The NFL saves Jets fans from another miserable evening with one easy decision
Sometimes things don’t always go the way you plan it. Certainly, for the 3-6 New York Jets, this isn’t how they thought the season would go. The same could be said for the Indianapolis Colts and their young quarterback, Anthony Richardson. But just because things don’t go the way you drew them up, doesn’t mean […]
Sometimes things don’t always go the way you plan it. Certainly, for the 3-6 New York Jets, this isn’t how they thought the season would go. The same could be said for the Indianapolis Colts and their young quarterback, Anthony Richardson. But just because things don’t go the way you drew them up, doesn’t mean you can’t make adjustments. And that is exactly what the NFL is doing.
The Week 11 Sunday Night football game for November 17 between the Jets and the Colts was flexed out of prime time. In its place the league bumped up the Cincinnati Bengals at the Los Angeles Chargers. The Colts will now visit the Jets at 1p.m. that Sunday.
It's easy to see why the schedule makers had this game slated for primetime before the season started, but neither the Jets nor the Colts have lived up to the hype. The Jets have already fired their head coach, and despite all the star power have a season that is teetering on the brink of playoff elimination for the 14th year in a row.
The Colts meanwhile haven’t gotten what they thought they would get from their young quarterback, Anthony Richardson. Richardson was benched last week in favor of 39-year-old journeyman Joe Flacco for the remainder for the season. While the Colts are saying all the right things about Richardson’s future in Indy, many people believe the franchise is already ready to move on from the 22-year-old sophomore out of Florida.
The Colts are currently 4-5 on the season and are still in the hunt for a playoff spot, especially after the Jets were able to take care of their divisional rival Houston Texans on Halloween Night.
With both teams having a losing a record at this point of the season, and the fact that the Jets have already had five primetime games through the first nine weeks of the year, it was an easy decision for the NFL to flex this game out of the Sunday Night slot.
The Bengals-Chargers game, at least on paper, is sure to be significantly better. The Bengals have won three of their last four games and are fresh off a five-touchdown outing from Joe Burrow in their blowout win over the Las Vegas Raiders. The Chargers just beat the Browns 27-10 on Sunday, too, to pick up their third win in their last four outings and move to 5-3 on the season.
The NFL implemented a "flexible scheduling" procedure for Sunday Night Football back in 2006 and is experimenting with Thursday and Monday Night schedule flexing this season, though it has yet to be tried.
For Sunday Night Football, it may be used up to twice between Weeks 5-10, and at the NFL's discretion during Weeks 11-17. This is the second game this season the NFL has flexed on Sunday Night Football, with the first oddly enough being this past weekend when the Colts were flexed into Sunday Night Football to take on the Minnesota Vikings and the Jacksonville Jaguars versus the Philadelphia Eagles was flexed out of primetime.
The NFL is doing its fans a service with their flexible scheduling, including Jets fans who don’t have to suffer through another primetime travesty like they have so many times so far this season.
