How are bye-weeks in the NFL determined? Is it luck-of-the-draw?
Do all teams get at least one bye week?
Yes, every team gets a bye week. It’s determined when the schedules are made. I don’t think there’s any particular system for it except to make sure every team gets one slotted into their schedule.
The “bye” week is also done in division groups: American East division, National West division, etc. All the teams in a division have their bye week the same week.
This wasn’t always so, when they had different sized divisions. If a division had an odd number of teams (like the old American West division had Denver, San Diego, Seattle, Oakland, and Kansas City), all but the lowest-ranked team from the previous season would have their bye week together. Then after all the then-six divisions had their bye weeks, the 4 leftover teams would have their bye week. (You couldn’t have 5 teams take the week off, because then some team would have nobody to play.)
This, of course, is all moot now that we have 8 divisions of 4 teams each.
Not entirely moot. The Saints had their bye week yesterday. NFC Divison rivals Carolina and Atlanta both played yesterday.
er, NFC South division rivals Atlanta and Tampa
One thing to note as far as “bye” weeks are concerned, in case you’re interested in why they exist.
The official reason for them is to give each team a week off to rest/recoup/heal, etc. Though if this were the case, every team would take week 9 off. (Halfway through the season.) In fact, the bye week is set anwhere from week 3 to week 9. http://www.fftoolbox.com/2006/byeweeks.cfm
In reality, it’s to stretch the season an extra week for television revenue. No cite for this, but it seems likely; should the season go to 18 games, there may be 2 byes.
Well, they used to group the byes by division, but recently have shuffled up the bye distribution (completely randomly as far as I can tell). For example, on Sunday the Bears were off but the rest of the NFC North played. Last Sunday the Packers and the Vikings were off but the Vikings and the Bears played. Perhaps because the schedule is now almost completely set in stone years ahead of time (save 2 games a year!) they decided to mix things up with the byes. 
Oops…that’s supposed to say the Lions & the Bears played…
I would suspect it’s more an issue with the “dominant market team” that would apparently take precedent over all other games.
IOW, 4 teams in the NFC North. 2 are off, 2 are playing. If Detroit and Chicago are off, for instance, there’s a good chance those 2 markets will want to watch Green Bay and/or Minnesota play. Or if Dallas and Philly are off, those markets would likely support demand for the NYG and 'Skins games.
I always thought it was to push the playoffs past the college football bowl games. Many teams are playing a meaningless game the last week of the season which will fall during the last week of the year.
Then, the playoffs can start the first full weekend of the new year and command full atttention.
Let’s just hope the NFL doesn’t add the foreign games and then a bye week after.
I think it had more to do with keeping football on every week. There used to be an extra weekend between the last playoff game and the Superbowl. They tried to keep the hype going for two weeks but it didn’t work too well. Now they have the same number of games spread out to make up for that extra week.
I’m pretty sure the bye week was first instituted because an expansion year left an odd number of teams in the league.
**Fiddlesticks ** is right . This is a bitter bone of contention with me and has been a long-time pet peeve of mine…
It is certainly not true, for example of the NFC East this year – in fact two (NY, Dallas) of the three other teams in the Division had their byes before playing Washington (Washington now has a Bye before playing Dallas).
One divisional opponent having a bye before playing another (that doesn’t have a bye) is a fact of NFL life that infuriates me.
The way you describe it is the way it SHOULD work. It is the way anyone with an ounce of common sense would make it work (although under the current format there probably needs to be 2 weeks with 5 teams Bye-ing - but still…).
But, as fiddlesticks said, it is not the way it DOES work.
What year did they start having bye weeks?
The bye week thing started in 1990.
duffer:
The NFL actually tried having two bye weeks for each team, making the season eighteen games long, but they dropped it after only one year. Maybe because people didn’t like how comparatively few games were on each weekend.
Thanks I had tried to look it up on the NFL site but missed it. It was in 1990 but they don’t say what their reason was. Also mentions the 18 week season.
*Commissioner Tagliabue announced NFL teams will play their 16-game schedule over 17 weeks in 1990 and 1991 and 16 games over 18 weeks in 1992 and 1993, February 27. * Cite.
According to the Wiki article:
That sounds about right. A lot of the players and coaches seem to think “momentum” is important, and don’t really appreciate the bye weeks. The people intent on making money from televising the games would probably like to extend the season until the NFL was televised year round.
It was never a secret that this was the reason. Byes started with a new TV contract in 1990, so the networks got more for there money.
There was only an odd number of teams from 1999-2001. During that time, there had to be a team on a bye every week.
As stated by others, the byes used to be by division. Now it’s mixed up a bit. I think it makes sense. If your team isn’t playing, you can still watch a division rival.
No, no. That made it an 18 week season. I was talking about an 18 game season.