(Photo by Brandon Sloter/Icon Sportswire)
Although the NFL prides itself on prioritizing parity within the league, one area it can’t seem to get right is schedule creation.
“Strength of Schedule” is a term we hear all too often, but it’s a fairly one-dimensional way of assessing the environmental factors that could adversely affect a team’s season. Although a team’s opponents’ records from the season before helps outline how difficult their schedule will be, it doesn’t come close to painting the whole picture. Determining a true “strength of schedule” metric has hurdles to overcome that are nearly impossible, such as quantifying which teams made the greatest offseason leaps before the teams take the field, so it’s a given that the metric will never be perfected.
However, hiding in plain sight are easily quantifiable metrics that the league seems content not addressing. “Net Rest Edge” is a metric Warren Sharp is keeping a close eye on. It’s calculated by comparing the rest days between two teams before a matchup, and aggregating a team’s net rest disparity throughout the season. For example, if you’re playing a team coming off a bye, but you played on Monday night the week before, the team you are facing has a Rest Edge of +8 days.
Rest disparity is becoming a larger problem as the league tries to get creative with additional prime time games.
The Chargers have only one game this season where they have an edge in rest against their opponent, when they come off their Week 5 bye to face the Broncos. They don’t play a single game where their opponent is on short rest, but face off against six opponents on extra rest. Their “Net Rest Edge” of -10 ranks as the fifth worst rest disparity in the league.
Combine the disappointing rest schedule (be sure to check out Sharp’s full article here) with the most projected travel miles in 2024 (Bill Speros from Bookies.com breaks the NFL’s 2024 travel miles here) and you have two very negative environmental hurdles for the Chargers to overcome.
Joe Hortiz and Jim Harbaugh have been diligently adding depth and competition to this roster, and let’s hope it continues. The 2024 Chargers will be as good as their rotational and depth pieces enable them to be.
Look, I think with analytics of everything these days, people get to into the weeds with minutiae. The strength of schedule is based off of the previous season. The Chiefs could lose Mahomes for the season and then what would our SOS be? Every year, based on opponents and/or an international game, a team from the West Coast or a team from the East Coast has the most travel. That’s just the way it is based on geography, so why even bring it up? I’m sure these little perks some good teams get like getting extra rest to play a tough opponent MIGHT factor in to the schedule makers, but you know what, they’ve earned that by being good. You want a break or two in the travel schedule? Then don’t be 5-12. You want more Primetime games? Don’t be 5-12. You want a break or two in the rest schedule? Don’t be 5-12. You want want the perks? Earn them. In fact, I wouldn’t let any of this non sense even creep into the team and it’s focus or mentality. Just go out and play. I doubt Harbaugh would even entertain such conversation about the rest schedule. Not worrying about it, or any other perks that are out of their control, is the exact mentality we want fostered around here and have been lacking for to long. I’m sure on some level there is a slight advantage gained when you play a team, but the Chiefs, Niners, Eagles, Bills are all 10+ win teams the last few seasons and a little negative disparity they might have had in the schedule didn’t derail them. At the end of the day, it’s football. Just prepare the best you can and when the lights come on, go hit somebody in the mouth. A winning mentality starts with not worrying about periphery things like rest and travel schedules, and I’m looking forward to whatever challenges are put in front of this Harbaugh bunch this season and going forward. Like Harbaugh has said in the past, “Just tell us where and when.”
I do think that there is a “REST” component for any athlete in any sport that makes a difference up to a point. In football, there is a huge difference between a team playing on 4-days rest versus 7-days rest. I don’t see a huge issue in 7-days rest versus 14-days rest as the body is recovered and additional rest can cause rust. Short recovery periods in any sports increase risk of injury. This is more of an NFL Money issue and less about competitive balance and player safety. I would not be surprised if the NFL has absolutely nothing in their algorithm that looks at “Rest”.
Interesting topic Kyle. As the NFL looks to expand to 18 regular season games (which I think will happen very soon) and mid-week games seem like a thing that’s going become more common (especially late in the season), I think there’s a few scheduling rules that the NFL could adopt to reduce injury and improve “fairness” in scheduling:
A few changes I would consider:
Also agree on mid-week games.
I don’t expect to see any roster expansion unless it is part of the negotiated CBA that going to 18 games triggers it. I don’t remember hearing anything along those lines. The roster as it stands now is really 69, not 53, since teams can have 16 practice squad players and activate them for games. I think the owners probably believe that should be sufficient. And the players may be fine with that, since roster expansion just spreads the players’ share of revenue across more players, diluting it for most.
I would not be in favor of artificial roster limitations being forced, like in your last bullet.
Regarding the larger rosters, I think the owners are going to have to give up a lot to get the additional game. I was thinking of ways teams could limit the wear/tear on players bodies. Larger rosters, limiting the number of games (or maybe snaps?) seemed like a reasonable way to do that. The extra game will add 2 additional regular season weeks to the season (one additional game week, one additional bye week). Two additional weeks of NFL football will add… 8-10% incremental revenue? More mid-week games to offer to streaming services will add… another 5-7%? Seems like there’s going to be a lot of incremental revenue the owners are going to have to throw at players. While the super-stars will get their share, the remaining 90% of the players will have opportunities to make it to a roster and potentially play longer.
Overall, the net rest concept feels like a red herring to me. Could it matter in specific situations (e.g., when a key player is hurt)? Definitely, but it feels situation specific to me.
Bottom line, this is not a west coast oriented league. If your team is in PST, you will likely be at a disadvantage for travel miles and EST road game start times from a body clock perspective. But… it’s the job. Show up and play the game and beat your opponent. Finding reasons to excuse not doing so doesn’t really seem like Harbaugh’s style, and I don’t think we as fans should buy into it other than in specific case-by-case situations.
FWIW at one point before Rivers was done as a Charger, I looked into Rivers’ entire career history to see if the 1 pm EST road games showed a disparity compared to the other games, and that wasn’t the case. Win percentage was close. (I realize that isn’t the same as the net rest issue.)
Out of interest, does anybody know if Net Rest Edge has been shown to be a statistically significant advantage?
I suspect that Net Rest Edge is probably a complicated concept. When is additional rest advantageous? Is it more so later in the season when more players are injured? Can additional rest be disadvantageous? One possible disadvantage discussed in the lead-up to playoffs (or, in the AFL, the finals) is where too many byes in a short period of time (ie, too much rest) might result in the team being ‘rusty’ and starting their next game a little slower than their less rested, but more ‘in form’, opponent. In a playoff game, the slow start can be disastrous.
It’s an interesting concept, and I totally agree it needs to be considered in the strength of schedule matrix – but it might be that Net Rest tends towards different outcomes in different contexts.
Good to see this become a topic of discussion. The typical strength of schedule discussion is often far too simplistic, IMO.
I agree with this.
My hypothesis would be – on the aggregate, it’s a definitely advantage. Less wear and tear on the body, less chance of injury, more time for preparation. I don’t know if I’ve ever been a firm believer in the harm of resting players.
That said- when Mike Williams got hurt because we didn’t rest him in meaningless game, I actually wasn’t very critical of Staley for the move, because the offense had been looking so-so IMO and needed as much work/reps as they could get.
But if you’re team is playing to their potential, I think you’d always want the extra rest.
Thank you for bringing this topic up Kyle. It is definitely a factor. Looking back at the past few seasons, the Chargers always seemed to be at a disadvantage when it came to rest. This season is no different. In the 2nd matchup the Chiefs will get an extra 3 days of rest since they’re playing on a Friday in the game before their matchup w/ the Chargers.
Strong depth & efficient rotations will dictate how the season goes. Fortunately Hortiz has hammered this point home w/ the many moves that have been made thus far.
*when it came to rest against the Chiefs.
How nice is that Bud Dupree signing looking? I can’t believe we are going into the season with 4 LEGIT EDGES!
On the basis of the above, would you expect more rotation of players in-game throughout the season, with fewer players playing 100%/close to 100% of snaps? With thr aim of reducing fatigue and possible injuries.
I think we should expect that for everyone but our offensive linemen, just based on our roster construction. I don’t know how concerned Jim will be with these rest days in his day-to-day decision making, and has really hammered the “less is never more” mentality home, but I think the nature of how he handled the roster at Michigan and how much flatter the talent tiers are between starters and depth compared to last year indicates we’ll see a much more rotation than years’ past