The NFL scheduling gods blessed ESPN with a great Week 18 slate which features two of the three most important games of the weekend. Unfortunately, that left CBS and Fox fighting for scraps on Sunday afternoon.

Saturday, ESPN will broadcast both a critical NFC South game between the Carolina Panthers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers and an NFC West tilt between the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers. It’s a win-and-in scenario for the Panthers, while a Bucs win would put each team’s fate in the hands of the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday. The winner of Seahawks-49ers will earn the No. 1 seed and first-round bye in the NFC. Both games have massive postseason implications.

The same cannot be said for the Sunday afternoon slate on CBS and Fox. Due to the NFL’s desire to play games concurrently in situations where the result could impact another team’s playoff circumstances, and the league’s effort to fill standalone national windows with meaningful games, CBS and Fox were left with the less desirable matchups in Week 18.

Realistically, there’s not much the NFL could’ve done about it. There’s simply not a lot to play for this weekend compared to the final week of the regular season most years.

That’s why it was interesting to see Chris “Mad Dog” Russo appear on ESPN, one of the beneficiaries of the NFL’s scheduling procedures, and rip the league for leaving out CBS and Fox. But that’s exactly what Mad Dog did on Wednesday morning’s edition of First Take.

“[The NFL] left CBS and Fox with absolutely nothing on Sunday. There’s nothing to watch.”

– Mad Dog (on ESPN’s airwaves) frustrated that CBS and Fox got screwed with the Week 18 schedule https://t.co/mehM2PYqdj pic.twitter.com/mtTPOM2Qif

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 31, 2025

“I’ll be careful with this because the producers are all worried about it, and thank god we have both games here on Saturday with the Carolina-Tampa game, and of course Seattle and San Francisco,” Mad Dog hedged before going into his rant. “[The NFL] left CBS and Fox with absolutely nothing on Sunday. There’s nothing to watch. The Sunday night game is fine. But there’s nothing in the daytime to watch. They gave all the good games to the primetime. You gotta leave one of these games here for Sunday afternoon at 4:30. …It’s the last week of the year, I gotta have something to watch!”

Mad Dog has a point here. The Sunday afternoon is typically the most-watched window for the NFL, yet the league left its best games to air elsewhere at different times. Again, the league had limited options if it wanted to fill all of its standalone windows with meaningful games, but the lack of decent Sunday afternoon games is certainly worth noting.

Not all is lost for CBS and Fox, however. At the end of Mad Dog’s rant, his First Take colleague Peter Schrager chimed in to mention that those networks will likely get their pick of the litter during the Wild Card round.

“CBS is going to get their choice, likely, of the Wild Card round, which we all agree is bigger than Week 18. Fox is likely gonna get Packers-Bears in the Wild Card round. I think those networks are going to be taken care of throughout the playoffs,” Schrager suggested. “Week 18 is a time for ESPN to puff its chest.”