Could this bye-week proposal work?

[GetNjigbaWithIt]

Like pretty much all fans, I dislike early bye weeks, so if I were an NFL owner, I'd submit a rule proposal that every teams bye-week fall inside a 3-week window (weeks 7-9) Could it work?

 

[sutz]

Like pretty much all fans, I dislike early bye weeks, so if I were an NFL owner, I'd submit a rule proposal that every teams bye-week fall inside a 3-week window (weeks 7-9) Could it work?

No way owners would like that. They'd lose too many games with that many teams missing mid-season.

 

[Lagartixa]

Like pretty much all fans, I dislike early bye weeks, so if I were an NFL owner, I'd submit a rule proposal that every teams bye-week fall inside a 3-week window (weeks 7-9) Could it work?

I'd say if it were gonna be three weeks, then it should be weeks 8-10 (seven weeks before the byes, eight weeks after them) or weeks 9-11 (eight weeks before, seven weeks after). When the season expands to 18 games, so 19 weeks, then you'd expect weeks 9-11 would be the best. Eight before, eight after. Right in the middle.

One problem is that doing it that way greatly reduces the number of games those three weeks. Instead of 16 games, there would be ten one week and 11 two other weeks, so 12 teams would have a bye one week, and then ten teams would have a bye the other two weeks.

If the issue is fairness, one solution I've seen proposed that would actually allow for more fairness was for each team to have two bye weeks. Now that the season has been expanded to 17 games and will soon go to 18, two byes seems like an even better idea. The problem is that the extra regular-season games in each team's schedule also make it even harder to fit two bye weeks, into the time available for the NFL season. Owners are going to want to expand the postseason too, so even though I think it would be better for the players and more fair for all the teams, I don't think the two-byes-per-team regular season will ever happen.

 

[49fansinceBrodie]

IMO the best way to handle bye weeks is to have TNF always follow a bye week for participating teams.

 

[Lagartixa]

The idea of the TNF teams always having a bye week before is a good one, but there's the problem that then there would be no TNF in weeks 2-5 (I'm assuming they could have a TNF game to start the season in week 1), 9, 13, and 16-18, and there's no way the NFL and Amazon are going to go for that.

Does anyone know why there are no byes in weeks 8 and 12? That's bizarre. You'd think they'd try to clump byes more in the middle than they are, even if it weren't as clumped as @12AngryHawks suggests at the top of this thread.

 

[Jegpeg]

How fixed is the season start?

Does anyone know why there are no byes in weeks 8 and 12? That's bizarre. You'd think they'd try to clump byes more in the middle than they are, even if it weren't as clumped as @12AngryHawks suggests at the top of this thread.

Week 12 is Thanksgiving, makes some sense for everyone to play then (I haven't checked if teams have had byes on Thanksgiving weekend in the past). It does seem odd there are no byes in week 8, could just be a quirk in the schedules I remembers weeks with just 2 teams on a bye and weeks with 8 and there are so many soft constraints in the scheduling optimization that I wouldn't be surprised if it was the best option they came up with when also considering things like not having long runs of road games.

 

[CouchLogic]

Here is a crazy idea, make all teams take the bye halfway through the year on the same friggin' week. Is everybody going to stop watching games the second half of the season? The answer is no.

They could spend a whole week talking about the first half and wanking it for the cowboys. Shoot, have a midseason review with meaningless rewards and everything.

It can't be anymore "fair" than that.

 

[onanygivensunday]

The NFL will never do what the OP is proposing because of the loss in advertising revenue during the condensed bye period.

The total number of games is the same but the number of games during the condensed bye weeks is not much more than 50% of the norm.

 

[Pandion Haliaetus]

Just go into a 18 game format. Every team gets a bye after week 9 and week 18.

8 teams make the playoffs, divisional titles don’t guarantee HFA. 1 plays 8, 2 plays 7, and so on.

 

[renofox]

...If the issue is fairness, one solution I've seen proposed that would actually allow for more fairness was for each team to have two bye weeks.

Didn't that used to be a thing for a few years?

 

[flv2]

IMO the best way to handle bye weeks is to have TNF always follow a bye week for participating teams.

I've said the same thing for years. It would also allow the league to have Wednesday Night football. Teams would play 2 mid-week games every season rather than 1. Every team could have 2 byes which would extend the season by 1 more week. Potentially it's 19 more prime time games without short weeks and without increasing the number of games played.

 

[Lagartixa]

Again, the problem with having a team's midweek game follow a bye is that if the league were to do that, then either bye weeks would have to be spread out across almost the entire season (weeks 2-17) or there couldn't be midweek games for much of the season. Both of those possibilities have problems.

If a week-five bye seems rough, imagine the teams that get week-two byes. Yikes. And imagine the outcry if a team like the Patriots of the early-to-mid aughts (or, say, the current Chiefs) got a week-17 bye before its likely-to-be-meaningless final regular-season game and the playoffs. Yikes squared.

And if the league were to keep byes more toward the middle of the season and have midweek games played by teams coming off byes, then there couldn't be midweek games for about half the season or so. Team owners, the league office, and Amazon wouldn't go for that.

EDITED to add: one possible solution would be to have multiple games on both Wednesday and Thursday night, but that's further dilution of the TV viewership for prime-time games, and the owners, league office, and Amazon won't go for that either.

 

[AROS]

My first favorite option is two bye weeks per season for each team. The first being in the middle of the first half of the season, the second being in the middle of the second half of the season. My second favorite is one bye week for every team the same week (around Week 10). Doesn't the MLB do something like that with All Star Week? The current system stinks. It's not fair that some teams are forced to have very early byes and others get theirs much later in the season.

 

[chris98251]

Or you get rid of 1 more preseason game, stagger start of the season and everyone gets a couple byes without dilution of play.

 

[BlueTalon]

If the issue is fairness, one solution I've seen proposed that would actually allow for more fairness was for each team to have two bye weeks. Now that the season has been expanded to 17 games and will soon go to 18, two byes seems like an even better idea.

I was a proponent of having a second bye week for every team rather than extending the schedule by a game. It would have served the same function of lengthening the season, and the national TV revenue would have been virtually unchanged.

 

[MORGULON]

No way owners would like that. They'd lose too many games with that many teams missing mid-season.

I was thinking have the NFL do it like baseball and have a break right in the middle of the season. Fair to everyone