On Thursday, the NFL announced its first primetime flex of the season. But it surprisingly doesn’t involve Sunday Night Football.
In Week 15, the league is flexing the Eagles-Seahawks game into Monday Night Football, replacing Chiefs-Patriots.
The first-ever Monday Night Football flex: the NFL is flexing Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce off of Monday Night Football in Week 15, replacing the Dec. 18 Chiefs at Patriots game with Eagles at Seahawks.
Eagles now will have three consecutive standalone games from Weeks… pic.twitter.com/8l9iV4MUNw
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) November 30, 2023
There are several other changes to the Week 15 schedule, which includes a Saturday tripleheader on NFL Network.
On Saturday, December 16, the tripleheader starts with Vikings-Bengals at 1 p.m. ET. Steelers-Colts follows at 4:30 p.m. ET, closing with Broncos-Lions in primetime at 8:15 p.m. ET.
The Chiefs-Patriots game will now air at 1 p.m. ET on Fox. The network will also air Falcons-Panthers, Bears-Browns, and Giants-Saints in the timeslot.
The rest of the Week 15 schedule remains unchanged. Prime Video will air Chargers-Raiders on Thursday Night Football and NBC will air Ravens-Jaguars on Sunday Night Football.
CBS has a five-game singleheader slate, featuring Bucs-Packers, Jets-Dolphins, and Texans-Titans at 1 p.m. ET and 49ers-Cardinals and Commanders-Rams at 4:05 p.m. ET. Fox’s national window at 4:25 p.m. ET will now feature Cowboys-Bills as the sole game going out to the country.
This flex seems to work out well for everyone. ESPN gets a far more competitive game on MNF. While Fox loses an Eagles game, it gets the Chiefs in the early window and also won’t deprive much of the country of the Eagles due to the Cowboys-Bills game that was previously airing at the same time. NFL Network also gets a pretty decent tripleheader, given the announced options available to it earlier this year.
We’re now down to just a couple of weeks left with flex potential, and our eyes will be on that Packers-Vikings Sunday Night Football matchup in Week 17. That game may or may not have playoff implications, and we’ll known soon whether or not it’ll be dumped from primetime in favor or something else.
The NFL also hasn’t announced network assignments for Week 18 yet, but Bills-Dolphins clearly looks like the pick of the litter. We’ll see how much will be on the line in that game as the final week of the regular season approaches.
[NFL]
