I’m not talking playoffs because that’s a different situation - teams get byes by having better records and the elimination format makes skipping a game a clear advantage.
But in the regular season, when you have teams at all levels playing against each other, is there a real advantage in coming off a bye week? It should be easy to tell - just compete the winning percentage of post-bye teams to the overall winning percentage.
But I couldn’t find that information online. However, I did find one article that did this for college football and it found that teams coming off a bye week had a lower winning percentage than non-bye teams.
While I’m on the subject, is there an objective advantage for teams playing short weeks (coming off a Monday game) or long weeks (coming off a Thursday game)?
A bye week CAN be a great thing, especially for an aging, veteran team that has a lot of injuries. If your best wide receiver has a sprained ankle, or if your best cornerback has a bad knee, a week off to get healthy can be a godsend.
But we’ve all seen teams that looked unbeatable all season, then looked sloppy, out of sorts and unfocused after a bye week in the playoffs. That’s ESPECIALLY common when a team has sewn up its division and wrapped up home field early. When that happens, well, after a few meaningless late season games and a bye week, the quarterback may not be sharp, because he hasn’t played a full game (or any kind of meaningful game) in a month.
That happened several times to Peyton Manning’s Colts, and seemed to happen to Aaron Rodgers’ Packer last week.
To sum up above, teams coming off a bye score about 3 points more than expected.
Against the spread, it’s another story. Here’s a chart here, which tracks teams off a bye week, against the spread, 1991-2000. Looks like coming off a bye is a slight disadvantage, against the spread. This probably shows that bettors overestimate the bye week advantage, and drive up the spread.
It also depends on where your bye week falls, too. A mid-season bye week, say week 8 or 9 is better for getting rested up and letting some of the minor bumps and bruises that accumulate from a half season of play. On the other hand it breaks up any momentum and rhythm that you have built up. An early bye week gives less interuption to your season, but does not give relief from injuries as much as most have not had time to wear down from the week in and week out pounding these guys take. A late bye week is not as interuptive as you have played most of your games, but the benefit from resting and recovering is not a great as you do not have many games left to make use of it. All of this can effect how you respond when you return to play and can skew the data from looking at a year’s worth of byes over all.
I don’t follow the NFL much anymore, but IIRC, in the early days of bye weeks, the NFL tried to schedule bye weeks for teams that were playing each other the week following a bye week. So no advantage.
I remember an entire division getting a bye week at the same time, and then they play each other the next week.
IMO, that’s how it should be done. But I don’t think they do it anymore.