A look at the final broadcast maps of the season, courtesy of the fine folks from the506.com.

 

Folks around the country are in for a rare treat in this timeslot, as the Jacksonville-Houston game will be shown from sea to shining sea. There is no official record for this, but we imagine it’s the widest distribution for any game involving the Texans, other than the odd primetime game in which they’ve been featured during their brief and inglorious history. Ironically, some parts of Texas north of Houston will get the Buffalo-Philadelphia game – a contest that leads the league this year in woulda-coulda-shoulda had playoff implications. The Cincy-Miami barn-freezer is mercifully limited to local markets.

 

This timeslot offers us this week’s most colorful patchwork of games. If only the games were as interesting as this patchwork of pretty colors. Instead, we have a collection of contests pitting teams playing out the string against teams resting up for the playoffs. This is how bad it is, folks: Cleveland still doesn’t know if its in the playoffs, and even beating lowly San Francisco won’t help the cause. Cleveland’s playoff hopes are almost entirely dependent upon the outcome of the primetime Tennessee-Indy game.

 

In a week almost utterly devoid of games with playoff implications, most of the nation will be fed the Pittsburgh-Baltimore grudge match, featuring a Ravens team that quit playing somewhere in the fourth quarter of their Week 13 loss to New England. And if you live around Kansas City or New York City, you lose!

 

Wow, a shocker! A game featuring the Cowboys gets the network’s widest distribution this week. Hey, at least the Dallas-Washington game offers us a rare taste of playoff fever: the Redskins are in with a win. St. Louis-Arizona, a game so bad it should be forced to wear a dunce cap, and Minnesota-Denver, will be shown in local markets. The Vikings are in with a win and Redskins loss.