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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/graywolt on 2024-06-19 22:11:04+00:00.

You may be asking yourself why it felt like last year that the Jets, Giants, and Bears were taking up most of the NFL national TV slots last year, despite combining for a lackluster 27-30 record. I, u/graywolt, will be here to explain why flexing terrible games out of primetime has gotten quite tougher than it’s used to, and why “bad” games haven’t been flexed out as much.

New Protections for Fox and CBS

For years now, CBS and Fox have had the abilities to protect their best matchup in a given week, two weeks before said week’s games were to play. Last year though, two new, big, protection rules became a thing, with the first new rule being that one half of a division series now belongs to one of CBS or FOX.

For this example, let’s say hypothetically that the Week 14 SNF matchup between the LA Chargers and the Kansas City Chiefs has the Chargers at 4-8, with the Chiefs at 9-3. Along with this, let’s say that the only three decent games that week that would be a good SNF matchup are Steelers-Browns (6-6) v (7-5), Jets-Dolphins, (7-5) v (9-3) and Bears-49ers (7-5) v (11-1). Fox would simply protect BUF/LAR, with CBS doing the same to NYJ/MIA. This seems like it would leave PIT-CLE to be moved to SNF, but not quite, as Browns-Steelers was/will be TNF Week 12. This would leave PIT-CLE on CBS, acting like a sort of auto protection.

The second new rule pretty much mandates that FOX and CBS get at least eight games for each AFC/NFC respectively. This rule is a bit more flexible though, with the Chiefs only being scheduled for seven CBS matchups, although Chiefs-Broncos in Week 18 seems likely to be on CBS.

A hypothetical example for this rule would be if say… By week 10, the Week 12 SNF game of Eagles-Rams was 6-2 v 2-6, and the only decent games for Week 12 were Chiefs-Panthers (6-2) v (4-4), Packers-49ers (5-3) v (6-2) and Pats-Dolphins (4-4) v (6-2). Fox protects Packers-49ers, and because the Chiefs are only scheduled for CBS seven times, CBS can protect Pats-Dolphins while still holding onto Chiefs-Panthers.

The new flex rules are part of the reason flexing didn’t happen nearly as much, but there were coincidental circumstances that occurred that seemed to prevent games from being moved last year.

Giants-Bills (Week 6, 2023)

The simple reason that Giants-Bills stayed on SNF that week is rather simple, with a flex having to be authorized by Week 4, which will never happen unless both teams lose a star player, and are winless while looking like absolute shit in every game.

Bears-Chargers (Week 8, 2023)

I personally was quite miffed about this game staying on SNF until I realized why it happened. The explanation for why this happened is a bit complicated, but here goes. What likely happened here is that since Rams-Cowboys was protected by FOX, the only way Bears-Chargers could be moved to 1 PM PT (where it had to be) is if it went to 1:25. The NFL and CBS were likely against this, as the second and third biggest markets would be locked out of seeing one of the two marquee 1:25 matchups that day (Chiefs/Broncos and Bengals/49ers)

Jets-Raiders (Week 10, 2023)

The reasons that this game wasn’t moved for Ravens-Browns or 49ers-Jags are because of two reasons: The Jets would’ve had to have been moved to 1:05 PM directly against the Giants, which was a no-go. Even if the NFL didn’t care about this, there would still only be five games in the early window, which is another no-go.

Packers-Giants (Week 14, 2023)

This has another simple answer, and it’s that barring a network swap, the only game that could be switched for Packers-Giants was Texans-Jets, which wasn’t better enough to warrant a flex.

I hope that this answers at least some questions on why it’s felt like bad games haven’t been moved nearly as much out of primetime.