Bye Week Schedules

[Biggems]

I have never liked how they schedule them...they are too drawn out and random for my taste. I would prefer to have a more orderly bye week format.

Here is how I would do the bye weeks.

1. Bye weeks occur from Week 7 - Week 10

2. 2 divisions per bye week (8 teams)

3. 1 division per conference and geographically opposite

NFC East, AFC West (7, 8, 9, 10)
NFC North, AFC South (8, 9, 10, 7)
NFC South, AFC North (9, 10, 7, 8)
NFC West, AFC East (10, 7, 8, 9)



IMO, this is perfect for divisional parity, and does a nice job of bringing a more even playing field across the league. No more week 3 or 4 byes, while another team gets their bye in week 9 or so. All 4 bye weeks will be in the middle of the season.

I would like to hear the thoughts of the rest of the zoners.

 

[MarionBarberThe4th]

The earliest bye is week 4.

The problem w/ your scenario is between those weeks, interest and ratings would suffer. When its spread out theres less chance of a bad week of games

 

[Biggems]

The earliest bye is week 4.

The problem w/ your scenario is between those weeks, interest and ratings would suffer. When its spread out theres less chance of a bad week of games

I disagree.....but that is why we have this forum to discuss these things.

Another scenario I was thinking.....still have 8 teams have a bye week, but pick 1 team from each division for each of the 4 bye weeks. This way, at least 3 teams from each division will be playing during the 4 bye weeks. Maybe this would keep interest and rating.

 

[Zaxor]

not sure about your schedule Biggems but it should have included that those teams coming off a buy must play the giants, eagles or Commanders .

 

[JackMagist]

Another problem with this schedule is that it doesn't take into consideration who is scheduled to play whom in those particular weeks.

I like the concept but it would take a lot of tweeking. Also, I'd make it from weeks 6 to 12 to keep the number of games played each week up.

 

[Hoofbite]

A while back I was thinking about the bye week scheduling myself.

I had a similar idea in that 1/4th of the league would take a bye at the same time and the byes would only last for a month.

However, instead of an entire division taking a week off (something the NFL would never do because the NFC East is such a big ratings magnet), 1 team from each division would get the week off.

Bye weeks would start on week 7 just as in yours and end after week 10. The order of the bye within the division would be based on each teams record from the previous year with the worst team in the division getting first pick from those weeks.

After week 10, all teams are scheduled against a non-divisional opponent for week 11 and week 12 could be "Rivalry Week" with every team playing against a team within their division.

As is, they have 3 weeks with 6 bye teams so adding another 2 teams would only cost the league 1 game.