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We have reached the point of the NFL season where the league is starting to flex out of games. Time is flying. On Tuesday, the NFL announced that they were flexing out of what they previously had scheduled for Sunday Night Football in Week 12. The game they’re bailing on is the Seattle Seahawks at the Philadelphia Eagles, quite the NFC matchup and one that will likely carry playoff implications.
Replacing that matchup in the final game on Sunday will be the Green Bay Packers on the road against the San Francisco 49ers. That’s two NFL cornerstone franchises and they’re both playing extremely well, it makes sense to get them under the lights. Still, though, even though we’re not fond of them, Philadelphia is a huge market. Primetime games generally do well there from a ratings perspective. Plus it’s not like the Eagles are out of the NFC East race so moving on from that is an interesting move.
The league could be eyeing a different game in Philadelphia for SNF
It would be very unlike the NFL to take away a primetime game from the city of Philadelphia without paying it back. Considering that they have likely looked ahead to what their current SNF schedule is, odds are they’re considering putting Philadelphia in that time slot during a different week. Perhaps a week where there aren’t more enticing games.
Week 16’s SNF game is currently scheduled to be the Kansas City Chiefs on the road against the Chicago Bears. While that game features Bears head coach Matt Nagy welcoming the team that he rose to prominence with and a matchup of quarterbacks drafted in 2017, the Bears and Mitchell Trubisky aren’t exactly great to watch these days. Chicago is certainly a big media market, and while the Chiefs will definitely be a playoff team, it makes sense for the NFL to bail from this contest.
Do you happen to know who the Philadelphia Eagles play in Week 16? They host the Dallas Cowboys, of course. What’s more is they host the Cowboys in a game that very well looks like it could decide the division that draws the most ratings... the NFC East.
The Cowboys only have one primetime game left on their schedule (coincidentally at Chicago during Week 13’s Thursday Night Football contest) so this would give them an extra one on the season. It makes a lot of sense for that to happen as the NFL loves to have both the Cowboys and NFC East-deciding games in their biggest slot, get ready for it to happen.
Dallas hosted Philadelphia on SNF earlier this season, a game that they won 37-10. The last time that they visited the City of Brotherly Love also came on SNF, the first win of the Amari Cooper era and Leighton Vander Esch’s coming out party.
More bright lights are coming in all likelihood.