Welcome back to—last I checked—the internet’s only annual preseason Week 18 Sunday Night Football flex power rankings! It’s now Year 8 of this running bit, though of course for the first five years I was making predictions about Week 17, before the league went and pushed The Crown Jewel of the Regular SeasonTM one week deeper into January.
Longtime readers know, and first-timers may be able to quickly surmise, that I have never gotten it right. I have been close, I have been far off and one year they canceled the game altogether. All possibilities are on the table. I remain obsessed with this little parlor game, and I can’t stop until I finally get it right, so let’s dive back in for another bite at the apple.
I think it’s time to change up my strategy, perhaps a reasonable notion after taking so many Ls. For years, my focus mirrored what I thought was an effort by the NFL to showcase games that would settle division crowns. In each of the past two years, however, the final game of the season has featured teams chasing wild-card berths. This run coincides with the 2021 addition of two flexed Saturday games in Week 18.
Last year, there was a true winner-take-all game in Week 18, with the 7–9 Titans facing the 8–8 Jaguars for the AFC South crown. And while those records don’t scream out for a red-carpet affair, it would have been keeping in the tradition of the #Game256 (now 272) time slot, remembering the culmination of the 2010 regular season when the 6–9 Seahawks beat the 7–8 Rams in a 16–6 slugfest to win the NFC West.
The actual choice—a competitive Packers-Lions game—also broke what had previously been a sacred cow of sorts, as the league has tried to make teams with fortunes linked play at the same time. Stick with me here for a refresher: The Lions were still alive in the playoff hunt when they woke up on the final day of the season, though they needed a Seahawks loss. This set up the possibility that a Seahawks win earlier in the day would render Detroit’s season effectively over before kickoff … which angered Seahawks fans, because they still needed the Lions to beat the Packers. This exact scenario played out, though fortunately for the NFL (and the Seahawks), the Lions played hard anyway in a technically meaningless game to knock out Green Bay and send Seattle to the postseason. This mess could have been avoided by playing the Lions-Packers game at the same time as the Seahawks and staging the AFC South game in the nightcap. It was particularly bold to take on this risk after the Nate Sudfeld debacle to end the 2020 season, when an eliminated Eagles team played backups and handed the 7–9 Washington Football Team an NFC crown over the 6–10 Giants.
My hunch, after months of ruminating on this, is that the league views the Saturday slot as an ideal spot for teams in the playoff hunt despite ugly records, or “less-desirable” teams (to TV execs) that have nonetheless earned the stage. So I’ve learned my lesson for predicting Game 272: Stop chasing division championship games at all costs, and be more open to possible wild-card games (such as that epic Raiders-Chargers game to end the 2021 season). Is that even possible? I guess it’s my job to try.
Luckily, this year at least, the AFC is stacked. There are simply too many good teams. Some box office quarterback the league would be thrilled to have headlining the final prime-time game of the season will miss the playoffs entirely. Teams worthy of being division champs will be relegated to wild cards. It opens up tons of possibilities for this exercise.
So here is my backward season preview. Plenty of other places on the internet concern themselves with predicting the playoffs. This piece goes no further than Jan. 7.
16. Seahawks at Cardinals
This is an easy game to put last. Every year there is one team we all expect to be the worst in the league, and this year that team is the Cardinals. Even if the league takes a more accepting view of games in which one team is out of it, the Cardinals could be so far out of the playoff picture as to make it embarrassing. Don’t bet on it.
15. Buccaneers at Panthers
This feels like another easy one to eliminate quickly. The Bucs have the 29th-longest odds to win the Super Bowl, and for good reason. Tom Brady is not walking through that door. (And even if he was!) The Panthers have some intrigue and could contend in a wide-open NFC South, but I don’t think this is the one.
14. Texans at Colts
This is the third and final game in what’s a clear bottom tier for me. I will give this one a slight edge because the Texans have already traded their first-round pick to the Cardinals. The Eagles were happy to improve their draft position in the famous Sudfeld game, but the league’s disaster scenario would be a team blatantly tanking for the No. 1 pick in front of everyone. The Texans have already traded away that possibility, meaning they have less of an obvious reason to tank, and may even be more willing to go all out in a meaningless Week 18 game (like they did last year under Lovie Smith, when they had infinitely more reason to tank, but chose not to anyway). The Colts have slightly longer odds to win their division than the Panthers, but I think Anthony Richardson has a greater chance of being must-see TV five months from now.
13. Broncos at Raiders
This game is testing my ability to stick to my new philosophy. Under my old way of sorting out games that won’t settle a division crown, this one would be easy to toss aside. When I started doing this exercise in 2016, I would automatically pluck the non-Patriots AFC East game out and stick it in the bottom half. Now I do that with the Chiefs. Sure, the Chiefs could lose the AFC West one of these years (theoretically), but they figure to at least be one of the two teams in the race. A Broncos-Raiders tilt feels very unlikely to be for the division crown. But could I see this being for a wild card, which would make it a fitting candidate based on recent trends? Ehhh, I’m still betting against it. The AFC is just too talented. If both of these teams were in it come Week 18, it would mean too many of the loaded-on-paper-this-preseason teams fell on their faces.
12. Vikings at Lions
And now, buckle up for a major run of NFC games. As I alluded to above, the AFC is just so overwhelmingly good. There are great quarterbacks whose teams will miss the playoffs entirely. Assuming enough of them stay healthy, that will be the dominant story line headed into the season’s final week. No offense to Kirk Cousins and Jared Goff (and the parade of QBs coming up in the next few games listed here), but the stakes for them just won’t be as interesting. Given that the NFL seems just as likely these days to choose a high-profile team chasing a wild card over a de facto division championship game, it’s just hard to pick this one, even if the Lions were last season’s media darlings. This game has a much better chance of mattering to the playoff bracket, but this is still moot for the purposes of this exercise.
11. Bears at Packers
Once again, sorry NFC. The two NFC North offerings land consecutively on my list, and for a lot of the same reasons. I’ll give this one a slight edge, partly because it’s a more historic rivalry, and Lambeau Field is one of the most appealing prime-time settings around. If Justin Fields takes a leap and has his team in contention, that would also be a new story that would drive some added interest. Same for Jordan Love in his first year as a starter, actually. I could really see this one being an appealing Week 18 game in a vacuum. But there are just too many other options that make more sense.
10. Falcons at Saints
I will give Falcons-Saints a slight edge over the two NFC North games, because I think this matchup is more likely to be a winner-takes-all division title game. But—and I am such a broken record at this point, but I’ll repeat myself for the folks who are skimming this and reading the paragraphs involving only their favorite teams—the AFC bubble teams will just be so much more interesting than whether Desmond Ridder or Derek Carr wins a division, possibly with a record barely over .500. It’s a nasty rivalry, and the Superdome is another great atmosphere for prime time, so this one is close to the midpoint of the list. But, again, I wouldn’t expect it to be the one.
9. Rams at 49ers
Where to place this one depends a lot on how confident you feel about a Rams turnaround. The Niners are loaded. They may have the division won by this point, or at the very least may be in a battle with the Seahawks for it. I will leave open some possibility the Rams could be flirting with a wild card, given their coaching and the openness of the NFC, but I see that as their ceiling this year. Still, there are too many other games where I feel a little more confident in the ability of both teams to be in the race. There is also some worry that the Niners could be resting guys as they tune up for the playoffs, though that is also the case for a couple of teams in games a little lower down on the list as well.
8. Cowboys at Commanders
This poll has always had an admitted NFC East bias, but for good reason: My list is that way because the TV networks are that way. NBC’s head honchos have come right out and said it. (This is also precisely how and why the Sudfeld Debacle came to be.) So, yes, if Dallas is win-and-in for the playoffs, of course the people paid to actually make these decisions would want those helmets with the stars on them all over your TV screen. You can’t have a list like this without the Cowboys as serious contenders, though it’s now been a decade since their run from 2011 to ’13 in which they played (and lost) in Game 256 in three straight seasons. The Commanders seem roughly as frisky as the Rams, so I feel fine about having them back-to-back on this list.
7. Eagles at Giants
And now here’s the other NFC East game, which you may have noticed is our eighth and final one from this season’s weaker conference. The final six games are all AFC matchups! I have never done anything remotely like this before, but I guess sometimes you need a gimmick to spice up the eighth installment of a somewhat repetitive bit. I’ll give Eagles-Giants a slight edge between the two NFC East games. Philadelphia and New York are both returning playoff teams, and I still think the Giants are more likely to contend for a playoff spot again than the Commanders. I also think the Eagles are more likely to have the inside pole position to clinch a division or possibly even sew up a No. 1 seed. But again, you know where I stand on this one. Let’s move on to the conference with too many great quarterbacks for too few playoff spots.
6. Jaguars at Titans
On paper, the South is the AFC’s weakest division, but these are its two best teams. The Titans face-planted down the stretch last year, but Mike Vrabel has had this team in the hunt every other season he’s been there, and they ran it back with some proud veterans. If this game is for the division, then it’ll be appealing. If Tennessee is in the wild-card hunt, maybe it’ll still matter to both teams. Maybe the division-favorite Jaguars will have a chance to improve their seeding. This game is a possibility in a few ways.
This is the same matchup that was flexed into prime time on Saturday night last year, as explained above, even though it would have been an ideal choice for Sunday night. Maybe I should take that as a hint that the league would like to avoid this game for our purposes. But after the Jaguars arrived with last season’s 27–0 playoff comeback, if Trevor Lawrence’s star keeps rising and the teams have more palatable records, maybe the league would do right by this division. Then again, I am still saying five other games look more likely.
5. Browns at Bengals
The AFC North is a jumbled mess (more on that below), but I mean that in the absolute best of ways. So I’ll slot the Bengals, division favorites, in right here. I think they’ll be comfortably in the playoffs but could be playing for the division title, if not the No. 1 seed and bye. The Browns are an interesting team, maybe the one with the widest range of outcomes in the league this season. I personally don’t have them making the playoffs, but I know a lot of people will. Last year Deshaun Watson was prime-time poison, with the NFL schedule seemingly going out of its way to bury his games in the 1:00 p.m. ET hour. Maybe the league and its partners will feel differently this year—though the team has only two stand-alone TV window games at the moment. Even if Watson’s return to form (and playoff contention) wouldn’t exactly be a feel-good story, it would be noteworthy, and the NFL would probably be fine putting it on the big stage. His playoff games would be nationally televised anyway. That said, the league would probably be happy to have the other options listed below.
4. Chiefs at Chargers
This game is tempting, and, if I was still operating under my protocol of the past few years, I think I would have put it in my No. 1 spot. But I have learned my lesson. This game is possibly too good. These two teams could be playing to settle the AFC West title, and/or for one team to get a wild card. But the Chiefs also might have the division wrapped up by multiple games at this point. They could be resting starters before the playoffs, and The Crown Jewel of the Regular SeasonTM will not involve Blaine Gabbert. We must account for that possibility. It’s hard to believe I have three games above this one. There are highly compensated executives who spend most of their waking hours trying to figure out how to maximize the amount of time Patrick Mahomes is playing football on national television. But I am going with three other games ahead of this one.
3. Bills at Dolphins
A year ago at this time, people were talking about the AFC West as one of the best divisions in history. The AFC East is this year’s preseason hype champ. And while it’s true that all four teams could challenge for playoff spots, that the order is up for grabs, that a very good team on paper will finish third or fourth—what matters most for this exercise is that all four teams are interesting. This is never strictly about the quality of the teams but also the box office draw. This game would match a recognizable quarterback on a perennial Super Bowl contender against one of last year’s up-and-coming teams, with plenty of firepower on its own sideline. It’s a rematch of last year’s wild-card nail-biter in which Skylar Thompson had to play quarterback for Miami. If Tua Tagovailoa is healthy, the interest will be there, especially with Mike McDaniel’s offense now more of a known entity. This game could easily be for the division, or a wild-card spot, or one of each, as is the case with a few other games in this part of the list.
2. Jets at Patriots
This is the game the NFL would want most. The league would move heaven and earth to put it on NBC if it mattered. Aaron Rodgers’s first season in New York is the headline of the NFL season, the top story line, whether you like it or not. Its conclusion, if it matters, will be documented. (Remember how much his offseason trade limbo impacted the entire season’s schedule?) That is how much the league cares about having Aaron Rodgers and the New York media market on television as much as possible this year. The Patriots give me some pause. My distressingly knowledgeable colleague Conor Orr thinks they will win the AFC East, and he was sober when he said it. I do not. Could they hang around and flirt with a wild card? Maybe. I also think this is a team that would play hard even if already eliminated, for plenty of reasons. First, Bill Belichick absolutely hates the Jets. Second, there are stories about his being on the hot seat, whether you believe them or not. And third, every win counts as he chases down Don Shula on the all-time list. He’s not going to let his team throw away a game without trying. So it’s a very appealing pick, and if it lands in the prime-time spot I will kick myself and feel very silly for leaving it short of my No. 1 choice. But I can’t because there is one game I think is just more likely to matter on both sides.
1. Steelers at Ravens
This is the one. I have learned from my mistakes. I have wasted too many years trying to pick games that matched up the two best teams in a single division, which I’m deliberately avoiding now. The Bengals are AFC North favorites, but I have listened to several million podcasts this summer that have touted every team in this division as a playoff contender. We have our MMQB staff predictions coming next week, and my AFC North pick is killing me, these two teams in particular. Do I have to pick one of them? Can I find a way to get them both in the playoffs? The good news is, in this exercise, I can pick both. I know Kenny Pickett is not in the club of billboard QBs I have said would fit the Game 272 vibe, but this is a classic NBC Sunday Night Football rivalry. You can already envision Troy Polamalu and Ed Reed narrating the cold open about everything being on the line. Regardless of the order in which the AFC North shakes out, there are scenarios where this is a crucial game for both teams. If these two rivals are going head-to-head for a playoff spot, that is potential TV magic, exactly the kind of game the NFL would celebrate. This is my year.
