Ranking Every Week 18 Option for ‘Sunday Night Football’ Flex

I was standing in the checkout line at the supermarket, minding my own business, when the familiar voice in my headphones suddenly jolted me to attention.

Mike Tirico, NBC’s play-by-play man for Sunday Night Football (and just about every other sport) was on my colleague Jimmy Traina’s podcast. We were entering Week 16 of the 2024 season, and Jimmy asked him to predict which Week 18 game would get flexed to Sunday night.

“Is there somebody for SI.com, who every week writes a column on forecasting the Week 18 game?” Tirico asked.

“I don’t know if it’s weekly,” Traina said. “But I have a colleague of mine, Mitch Goldich, before the season …”

“That’s what it is!” Tirico said, starting to get more excited. “I saw that, maybe Week 1, and I was just laughing. That’s pretty funny. I hope we dust that off and do that [again].”

I must say, after nine years of writing this preseason column and absorbing comments on social media like, “Who reads this?” it’s pretty validating to now be able to answer: Mike Tirico!

Welcome, one and all, to my 10th Annual Preseason Week 18* Sunday Night Football Flex Power Rankings! (*Of course, it used to be Week 17 when I started.) As most people whose lives revolve around the NFL prepare for Game No. 1 in just a few days—including Tirico, who will be in the booth with Cris Collinsworth for Eagles-Cowboys on Thursday—I am ready to zoom ahead to Game 272, the Crown Jewel of the Regular Season™. 

I can’t say I had any grand plans to celebrate the column’s tin anniversary (I really thought it was going to be a more exciting metal when I consulted Wikipedia), but it felt obvious that December night that I needed to call in a special guest. After all, he found me.

“I [get in] ridiculous search mode, just kind of reading whatever I can get my hands on,” Tirico told me when we spoke in August. “I remember just kind of stumbling on it.”

Tirico has called Game 272 since 2022, and admits he takes a peak at the Week 18 slate after the schedule is released in May.

“And I’ll let you in on this. As we go from city to city, we’ll go to practice, see the home team, go to dinner, do our meetings. Invariably, once we get to November, we begin our own in-house parlor game, Where do you think we’re gonna be, Week 18? And somebody will say, Oh, we’re not gonna be there; we’ll be there. And it kinda goes back and forth.”

I can relate! It’s been a favorite game of mine ever since NBC started waiting until the last possible minute to flex the game with the most playoff stakes into prime time on the final night of the season.

“And it’s one of those things that you realize, no matter how much energy you put into this, it is 100% wasted energy,” Tirico said. “Because there’s nothing you can do about it, you don’t control it, but it’s just fun to speculate.”

Last year, his crew got to call maybe the most-hyped regular-season finale in the history of this column. The Vikings and Lions came into the week both sitting at 14–2, knowing the winner would claim the NFC’s No. 1 seed and the loser would have to go on the road for wild-card weekend as the No. 5 seed.

“I think for the regular season, that’s as unique a game in terms of stakes as you can ever have,” Tirico said. It’s pretty much the dream matchup, and hard to imagine it being topped, except with a more exciting finish on the field (like we’ve seen, for example, in the hectic Chargers-Raiders game that ended the 2021 season).

But it’s fun to dream about the upcoming season and the endless possibilities. 

“Never anticipate what’s gonna happen in the NFL season, because we never know. I would say there are like four or five realistic, these two teams look like playoff team matchups, that look really good out there.”

It was around this point in the conversation that I let him in on the open secret … that I’m terrible at this. That in nine seasons of picking, I’ve only had the eventual flexed game in my top three once. That I’ve never picked the winner. That this was a bit of a phone-a-friend situation to improve my odds.

“So in other words,” he asked, “you are an expert at this until we look at your results?” Boom, roasted.

In my defense, Tirico rattled off his initial pool of candidates and quickly got to seven games, plus a sleeper, which took us to half the league. I think that only proves my point that this is hard.

“And if you look at any of those games,” he added, “those are really, really fun games.”

He and I also disagree on the No. 1 pick, which adds another fun wrinkle if people are choosing what to root for as the season winds down. So I’ll share my rankings below, make some references to his thoughts and then see if I get bested in my own prediction column.

Let’s get to the rankings …

The first few games are usually the easiest to place on the list, as I quickly eliminate some of the teams with the longest odds of making the playoffs. The Saints are sinking this game. Even if it matters to the Falcons, I have a hard time seeing this one getting flexed.

I slotted this one in ahead of Saints-Falcons, because there’s just a perennially lingering AFC South vibe that anything can happen in that division. Still, I think Cam Ward’s Titans will need at least another year to be ready for prime time, and the division favorites are in the other AFC South game.

This game features two teams seemingly headed in different directions, and it would take a lot for both the Dolphins and Patriots to be in the hunt come Week 18. I won’t have either in the playoffs when our MMQB staff picks are revealed later this week, so I can’t have this game ranked very high.

I’ve seen sites giving the Browns the league’s worst odds of making the playoffs, so you may be surprised to see me list this game above three others. However, the Bengals are the first team we’ve gotten to that I’d consider a real box office draw. The league would like to have a game that matters to both teams in the Game 272 time slot. But if a player like Joe Burrow is in a win-and-in game against a team that’s already been eliminated, that would be the next best thing. And if Joe Flacco happens to be riding a miracle season to the cusp of playoff contention—or a certain third-string quarterback who gets a lot of attention is given a chance to start a meaningless game—yes, that would be appealing to NBC.

The Buccaneers have won the NFC South four consecutive seasons, and I expect them to make it five. But I think there’s a decent chance they’ll have it wrapped up by Week 18 and may only be playing for seeding. This game slides up my list a little because of the Panthers’ frisky end to the 2024 season, but there are still just too many other games where I think both teams could be in the playoff mix.

We know the Cowboys are a major draw for TV ratings (even without Micah Parsons) and that NBC would love to feature them here for the same reasons they’ve been elevated as the Eagles’ opponent in the Week 1 opener. Dallas famously played in this time slot three consecutive seasons from 2011 to ’13, once against each NFC East rival, though the team hasn’t been back in over a decade. If Russell Wilson or Jaxson Dart have the Giants in a position to care about this game, I think it would be an easy choice, which is why these two markets will never be ranked 15th or 16th on this list. But I just don’t see it this year.

It seems fitting to have the Chiefs one spot ahead of the Cowboys, given the conversation in recent years about whether Kansas City has overtaken Dallas as the new king of television ratings. NBC similarly would be thrilled to have a bonus Chiefs game on the schedule in January. However, the schedule makers didn’t pair up K.C. with either of the AFC West teams that earned wild-card spots last season and are expected to contend. If Pete Carroll and Chip Kelly have the Raiders in the mix, this would be a great rivalry game to finish out the season. But in a world where the league really does prioritize playoff stakes over ratings for this time slot, this game has a ceiling.

This is Tirico’s sleeper game, and he has an excellent point.

The potential for great stakes are clear. The Bills are favorites to win the AFC East for the sixth consecutive season, though there’s always a risk that they’ll have it clinched and won’t need to play their starters. The Jets would be an appealing team if they’re fighting to end the league’s longest playoff drought in Aaron Glenn’s first season.

But the big thing this game has going for it is that it’ll be the final regular-season game at Highmark Stadium, where the Bills have played since 1973. The team has already announced it’ll wear the throwback red helmets this week. Everyone expects the Bills to be in the playoffs, but if they’re surprisingly locked into a wild card, this would very likely be the final game there, period. If there’s no perfect game to flex, maybe a public funeral for The Ralph would be a fun way to end the season. You can practically already picture that sendoff coming on one more frigid (maybe snowy) night with the Bills Mafia under the red heat lamps, an emotional season finale even if there are no stakes.

Tirico is totally right, but upon further reflection, I think that would be an ideal use of the league’s Week 18 Saturday time slots. In fact, I’ve basically convinced myself that this will be the Saturday nightcap—unless the Bills need to play at the same time as another AFC contender for fairness reasons, in which case it wouldn’t be as likely to get flexed to Sunday night anyway.

We’re now up to the top half of this list, and entering the pool of games Tirico and I agree are real contenders. “The AFC South is always in the mix,” he said. And it’s true. Out of every division in football, that’s the one that in many years feels like you could take the teams, shake them up like dice and roll them into any random order. Texans fans may not want to hear that, as their team has won the division in each of C.J. Stroud’s first two seasons and may be establishing itself as the class of the AFC South for a while. But old feelings die hard, and if the Colts can hang around, it wouldn’t be a shocker to see these teams trying to claw for their ninth or 10th win to get into the playoffs.

This is the one game I had in my top seven that Tirico didn’t have in his quick rundown of candidates (though, for what it’s worth, I didn’t press him on it). I just think the NFC West is this year’s hardest division to handicap. I could see the Rams, 49ers and Seahawks finishing in any order from one through three, and I know there are plenty of people out there who view the Cardinals as their NFC sleeper team. Everyone is familiar with the Sean McVay and Matthew Stafford narratives at this point (and who knows if we’ll have more reporting by January about whether Stafford will be back in 2026). The Cardinals would be a nice story if they’ve taken another step forward in Jonathan Gannon’s third season. Kyler Murray still has just one career playoff game, which was an ugly loss against these Rams in this very building. We’re solidly into the games I can really picture getting flexed.

I just made my thoughts on the NFC West clear. I’m putting this one slightly above Cardinals-Rams, because I think it’s more likely to be with the division title on the line. Though, once again, if the Rams win the division, this game could easily be for a wild-card berth. It would be a rematch of the game that ended the 2019 regular season, when Dre Greenlaw tackled Jacob Hollister at the goal line in the final seconds to give San Francisco the No. 1 seed.

This game is also being played at Levi’s Stadium, home of Super Bowl LX, which is on NBC this season. That may not mean much to you, but it would be one of those in-game storylines that everyone talks about, how the eyes of the football world will be back on the same building five weeks later. (And networks do like to send their crews to the Super Bowl stadium in advance, in case that’s any sort of tiebreaker.)

I think this one is a little less likely to matter for both teams than the previous three games on the list, but I’m giving it a bump because of how quickly the NFL would pick it if it matters at all. The Lions are veterans of the time slot (this would mark three times in four years). And, of course, one of the top storylines of the offseason was Ben Johnson finally leaving his job as Lions offensive coordinator to take the head coaching job in Chicago. Seeing him go up against Dan Campbell in a game with playoff stakes would be must-see TV. Especially after his bold opening press conference, slinging unprovoked arrows all over the NFC North.

Even if the game doesn’t matter to Chicago, there could be a cool parallel here. To conclude the 2022 season, the league flexed a Lions-Packers game into this time slot. Detroit was eliminated earlier in the day, but Campbell’s crew played their butts off and knocked the Packers out of the playoffs, too. If the Bears are in the same situation against the mighty Lions, it would be fun to see Johnson’s team go all out as he tries to build up his new team like his old one.

But let’s keep going. The final four games on my list all feature two teams that made the playoffs last season.

The NFC North was the best division in football last season, and I have both of its matchups in the top five here. The Packers and Vikings both made the playoffs last year, and this game could be for the division crown, wild-card berths or both. It’s also another great rivalry, and the Packers’ late addition of Micah Parsons is probably going to make them a bigger story all year. I think we usually focus on QBs with starpower and Q rating, but J.J. McCarthy is one of the most interesting unknowns of the season. The Vikings went 14–3 with Sam Darnold. If Kevin O’Connell can coach a great first NFL season out of McCarthy, there’s no reason a team with Brian Flores’s defense and Justin Jefferson can’t contend. The Minnesota crowd would give us an awesome prime-time atmosphere, too.

This is another game where both teams were wild cards last season and are expected to contend again this year. And now the Broncos seem to be the league’s No. 1 hyped potential sleeper team, while the world’s hot take economy would definitely be interested in seeing whether Justin Herbert wins a big game. The Chiefs have won the AFC West nine seasons in a row. If this is finally the year they stumble, the stakes would be massive for one of these teams to break through. But even if this is just a game where one team will make the playoffs and the other will go home, we have seen in years past that that could be good enough to get flex treatment. I think it’s more likely to be the case here than in many of the mid-tier games on the list.

I’ve teased that Tirico and I had different games rated No. 1, and here’s his top game sitting in my No. 2 spot. “If this is Aaron Rodgers’s last year, then why not one game to win the division, or perhaps make the playoffs and keep his career going?” he said.

And he’s right. However you feel about him, Rodgers would be ratings gold. I think people will be fascinated in how he does in Pittsburgh, whether he’ll get back to the playoffs for the first time since he left Green Bay, if he’ll keep Mike Tomlin’s streak of .500 seasons alive, if he’ll be good enough to warrant coming back in 2026, etc., etc. I don’t know that the Steelers are really a Super Bowl contender, but they were good enough to make the playoffs behind a combo of Russell Wilson and Justin Fields last year, and they always seem to be in the mix.

The Ravens might be the best team in the AFC, and even if the AFC North is settled by Week 18, this could easily be a game dripping with playoff seeding ramifications for them. This is also a classic rivalry that honestly makes me think of Sunday Night Football, and it would feel very much at home here. It would be a great way to end the season. But …

Out of all 16 games, this is the one I think is most likely to be a straight-up de facto division championship game. The defending champion Eagles are favorites, but the NFC East famously hasn’t had a repeat champion since 2004. The Commanders exploded onto the scene in Jayden Daniels’s rookie season and this would be a rematch of last year’s NFC title game, a blowout that might be best remembered for Frankie Luvu jumping over the pile to stop the tush push.

This would also be a rematch of the infamous Nate Sudfeld game, when these two teams were flexed into this time slot to close out the wacky 2020 season. (That one was 13th on my preseason list, but in my defense the Washington Football Team won the NFC East at 7–9. You see, this is hard!) If it’s picked again this year, you can bank on it being a more enticing game. We know how much every TV network loves the NFC East, and this would be an easy pick if the game is meaningful. Yes, even over Aaron Rodgers.

So my prediction is that Tirico will finish the regular season in the same place where he starts it: the broadcast booth at Lincoln Financial Field. Though, again, you all know my track record on this. So I look forward to seeing who’s right. He did say this was 100% wasted energy, but I am happy to have wasted more of it and appreciative that this year he decided to join me.