The NFL enters Week 15 with a loaded slate on its hands.
The strength of that schedule will be highlighted Sunday afternoon when four of the league’s top teams face off against one another. The Buffalo Bills (10-3), currently the No. 2 seed in the AFC, will take on the Detroit Lions (12-1), the top seed in the NFC at 4:25 p.m. ET on CBS. Curiously, the Pittsburgh Steelers (10-3), the No. 3 seed in the AFC, and the Philadelphia Eagles (11-2), the No. 2 seed in the NFC, are playing at the exact same time on Fox.
So how did this happen?
Well, on a normal NFL Sunday, both CBS and Fox will air regional action in the 1:00 p.m. ET window. Then, the two networks will switch off who airs a game in the 4:25 p.m. ET national window. Typically, that game is of considerable national interest. Games played in the Mountain or Pacific time zones that are not selected for the national window kick off at 4:05 p.m. ET, and are only shown in limited markets.
However, two times each year the NFL will schedule what is known as a “double-doubleheader” in which both CBS and Fox air regional action at 1:00 p.m. ET and a national window game at 4:25 p.m. ET. The networks generally don’t love this because it means they’re competing with another high-wattage game on a different channel. But the NFL sees the double-doubleheader as an opportunity to juice overall viewership, even if the networks themselves don’t quite match the audiences they get in normal weeks.
What’s different about this week is that the first double-doubleheader is falling much later in the season. In the past, the NFL has scheduled the double-double during Week 1 and Week 18 — the first and last weeks of the regular season. This season, the NFL decided to do Fox a favor and give the network a standard national window game in Week 1 (which happened to be the debut of Tom Brady’s broadcasting career).
As a result, Week 15 became a double-doubleheader instead. And it just so happens that it will feature two of the most intriguing matchups so far this season.
While the move may have partly been to do Fox a favor, the league also believes that moving the double-doubleheader to later in the season is prudent from a ratings standpoint. According to a report by Front Office Sports, the NFL “shifted that double-doubleheader … to the much later timing to have a better sense of who the top teams are, and in turn, potentially drive higher viewership.”
That strategy has seemed to work. Now, the entire country will get to choose between two strong games instead of one. In a normal week, it’s possible one of these games could’ve been flexed into primetime to ensure both would go to a national audience (especially with Monday Night Football airing a less than stellar doubleheader of its own in Week 15). But the double-doubleheader means that’ll happen anyway this week, without the need for a flex.
It’ll be interesting to see whether the NFL’s strategy pays off in the form of demonstrably increased viewership. If so, expect the double-doubleheader to make a return again late next season.
