For 20 years, the NFL has made Sunday Night Football on NBC the marquee prime-time game of the weekend. Flexible scheduling was one of the selling points of SNF on NBC, with the league having the ability to swap out lackluster games for higher quality matchups. For several years, SNF has had its flex scheduling window opened in Week 5 instead of the back-end of the season.

And yet, the 2-5 Philadelphia Eagles and 1-4-1 Washington Commanders were not flexed out this weekend, even though there are far more compelling and flex-worthy games on the Week 8 Sunday schedule. Is this just another case of NFC East bias? Well, it’s a little more complicated than that, and it’s largely the NFL’s own doing.

Satisfying FOX and CBS: Auto-protections for divisional games, expanded weekly protections

The games that immediately standout as possible SNF replacement options are division rivalries:

There’s just one problem: All three of these matchups have already happened or will happen in prime-time.

The Browns beat the Steelers on Thursday Night Football in Week 4, the Chiefs hammered the Broncos on Monday Night Football in Week 1, and the Vikings are scheduled to host the Lions on Sunday Night Football in Week 15.

Under the current broadcast agreement, which began in 2023, there are significant changes to the schedule protection rules to prevent FOX and CBS from losing marquee games to NBC, ESPN/ABC, and Prime Video. Unlike in, say, 2016, when NBC flexed in Chiefs at Broncos in November while already having the Broncos at Chiefs in December, FOX and CBS are entitled to broadcast one of the two division rivalry games they would otherwise normally air. This makes those three games effectively off limits for flexing into any prime-time window.

FOX and CBS were also given expanded protections beyond divisional games. They’re both permitted to protect one game per week during the flex window (except for Week 18). Those protections are separate from the auto-protections for division showdowns.

FOX would’ve likely protected Vikings at Lions either way, while CBS presumably protected the Baltimore Ravens at Buffalo Bills. If Ravens-Bills was unprotected and not flexed, then that’s probably down to the Ravens having a Thursday night game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, as typically the NFL does not do SNF to TNF turnarounds.

The other flex eligible options stink

Sometimes you get lucky with the schedule and other times you don’t. If you remove the auto-protected division games and the Ravens at Bills, you’re left with the following options:

Yikes. Zero games between teams above .500 in this bunch, and somehow only the Falcons at Bucs looks like it has significant playoff implications for both teams due to the perpetually sorry nature of the NFC South. Flex decisions at this stage of the NFL regular season are made at least 12 days in advance, so the Falcons and Bucs were never in consideration.

The NFC East is somehow still attainable for the Eagles and Commanders

If you absolutely had to sell the Eagles at Commanders as somewhat relevant, we needn’t look further than the state of the NFC East.

The first-place New York Giants are on a bye, so they’ll stay at 4-2-1 heading into Week 9, while the Dallas Cowboys are in hot pursuit at 3-4. A Philadelphia win puts the Eagles only one behind the Giants in the win column, whereas a Commanders victory puts them exactly two games back of the Giants, although they’d be in a lot better shape if anyone on the Commanders knew about the concept of a running clock when they faced New York a few weeks ago.

Other than that, this could conceivably be Dan Quinn’s final game as Commanders coach if he loses again. That’s about as compelling as it gets.

The NFL has made flexing bad games out of prime-time very difficult

Get used to this until at least the NFL can opt out of its current media rights deal at the end of the 2029 season. Between the stronger FOX and CBS protection rules, expanded standalone windows for the ever-expanding international games, the proliferation of late-season national Saturday kickoffs, previously non-existent holiday specials like Thanksgiving Eve on Netflix, Black Friday on Prime Video, and Christmas Day doubleheaders on Netflix, there are more time slots and rights holders to satisfy. This also means there are fewer pathways to booting bad games like the Eagles vs. Commanders out of prime-time for better matchups.

Ironically, the NFL has rendered the original purpose of flex scheduling increasingly inflexible to do.