Mike Tirico is retiring. Not from broadcasting, of course. He’ll be in the booth for NBC’s Sunday Night Football all season long, and he’ll be on your TV screen for basketball, golf, horse racing, the Olympics and seemingly any other sport NBC can get its hands on.
He’s only retiring from the Preseason SNF Flex Power Rankings. In which he has made precisely one correct prediction.
“Given the history of the NFL, repeating is very difficult,” he said. “So I’m just very happy with that one. I’m gonna go out on top.”
This is my 11th consecutive season attempting this time-honored sports media nerd parlor game, trying to predict which matchup will get flexed into prime time on the final night of the NFL’s regular season. Though in my case, starting before Week 1. As the football world settles in to watch Seahawks-Patriots in Game No. 1, I am, as always, zooming ahead to Game No. 272.
This time last year, I reached out to Tirico, seeking a phone-a-friend lifeline in an effort to finally predict the game before the season. I only made one mistake: not taking his advice.
Tirico staked his claim on Steelers-Ravens, another game I liked. But I slotted it into No. 2 on my list behind Eagles-Commanders, which would’ve been a rematch of the previous season’s NFC title game. I thought it would be a fun little competition to track through the season: my pick or his. Until Jayden Daniels got hurt, the Commanders fell out of contention and I knew the final two months of the year were lining up for my cameo guest to be crowned in my own column.
The funniest part, to me, is that last year represented my best performance in a decade of running the column, having placed the ultimate game No. 2 on my list. But there I was at the end of the season focused more on how I hadn’t taken the advice I’d sought in the first place.
Was Tirico thinking about the fact that he had a prediction on record as those stars were aligning late last season? “Guaranteed, absolutely,” he laughed. “And other than Aaron Rodgers coming back this year, I pretty much nailed it.”
To add insult to injury, Tirico himself was the man who broke the news to me that he’d bested me at my own game. He announced to the world during Sunday Night Football in Week 17 that he, Cris Collinsworth, Melissa Stark and the rest of the crew would be headed to Pittsburgh the following week.
“It didn’t register at that moment,” Tirico says of squashing my dreams. “But soon after it did, it was maybe the highlight of my year. You know, calling the Super Bowl, hosting the Olympics, the Spurs-Thunder Western Conference Finals … this is right up there with all of those.”
And then last year’s Game 272 fully lived up to my billing as the Crown Jewel of the Regular Season™. “Little did we know that it would be the last time we would see John Harbaugh as the coach of the Ravens and it would be the last victory for Mike Tomlin with the Steelers,” Tirico said. “I mean, two all-time great chapters of head coaches in the history of the NFL, full stop.”
And unlike the 2024 season’s finale—when the Lions and Vikings met in a game with enormous playoff ramifications that didn’t quite live up to the hype on the field—this one came down to the final snap, a missed Tyler Loop field goal that propelled the Steelers to the playoffs and sent the Ravens packing.
So here we go. For the 11th consecutive year, I will power rank all 16 games on the final page of the NFL calendar, in order of their likelihood to get flexed to Sunday night. Tirico, despite his retirement, has graciously agreed to stay on as an advisor and coach me through my picks. There are a few games we disagree on, as I’ll get into below, but the No. 1 pick was obvious to both of us.
View this post on Instagram
