Does the scheduled bye matter?

Obviously we can't know how banged up we'll be going into the bye; that usually plays a role in appreciation or lack thereof. But it's pretty close to the middle of the 17-week schedule.

Is this ideal in a longer season? Would you prefer it be earlier, or later? Why?

I generally prefer a later bye, to get a rest later in the season when more needed.

But you never know. Some years, with more injuries in Sep/Oct, an early bye can be a blessing.

Having it mid-season kind of balances things out. Not something we can control, but can be interesting to discuss.

:snack:

If they ever expand to 18 games, I think they'll really need to institute a double bye.

Definitely like a week 9 bye more than a week 4.

Some guys might need a break by week 4, but pretty much all of them can use some extra rest by week 9.

Bye mid to late season helps, but our guys tend to take at least 1-2 games off in addition to the bye.

Intuitively i'd prefer my team to have its bye week between the mid point and 2 3rds of the way through the season. Intuitively a team after an early bye-week is playing with less experience and has less of its flaws removed than a team that has played the extra game. I'd want to see many years of data to convince me otherwise, and I don't have that data at this time.

Home field advantage is bigger earlier in the season than it is at the end of the season. This may be counter-intuitive but home team win percentage data shows a consistent pattern over a 6 year period from 2013 to 2018 inclusive.

In short give me a bye-week between Weeks 10 to 12 and at least 5 of my home games in the 1st 8 weeks.

It probably matters but there is absolutely nothing that can be done about when ours is scheduled.

INHO, it’s a crap shoot.
Either it works in our favor or against.