The first Sunday of the NFL season was just 15 days ago and already the league is at one of its dreaded midseason mile-markers. The bye weeks start this weekend, with Philadelphia and Green Bay getting the (dis)honor of skipping a game before they're even a quarter of a way into their seasons.
It's rough for both franchises, but especially for Philadelphia, the surprise team of 2016 that's out to a 3-0 start with a momentum that could only be stopped by the schedule-maker's forced vacation. It's too early for that. Philadelphia, in the midst of its hottest streak since the days of Donovan McNabb, one day after surprising the league and destroying the Pittsburgh Steelers, now won't play until Oct. 9. There will be teams that have played five games while Philly (and Green Bay) will have played three. It's unfair. The NFL's byes start too soon and end too late.
The entire point of the bye week, of course, is to give the league 17 NFL Sundays instead of 16. And that's great, everybody gets to make a little more money and, though it's never any fun when your team has a bye week or your fantasy team is decimated for all of November because of them, no fan is truly complaining about a free week of football. There's also the bonus that, in the middle of a brutal 16-game slate, teams get a one-week vacation from the rigors of NFL football and having to sit for soft-lit discussions for pregame shows. But is it a break when you've barely broken a sweat (like Green Bay and Philly) or when the season is almost over (like when Cleveland and Tennessee have theirs in Week 13 -- luckily neither will be playing for anything but draft slots)?
Here are the bye weeks for all 32 NFL teams:
Week 4: Green Bay, Philadelphia
Week 5: Jacksonville, Kansas City, New Orleans, Seattle
Week 6: Minnesota, Tampa Bay
Week 7: Carolina, Dallas
Week 8: Baltimore, Los Angeles, Miami, NY Giants, Pittsburgh, San Francisco
Week 9: Arizona, Chicago, Cincinnati, Houston, New England, Washington
Week 10: Buffalo, Detroit, Indianapolis, Oakland
Week 11: Atlanta, Denver, NY Jets, San Diego
Week 12: None
Week 13: Cleveland, Tennessee
The first bye Sunday is Oct. 2. The last one is Dec. 4. That's two months of byes! It stretches over 10 weeks! Luck of the draw is always going to exist when it comes to schedule-making, but giving two teams a bye on the first weekend of October and two other teams byes the week after Thanksgiving is simply unnecessary.
There are hundreds of factors to consider beyond the nearly impossible task of coming up with a 17-week schedule for 32 teams: Division teams have 14 common opponents. A team needs a bye coming off a London game. Every team has to play Thursday. Teams can't have home or road trips lasting longer than two games (with very few exceptions). Teams aren't supposed to play too many games against opponents coming off byes. There are TV considerations, short weeks, end-of-year division games and a desire not to put the Bears in primetime in back-to-back weeks -- twice. (Oops.) Nobody said this was easy. But the NFL boasts it has 136 computers on the job which is kind of mind-boggling given that NASA got to the moon with worse technology than you had in your first flip phone and the NFL basically admits it needs the Large Hadron Collider to set a Ravens-Texans 1 p.m. game.
2. Here's how to do it.
This season, four weekends feature just two teams on a bye. That means four weeks = 8 bye teams.
Two weekends feature six teams on a bye. That means two weeks = 12 bye teams.
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