8bc000

NFL Flexible Scheduling Watch: Week 13

by

So far this season we haven’t had any “real” flexes, in the sense that none of the official flex-scheduling windows in primetime have seen any of their games flexed out. That will change as we enter the home stretch of the season, and for a season that hasn’t had any flexing so far, it’s hard to think of a season seeing so much December flex drama.

The storyline of this season is that no one seems to look particularly good; each week the league’s pundits look for a team to anoint as the best of the league, only for that team to take an upset loss against a team with no business beating them, most recently the Rams falling to a Panthers team that has alternated wins over good teams with losses to the likes of the lowly Saints. The Rams still look like the team that would “make the most sense” winning the Super Bowl, but it’s hard to tell if that’s a result of no one wanting to believe that the best team in the league has Sam Darnold or a second-year player at quarterback. The Packers looked like the Super Bowl favorites in the first third of the season, only to take losses to the likes of the Browns, the aforementioned Panthers (at home this time, as opposed to the Rams losing on the road), and the Eagles right as they seemingly forgot how to play offense – and now people are talking about them as Super Bowl contenders again, if only because they can’t figure out who else to put in the 5 spot of their power rankings.

For flex scheduling purposes, what this means is that there’s rarely a reason to give up on a tentative game. To be sure, this past Monday’s Giants-Patriots game was absolutely deserving of a flex and likely would have been if it were a Sunday game, but most other games on the slate involve teams with at least outside shots at the playoffs. Things are only getting more dramatic as the season comes down to the wire; no fewer than three teams, the Cowboys, Bengals, and Dolphins, that spent the entire season to this point nowhere near the playoff picture are now hoping to make late charges to sneak into the playoffs, while the mighty Chiefs, after making it at least to overtime of the AFC Championship Game every year of Patrick Mahomes’ career, might have to act like those teams just to make the playoffs. 23 teams have realistic shots at claiming one of the 14 playoff spots, meaning just about every game has playoff implications.

I’ve complained in the past about the league being careless with scheduling divisional games that are locked to their respective conference’s network in the main flex period, and I’m going to do it again next week with a bounty of big divisional games on Sunday afternoon and Dolphins-Steelers lucking into not being a disaster thanks to the Dolphins’ late push. But in a broader sense, there are so many divisional games in December – this week also has a bunch of divisional games locked into regional distribution, most glaringly Colts-Jaguars – that it greatly complicates figuring out what things might look like down the stretch, what games might be important and how, especially in Week 18. There’s a lot of variation as it is in trying to figure out what Week 18 might look like too many weeks out, but the variation seems especially wide this year. Of the three games that, in my view, look likeliest to be division title games, two haven’t played their first matchup yet and the third only played its first matchup this week. There’s a lot of variation in possible outcomes for a lot of teams, especially when it comes to who might win the AFC North and South and NFC West (and to a lesser extent NFC North), all divisions with three teams with a realistic shot to win them. The next two to three weeks will make a big difference on what the playoff picture looks like, and with it, what the Week 18 schedule might look like.

With regards to the next two weeks, the team that will make the most impact on flex scheduling is the Jacksonville Jaguars, who could see games flexed into primetime in consecutive weeks. Traditionally, the Jags are such ratings poison that in the last year of the SNF-only flex scheduling regime, when Titans-Jaguars was a division title game, the league passed on it for the SNF finale in favor of a Packers-Lions game where the Lions would be eliminated before game time, lucking into the Lions playing hard and beating the Packers anyway. But that year the AFC South struggled to get to .500 and seemed destined to be swept out of the playoffs by a superior wild card team only for the Jags to mount a historic comeback to knock out the Chargers.

This time around, few teams exemplify this season of inconsistency and flawed teams from top to bottom like the Jags: a marquee Monday night win over the Chiefs, not to mention wins over the Texans, Niners, and Chargers, but also a nasty loss to the Bengals where Joe Burrow got hurt and the Bengals came back to win after the injury when Jake Browning came in, and the only games they’ve played against teams we’re sure are good were a home loss to the Seahawks and a blowout loss in their second home of London to the Rams. Now they’re sitting in the 3 seed with a pair of matchups with the Colts looming on top of one more big showdown against the current 2 seed, one that has the biggest point in its favor for a potential flex: the prospect of being locked into the late singleheader. These are the games that will prove whether the Jags are for real, a real threat to make a deep run in the playoffs, and in the case of the first Colts game, whether they can “play their way into primetime” twice over – and at least one Jags fan is already calling his shot when it comes to the flexing stakes of this week’s Colts game.

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

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

Read more

NFL Flexible Scheduling Watch: Week 12

by

I’ve complained in the past about how much I often tend to struggle with filling out this opening section. That hasn’t been quite so much the case this year, but in some ways it’s grown more acute. The 506sports Discord locked itself behind Patreon at the start of the season, meaning I don’t have an antidote to the insanity of my comment section (or at least of one particular commenter), and I don’t have as much exposure to any developments or reporting that might have bearing on flex scheduling. (Though some quick Googling suggests that Mike North hasn’t done any in-season interviews of the sort he’s done the last few years.)

Here’s an example of something that might fill out this section but which would mostly be repeated in the weekly capsules: in the second installment of this year’s iteration of this feature, I noted the Dolphins’ woeful start and how it would, or wouldn’t, affect flex scheduling this year. Since then they’ve gone 3-1, with the only loss coming in Lamar Jackson’s comeback followed up by a big home win over the Bills (Miami’s first win over the Bills in three years and second in seven), and ascended to the level of mere mediocrity rather than outright disaster. Will that save their primetime appearances?

We’ll see. Part of the point of my bringing them up in Week 7 was that it was virtually impossible to flex them out of their Monday night game against the Steelers given the limited number of games capable of making that move and the questionable quality of the teams in those games, meaning that game was likely to keep its spot no matter what. More interesting would be their Sunday night tilt against the Bengals, which depends as much on what the Bengals do with Joe Burrow back as on the Dolphins. With games against the woeful Saints and Jets the next two weeks, there’s a very good chance the Dolphins will end up at 6-7 by the time the decision needs to be made (assuming the league can’t wait for the Monday night result when making a decision with six days’ notice), which I hear gets the kids all excited. Would that be enough to avoid a flex when the Bengals are already guaranteed to be worse than that?

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

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

Read more

NFL Flexible Scheduling Watch: Week 11

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more