Last-Minute Remarks on NFL Flexible Scheduling Decisions Following Week 15

Week 16: No announcement was made on the Week 16 slate on Sunday, which is a change from past “six-day hold” situations. This sort of limbo can end up getting the 506sports Discord stir-crazy and wondering if Fox held the line enough on keeping Vikings-Seahawks to force CBS to stick with Niners-Dolphins as its lead game, but the most likely explanations are a) continued horse-trading involving what sort of compensation to give Fox and b) holding off so the league can make announcements for Weeks 16 and 17 at once. We saw with the Thursday night flex that the league can make a decision regarding a flex before they actually announce it. It’s worth noting that NBC advertised the Bucs-Cowboys game for Sunday night during last night’s game, after CBS and Fox did not advertise their slates for next Sunday at all – and it’s also worth noting that on-screen, though not verbal, advertisements for Bucs-Cowboys started showing up at halftime but were absent from NBC’s ticker during pregame, which may suggest NBC was informed that they would be keeping the game sometime during the first half. To my knowledge, however, as I write this nothing has leaked regarding any time or network changes.

Right now the playoff hopes of both the Niners and Dolphins are hanging by a thread, although the Chargers’ loss means that both a Chargers win and Dolphins loss would be needed to eliminate the Dolphins. If I were the czar of the NFL schedule I’d move Niners-Dolphins to the 1 PM ET window so the Rams can’t eliminate the Niners before game time; moving Rams-Jets late only dilutes the distribution of Niners-Dolphins, as it likely can’t move to the same network as Giants-Falcons. But moving any game other than Niners-Dolphins or Eagles-Swing States to 4:05 means moving a game involving a team already eliminated from the playoffs, and the next-best game on the Sunday afternoon slate, Lions-Bears, sees the Bears enforcing a blackout on CBS in the Chicago market, so moving it late means depriving the market from the feature game. Jaguars-Raiders, the only other 4:25 PM ET game, might be the worst game of the entire season, let alone the week’s slate, so it’s not a good choice to move to Fox either. Given that, and given the time constraints if the schedule hasn’t already been finalized without our knowledge, a straight swap of Niners-Dolphins for Vikings-Seahawks seems most likely. (Hey, maybe in light of the Geno Smith injury, there’s a last-minute push to get Fox to give up Eagles-Swing States instead! Eh, probably not.) Final prediction: Minnesota Vikings @ Seattle Seahawks to 4:25 CBS.

Week 17 thoughts after the jump!

Read more