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Mike Tirico is retiring. Not from broadcasting, of course. He’ll be in the booth for NBC’s Sunday Night Football all season long, and he’ll be on your TV screen for basketball, golf, horse racing, the Olympics and seemingly any other sport NBC can get its hands on.
He’s only retiring from the Preseason SNF Flex Power Rankings. In which he has made precisely one correct prediction.
“Given the history of the NFL, repeating is very difficult,” he said. “So I’m just very happy with that one. I’m gonna go out on top.”
This is my 11th consecutive season attempting this time-honored sports media nerd parlor game, trying to predict which matchup will get flexed into prime time on the final night of the NFL’s regular season. Though in my case, starting before Week 1. As the football world settles in to watch Seahawks-Patriots in Game No. 1, I am, as always, zooming ahead to Game No. 272.
This time last year, I reached out to Tirico, seeking a phone-a-friend lifeline in an effort to finally predict the game before the season. I only made one mistake: not taking his advice.
Tirico staked his claim on Steelers-Ravens, another game I liked. But I slotted it into No. 2 on my list behind Eagles-Commanders, which would’ve been a rematch of the previous season’s NFC title game. I thought it would be a fun little competition to track through the season: my pick or his. Until Jayden Daniels got hurt, the Commanders fell out of contention and I knew the final two months of the year were lining up for my cameo guest to be crowned in my own column.
The funniest part, to me, is that last year represented my best performance in a decade of running the column, having placed the ultimate game No. 2 on my list. But there I was at the end of the season focused more on how I hadn’t taken the advice I’d sought in the first place.
Was Tirico thinking about the fact that he had a prediction on record as those stars were aligning late last season? “Guaranteed, absolutely,” he laughed. “And other than Aaron Rodgers coming back this year, I pretty much nailed it.”
To add insult to injury, Tirico himself was the man who broke the news to me that he’d bested me at my own game. He announced to the world during Sunday Night Football in Week 17 that he, Cris Collinsworth, Melissa Stark and the rest of the crew would be headed to Pittsburgh the following week.
“It didn’t register at that moment,” Tirico says of squashing my dreams. “But soon after it did, it was maybe the highlight of my year. You know, calling the Super Bowl, hosting the Olympics, the Spurs-Thunder Western Conference Finals … this is right up there with all of those.”
And then last year’s Game 272 fully lived up to my billing as the Crown Jewel of the Regular Season™. “Little did we know that it would be the last time we would see John Harbaugh as the coach of the Ravens and it would be the last victory for Mike Tomlin with the Steelers,” Tirico said. “I mean, two all-time great chapters of head coaches in the history of the NFL, full stop.”
And unlike the 2024 season’s finale—when the Lions and Vikings met in a game with enormous playoff ramifications that didn’t quite live up to the hype on the field—this one came down to the final snap, a missed Tyler Loop field goal that propelled the Steelers to the playoffs and sent the Ravens packing.
So here we go. For the 11th consecutive year, I will power rank all 16 games on the final page of the NFL calendar, in order of their likelihood to get flexed to Sunday night. Tirico, despite his retirement, has graciously agreed to stay on as an advisor and coach me through my picks. There are a few games we disagree on, as I’ll get into below, but the No. 1 pick was obvious to both of us.
I don’t always do this, but this year’s list broke very cleanly into tiers with similar types of games near each other. So I’ll label those four tiers throughout. As always, I am predicting what I think is most likely to happen—based on factors that include not just playoff ramifications but also potential TV ratings and everything else that gets baked into these decisions.
Tier 1: Unlikely to matter for both teams
16. 49ers at Cardinals
I’m starting with a few games that pit one good team against one team that—how shall I put this nicely?—might be focused on draft position and the QB class of 2027 by the time January rolls around. Ideally, Game 272 will matter to both teams, but that feels far-fetched with a few of them.
I’m not sure if the Cardinals will actually be the worst team in football, but they are the team with the toughest path to the playoffs, given the talent around them in their division. And with the Rams and Seahawks Nos. 1 and 2 in many power rankings around the world, the 49ers probably have a better chance of being win-and-in for a wild-card berth than a division title, which slides this game to the bottom.
15. Browns at Bengals
I am imagining a world where Shedeur Sanders has the Browns in a win-and-in scenario for a playoff spot, and I am sure the NFL would be interested in foisting it upon us in prime time. But putting this game 15th on my list says something about how likely I imagine that scenario to play out. I could definitely see the Bengals in that type of game, with Joe Burrow & Co. still a popular draw as they seek to end a three-year postseason drought. But the bottom five games all seem unlikely this year.
14. Dolphins at Patriots
We are continuing with the theme here, but I gave the Patriots a slight bump over the Bengals, as they’re coming off last year’s Super Bowl berth. If this is the type of game where the Patriots are playing for the AFC East against a Dolphins squad in contention for a top-three pick, it could be more likely to be a Week 18 Saturday night contest. But I have to rank all of these games somewhere, so I guess you can count this as a relative vote of confidence in the Patriots playing for a division title.
13. Titans at Texans
My official playoff predictions will be published on the site later this week, but I will spoil one result now: The Texans are the first team we’ve gotten to on this list that I have winning their division. That’s the main reason I put this game slightly above the one featuring the Patriots. I still think the job Robert Saleh and his staff inherited in Tennessee will take more than one year to turn around, and I don’t think this game will be very appealing in Week 18. And even if this game does matter, I think the NFL/NBC decision-makers would have more interest.
12. Jets at Bills
The Jets played in Buffalo last season in Week 18, and it was a sleeper pick on this list, knowing it would be the final regular-season game at the old Highmark Stadium, with the Bills’ franchise celebrating former players and decades of history. I do think there would be some interest in ending the season with a prime-time affair in the new building, though we’ll have many years to see more enticing games there. Cautiously, I’ll place the Jets above some of the other teams expected to be toward the bottom of the standings. Still, it would be a surprise if this game is the last one standing.
11. Raiders at Chiefs
The Chiefs are guaranteed ratings gold, which means they are always a candidate to get flexed. If Patrick Mahomes has them on the doorstep of the playoffs in his return from last season’s torn ACL and a year out of the postseason, that would make a compelling storyline—but frankly they don’t even need that compelling of a storyline. The Chiefs are playing football would suffice. The Raiders are holding them back from being extremely high on this list, but I had to put this game above a handful with other teams closer to the Raiders’ caliber. Having said that, I do believe the Raiders have a better chance to compete this year than some of the other teams we’ve passed through. And if Fernando Mendoza is in the lineup with any stakes at all, that would be a fun way to end the season.
Tier 2: Potential for an important game
10. Jaguars at Colts
I will note that this is the game on which Tirico and I disagree the most. He slid this game into his top five, citing the Jaguars’ success last year and a belief in Shane Steichen and a healthy Daniel Jones. I am much lower on the Colts heading into this season and had trouble getting behind this one. A Texans-Jaguars game would have easily been a top-five game for me, but this one is not.
One more issue is that the proliferation of Saturday games in Week 18 has created new TV windows for games with playoff stakes that are not exactly ratings darlings. The three games in this tier come from the AFC South and NFC South, and some of the matchups in those divisions would face an uphill battle in both needing to matter and also needing to be the most appealing of the games that matter. We haven’t seen a game from either South division flexed into Sunday Night Football in the final week since Titans-Colts in 2018, before they added the Saturday games in 2021. I’m not trying to pick on these teams, but I am being a realist about how the NFL builds its TV schedule.
9. Falcons at Panthers
Last season, three teams finished tied atop the NFC South at 8–9, with the Saints only two games behind at 6–11. This year, the division could be similarly bunched up. In a world where any team could win, either matchup could be for the division title. Not to repeat myself too much, but last year was a great example of what can happen with a mediocre division. Steelers-Ravens was a no-brainer for Game 272 (even if their records weren’t stellar), but those Saturday time slots also felt tailor-made for a rainy, NFC South slugfest where the outcome of Buccaneers-Panthers on Saturday forced the next day’s Falcons-Saints game to settle the division.
Anyway, the Panthers are the defending division champs, while the Falcons get perennial preseason hype for their skill-position talent, though they enter the season with an unsettled quarterback situation. This could be for the division crown, but doesn’t necessarily scream marquee.
8. Buccaneers at Saints
I’ll go with Buccaneers-Saints slightly higher than its other divisional counterpart. I have the Bucs winning the division this season, and the Saints came on strong at the end of Kellen Moore’s and Tyler Shough’s first season in New Orleans. It belongs in this tier for the same reasons I laid out above, but I’ll give this game an edge. While we remain in the same tier, we’ve officially crossed into the top half of the rankings. It’s hard not to be interested in the thought of Baker Mayfield, playing out the end of his contract year, chasing a playoff spot in the final game of the season with a lot on the line for himself and his team.
Tier 3: In NBC’s dreams
7. Eagles at Giants
The NFC East is a perennial threat to wind up in prime time, though no game from the TV networks’ longtime favorite division has been flexed in the final week since Eagles-Commanders in 2020 (the Nate Sudfeld game). The division feels up for grabs, as it often does, even after the Eagles finally ended the incredible streak that saw no repeat champion in the NFC East since 2004. The Eagles always seem to be long on intrigue, regardless of whether they’re having a good season or a bad one. If John Harbaugh has the Giants in position to get back into the playoffs against a Philadelphia team in a similar position, this would be a TV booker’s dream.
6. Cowboys at Commanders
I’m putting both NFC East games back-to-back, but will give a slight edge to this one, as I think the Commanders are more likely to rebound and get back into contention than the Giants this season. Jayden Daniels was such a star at the end of the 2024 season, and if the game matters to both teams, it would be a no-brainer and to give him another massive stage before the playoffs. There are plenty of storylines in this one, from Dan Quinn and Brian Schottenheimer being coordinators together in Dallas, to potential star defensive rookies Sonny Styles and Caleb Downs coming out of Ohio State together. But honestly, the jerseys are enough to draw interest as long as the game has stakes.
5. Steelers at Ravens
A rematch of last season’s Game 272 was one of the toughest for me to rank. It’s a new era in this rivalry with those longtime coaches now elsewhere (and Tomlin working for the network that would televise the game). The Harbaugh-Tomlin era spanned more than half of the Ravens’ existence since they moved from Cleveland in 1996, but great rivalries transcend individual coaches, players and eras, and I believe this one will endure. It would be fun to start a new chapter off with a game-of-the-year-type moment.
I didn’t think the Steelers would be a playoff team last season, and they proved me wrong once. So maybe Aaron Rodgers (and now Mike McCarthy) will do it again. I think there’s a long way to go, but this would certainly be a fascinating game if these two teams ended up in roughly the same spot they were last year in Week 18.
“The sequel is never as good as the original,” Tirico said. “But this sequel would be pretty good.”
Tier 4: The top contenders
4. Bears at Vikings
The NFC North is the only division I haven’t mentioned yet, as I’ve got both games in my top four. This one may be an unpopular pick, and it sits alongside Colts-Jaguars as a game where I disagree with Tirico, as he didn’t have it in his top five. But I’m sticking to my guns here. Interest in the Bears speaks for itself, looking at last year’s playoff run and their string of exciting games. They are an “it” team right now, with a Hallmark Christmas movie coming and a young quarterback on the cover of Madden. The Vikings feel a little overlooked, after going 9–8 last season with a dreadful quarterback room. For them to be a playoff dark horse, it may well have to come at the Bears’ expense. But for this game to be flexed, I don’t necessarily need that to come to pass; I just need it to be possible going into Week 18.
I also love the atmosphere in Minnesota (in 2024, I spent a week as a member of their grounds crew and manned one of the field goal nets during a SNF game), and think this would be a great playoff-like atmosphere a week early.
3. Lions at Packers
And here’s the other NFC North game. This division has made up three of the nine games since I started writing this column (Lions-Packers in 2016, Packers-Lions in 2022 and Lions-Vikings in 2024), plus Packers-Vikings in 2015, the year before I started. No other division has more than one in that span. I’ve long treated the NFC East as the king of this time slot after three consecutive Cowboys games from 2011 to ’13, but perhaps the baton has been passed.
The Packers have made the playoffs three consecutive seasons, and could be making a late-season charge after Micah Parsons returns. The Lions have a great team on paper that had a hard-luck 2025. I don’t think I have to sell this game hard; everyone knows it would be a good one and I think it’s pretty clear it could easily matter to both teams. Let’s do prime time in Lambeau in January.
When these teams met at the end of the 2022 season, the Lions knocked the Packers out of the playoffs despite already having been eliminated earlier in the day. “I think we’re owed a great Game 272, Detroit–Green Bay, with something on the line for both teams,” Tirico said.
2. Chargers at Broncos
This time last year, not many people would have believed that two AFC West teams would make the playoffs, and neither would be in Kansas City. But it did happen, and both the Chargers and Broncos should be contenders again this season. This would be a fantastic game again, with the Broncos trying to prove that last season wasn’t a fluke, and I think there’s a Mike McDaniel curiosity factor making the Chargers more intriguing. This could be a game for the division title, a wild-card berth or one of each. I’ve said in this column before that Denver is an underrated stadium for a cold-weather, night game, too. “Jim Harbaugh in his receiving gloves on the sideline against Sean Payton,” Tirico said, encouraging me to keep this game above the NFC North contests.
The AFC is extremely crowded this season, and some teams that look potentially very good now will be left out of the postseason. If this game determines which teams get in and which don’t, it would be a fitting end to the season.
1. Seahawks at Rams
This is the one. Not only is this my top-ranked game for 2026, but I also can’t remember the last time my list had such a resounding favorite. The Rams are the consensus best team in football, having made some high-profile, Hall of Fame additions this offseason. The Seahawks are the defending champs. These teams are division rivals. They played arguably the most impactful game of the regular season last year, the prime-time affairthat swung on a fumbled two-point conversion and gave Seattle home-field advantage in the playoffs. Then they met again in the NFC title game. It feels like the whole season is setting up to be a showdown between these two teams again.
It felt like such a clear No. 1 that I asked Tirico to talk me out of it. Of course he would not. I tried to overthink it: Could the Rams be too far ahead and already have the No. 1 seed clinched? That feels disrespectful to, I’ll reiterate, the defending Super Bowl champs.
Last year’s season-ender will be “Pretty, pretty hard to top,” Tirico acknowledges, “but you know the NFL: They always find a way to get the script to top the last one.” He also noted that these teams will play against each other in Weeks 16 and 18, so the proximity of the matchups could add to the intrigue.
If you make me take this game or the field, I would take the field. But SoFi Stadium is going to host the final game of the playoffs, with Super Bowl LXI set for Los Angeles on Valentine’s Day. And I think it’s a safe bet to host the final game of the regular season, too. Trust me, I have to be right one of these years. And this year Tirico agrees with me—purely in an advisory role, of course. But maybe next year I can finally retire on top, too.
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MITCH GOLDICH
Mitch Goldich is a senior editor for Sports Illustrated, mostly focused on the NFL. He has also covered the Olympics extensively and written on a variety of sports since joining SI in 2014. His work has been published by The New York Times, Baseball Prospectus and Food & Wine, among other outlets. Goldich has a bachelor’s in journalism from Lehigh University and a master’s in journalism from the Medill School at Northwestern University. He is a Philly native, now living in Boston, and he invented and popularized the octopus, when the same player scores a touchdown and the ensuing two-point conversion.
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