NFL bye-week thoughts

This Sunday will be the last bye week for 4 teams, which thus have played 11 games without a break and get to rest up for the “stretch” (race to post-season). The first bye week was in late September, meaning those two teams ended up facing the last 13 games without a break (Packers would probably have been ever so happy, as things turned out, to have their bye week about now instead of in week 4).

This seems a bit uneven to me. Yes, ISTR that they used to play all 14 games without a break, and when the New Browns were added, there was at least one team with a bye every week because there were an odd number of teams. But would it not be an improvement to add a second bye week to balance things out?

I mean, 18 weeks of football would generate more revenue except for the casual fans who only watch their team. And certainly the teams would benefit from a second break in the action. I am having a hard time imagining a down-side, unless pushing the regular season into late August or further into January would be a real problem. Any thoughts?

I think the football season already goes too late and starts too early. I’d say eliminate the bye week. I know they won’t do this as it would mean one fewer weeks of TV revenue. (And yes I do believe the NFL gets more this way even though each week there are fans with no home team to watch). I’d even say go back to 14 games. I think it’s quite silly to have the conference championships played under foul weather.

Here in CT we got 48 inches of snow last winter in one storm. I’d hate to see another such, but I really think it would serve the NFL right to have such a storm hit our neighbor New York on Super Bowl Sunday (or the day before) this January.

If the NFL wants to keep the Thursday Night games, they should add another bye week to the schedule and allow teams to have one of their byes be the week before the Thursday Night game. I think the three day break between a team’s Sunday night game and their Thursday night game is way too short. Players don’t get a chance to rest up and get healthy, the coaches don’t have much time to prepare, and the games that are played on Thursday night just aren’t very well played most of the time.

Adding a second bye week doesn’t have to extend the season … if they dump a pre-season game. Which I think is the only sticking point to getting it done now. If they could find some kind of revenue (say additional television rights money for an additional week of real NFL games) to replace the lost pre-season game, they could get it done this offseason.

The other problem is that I don’t think the owners have given up hope for an 18 week regular season/2 preseason game schedule, so they might not want to lose that one preseason game to a bye week. But I really think they should focus on the additional bye week and get it done this offseason.

Of course, the NFL already tried an 18-week/2-bye schedule (in like '93?), and reverted after one year because it didn’t feel right; it diluted the schedule, and with so many teams resting there were too many weeks without any big games. Who knows, maybe it would work better now – notably, they’ve added a few teams since then.

I agree. In fact, I’m puzzled as to why the NFL doesn’t already do this whenever possible. I guess I’m also puzzled as to why it’s Thursday Night Football and not *Friday *Night Football. Are they worried about stepping on the toes of high school programs?

The NBA season is worse.

I think giving up one preseason game to get a second bye week like Hamlet said is a good idea. I assume that the NFL would make more money on a real game than a preseason game, so it makes sense to me.

There wouldn’t be an extra game though, they’d just be trading a pre-season game for a bye week. Each team would still play 16 games, but there would be two byes, for 18 weeks of games, rather than the 17 now. That additional week of games could (if they can work it out regarding their current television contracts), bring in more television money, but I’m not sure if it would counter balance the loss of a pre-season game.

It also gets more complicated when considering the difference between high-revenue/low revenue producing teams. An increase in television money would increase the shared revenues (the money all the NFL share in), but the loss of non-shared revenues, like “locally generated revenues”, pro shop sales, concessions, tickets, parking, sponsorships, naming rights, and the like, from losing a pre-season game may be more important to the big owners than the little guys.

Jerry Jones makes a fair amount of money (money he doesn’t have to share with the other NFL teams), with local revenues from a pre-season game. To him, losing that money in favor of getting more money that is shared (from an additional week of real games on television) amongst all owners may not be in his best financial interests. Shahid Khan may not care, because he won’t lose as much revenue with one less preseason game. So there could be a rift between the high revenue generating and the low revenue generating teams that is further confounding the issue.

I don’t know how much money these teams will lose by losing a pre-season game in favor of another week of television, so I may be just speculating. But you can bet that the owners care, and are looking into it. And, if money is more important to them than giving players an additional bye week, then it may never happen. We will see.

Thursday night football is bad. screw you Goodell

Short weeks cause more injuries. He doesn’t care about players just more revenue

and normal people can’t watch the games anyway cause only the 1% can afford NFL Network

Do we have any actual evidence of this? While it’s common sense that players will be less likely to play if injured on the Sunday before, I’ve seen nothing to indicate that playing on a Thursday rather than a Sunday causes more injuries. And according to Goodell, the NFL has researched it and there is no such increase in injuries.

I don’t know but there are players who don’t like it

and feel like playing more fatigued

I don’t think players not liking it is necessarily in dispute. But you alleged Thursday games cause more injuries, which the NFL supposedly studied and found wasn’t true.

sorry I was wrong on the internet. I made an unsubstantiated claim and apologize for speaking without doing the proper research
irregardless I still don’t like thursday night ball. Thursday football is only for Thanksgiving. Football day is a special occasion each day we add a week of having football dilutes the specialness of the day

The two largest cable providers have added the NFL Network to their standard digital programming lineups. It reaches 72 million of 120 million households in the US.

Yeah must be nice to be able to afford cable. Can I come over and watch at your house Mr. Rockefeller

The correct response would be, “okay, maybe the 1% was a bit of an exaggeration. Sorry.”

Why don’t you just go to a bar like everyone else did before cable picked up the network?

DirecTV (satellite) does too.

It’s awesome being able to afford the things I want. Thanks for asking. I don’t see why you care seeing as you hate Thursday football anyway. You can always go to your local bar and watch the game for the price of a beer.

Must be nice to be able to afford beer.

That’s the common perception, but it seems to be false. Grantland did an excellent analysis of several stats related to sloppiness (fumbles, picks, dropped passes) and across the board, Thursdays were no worse (and in some ways, better) than Sundays.

Interesting article. I did a bit of research and found this article. This article does some analysis about the games, and says:

“The first number that really jumps off the page here is a big one: touchdowns. Offensive touchdowns are down significantly during TNF. The drop of 0.68 scores-per-game works out to just over one third of a touchdown per team. Extrapolated over the 19 TNF games, that’s a loss of about 13 total touchdowns. That’s a lot of fantasy point.”

“I left the raw data here for touchdowns and interceptions because of how ridiculous it is. NFL quarterbacks normally throw 1.7 touchdowns for every one interception. During TNF, it’s a pathetic 1:1 ratio. We’ve had the “luxury” of sitting through 42 touchdowns and 42 interceptions during TNF over the last year-plus. Ouch.”

“Scanning over the other splits, we see similar passing struggles during TNF. Passes (excluding tipped passes, throw aways, hits, spikes) are completed at a rate four percentage points lower during TNF than they are normally. A part of this can be explained by an average depth of target that is nearly a full yard higher during TNF. This also explains why our YPA (yards-per-aimed throw) is about equal.”

So with less touchdowns, more interceptions, lower completion rates, and such a reliance on passing, I can see why TNF gets a reputation for sloppy play. I think it’s hard to quantify “sloppy” and the number of games on Thursday make sample size a big issue, so drawing conclusions based on statistical analysis is really tough (as both authors point out). I do think that player fatigue and lack of preparation matter to the performance of the players and coaches, and if you ask them, a great many agree.

A year of games is not a statistically significant sample, especially considering the number of other variables.

I don’t think there is a need for an extra bye week. The NFL seems to really like starting the season on the Thursday after Labor Day. The calendar usually falls so that the playoffs start right after New Year’s Day. An extra week would add even more regular season games in bad weather, I like an occasional snow game, but the novelty can wear off quickly. Plus, we’d end up with even more bad matchups for the game of the week or Monday Night Football.

I despise the Thursday games. It screws up fantasy and pickem pools for me. I don’t often watch the Thursday games, I’m usually at work. The ones I’ve seen are usually slopfests.