Week 15 broadcast maps: pitched playoff-style battles

 

With a small slate of uninspiring early games, the Bills-Jets battle gets top billing in the time slot. The rest of you will probably be over on Fox watching Tampa-Atlanta.

 

If the early slate features few games and even fewer compelling match-ups, the network makes up for it with a pair of playoff-worthy battles in the late slot. In fact, the nation is just about evenly split geographically between the huge Pittsburgh-Baltimore battle for AFC North supremacy, which gets the top crew of Nantz-Simms, and what's shaped up as an interesting Denver-Carolina contest. New England-Oakland gets only regional coverage and probably deserves even less.

 

Atlanta's rising star Matt Ryan gets some of his most widespread coverage of the year as the NFC North's key Bucs-Falcons battle will be seen throughout the Deep South, along with in far-flung regions from upstate New York to Southern California. However, the star-studded Minnesota-Arizona showdown, which also impacts the NFC playoff picture, is the biggest game in the eyes of the network, drawing the No. 1 crew of Buck-Aikman.

 

By Kerry Byrne