Week 14, Broadcast Maps

Week 14 is here and that means only 4 more weeks of regular season football.

Broadcast Maps are up: Week 14, Broadcast Maps

Primetime games are as follow:

TNF: Vikings @ Cardinals

SNF: Patriots @ Texans

MNF: Giants @ Dolphins

Vikings-Cards is the rare good Thursday Night Matchup.  Important playoff implications are abound here.  Cards can shore up the NFC West title with a win.  Vikings are coming off a shellacking at home, but are still in a tight division race with the Packers.    I do hope JJ Watt destroys Dreamboat.  Giants-Fins is a battle of 5-7 teams, don’t you enjoy the saturation of NFC East prime time games.

As for Sunday, we have a terrible 11:2 early to late afternoon ratio.  God damn.

CBS early features Steelers-Bengals in a good portion of the country.  I am surprised this is not a 4 PM game considering 1) it features two teams with above .500 records (an increasingly rare thing this season), 2) essentially determines who takes the AFC North, and 3) features the Steelers (one of the leagues favorite teams for over-saturation for national games).  Jets-Titans is limited to their core markets.  Bills-Eagles is also fairly scant in the coverage.  I am surprised at the relative paucity of territories in PA which are broadcasting the Eagles.  Chargers-Chiefs is also fairly contained to their core markets, though I do enjoy seeing the ever shrinking geographic sphere of influence the Chargers have in California.  Colts-Jags have their natural markets plus Houston. The lone late game is Raiders-Broncos, which like most Raiders games is the FEMA quarantine game with a huge chunk of the West plus randomized blotches east of the Mississippi.

Fox early features Falcons-Panthers in the Northeast, parts of the Southwest, CO and WY and Miami (nearly missed that one).  I do not think much has been made of the Falcons collapse as it ought to be.  It is rather impressive to start the year 5-0 and be well out of playoff consideration with 4 games to go.  Redskins-Bears is featured in a massive amount of the country compared to what it should be.  No idea about that one.  Washington is an awful road team to boot, but the Bears have been extraordinarily Jekyll and Hyde this year.  Just look at how pathetic the Ravens broadcast is in Maryland.  HAHAHA FUCK YOU FLACCO.  Saints-Bucs is mostly in the Southeast.   Who knew the great Brachyura Larcenist could be rather capable.  (Brachyura is the animal kingdom order for crabs, no I had to look it up myself, sounds catchy though).  Jameis Winston is slowly turning into the Asshole Cam Newton.  9ers-Browns is on and is subjecting more of Ohio then it should to its horror.  Lions-Rams is also mercifully limited. Lone Fox late game is Packers-Cowboys, yeah that’s a good one to have for a late game.

Boy that NFC East is always a juggernaut year-in-and-year-out.  Wait, are you telling me the networks constantly broadcast their games in marquee slots because the division is all major market teams with significant fanbases and not for the general quality of the teams of the division.  One day Goodell will have a division with the Packers, Cowboys, Giants and Steelers and we will never hear or see another team past 4PM.