NFL TV Maps for Week 8

It is Week 8, which means that the NFL season will be halfway over after this weekend. The NFL TV Maps show an alarming trend. There have been far too many mono-colored maps this season.

The Seahawks-Cowboys game is the only game on Fox in the afternoon time slot. It becomes a de-facto national broadcast, but it doesn’t count toward the limits on nationally televised games for individual teams. The NFL is skirting their own rules.

NFC East teams are continually getting more national games this year that are allowed under the NFL’s scheduling rules. They don’t count though because they are only national games because there are no other games scheduled at that time. I’m sure this will be addressed by smaller market team the next time the competition committee meets.

Fox’s early game in the Seattle area is Arizona-Cleveland. While that game is hardly appealing, at least it’ll give us a chance to scout the Cardinals a bit. The Seahawks play Arizona in Week 10 after the bye week.

The other games in that slate have limited appeal. San Francisco-St. Louis is interesting from an NFC West point of view, but those are still two teams that aren’t any good.

Next: Okung injury leaves Seattle without a backup OT

The CBS slate is much more interesting. Cincinnati-Pittsburgh is an interesting game between two teams that are playing well at the moment. That game is likely to dominate the ratings this week.

The other interesting game is Jets-Raiders. Both of those teams are ascending teams that look like they’ll be in the battle for Wild Card spots this season. Unfortunately it is in the late time slot. Even if it was available in the Seattle area, no one would have watched it because the Seahawks game would have been on.

CBS (One Game)

Fox Early

Fox Late

All maps are from the awesome guys over at 506Sports. They do a great job, and we should all be grateful for their work. On their site, you can zoom in in case you live near one of the boarders and need more clarity about what games will be shown in their area.