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 the lowly Panthers 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.  

 

All rest disadvantages against conference opponents except the Steelers.

 

 

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.

Edited 48 minutes ago by transplantbillsfan

[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. 

[Goin Breakdown]

Whatever excuse we need to distract us from the fact that this team is limping and ugly right now. 

[transplantbillsfan]

2 hours ago, Low Positive said:

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

 

My bad!

[Kelly to Allen]

2 hours ago, Shortchaz said:

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

 

The 23 chiefs lost to the Aidan O'Connell raiders on Christmas.... The offense looked horrible 

[ALLinALLEN]

Bills will make the superbowl the season the stars align, and people will say "well it was too bright" as an excuse if they lost. 

[JustHewIt]

2 hours ago, Low Positive said:

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

 

We do, because we won.

 

Going into the game it was the "red hot Panthers" that we'd be lucky to squeak one out against on the road.  But we blew them out, therefore they're actually a poverty franchise and the win shouldn't even count.

[BillytheKid]

The Bills biggest issue on whether they win or lose this year is….
 

Taking care of the ball. 
 

Bills 3 losses

 

8 giveaways and 3 takeaways

 

-5 in turnovers.

 

2.66 per game giving it away to only 1 take away per game

 

Score 15.66 Points per game on offense

 

Give up 25.66 Points per game on defense

 

-9 Point Differential per game

 

 

 

 

Bills 6 wins

 

9 takeaways 1 giveaway

 

+8 in turnovers

 

1.5 take away per game

0.16 give away per game

 

33 Points Per game offense

20 Points per game defense

 

+13 point differential per game

 

 

What this shows is that when the Bills don’t turn the ball over they don’t lose and when they do turn it over more than one time in a game they can’t over come it.

Big part of the reason is because the Bills offense is playing ball control. So when you give up your possession it is even a bigger deal because you just gave away one of your “ball control possessions” that you need to score with. OR you set the other team up for an easy score.

 

Everyone can say “no kidding, if you turn it over you will lose” but my point is that it is even more important for this Bills team to not turn it over because of how they play this ball control offense. It limits possessions during the game and turning it over more than once takes enough points off of the board for your team that it makes it really hard to come back from.

 

More so for this Bills team than most of the other playoff caliber teams.

 

They need to take care of the ball.