Bills have the biggest rest disadvantage in 2025 among playoff contenders

[transplantbillsfan]

I got to thinking about this because I was thinking ahead to the Patriots game when we play a division rival coming off their bye... which sucks.

 

We also played the Falcons coming off their bye.  We know how that went.

 

We also played another division rival in the Dolphins coming off a Thursday night game with an extra 4 days of rest.

 

And ya know what, we're going to play another big conference game against the Bengals where they're coming off a Thanksgiving Thursday Night Football game.

 

Yes, the Bills benefitted from the bye week coming in to play a Chiefs team coming off a MNF game and a Saints team we got extra rest for after a TNF game  and will benefit from playing on TNF next week against the Steelers, but we have 2 divisional road games this year where we are scheduled with a rest disadvantage.  

 

 

By itself, I wouldn't really cry foul, but the Bills are -7 in rest disadvantage days for the whole season.  The next closest AFC teams even remotely contending for an AFC playoff spot are the Steelers and Browns both at -4 followed by the Texans at -2.  All the other AFC contenders for the playoffs have a rest advantage with the Jags (if we wanna call them a contender) at +1, the Chiefs and Patriots at +2, the Bengals and Colts at +3 and the Ravens and Chargers at +5.

 

Those are just the contenders for playoffs in the AFC.  To show the disparity in rest advantages, there's a 32 day difference from the team with the greatest rest advantage in the Lions at +13 to the team with the biggest rest disadvantage in the Raiders at -19.

 

And yes... gotta go out and win the games you play... but I guarantee statistically it's significantly more advantageous to play a team with a rest advantage rather than a rest disadvantage.  You would really think in a league that touts its own parity, they would really be trying to make the schedule a little more equal than a 32 day rest disparity from top to bottom.

[Low Positive]

We didn’t get a bye before the chiefs game, unless you count the Panthers as a defacto bye week. 

[dorquemada]

The regime is happy you’re helping them generate excuses for their bad season.  

[strive_for_five_guy]

1 minute ago, dorquemada said:

The regime is happy you’re helping them generate excuses for their bad season.  

Now we’re REALLY getting back to the drought years

[finn]

The only rest advantage that truly matters is the first-round bye in the playoffs, which favors that team way out of proportion to what they've done to earn the rest. It's just wrong, no matter who gets it. 

[Ga boy]

3 minutes ago, finn said:

The only rest advantage that truly matters is the first-round bye in the playoffs, which favors that team way out of proportion to what they've done to earn the rest. It's just wrong, no matter who gets it. 

I don’t wanna be right if the Bills getting that bye week is wrong.

[Chaos]

6 minutes ago, finn said:

The only rest advantage that truly matters is the first-round bye in the playoffs, which favors that team way out of proportion to what they've done to earn the rest. It's just wrong, no matter who gets it. 

Combined with reseeding its a massive advantage.  The only way to make peace with it is to realize it makes every single regular season game incredibly important. 

[Shortchaz]

If the bills were a serious team, they would’ve handled the falcons and the dolphins. Since they didn’t, they are not. 

[BlazinBill]

[Mike in Horseheads]

Well, this is a new one. They should not have lost to the Falcons and Dolphins period.

[Success]

I have a hard time getting upset about this one.

 

And I hope the team doesn't.  I want a team that sees something like this & laughs at the idea that it could hold them back in any way.

 

 

[zow2]

This is all BS.  before the season the Bills were clowned on for having a really easy schedule, they travel i think the least amount of miles in the NFL and the Central time zone is as far west as they go.  There’s no excuse for not having the 1 seed other than they massively underachieved and over estimated the roster.

[finn]

52 minutes ago, Chaos said:

Combined with reseeding its a massive advantage.  The only way to make peace with it is to realize it makes every single regular season game incredibly important. 

Right, that's why the Dolphins loss hit so hard. Fine to lose to Atlanta, an NFC team, and even to the Patriots, since they'll get a chance to even up. But you can't lose to another divisional opponent, especially one on the ropes like that. The game made me think they don't deserve the AFC East title or the first-round bye because they forgot that every game counts.

 

If they go all the way, it's going to be a long, grueling battle.