It's been a rough week for the Philadelphia Eagles, and things could get even worse on Sunday when they face the Carolina Panthers. For their Week 6 game, the Eagles will be facing a scheduling disadvantage that no team has ever been able to overcome: They're coming off an international game and they have to face a team coming off a bye. So, how bad of a disadvantage is this?
It's only happened four times — so it's a small sample size — but the team coming off the international game is 0-4 against the team coming off a bye and 0-3-1 against the spread, which suggests this does put teams at a competitive disadvantage. Over the past decade, the NFL has generally tried to avoid situations like this, but the league essentially gave up on that this year, with a total of five teams stuck in this exact situation. Here's a brief look at the four games in which a team coming off an international game faced a team off a bye.
Here's where things get even uglier: The team coming off the international trip has averaged just 15.25 points per game. And to make things worse, the four international teams were outscored 70-30 over the first three quarters. Again, it's a small sample size, but those are eye-opening numbers.
One reason the sample size is so small is that this situation wasn't really possible for most of NFL history. The first London game was played in 2007, and for the first nine years of the series, any team playing Europe received a bye after its game. However, in 2016, the Colts decided they didn't WANT a bye after their London game because they didn't want their off week so early in the season.
Since that point, the NFL has allowed teams to request a bye after playing abroad, but even if a team requests one, there's no guarantee they'll get it. The 2021 Dolphins and 2025 Browns are the only two teams that played an international game in Europe before their matchup with a team coming off a bye. That's an important distinction, because they had to re-adjust to a massive time change heading into their next game.
After the NFL schedule came out in May, the league's vice president of broadcast planning, Mike North, explained why teams are no longer guaranteed a bye after an international game. "I know it's not quite routine, but it's getting to the point where it's pretty routine," North said of international travel. "You play an afternoon (game) over there, it's morning over here, you're back in the facility by what?
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