Note: This post does not incorporate the result of the Thursday night game.
On this week’s “Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast”, SportsBusiness Journal’s John Ourand explained how the rule guaranteeing CBS and Fox one-half of each division rivalry is hindering the league’s ability to flex out of bad games by seemingly confirming that CBS and Fox don’t have to protect games if they’re the only half of a division rivalry they’re scheduled to get:
Now, I’m not sure how much that rule has to do with the bad primetime games we’ve already gotten. Besides a number of games not falling in flexible windows, even with the guaranteed-division-rivalry rule it’s not like the league was lacking in alternatives to Bears-Chargers Week 8. It would have required some back-and-forth crossflexing to accommodate both the Rams and Chargers without giving CBS too many games in the late window, but that shouldn’t have been too much of an obstacle unless, as I’ve decided, the early flex is meant to be a very rare exception to the games it applies to being non-flexible, to be used only when an injury to a star player makes it truly dire and not as marketable as it used to be. But that may not be as much the case as I’ve thought: this week’s Jets-Raiders game apparently got to the point of the networks issuing protections, with Fox reportedly protecting Niners-Jaguars despite not moving it to the late window or otherwise moving away from Giants-Cowboys as their lead late game, because the Cowboys-Giants half of the rivalry had already aired on NBC. (On that note, shortly after the bit in the clip Marchand and Ourand were reminded that there are three games between teams with winning records this week, including Niners-Jaguars… and all three are in the early window, and in fact all three are on Fox so no one will be getting more than one of them without Sunday Ticket.) And the rule certainly is greatly limiting the league’s options in the main flex period, as we’ve had plenty of opportunity to explore in this space.
What would I do about it? Really, there’s not much that can be done beyond taking more care in the construction of the schedule. One thing I would do is space out divisional games as evenly as possible across the season. Each division has 12 divisional games, two of which have to be played Week 18; multiply by eight divisions and that’s 80 games over 17 weeks, or about five a week with five weeks getting four. Those five weeks, if possible, should all be in the main flex period. In addition, for any division game scheduled for one of the primetime packages, CBS or Fox’s half of those games should be scheduled for September or October before the main flex period kicks in, and games with one half scheduled for Week 18 should have the other half scheduled either in the first half of the season, or very late in the season, around Week 15-16, so the league has some idea of the likelihood that the Week 18 game will be suitable/desirable for a move to NBC or ESPN. Balancing all of that is not necessarily practical, and might not be desirable for CBS or Fox, but I feel like it should be a goal the league should aspire towards.
Of course, there’s a reason Fox didn’t back out of a game involving the woeful Giants as its lead late game in favor of Niners-Jaguars or any of the other games involving teams with winning records: how good a team is doesn’t necessarily correlate that well with how desirable the games involving them are.
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 28 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. My assumption is that protections are due five weeks in advance, in accordance with the 28-day deadline for TNF flexes. Protections have never been officially publicized, and have not leaked en masse since 2014, so can only be speculated on.
- Supposedly, CBS and Fox are also guaranteed one half of each division rivalry. Notably, some Week 18 games (see below) have their other halves scheduled for the other conference’s network, though none are scheduled for 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; Amazon’s Black Friday game does not count even though the rest of their TNF slate does, and NBC’s Saturday afternoon game Week 16 doesn’t count but their Peacock game that night 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.
- 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 moreNFL Flexible Scheduling Watch: Week 9