With the 2025 regular season winding down, we've officially arrived at the point in the NFL's calendar where the term 'flex game' becomes a key part of any football fan's lexicon. In order to ensure that the most consequential games on each week's slate ends up in a timeslot that maximizes the number of viewers who could tune in, from Week 10 on, many games are subject to time changes, keeping fanbases on their toes, as if there wasn't enough to be anxious about as a football fan in the month of December.
Already this season we've seen new games flexed into the primetime Sunday night slot, along with marquee games getting moved to a 4:25 pm ET standalone kickoff, but in Week 17, the Houston Texans will be one of four teams playing on Saturday instead of Sunday.
"The NFL’s Week 17 Saturday doubleheader on Dec. 27 will feature two games with potential playoff implications, as the Houston Texans face the Los Angeles Chargers and the Baltimore Ravens square off with the Green Bay Packers," writes Amos Morale III of The Athletic. "Texans-Chargers, a rematch from last year’s AFC wild-card round won by Houston, will kick off at 4:30 p.m. ET on NFL Network. The Ravens and Packers will play at 8 p.m. ET and stream exclusively on Peacock."
In their penultimate game of the season, the Texans will head to Los Angeles to face the Chargers in a game that will certainly have postseason stakes of some sort attached to it. Both Houston and LA could be playing to clinch a Wild Card berth, or even to remain in the hunt for a division title, and now this game will be played without any other matchups putting up a fight for competing eyeballs, unless of course the Fenway Bowl, the Pop-Tarts Bowl or the Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl tickles your fancy.
If you're a Texans fan, the best possible Christmas gift you could ask for is that Houston is in position to clinch a postseason berth with a win over the Chargers... the very same Chargers team that the Texans absolutely pummeled in the Wild Card Round of the Playoff last January. But in order for the Texans to find themselves in that position, they'll need to take care of business at home over the next two weeks against the Arizona Cardinals and Las Vegas Raiders.