Question about the Bye Week

This season, our bye week comes in Week 3, as do both the Rams and the Cards, making it a long haul for all 3 teams from now through December. But the Niners get their bye in a more natural place in the season in Week 8.

So my question is this: How are byes determined? With a league that prides themselves in parity in just about everything they do from the draft to scheduling to the salary cap, wouldn't it make sense to give the divisional teams their bye in the same week, or if that's not possible, the following week instead of allowing one team to take it at a more opportune time in the season?

Don't be silly the NFL hates the niners apparently, Plebzone told me.

Now I don't know if it's even possible to do or not but I have always said that to me, the fairest thing to do with the bye weeks is to simply have 1 whole division take it at the same time and then play a division game coming out of the bye week.
That way every team in your division has it at the same time and nobody gets an advantage of having extra time to prepare for a team etc....

I think I remember either a year or two ago when we played like 4 or 5 games against teams that had a bye week the week before and therefore, an extra week to prepare for us. Not sure it did them much good cause we're the Seahawks :th2thumbs: but I just think it would be more fair to simply do a division a week and then play division opponents coming out of the bye.

I'm sure there are logical reasons as to why this doesn't happen though.....

Seahawks1Fan":2x1sf3ut said:

Now I don't know if it's even possible to do or not but I have always said that to me, the fairest thing to do with the bye weeks is to simply have 1 whole division take it at the same time and then play a division game coming out of the bye week.
That way every team in your division has it at the same time and nobody gets an advantage of having extra time to prepare for a team etc....

I think I remember either a year or two ago when we played like 4 or 5 games against teams that had a bye week the week before and therefore, an extra week to prepare for us. Not sure it did them much good cause we're the Seahawks :th2thumbs: but I just think it would be more fair to simply do a division a week and then play division opponents coming out of the bye.

I'm sure there are logical reasons as to why this doesn't happen though.....

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The logical reason probably has something to do with money. Perhaps the networks want to preserve their marquee matchups or something.

I don't see a whole lot of difference between a Week 3 bye and a Week 4 or even a Week 5 bye, but having 3 teams in the same division get their byes in Week 3 and the 4th team in Week 8 is pretty significant IMO.

The league uses a very complicated formula with many thousand of iterations to come up with the schedule that meets all of the NEEDs of the teams like usage of the stadium for other events etc. They need to balance travel, tv networks, prime time, etc.

So when a teams bye week is in a bad time it is probably because they wanted to favor another team because they want that team to have an advantage. LOL.

Bottom line the league does not want Seattle getting another Home Field Advantage in playoffs. Because they know if that happens the Hawks are back in the Show again.

That is not what they want. they want different teams each year unless it is NE, Stealers, Dallas, Giants, SF or GB.

For they same reason the league ensured Seattle got very few Prime Time games at home (because of the blow outs) they calculate every facet of the schedule to advantage some teams and disadvantage others.

They are not picking solely on the Hawks however they certainly favor certain teams in way of schedule year after year, by way of where the game is played, the time it is played, the travel and weather.