The first “Monday Night Football” flex schedule will take place on Dec. 18 with the Eagles at the Seahawks replacing the Chiefs at the Patriots on ESPN/ABC.
Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City will now play at Foxborough on Sunday, Dec. 17 on Fox in a 1 p.m. kickoff.
The behind-the-scenes maneuvering is very interesting and underscores how, in the NFL’s new $110 billion TV deal, more potential flex scheduling has actually meant less flex schedule.
This first MNF switcheroo is the first prime time flex game of any kind this season.
Let’s go through it.
1️⃣ As part of the new long-term agreements with ESPN, Amazon, NBC, CBS and Fox, the NFL added flex scheduling to both “Monday Night Football” and “Thursday Night Football,” while keeping it available to “Sunday Night Football.” The flex processes are complicated to satisfy all the deals, which has limited it in this first season.
2️⃣ Amazon will have no flex games this year, while this is the one and only flex for MNF. (By the way, ESPN’s schedule finishes strong with Baltimore at San Francisco and then Detroit at Dallas, which is on Saturday, Dec. 30.) NBC hasn’t had any games flexed in yet, even though the network can do it earlier in the season than either ESPN or Amazon.
3️⃣ For the first MNF flex, the NFL saw an opportunity to move a potentially non-competitive game that did include Mahomes, but also the woeful Patriots. While ESPN wants Mahomes on its air, it would prefer a compelling game, and New England hasn’t offered that all year.
Plus, the Pats have no playoff chances and are so nondescript that in previewing this Thursday’s Pats-Steelers’ matchup, Amazon used Bill Belichick as the picture instead of what is normally a player. The Eagles don’t have Mahomes, but Jalen Hurts is a star and the game should have postseason implications for both Philadelphia and Seattle.
4️⃣ We said that potentially more flex scheduling has actually resulted in less flex scheduling, which we can illustrate with how ESPN was able to exchange Chiefs-Pats for Eagles-Seahawks. Let’s go through how the NFL maneuvered everything to satisfy ESPN’s desire and also benefit Fox, who, along with CBS, each has added protections under the new arrangements:
a) The game of the week for Dec. 17 is actually Bills vs. Cowboys, which Fox was able to leave unprotected even though it fell in its 4:25 “America’s Game of the Week” window. The Cowboys have to appear at least eight times on Fox between Week 1-17. By virtue of having to be served a minimum of Cowboys games, Fox instead protected Philadelphia-Seattle.
b) Fox could have kept the game in Seattle and it would have been televised to 10 percent of the country in the late window opposite Cowboys-Bills. By virtue of the trade, Mahomes and the Chiefs will be at 1 p.m. on Fox and 60 percent of the country will receive it.
c) As an added incentive, the NFL didn’t move the Bears-Browns game to Saturday, Dec. 16, which Fox wanted to keep on Dec. 17 because of the size of those markets. The NFL Network has a triple-header that Saturday.
5️⃣ The MNF flex is not a good deal for traveling fans.
If you had a trip planned for Seattle to see the Eagles-Seahawks, it is now a day later.
Conversely, if you were going to MNF in Foxboro, it is now a day earlier. That’s not ideal for those with tickets to this game to have only a little more than two weeks notice to change plans.
6️⃣ One other note that didn’t apply to this situation, but is a reason that more potential prime time flex has led to less prime time flex — both Fox with the NFC and CBS with the AFC are guaranteed one half of every home-and-home divisional conference matchup. For example, one Cowboys-Giants game has to be on Fox and one Jets-Dolphins game has to be on CBS. This has resulted in the Sunday afternoon networks having the ability to be strategic and, as with this year, not having to protect Cowboys-Bills.
In the end, for the first MNF flex, the NFL figured out a way for it to work for all the networks.
Quick clicks
ESPN is adding former Met and Yankee Adam Ottavino, for its midnight “Baseball Tonight” shows for the winter meetings, according to sources. Ottavino is currently a free agent, so maybe he’ll break his own news. ESPN is not traveling the whole crew to Nashville, the site of the meetings. For the studio shows, Phil Murphy will host with Doug Glanville, Tim Kurkjian and Ottavino as analysts. Jeff Passan, Jesse Rogers and Alden Gonzalez will be on site, while Buster Olney will not be as he does his Baseball Tonight podcast. Something to watch for the future: ESPN is very high on Joey Votto, according to sources. Votto has said he wants to play one more year, but, while ESPN doesn’t really have that many MLB shows, it could try to make room for Votto if he eventually pursues TV. …
MLB Network, as it should, has really taken the mantle as the place to watch the winter meetings. It will be on site with 28 hours of coverage. The Post insiders Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman will be a featured part of the coverage, joined by Jon Morosi and Mark Feinsand, along with a large cast of hosts and other analysts. After the meetings in Nashville, MLBN will have a documentary on George Brett called, “Brett,” airing on Thursday at 8 p.m. … YES’s introduction of Noah Eagle was very well produced. Eagle. 26, is calling Nets’ games when his father, Ian, and Ryan Ruocco are on other assignments. Noah has already shown his ability on NBC’s Big Ten prime time games, but if you watch that intro segment, that is some big time broadcasting chops to pull off so smoothly as, in the bit, he took over the play-by-play from his father. … NASCAR announced its new broadcasting deal is for $7.7 billion over seven years. While Fox and NBC kept their heavy involvement, the added significance of the arrangements is that Amazon Prime Video and WBD Sports are now part of the summer series. What is significant to me — and granted, it is a smaller deal — is how Amazon, mostly because of the NFL, is now such a part of the sports viewing landscape that it wasn’t considered a big surprise that it added more programming. Meanwhile, WBD Sports, which always has an underrated portfolio (NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAA Tournament, among other things) increases its summer programming for TNT and Max streaming. It will also add programming for TruTV and Bleacher Report. …
If I’m Disney’s Bob Iger and Elon Musk told me to “Go f–k yourself,” I would strongly consider not having my employees tweet. Not out of spite, but out of sense. I’ve said this before as Iger considered buying Twitter (now X) years ago. If Disney had gone through and purchased Twitter, would every other company freely put their information on the platform? When Adam Schefter or Adrian Wojnarowski have a scoop, should they send it to every major newspaper website, too, before it is on ESPN? Instead, Disney/ESPN pay their insiders and analysts millions, and the first place you look for them on breaking news is on X. While it can be a good promotional platform (I use it), it really doesn’t make much sense to give away the information. My guess is Iger doesn’t want to make a fight with Musk bigger, even though we don’t see Iger ending the advertising pause soon. Putting that aside, I may never understand why you pay all these analysts millions to have them teach their audience to find them on a platform you don’t own. … CBS ended its more than quarter-century run with the SEC’s top game in style with Alabama over Georgia. CBS will have the Big Ten next year, but there is a generation that grew up with that CBS music before an SEC game at 3:30. Going forward, the SEC will exclusively be a Disney/ABC/ESPN production. … The fact that the Pac-12’s final game was its highest rated ever on Friday is just a testament of what a shame it is that it failed to survive the college football TV chaos. There were 9.2 million viewers for Washington’s thriller over Oregon.
Clicker Book Club
Papa Clicker, my father, Herb Marchand, loved Alex Squadron’s “Life in the G (Minor League Basketball and the Relentless Pursuit of the NBA),” describing it as an interesting study of the efforts of players in basketball’s minor league as they try to reach the NBA, while playing for low pay and challenging working conditions exacerbated by the pandemic. Readers will become fans of members of the Birmingham Squadron as they deal with their personal and professional struggles. Squadron receives a near all-time high score of 4.6 out of 5 clickers.
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