{"id":461266,"date":"2025-12-21T02:06:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T02:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/461266\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T02:06:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T02:06:13","slug":"how-late-season-schedule-changes-impact-the-nfl-playoff-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/461266\/","title":{"rendered":"How late-season schedule changes impact the NFL playoff picture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

ARLINGTON, Texas\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The NFL regular season is turning down the stretch and the playoff picture is coming into focus, and that means not just the teams but the league\u2019s scheduling crew is hard at work.<\/p>\n

The Chargers<\/a>, who play at Dallas on Sunday, can secure a postseason berth with a victory and some help from a team or two. Coupled with a win over the Cowboys, the Chargers need Las Vegas to win at Houston (unlikely) or San Francisco to win at Indianapolis (more likely) so they can rest easy knowing they\u2019re at least in the playoffs for the second consecutive season under Jim Harbaugh<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although the Rams<\/a> have already qualified for the playoffs, they need to regain their balance after a spirit-snapping loss at Seattle on Thursday that likely cost them a chance at the NFC\u2019s No. 1 seed.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look at the upcoming schedule for the end of this season and beginning of next, along with decisions that need to be made:<\/p>\n

\u2014 Why did the league schedule Houston at the Chargers for Saturday of Week 17?<\/p>\n

The game was always a candidate for that 1:30 p.m. slot on NFL Network, and Seattle at Carolina was also under consideration.<\/p>\n

The league liked Texans-Chargers on Saturday because both of those clubs likely will be playing in January \u2014 maybe against each other again \u2014 and if that game were moved to Sunday afternoon, it would be going head-to-head against Fox\u2019s national game, Philadelphia at Buffalo, a potential Super Bowl preview.<\/p>\n

So the NFL wanted to do the Texans and Chargers a solid and give them the national stage to themselves.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Rams at Atlanta in Week 17 isn\u2019t a fantastic Monday night game for Week 17, especially with the Falcons currently at 5-9. But with all the games spread throughout the week of Christmas, there weren\u2019t a lot of great replacement options.<\/p>\n

The league didn\u2019t move Texans-Chargers into that slot for good reason. Because whoever plays in that \u201cMonday Night Football\u201d slot \u2014 it\u2019s staying Rams-Falcons \u2014 won\u2019t be a candidate for a Saturday game in the final weekend.<\/p>\n

So by moving Texans-Chargers to Saturday, both those teams are in play for the two Saturday spots in Week 18. The Chargers finish at Denver, and the Texans play host to Indianapolis. Either or both of those games could wind up on ESPN for those finishing Saturday games.<\/p>\n

\u2014 The NFL originally slated Cincinnati at Miami for this week\u2019s Sunday night game but last week decided to move New England at Baltimore into that time slot. That\u2019s notable because it\u2019s the first flex of the season, which is an unusually low number. Typically, there have been three or four flexes to this point.<\/p>\n

Why only one? There are multiple reasons. First, the league\u2019s scheduling crew had a pretty clear crystal ball in May, a good idea for which teams would still be in the mix. Credit to those folks.<\/p>\n

But the bar for flexing games is also a little higher than it used to be. The NFL is cautious about inconveniencing 75,000 fans for a relatively small bump in viewership. What\u2019s more, with all the new windows and partners \u2014 Netflix, Amazon Prime, Peacock, Paramount+ \u2014 there are fewer games to go around. Even if the league wanted to flex, there are fewer options. The traditional Sunday inventory is a lot thinner than it used to be.<\/p>\n

\u2014 It\u2019s worth noting that the league\u2019s philosophy on moving games around is it flexes out of a game that\u2019s falling apart, it doesn\u2019t flex into a better game because the network or streaming service doesn\u2019t happen to like the game it has.<\/p>\n

Cincinnati-Miami was a no-brainer flex candidate back in October when both teams were reeling. But then Joe Burrow came back for the Bengals, and the Dolphins started winning, and it got interesting for a while. But then Cincinnati got shut out last week by Baltimore, and Miami just benched its quarterback. Flex was back on.<\/p>\n

So what to flex into? The thought was, yes, the NFL can move Patriots-Ravens into that Sunday window for NBC, and at least it can leave behind Kansas City-Tennessee for CBS. Everybody figured the Chiefs would be fighting for their postseason lives. That wasn\u2019t the case. Kansas City was eliminated last week and lost Patrick Mahomes<\/a> to a season-ending knee injury. Chiefs-Titans isn\u2019t nearly as interesting as anticipated.<\/p>\n

It could have been an ugly Sunday for CBS, but the network wound up with Pittsburgh-Detroit for its national game. That very easily could have been the far-less-tantalizing Buffalo at Cleveland.<\/p>\n

\u2014 We\u2019re heading into a postseason with no Kansas City, no Dallas, maybe no Baltimore or Pittsburgh \u2014 one of them is going to miss out \u2014 and with the rise of Chicago, possibly no Green Bay or Detroit.<\/p>\n

A lot of those traditional anchor teams could be watching from their couches.<\/p>\n

That means the NFL will have to make some new decisions about who to prioritize in postseason scheduling, perhaps looking with fresh eyes at clubs such as Seattle, Tampa Bay, Carolina, Jacksonville and others. Who are the ones with the most national appeal?<\/p>\n

And that rolls into next season. How does the league dole out those big national windows. With Kansas City missing the playoffs, and Mahomes recovering from a major knee injury, do the Chiefs recede into the background after a decade of division titles and deep playoff runs?<\/p>\n

Have the Bears broken through? They\u2019re 10-4. At 12-2, Denver looks to be back and set up to keep it going. Heading into Thursday night\u2019s game, the Rams were as hot as any team in the league, and the Chargers could finally get Justin Herbert that inaugural playoff victory.<\/p>\n

The Steelers have won two in a row, and could wind up making a postseason run. If so, what does Aaron Rodgers do next season, and how will the club move forward?<\/p>\n

The NFL leaned heavily into Washington after one outstanding season, giving them eight nationally televised games this season. That bet didn\u2019t pay off; the Commanders are 4-10.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the game behind the games, and those decisions are taking shape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, Texas\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The NFL regular season is turning down the stretch and the playoff picture is coming into focus,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":461267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[18570,1582,276,14732,7151,1910,18818,2961,2968,224,5337,1232,59920,5395,5950,2086,34106,3007,210479,2452],"class_list":{"0":"post-461266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-baltimore","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-candidate","12":"tag-chargers","13":"tag-game","14":"tag-kansas-city","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-league","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-losangeles","19":"tag-nfl","20":"tag-nfl-network","21":"tag-saturday","22":"tag-season","23":"tag-seattle","24":"tag-slot","25":"tag-team","26":"tag-texans-charger","27":"tag-week"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115755115163986014","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}