During the second half of the season, the NFL will be able to schedule the Sunday night games on the fly, ensuring that the matchups are good ones.
For Weeks 10-15 and Week 17, the final regular-season weekend, all Sunday games will be listed with start times of 1 p.m. or 4:05-4:15 p.m. ET. The league must then announce which match will be played Sunday night at least 12 days before the date of the game.
CBS, who has the AFC games, and Fox, who has the NFC, each have the option to protect five games over the final seven weeks, but they cannot protect more than one game per week. If they protect a game, the league can’t move it to Sunday night.
This will be an improvement over recent years, where we’ve seen some poor or meaningless matchups on Sunday night. Now we’ll have games in prime time that are ready for prime time.
