because, besides the Rose Bowl’s tradition, they’re likely to have the best non-semifinal matchups. Stretching the NY6 over at least three days, though, seems desirable, allowing all six bowls to get prime spots no earlier than the late afternoon. Combine that with a more calendar-conscious semifinal rotation and I think there’s a better solution that would work for the College Football Playoff by maximizing the number of times the semifinals are played on Saturday when they aren’t the Rose or Sugar. I mentioned above that the Rose and Sugar Bowls should never be the semifinals when New Year’s Day is a Sunday; let me amend that to say the Rose and Sugar Bowls should always be the semifinals when New Year’s Day is a Wednesday or Saturday, and never be the semifinals when it falls on any other day, unless a leap year causes one of those days (particularly Wednesday) to be skipped. If New Year’s Day is a Friday or Thursday, play the semis the following Saturday (and if Thursday, the other two bowls on the intervening day); if it’s a Sunday or Monday, play the preceding Saturday; if it’s a Tuesday and doesn’t start a leap year, play on New Year’s Eve. Note that, other than the timing of bowls that are neither the Rose, Sugar, or semifinals, this is only inconsistent with the CFP’s “new tradition” if New Year’s Day is a Friday or Thursday.

Had the CFP taken this approach, they might have still had the Rose and Sugar Bowls host the first year to make up for missing a Wednesday year by one year, but then they wouldn’t host again until 2020, and then again in 2022. Through next year this would have been consistent with ESPN getting their way this year (other than the timing of non-Rose/Sugar/Semifinal bowls), and other than when the Rose and Sugar host, would have remained so right up until the last year of the contract if ESPN got their way again in 2020-2021 (somewhat incredibly, a Rose/Sugar year in real life).

But then, neither the power brokers nor ESPN have much reason to change course; the CFP’s contract is set for the next ten years and they make the same money no matter what, so they only really have any reason to change course if the New Year’s Eve semifinals prove actively destructive to the overall popularity of college football, and they certainly didn’t let a bunch of sportswriter whining get to them over the 16-year-long lifespan of the BCS so they certainly won’t do so now. The value of the CFP to ESPN, meanwhile, is mostly in how it juices up its subscriber fees, without which the CFP would almost certainly be on broadcast like it should be, and while people might be a little less attached to cable if they can’t watch the game anyway, it’s the fact that ESPN carries the games that matters to their subscriber fees, with when they’re held a more secondary consideration. If you want college football to bail from their “new tradition” in the next six years, you want cord-cutting to accelerate to the point of making a sizable dent in ESPN’s bottom line and undermining the value of their subscription revenue stream, causing these two things to collide head-on. If the CFP decides they can’t spend the rest of the contract with the playoff stuck on a glorified premium channel, they may try to force ESPN to move the remaining playoff games, if not the entire New Year’s Six, to ABC (or otherwise to offer them for free), and that would mean advertising would have to pull a lot more of the CFP’s weight, giving both ESPN and the CFP a lot more incentive to pull the semifinals off New Year’s Eve (although keeping them there would give ABC a powerhouse lead-in to the already dominant New Year’s Rockin’ Eve).

In a way, the fact the New Year’s Six was even a plausible concept says a lot about how the shift to cable changed the scheduling priorities. The BCS was scheduled for broadcast television, where the only non-primetime spots generally open to sports are on weekends and holidays, and so the Rose Bowl was the only game not placed in a primetime slot. But ESPN has complete control over its schedule without dealing with affiliates and less dependence on advertising revenue, and is more concerned with filling time than with ratings – note that ESPN has long aired afternoon bowls throughout the week between Christmas and New Year’s – and so its priority was to spread out high ratings throughout the entire day while still being able to count on, if not other bowls, college and professional basketball games to attract decent ratings of their own in primetime. The move of the BCS to ESPN was the ultimate manifestation of the greed of college football’s kingpins, and since it kicked in I’ve never watched more of any BCS or New Year’s Six game than necessary to see the graphics, BottomLine treatment, or sample Megacast coverage (which admittedly makes a fairly weak boycott), not even letting a cable box sit on ESPN with the TV off lest it send data implying our household is actually standing for it. For everyone who didn’t follow suit, from Congressmen that didn’t use it as a reason to keep a closer eye on college football’s “amateur” “academic” purposes to fans who took what they were given and dutifully turned on ESPN at the appropriate times, this is what you’ve sown. Feel lucky this sort of thing hasn’t spread throughout sports – yet.

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 15

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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; nine teams have five primetime appearances each, but only the Giants, Cowboys, Packers, and Eagles don’t have games in the main flex period, and of those only the Giants don’t have games in the early flex period. 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 17 (January 3):

AFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS
SOUTH
47-7		 59-5 ALL OTHER TEAMS
ELIMINATED
6-8
WEST
310-4		 69-5
9-5
NORTH
211-3		 9-5
9-5
EAST
112-2
CLINCHED
NFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (7-7)
EAST
47-7		 59-5
2 tied at 6-8
NORTH
310-4		 69-5
9-5
WEST
212-2
CLINCHED
SOUTH
114-0
CLINCHED
  • Tentative game: None (NBC will show game with guaranteed playoff implications).
  • Possible games: Vikings-Packers, Bucs-Panthers. The situation is actually quite simple, but this may be the biggest looming headache of the all-division-games era, certainly if the Panthers, Vikings, and Cardinals all lose and leave the NFL with no good options.
  • Vikings-Packers will be picked if: The Packers lose OR (the Vikings win AND the Panthers lose). In all likelihood, the NFL is going to have to settle for a division title game between two playoff-bound teams that may well determine home field for a rematch the following week. What makes this even more of a headache is that the Vikings play on Sunday night, so if the Packers win this game’s chances will be dependent on the Sunday night result… then again, if you believe one of my commenters a Packers win could force this game to be rescheduled to Saturday anyway, since that would keep open the possibility the Cardinals would have to host the Vikings the weekend of the college football national championship in their home stadium, and in any case that possibility would make the NFL somewhat reluctant to flex Vikings-Packers to primetime even without the CFP factor.
  • Bucs-Panthers will be picked if: The Panthers win AND the Packers win. This is a last resort play if Vikings-Packers weren’t an option, but honestly if Vikings-Packers weren’t such a ratings magnet I could see the NFL going with the game that’s meaningless for playoff purposes but totally meaningful for history in the absence of a true winner-in, loser-out game, and they may do so anyway if they’d prefer to schedule Vikings-Packers simultaneously with Cardinals-Seahawks (i.e., if the Packers have a shot to steal the first-round bye, although if it’s still a division title game it’s much better to have it go on later than the reverse).

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 14

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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; nine teams have five primetime appearances each, but only the Giants, Cowboys, Packers, and Eagles don’t have games in the main flex period, and of those only the Giants don’t have games in the early flex period. 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 16 (December 27):

  • Selected game: NY Giants @ Minnesota.

Week 17 (January 3):

AFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (6-7)
SOUTH
46-7		 58-5
6-7
WEST
310-3		 68-5
8-5 5-8
NORTH
210-3		 8-5
8-5
EAST
111-2
8-5
NFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (6-7)
EAST
46-7		 58-5
2 tied at 6-7
NORTH
39-4		 68-5
8-5
WEST
211-2
8-5
SOUTH
113-0
CLINCHED
  • Tentative game: None (NBC will show game with guaranteed playoff implications).
  • Possible games: Jets-Bills, Raiders-Chiefs, Indians-Cowboys, Vikings-Packers, Colts-Titans, Texans-Jaguars, Seahawks-Cardinals. Unfortunately, no division has more than one realistic wild card contender, and the divisions with the most straightforward straight-up division title games, the NFC North and West, have also all but locked up the two wild card spots between them.
  • Chances of Vikings-Packers: 25 percent. The good news is that this game should be a division title game regardless of the order in which the teams would be in so long as they’re within a game of each other; the Packers have a game in hand while the Vikings should take the division tiebreaker with a win. The bad news is it would take a nearly complete collapse for the loser of this game not to be in line for a wild card spot, and outright impossible for the loser to be guaranteed to be out. It may actually be better if the winner of this game is in line for a first-round bye, even though that could cause a logistical nightmare for the NFL (see the Seahawks-Cardinals section below for what’s facing the NFL if the Cardinals have to host a wild-card game). If this game could just determine home-field for a rematch the following week, or if the loser gets to play the sucky NFC East winner while the winner has to deal with an actually good team, the NFL might actually prefer Bucs-Panthers if the Panthers are still unbeaten. Still, the likelihood of this game being a division title game leads me to peg its chances so high; if the Panthers lose one of their next two this becomes the last-resort option.
  • Chances of Bucs-Panthers: 20 percent. This is basically a last-resort option for the undefeated factor the NFL would only choose if there’s no other attractive options; if the Panthers are still undefeated they’d have nothing else to play for, and there’s an off chance the NFL would prefer this game was simultaneous with other games involving NFC Wild Card contenders. So it says a lot I have the chances for this game being so high; all the other games below are counting on fairly specific circumstances.
  • Chances of Indians-Cowboys: 15 percent. Turns out the Giants might be more relevant to the Week 17 selection than I thought when I made my Last-Minute Remarks. As explained here, this game could be a contender for SNF even if the Cowboys are completely irrelevant; if Washington loses next week while the Eagles win, then the Eagles lose the following week while the Giants split their next two games, the result would be a three-way tie with Washington having swept the Eagles and holding the division tie-breaker over the Giants with a win over the Cowboys. Alternately, the Cowboys have a game in hand over the Indians and are the only team in the division with three division wins; if they win their next two and the only other NFC East win is the one that’s necessary for the Eagles to lose Week 16, the result would be a three-way tie a game back of the Indians with the Cowboys set to win any three-way tiebreakers over the Indians and the Eagles-Giants winner. Both of these scenarios would be dependent on the Giants-Vikings result, but we have just seen the NFL is willing to condition a flex on the Monday Night Football result, so they might be willing to condition a flex on the SNF result as well.
  • Chances of Jets-Bills: 10 percent. If the Bills win their next two and the Steelers lose their next two, the Jets would actually only need to split for this game to be an option, since the Bills have a game in hand.
  • Chances of Seahawks-Cardinals: 8 percent. Would need the Cardinals to lose their next two and the Seahawks to win their next two, and might need the Packers to lose this week as well so the Cardinals aren’t at risk for hosting a Wild Card game the same weekend as the college football National Championship in their stadium. Even then the Cardinals have already clinched a playoff spot and the Seahawks would have as well, so this is another last-resort pick.
  • Chances of Raiders-Chiefs: 7 percent. If the Chiefs lose their next two and the Raiders win their next two, and either the Jets or Steelers also lose their next two, both these teams would be in pretty good tiebreaker shape… to the point that if both the Jets and Steelers lose their next two, there’s a disturbingly good chance the loser of this game still makes the playoffs.
  • Chances of Texans-Jaguars: 7 percent. The Jaguars have opened up the possibility of the AFC South bailing out the NFL here. If the Colts lose their next two, the Jaguars win their next two, and the Texans lose their other game, this becomes a division title game.
  • Chances of Colts-Titans: 7 percent. Another last-resort game that could still lose to Bucs-Panthers if the Panthers are unbeaten and the Bucs aren’t still contending for the wild card, but falls under the same category as Indians-Cowboys might fall into, mentioned above. If the Jaguars win out and the Colts and Texans split, the Colts would hold the tiebreaker over the Texans-Jaguars winner.
  • Chances of Eagles-Giants: 1 percent. Yes, both these teams are technically maxed out on primetime appearances. Yes, part of the reason they’re maxed out may be that this game can’t be moved to primetime no matter what, given the possibility of a blizzard and traffic nightmare. But you know what? Given the constraints and substandard options facing the NFL, if worst comes to worst and this is a division title game and the only option otherwise available I would not be surprised to see the NFL say “screw everyone” and push this game into primetime no matter what Fox and the Meadowlands think.

Last-Minute Remarks on SNF Week 16 Picks

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Week 16 (December 27):

  • Tentative game: Pittsburgh @ Baltimore
  • Prospects: 8-5 v. 4-9. One of the NFL’s better rivalries, but not in the best shape right now with the Ravens eliminated from the playoffs.
  • Likely protections: Patriots-Jets (CBS) and Packers-Cardinals or Panthers-Falcons (FOX).
  • Other possible games mentioned on last week’s Watch and their records: Packers (9-4)-Cardinals (11-2), Panthers (13-0)-Falcons (6-7), Giants (5-7)-Vikings (8-5), Bears (5-8)-Bucs (6-7), Colts (6-7)-Dolphins (5-7), Cowboys (4-9)-Bills (6-7).
  • Impact of Monday Night Football: The winner goes to 6-7 and makes their respective game at least a little more palatable, but I’m not sure it matters.
  • Analysis: Well, I still don’t quite know what happened to put Cardinals-Eagles on SNF Week 15, but I’ve gotten enough of an idea, and thought through the implications of this week more, that I can actually make a semi-informed prediction about this week. The key is that the NFL probably wants to avoid a repeat of the Bears-Eagles fiasco from two years ago, when the loser of the SNF game was guaranteed to be in a division title game but the NFL wanted to announce the Week 17 game by halftime.They’d prefer a game with no impact on the Week 17 prospects of any game, and the only games that fit the bill are Bears-Bucs, Colts-Dolphins, and the tentative. (The NFL may want to hold Bucs-Panthers in reserve for the undefeated factor.) This is where the Cardinals-Eagles flex comes in, because the only way I can even begin to make sense of why it would be picked over Texans-Colts is if the NFL is hard up against the balance of primetime games taken from Fox and CBS and absolutely had to take a Fox game, and even then I’m not sure you’d take Cardinals-Eagles unless you had the same constraint this week as well (especially given the weakness of the Week 17 AFC options). Given the Bears’ weakness and the Panthers’ close calls and likelihood not to be playing for anything but an unbeaten season by Week 17 I wouldn’t be totally surprised by Panthers-Falcons, but…
  • Final prediction: Chicago Bears @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
  • Actual selection: New York Giants @ Minnesota Vikings (if the Giants win tonight), Pittsburgh Steelers @ Baltimore Ravens (no change) (if the Dolphins win tonight). I guess the NFL is comfortable with the possibility Vikings-Packers’ prospects will depend on what the Vikings do, and it probably is the best option if you ignore Week 17 implications, but looking at that other option, so much for my Fox-CBS balance theory.

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 13

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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; nine teams have five primetime appearances each, but only the Giants, Cowboys, Packers, and Eagles don’t have games in the main flex period, and of those only the Giants don’t have games in the early flex period. 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 22):

  • Selected game: Cincinnati @ Arizona.

Week 12 (November 29):

  • Selected game: New England @ Denver.

Week 13 (December 6):

  • Selected game: Indianapolis @ Pittsburgh.

Week 14 (December 13):

  • Selected game: New England @ Houston.

Week 15 (December 20):

  • Selected game: Arizona @ Philadelphia. Hoo boy, I can’t wait to hear what inscrutable thought process went into this one; have we ever seen a team below .500, certainly with more than a game’s difference between wins and losses, flexed into Sunday night (at least with a game involving only teams at .500 or above as an option)? Certainly I didn’t consider any teams below 5-6 last week despite the tire fire the NFC East is this year, but that’s offset by the fact this maxes out the Eagles on primetime appearances with a Week 17 game against the Giants still potentially deciding the division, and the decision came down before seeing if the two would come out of this week tied for the division lead. If you’re going to disqualify yourself from airing Eagles-Giants, why not put on Panthers-Giants, a game that honestly isn’t that much more lopsided even if the Panthers lose? If Fox protected Panthers-Giants, and you really don’t want to put the Texans on consecutive weeks or you want to address an imbalance of games taken from CBS or Fox, why not put on Bears-Vikings, two bigger markets and a less lopsided game? Yeah, the Vikings’ lease at the University of Minnesota’s stadium only allows them one primetime home game to be played when classes aren’t in session, but I can’t imagine Minnesota would still have classes in session when Christmas is the following Friday, and their Week 17 potential NFC North title game against the Packers is at Lambeau. Hell, Bills-Original Americans would at least be competitive and wouldn’t squeeze you out of a potential Week 17 game. The more I think about this the more I think this is the worst actual flex I’ve ever encountered in the ten years we’ve had flex scheduling, worse than the multi-week clusterbleep of two years ago that put the absolute worst Week 16 game the NFL could have for the purpose of determining the Week 17 game into SNF, which was at least an otherwise understandable choice with a two-game gap and without outright ruling out any potential Week 17 game. The only flex that might come close would be the very first flex known to be a flex way back in 2007 (when I wasn’t sure protections or appearance limits even existed), and even that involved the undefeated Patriots in their 18-1 season. Seriously, do you realize this is only a game less lopsided than the tentative?

Week 16 (December 27):

  • Tentative game: Pittsburgh @ Baltimore
  • Prospects: 7-5 v. 4-8. One of the NFL’s better rivalries, but not in the best shape right now. Probably would be a better flex choice than Cardinals-Eagles though.
  • Likely protections: Patriots-Jets (CBS) and Packers-Cardinals or Panthers-Falcons (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Fox’s unprotected game has been far and away ahead of any other contenders all season, with Giants-Vikings in second. Of course that involves a 5-7 team, so for completeness’ sake let’s mention Bears-Bucs and Colts-Dolphins. Hell, let’s throw Cowboys-Bills in there for the hell of it.
  • Analysis: Well, with the Packers still hovering a game short of being maxed out and this now potentially representing the second straight week for the Cardinals on SNF, I guess we can rule that game out. Meanwhile, the once-mighty Falcons have fallen to .500 and the Panthers have clinched the division and might not have much of anything to play for by the time this game comes around, and it’s not like the Giants have a Week 17 candidate game to worry about getting maxed out for anymore. The worst-case scenario for Giants-Vikings is probably 8-5 v. 5-8, which probably still beats 7-6 v. 6-7 for Bears-Bucs and Colts-Dolphins given the name factor and NFC East bull-dropping fire, but might be close with 7-6 v. 5-8 for a game involving America’s Team that could still win the division. Of course the Cowboys would also be maxed out with their own potential Week 17 candidate game, but does anyone really want to see Indians-Cowboys in primetime again? Really the biggest threat to Giants-Vikings might be the tentative, whose best-case scenario is identical to Giants-Vikings’ worst with both the rivalry-game factor and the tentative game bias on its side, but after this flex I’m not even so sure about that. Hopefully I’ll be less sleep-deprived and more informed about just what the hell the NFL was thinking by Sunday night when I make my Last-Minute Remarks.

Week 17 (January 3):

AFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (5-7)
SOUTH
46-6		 57-5
6-6
WEST
310-2		 67-5
7-5
EAST
210-2		 7-5
7-5 6-6
NORTH
110-2		 6-6
7-5
NFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (5-7)
EAST
45-7		 58-4
2 tied at 5-7
NORTH
38-4		 67-5
8-4 4-8
WEST
210-2		 6-6
7-5 6-6
SOUTH
112-0
CLINCHED
  • Tentative game: None (NBC will show game with guaranteed playoff implications).
  • Possible games: Jets-Bills, Raiders-Chiefs, Indians-Cowboys, Vikings-Packers, Seahawks-Cardinals. Only three of these games involve teams within a game of each other at the moment (which would have been two if the Cowboys hadn’t won Monday night), but sure, let’s carelessly throw away the possibility of a fourth for whatever unfathomable reason!

Last-Minute Remarks on SNF Week 15 Picks

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Week 15 (December 20):

  • Tentative game: Cincinnati @ San Francisco
  • Prospects: 10-2 v. 4-8. Massively lopsided.
  • Likely protections: Broncos-Steelers (CBS, confirmed) and Panthers-Giants or Bears-Vikings (FOX).
  • Other possible games mentioned on last week’s Watch and their records: Texans (6-6)-Colts (6-6), Panthers (12-0)-Giants (5-7), Packers (8-4)-Raiders (5-7), Bills (6-6)-Original Americans (5-6), Bears (5-7)-Vikings (8-4).
  • Impact of Monday Night Football: A win over the Cowboys would put the Bills game on par with Texans-Colts and at least put in some doubt as to the best option. The question is whether it would win a tiebreaker.
  • Analysis: Panthers-Giants or Packers-Raiders would max the Giants or Packers out on primetime appearances with potential Week 17 division title games looming, and as much as the NFL would prefer avoiding simultaneous Bay Area home games, right now the Giants’ game is the one that looks less likely – and what would make it really unlikely is an Indian win that puts their game against the Bills in that much better position. With Bears-Vikings lopsided and involving a 5-7 team, that leaves only the potential or actual battles of 6-6 teams. Texans-Colts would put the Texans on SNF in consecutive weeks (with neither being pre-scheduled) but it’s a pivotal clash in the AFC South while the Bills have no buzz whatsoever, and despite potentially leading their division and that division being the NFC East I’m not sure their opponents have much of any either.
  • Final prediction: Houston Texans @ Indianapolis Colts.

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 12

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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; nine teams have five primetime appearances each, but only the Giants, Cowboys, Packers, and Eagles don’t have games in the main flex period, and of those only the Giants don’t have games in the early flex period. 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 22):

  • Selected game: Cincinnati @ Arizona.

Week 12 (November 29):

  • Selected game: New England @ Denver.

Week 13 (December 6):

  • Selected game: Indianapolis @ Pittsburgh.

Week 14 (December 13):

  • Selected game: New England @ Houston.

Week 15 (December 20):

  • Tentative game: Cincinnati @ San Francisco
  • Prospects: 9-2 v. 3-8. Massively lopsided.
  • Likely protections: Broncos-Steelers (CBS, confirmed) and Panthers-Giants or Bears-Vikings (FOX).
  • Other possible games: Texans-Colts is a key showdown for the AFC South at 6-5 v. 6-5. Panthers-Giants is very lopsided at 11-0 v. 5-6, but the unbeaten factor can’t be discounted. I also must mention the continued possibility that the NFL would still give the edge to Packers-Raiders if it’s reasonably competitive with other options, even if it is a bit lopsided at 7-4 v. 5-6. It would probably overcome Bills-Original Americans (5-6 v. 5-6) under any circumstances, at least, and probably also Bears-Vikings (5-6 v. 8-3) even though that game might have greater name value.
  • Analysis: Realistically Panthers-Giants isn’t an option; it would max the Giants out on primetime appearances when Eagles-Giants Week 17 could still be an NFC East division title game. That basically leaves Texans-Colts, which would involve flexing in the Texans two weeks in a row, against Packers-Raiders. My impression is that a Raiders loss would probably make Texans-Colts a mortal lock, but it’s very easy to see a scenario where the Texans and Colts both lose and the Raiders win, which would actually make Packers-Raiders indisputably the better option regardless of Bay Area television considerations. Even if just one of the Texans or Colts lose, it would either give Packers-Raiders the same pair of records or make it a Packers win better. On the other hand, picking Packers-Raiders would also max the Packers out on primetime appearances with a potential Vikings-Packers division title game looming Week 17, which might open things up for the other games with 5-6 teams. The AFC South showdown factor probably gives Texans-Colts the edge over Bills-Natives, but if it’s 6-6 v. 6-6 and Bears-Vikings is 6-6 v. 8-4 and unprotected, it might get the edge especially given the relative popularity, market size, and name value of the teams.

Week 16 (December 27):

  • Tentative game: Pittsburgh @ Baltimore
  • Prospects: 6-5 v. 4-7. One of the NFL’s better rivalries, but not in the best shape right now, although the Ravens are looking not-horrible enough the game could keep its spot if circumstances warrant.
  • Likely protections: Patriots-Jets (CBS) and Packers-Cardinals or Panthers-Falcons (FOX).
  • Other possible games: As with the week with the first Panthers-Falcons matchup, Fox’s unprotected game is far and away ahead of any other contenders, with Giants-Vikings in second and Bears-Bucs a dark horse.

Week 17 (January 3):

AFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (4-7)
SOUTH
46-5		 56-5
6-5
WEST
39-2		 66-5
6-5
NORTH
29-2		 6-5
6-5 6-5
EAST
110-1		 5-6
6-5 5-6
NFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS		 WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (4-7)
EAST
45-6		 57-4
5-6
NORTH
38-3		 66-5
7-4
WEST
29-2		 6-5
6-5 5-6
SOUTH
111-0		 5-6
6-5 5-6
  • Tentative game: None (NBC will show game with guaranteed playoff implications).
  • Possible games: Jets-Bills, Saints-Falcons, Jaguars-Texans, Raiders-Chiefs, Indians-Cowboys, Eagles-Giants, Vikings-Packers, Seahawks-Cardinals.