Some have asked why a New England Patriots-Buffalo Bills game would be on Fox, not CBS. Patriots president Jonathan Kraft explained on 98.5 The Sports Hub the new television programming policy called cross-flex.
"We started this season with something called cross-flex. We've always had that Sunday night flex where you could flex a game in or out in the back half of the season. And starting this season after Week 5, we did something where on a weekend like this, where CBS decides a couple weeks ago what looks like the big games. And in this case you had Denver and the Jets, and you are deciding when the Jets are 1-1 and Denver is Denver, you have Pittsburgh and Cleveland which is always a marquee divisional matchup, so a Bills-Patriots game that didn't look that exciting for the network up against other stuff, we were only scheduled to go to like five or six percent of the country.
"Fox had a much lighter slate at 1 o'clock today -- it's their doubleheader weekend, they have a bunch of games late. So they were willing, if they could take this game to clear it to something like 20 percent of the country, that way two teams that are 3-2 and battling for first place don't get stuck just basically going to Buffalo and the New England markets. Now it will go to a larger portion of the country. Hopefully NFL fans in general will get to choose from the most interesting games possible. And that was the idea behind flexing across networks. And so we have the honor of being the first one."
