Whatever you think about the old rest vs. rust debate, the NFL believes the possible perceived advantage either side might have doesn’t matter — and it has the data to back that up.
Following the unveiling of the 2026 NFL regular season schedule, one of the details scrutinized for fairness is rest disparity, which measures how much time a team has to prepare for a given game, compared to its opponent. All 32 teams have 17 games in 18 weeks, so there’s a balance in that — you’d think every team has one week with an extra week of rest and preparation compared to the team they’re facing, but that logically evens out when an opponent is coming off their bye.
That doesn’t happen evenly, however. The Philadelphia Eagles and Los Angeles Chargers each have four games this season where their opponent is coming off its bye week, and the Las Vegas Raiders have three such games, while 14 NFL teams never have to face an opponent well-rested after its bye week.
About 40% of NFL games have one team with a day or more of additional rest than its opponent. Add in games where one team is coming off a Thursday kickoff and the other a normal Sunday game, and the imbalance can be substantial. The Chicago Bears, for instance, have a plus-15 rest differential, which is to say they have 15 more days to prepare for their games than their opponents. The Chargers are at the other extreme, with a minus-24 differential — between the two, the net net, if you will, is a difference of 39 days of rest and preparation.
Justin Herbert, Jim Harbaugh and the Chargers have four games against teams coming off a bye in 2026, tied for the most in the league. (Photo by Brooke Sutton/Getty Images)
Yet, when one NFL executive was pressed about the issue after the regular-season schedule release, NFL vice president of broadcast planning Mike North said the league has data showing there’s no advantage to having extra rest.
“We’ve got a really robust data and analytics team here in the office … and they have been very clear with us, that rest disparity is not a thing,” North said during a remarkably thorough 100-minute conference call with reporters Friday morning. “You do not have a competitive advantage when you’re coming off your bye, and you certainly don’t have a competitive advantage when you’re one day, two days or three days more well-rested. If the data suggest that there’s a there there, we will adjust. We absolutely will.
“But we’ve been very conscious, we’ve been very careful, and we’ve been very connected with our data team … [they] have been adamant that relaxation disparity doesn’t affect efficiency, anticipated win proportion, anticipated factors scored.”
Positive sufficient, if you happen to take a look at each recreation the place one group is coming off a bye and its opponent will not be during the last two seasons, these groups are mixed 27-27. Groups with the bye week benefit went 14-12 in 2025 and 13-15 in 2024. So, each seasons had been inside a single win of a coin flip, and mixed they’re 27-27, suggesting there isn’t a benefit in any respect.
Even over the course of a full season, groups which have had some unhealthy relaxation luck have exceeded expectations. Of the 28 groups with probably the most excessive relaxation differential disparities since 2002, 18 of them went over their projected win whole, per Sumer Sports. A type of groups almost received a Tremendous Bowl as nicely, with the San Francisco 49ers having a minus-19 relaxation day differential in 2023.
The 49ers received the NFC title in 2023 after having the worst relaxation drawback within the league. (Picture by Michael Zagaris/San Francisco 49ers/Getty Photographs)
The notion is definitely there. One group has two weeks to focus solely on its recreation plan, and the opposite has only one. That is additionally along with the added bodily restoration to get gamers again from accidents and usually compensate for relaxation. NFL groups, and their followers, discover when they need to have this benefit, and understandably complain once they do not.
“I will not disguise the truth that the groups are conscious, and have lengthy recollections, and remind us,” North mentioned. “What we’re actually attempting to deal with is the info: Is there a aggressive benefit to taking part in a group once you’re coming off your bye week? I’d have instructed you not that way back, the reply was clearly ‘Sure.’ I keep in mind [longtime NFL executive] Howard Katz having an actual dedication one yr to essentially attempting to keep away from or a minimum of reduce a group having to play a street recreation … when you need to journey to a extra well-rested group, it was one thing just like the visiting group received 38% of the time, as a substitute of 44% of the time. A 20% affect on win proportion is related, and that was completely one thing that, for a number of years in a row, we had been very, very cognizant of, and writing guidelines within the software program to stop. In the event you verify the maths, it is flipped.”
The NFL’s CBA now requires groups on a bye to present gamers a full 4 consecutive days off throughout a bye week, so whereas coaches have extra time to organize a recreation plan, they’re nonetheless implementing the identical one-week timeframe for probably the most half. It brings again the remainder vs. rust argument, whether or not a group that has a protracted weekend out of its facility and assembly rooms positive factors extra within the break than it loses by breaking out of routine and schedule and the traditional rhythm of making ready for a recreation each week.
Two analysts for the NFL, Mike Lopez and Tom Bliss, wrote a paper in 2024 titled “Bye-bye, bye benefit: estimating the aggressive affect of relaxation differential within the Nationwide Soccer League,” laying out their research. Earlier than the Collective Bargaining Settlement that was agreed to in 2011, groups coming off a bye had a 2.2-point benefit on different groups. However as soon as the CBA mandated time away from the group for gamers, that benefit lessened, suggesting the sting was in extra observe time, not simply time to relaxation and put together. Their estimate within the 2024 paper was that groups coming off a bye week have a 0.3-point benefit, almost negligible in a recreation’s consequence.
There’s one other argument to be made. Primarily, well-coached groups can be well-coached no matter how a lot prep time they’ve, and poorly coached groups will nonetheless be poorly coached even with an additional week of poor teaching. Whether or not that can play out on this yr’s outcomes stays to be seen, however the final two seasons present the affect of 1 group having an additional week yielding the identical .500 total document as the whole league has over a whole season.
“I am positive the Chargers are a bit disenchanted,” North mentioned. “However I might remind them that just a few years in the past, I believe it was the 49ers who had the [worst] relaxation disparity within the league at a minus-22 or one thing like that, and went to a Tremendous Bowl. So good groups overcome challenges to the extent that relaxation disparity may be one, however our knowledge doesn’t assist that that may be a aggressive drawback.”
