Scott Hanson: Every NFL late afternoon window will have at least 3 games

As the NFL RedZone has become more of a fixture for football fans on Sundays during football seasons, it’s also become more influential in how the schedules are made. In an interview with WFAN in New York on Tuesday, RedZone host Scott Hanson shared how that is the case.

On most Sundays, there are more games in the early afternoon window than the late one. For several reasons — namely bye weeks — the late afternoon schedule can sometimes be especially light in the middle of the season. In his interview, Hanson detailed that the late afternoon window will never drop below three games going forward.

“You’ll be the first audience I’m telling this to. We had a Zoom with all the NFL executives in the offseason — kind of getting us ready for the regular season. And I was told that the schedule makers particularly brought up NFL RedZone this year and said, ‘We cannot have any two-game late windows’…the lowest number we’ll have in the late window is three. And there are many weeks that have four games or five games in the late window. So they did us a solid there because a two-game late window for RedZone purposes is death.”

How significant is this news? It varies on what the focus is.

Having no windows with fewer than three games isn’t a big shift. Per 506 Sports, there were no weeks in the 2023 season with fewer than three games in the late afternoon window. The 2022 season had two such weeks. One of those was Week 16, which — because it fell on Christmas weekend (Dec. 25 was a Sunday) — had more standalone games than a normal week. The other was Week 9, which had six teams on a bye. So, late windows with only two games don’t happen without fairly unusual circumstances and even then, they’re fairly uncommon.

More significant is Hanson saying “There are many weeks that have four games or five games in the late window.” While two-game late windows aren’t common, three-game late windows are. There were seven such weeks in 2023 and five in 2022. Those can be problematic, as well, particularly if one of the games lags behind the others, as RedZone is not permitted to show game coverage when only one game is going on. The more games being played at a given time, the less likely that is to happen. That leads directly to Hanson’s point that the schedule makers are considering RedZone when making the schedules.

For fans, that’s significant.

[506 Sports (2022 Week 9, 16)]