Oh how the tables have turned.
Not long ago, ESPN was treated as a bottom of the barrel broadcast partner by the NFL, earning Monday Night Football schedules that fell more in line with the lower-tier Thursday Night package than the prestige Sunday Night package in terms of quality. Chalk it up to whatever you want — underwhelming booths, lackluster production, the BoogerMobile, etc. — but the NFL clearly did not hold ESPN in as high regard as its Sunday afternoon partners, CBS and Fox.
But times have changed. Earlier this year, the NFL and ESPN came together and agreed to a massive deal that will see the league take a 10% stake in the network, while ESPN takes control of NFL Network and linear distribution to NFL RedZone. While the ESPN-NFL relationship certainly benefited from mutual success before, that dynamic is heightened now.
The warming by the NFL to ESPN didn’t happen overnight. The Worldwide Leader in Sports made concerted efforts to win over the league. Poaching Joe Buck and Troy Aikman from Fox, and later poaching a director from Fox for Monday Night Football. Moving its lead college football producer, who produced numerous national championships, over to the NFL. Sending Monday Night Countdown on the road almost every week, and using one of the faces of ESPN, Scott Van Pelt, to host the show. Dedicating countless hours of studio coverage to the league, no matter what time of year it is.
Everything adds up to put ESPN in the good graces of the NFL league office. And on Sunday night, when the NFL’s Week 18 schedule was released, ESPN saw the fruits of its labor.
Going into Week 18, the NFL faced having an underwhelming regular-season finale in which all 14 spots in the postseason were already accounted for. Luckily, that did not happen. Both the AFC North and NFC South will hold de facto title games next week, with the winners of Ravens-Steelers and Panthers-Buccaneers (essentially) guaranteed playoff spots. Then there’s the battle for the No. 1 seed and first-round byes in both conferences. The winner of Seahawks-49ers will earn the first-round bye in the NFC, while the Broncos (vs. Chiefs) and Patriots (vs. Jets) are fighting for the bye on the AFC side, with the Jaguars waiting in the wings should both teams lose.
That creates three games in Week 18 that clearly stand above the rest. Both Ravens-Steelers and Panthers-Buccaneers are highly desirable matchups, since the winner of each game makes the playoffs (assuming the Falcons don’t win out and force some wacky three-way tiebreakers in the NFC South). And Seahawks-49ers, features two of the best records in football and has clearly defined stakes, with the winner earning a critical first-round bye.
Of the three best games of the week, ESPN is getting two of them as part of its Saturday doubleheader: Panthers-Bucs and Seahawks-49ers. The generous scheduling is not something ESPN is used to, apparently. Even Scott Van Pelt, when learning about the schedule on the air Sunday night, was shocked to hear it.
Scott Van Pelt was pleasantly surprised when he learned ESPN was getting both Panthers-Bucs and Seahawks-49ers next weekpic.twitter.com/1iNIoOYxXK
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 29, 2025
NBC’s Sunday Night Football unsurprisingly received Ravens-Steelers, given its status as the premier NFL package. CBS and Fox, on the other hand, were given two comparatively lackluster matchups in their Sunday national windows: Chargers-Broncos for CBS and Dolphins-Patriots for Fox.
To be sure, the NFL didn’t simply give ESPN the better matchups because it’s the favored son. There are competitive integrity reasons for this exact scheduling.
With ESPN’s games being played on Saturday, the NFL needed to schedule two games that did not significantly impact scenarios for Sunday’s games. Both Panthers-Bucs and Seahawks-49ers have clearly defined stakes, but don’t have any sizable impact on other teams playing Sunday. As a rule of thumb, the NFL prefers to play games where a certain result could dictate playoff eligibility or seeding for another team in concurrent windows to avoid giving one team an unfair advantage.
Still, that decision left CBS and Fox with two of Week 18’s lesser games.
Is this a sign of things to come? Perhaps. No one would be surprised to see the NFL, which will soon have a vested interest in ESPN’s success once its deal is approved, favor ESPN when it comes to scheduling. Was that the case this year? Probably not. It seems CBS and Fox were simply on the unlucky end of a rather bare Week 18 schedule. Given their status as the NFL’s Sunday afternoon partners, both networks are generally going to air games full of contingencies, as those must be played in concurrent windows. Some years, those games will be better than others. Conversely, ESPN could get stuck with some meaningless Saturday games in certain seasons when many playoff outcomes are contingent on other games on the schedule.
Week 18 scheduling is largely a product of circumstance. This year, those circumstances benefit ESPN. But that’s no guarantee going forward.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.