NFL Making Key Changes To Deliver Improved TV Experience In 2023

The NFL is making quite a few changes on the scheduling front this season that is sure to have an impact on every fan’s TV viewing experience.

Perhaps the biggest impact is flex scheduling for Monday Night Football. ESPN and the NFL will be able to flex certain Sunday games into the Monday night prime time slot in Weeks 12 through 17. This should ensure that Monday night games in those weeks will have quite a bit of impact on the playoff race, and perhaps for first place in divisional races.

CBS and Fox
FOXA
will both have the right to protect one game each of those weeks, so ESPN may not get the best game each week. However, the network should be able to ensure that it won’t get any ho-hum, meaningless games between two poor teams that have no chance of playing in the postseason.

The NFL may be the outright king when it come to North American professional sports, but that doesn’t mean it is not willing to borrow (steal) from the other leagues. The NHL has come up with something of a smash with its Black Friday game the day after Thanksgiving. The NFL is going to the same well this year, and fans will get a chance to see former Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers lead the New York Jets against the Miami Dolphins in an AFC East battle.

The New York market should ensure huge ratings numbers, and if Rodgers provides the upgrade to the Jets offense that is expected, it could be one of the highest rated games of the year.

The NFL also wants to beef up its Thursday night schedule, and it will no longer limit teams to one Thursday night game per year. As a result, the Bears, Saints, Steelers, Commanders, 49ers, Packers, and Lions will each appear twice on the showcase game.

There’s not a lot of grumbling right now about teams playing multiple short-week games, but you can be sure that some coaches and general managers will have plenty to say about it if and when they end up on the short end of the score in multiple games.

Amazon
AMZN
Prime will continue to be involved with the NFL, as that conglomerate/network will televise 15 games Thursday night games and one on Friday. ESPN-plus will get a game for the second straight year, while NBC Peacock will get a late-season game between the Bills and Los Angeles Chargers.

The Vikings will have 5 games in prime time this season, starting with their Week 2 game in Philadelphia against the defending NFC Champion Eagles. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The Vikings played the Eagles in prime time in Week 2, a game after taking apart the Green Bay Packers in the opener.

The Vikings were not in Philadelphia’s class last year, as they simply did not have the defense or all-around confidence to stay in the battle. The Eagles won last year’s game by a 24-7 margin, and it could have been much worse.

This game will provide something of a litmus test for Kevin O’Connell, his staff and his players. This is not a must-win game for the Vikings, but they must show the ability to compete well into the 4^th quarter with a championship-caliber team if they want full respect around the league.

The decision to send Za’Darius Smith to the Cleveland Browns was based on a combination of Smith’s salary-cap hit and the player’s desire to go elsewhere. While Smith had 10.0 sacks for the Vikings, he had 8.5 of them in the first part of the year and was largely invisible throughout the second half of the season.

The Vikings are apparently banking on Danielle Hunter to have a dominant season, and that may not come to fruition. While he had 10.5 sacks a year ago, he was not the dynamo who anchored the pass rush in 2018 and 2019. He registered 14.5 sacks in each of those season but did not have the same kind of impact last year.

Perhaps Marcus Davenport will turn out to be a better pass-rush complement than Smith was. If he is not, it’s going to be very difficult for new defensive coordinator Brian Flores to get this long-suffering defensive unit to improve.