Bills scheduling woes

[BuffaloBob]

Thank you.

No problem, brother!

[MattM]

I recall someone raising this topic around here just a few months ago, and it covered several years of data. My memory is that the Bills consistently were scheduled against NE when NE was coming off a bye week, and never the other way around, with the obvious exception of the opening game (which, interestingly enough, is the one game where the Bills were competitive or actually won).

 

I think everyone around here would agree that the team with more time to rest and more time to prepare has an advantage. And obviously the opponent is at a disadvantage. I think most of us would also agree that putting a balanced schedule together is a difficult (but not impossible) task. But if one team is consistently playing its chief divisional after that rival has gotten more rest and preparation time, it begins to appear that the league is going out of its way to help one team over the other. If this has been the pattern over several years, as in the case of the Bills, then I think it is more than fair for them to raise the question of fairness.

 

The Pats* played us after the bye 4 straight years (odds of that occurring randomly are about 4000 to 1) and something like 5 out of 8 years (also getting Miami after the bye the year after Miami won the division, and Baltimore the year after the Ravens ended the Cheats*' season). I'd love to see an analysis of how the Cheatahs* have fared in these stats over the years. I think someone above noted they've played a ridiculously small number of post-bye teams since 2009, but I'm too lazy to go back through and check. As I've said before, the NFL's a lot like Orwell's "Animal Farm"--all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others....

[MattM]

I wonder how much of this is caused by the fact that the bills rarely, if ever, get a Sunday night or Monday night game. I feel like there could be a correlation, but not sure how exactly.

 

That doesn't really factor in here--it's based on bye weeks (which all teams have one of) and Thursday night games (which, again, all teams have one of). Thus, on average you'd expect most teams to have one or two games against better rested opponents. The divergence seen should not be allowed to stand over time....

[CodeMonkey]

This is just a plain stupid argument. There are University PHd programs around the country that are rooted in scheduling/routing theory. This is WELL KNOWN. You don't need a commercially available scheduling software program from Microsoft or Intuit to do this sort of thing.

 

It is a simple matter of prioritizing the scheduling parameters. There are thousands of academic papers published on scheduling/routing algorithms and heuristic methods implemented in software for calculating solutions based on those algorithms. I would bet my life that the NFL has software that they use to at the very least establish a first pass schedule for all teams, and then a way to go in and alter certain parameters and re-run the program as needed until they end up with the final schedule.

 

This is in fact, NOT rocket science, nor is any required.

True. Liked I stated earlier, any third year computer science student could create that software (if it doesn't already exist, and it probably does).

[BuffaloBob]

 

True. Liked I stated earlier, any third year computer science student could create that software (if it doesn't already exist, and it probably does).

I don't know if you saw it, but my next post actually provides a link to the brochure from the software company that provides this software to the NFL and decribes the capabilities of the product. Check it out! [link]http://www.fico.com/...cess_2495CS.pdf[/link] Edited June 20, 2013 by BuffaloBob

[CodeMonkey]

I don't know if you saw it, but my next post actually provides a link to the brochure from the software company that provides this software to the NFL and decribes the capabilities of the product. Check it out! [link]http://www.fico.com/...cess_2495CS.pdf[/link]

I had missed that, thanks. According to that obvious marketing brochure ("countless constraints", really ), they do take "number of days off between games" into account. But right at the top, they list the overall challenge as "Develop a game schedule that maximizes television ratings and accommodates the teams and their fans" which states their main priority perfectly.

 

I would love to have a more detailed look at it to see if things like nationwide popularity factor in to their maximize TV ratings constraint. Maybe I should try and get a job there and add a Bills positive bias to the formulas

[JohnC]

So by that logic, when, say, African Americans were "whining" about equal rights, they should have been told to shut up because they were the minority +/- not pulling their share of wealth generation? And since the Bills will never be able to change being a small market, they should just live with being screwed? Screw that.

 

This topic and excuse making responses is embarrassing. There are years when the schedule comes out for most normal franchises (not the Bills) where an organization might believe the schedule is disadvantageous but ultimately do very well. There are years when the schedule comes out for most normal franchises (not the Bills) where an organization might believe the schedule is very advantageous but ultimately do very poorly. Just because an opponent has additional days of rest doesn't predictably translate into success. What often appears to be an advantage doesn't always turn out to be an advantage.

 

Teams making the long travel trip from the west coast to the east coast often win, even with the added challenge of having to contend with the time change. And the reverse is true. The biggest factor for the success of a team has little to do with outside influences. The major factors contributing to success have to do with the quality of the organizatiion and team.

 

It's embarrassing to watch a large segment of the Bills fanbase make excuses for why they lose and make pathetic excuses for why other teams win. As pointed out by others this organization has been complaining to the league for years that the late season games are difficult to sell in Buffalo. So this year they schedule few late season games at the antiquated stadium, yet some people associated with the organization still howl. When a franchise on its own moves some games to another city it has no credibility on this scheduling issue.

 

The schedule has nothing to do with the Bills being a loser for a generation. No outside influence has much to do with how poorly this franchise has performed. Whatever so called scheduling disadvantages this frachise is subjected to is the same scheduling disadvantages that other franchises are subjected to over time.

[McD]

After looking at the past 10 years, I found an interesting stat. The Bills only had one Divisional game after a bye and that happened to be against the Pats who also came off a bye that week, which nulified any "advantage" for either team. The Pats however had the advantage of coming off of a bye to play another Divisional opponent a whopping 6 times in 10 years. The Fish and the Jest each played 4 Divisional games. Not going for a conspiracy here, but an eye raising stat that shows there is a lot of disaparity in the scheduling that should be corrected. The records at first glance might not show much, but after looking a bit deeper there's more to it...

 

Pats in 10 games off a bye and 6 Divisional opponents 9-1 (their only loss came against a 12-4 Steelers team).

Mia in 10 games off a bye and 4 Divisional opponents 5-5 (they played 2 eventual SB champs in here N.O and GB and went 1-1 and the loss was a much closer close game than the 46-34 loss. They also beat the NFC champ Bears and lost by 7 to NFC West Div winner Seattle on the road).

NYJ in 10 games off a bye and 4 Divisional opponents 6-4 (Lost to eventual SB Champ GB, and an 11-5 Seahawks team).

Bills in 10 games off a bye and 1 Divisional opponent 5-5 (Lost to a 10-6 Dallas team on the road by 4, Lost to SB Champ Pats, beat Div winner SD, lost in OT to the 12 Ravens on the road, lost 21-9 [respectable] to a 12-4 Texans team on the road.

 

This isn't perfect, but you can see that there is some substance to having an extra week off before a game, and it is a bit odd that other teams within our Division that have had a much better schedule than the Bills. Would those games (all being fair and equal) make a difference...? Impossible to tell, but if you go with the odds I'd say yes. Even a game or two here and there could change a season. Having 6 Div games (Pats) after a bye compared to 1 (Bills) is a disgrace, and it can be rectified if the NFL scheduling committee wanted to do so.

[MattM]

Many thanks for the work, McD. After re-reading Brown's blog post, I really can't see how anyone could argue with it. He's not laying it out as an excuse, he's simply stating facts. Facts that the NFL may mot like, but facts nonetheless.

 

FYI, I found the post above where someone took the trouble (much bigger job) of checking how often the Pats* played folks after the other team's bye or Thursday game and found that since 2009 they'd only played ONE such game. Compare that to the 9 we're playing in just 2012-13. Also recall how they beat us last year by only 6 after getting an extra week off and tell me that that extra week certainly had nothing to do with them winning that game, that extra time of 3 or 7 days is not a substantive advantage....

[8-8 Forever?]

Part of the inexplicable Andy Reid promotional package.

Don't laugh, I believe the league does what it can to promote the success of its marquee players, coaches and teams (to pump the TV contract up based on the national TV games having teams with good records playing them). The Bills franchise is not and has none of these, so they are set up to be the "homecoming game" opponent as much as the scheduling allows.

[ALLEN1QB]

To who ever makes the NFL schedule WTF?

[San Jose Bills Fan]

Thanks to BuffaloBob for rescuing the discussion with useful facts by way of his link. With regards to useful facts and data, I wish I could find the spreadsheet analysis that one of our posters did on this subject.

 

That analysis clearly showed that in recent history, the Bills have gotten the short end of the stick with regards to the bye/mini-bye week aspect of their schedule.

 

Unfortunately the topic seems to be a case of the "Stiff upper lip" crowd vs the "Whiners," in other words it has become the quintessential polarized, oversimplified, and emotional discussion.

 

Clearly the NFL starts the schedule process with a software program which uses an algorithm and weighted values. It seems that the bye/mini-bye week is not currently weighted very heavily. In a perfect world, the schedule is perfectly fair. We do not live in a perfect world.

 

However in a highly competitive league with a very delicate competitive balance where small factors can have large impacts the issue revolves around what Chris Brown stated (paraphrasing) that "the NFL has to do better."

 

When one team plays 5 of the dates in question and a divisional rival plays zero, that is clearly unfair. I doubt we'd be having this discussion if every team in the league played 2-3 of these dates each season.

 

The question is, can and should the NFL increase the weighing of bye/min-bye weeks in their schedule-making algorithm?

 

Unfortunately we don't know what their algorithm is so it's nearly impossible for us to answer that question but clearly it seems like this aspect of scheduling could be weighted a bit more to mitigate the very significant inequities that are manifested in the schedule every year.

 

Without knowing the gory details and conceding that they have a challenging job, it seems like the NFL schedule makers could do a better job in this particular regard.

[Mr. WEO]

This thread seems to turn on the assumption that teams benefit from getting extra time prepare for the Bills.

 

A bit far fetched. Such extra prep has hardly been necessary for over a decade.

[BuffaloBob]

This thread seems to turn on the assumption that teams benefit from getting extra time prepare for the Bills.

 

A bit far fetched. Such extra prep has hardly been necessary for over a decade.

Maybe those teams didn't need the extra time for going to school on the Bills, but the extra time most certainly works wonders for any team with key players who are nicked up and can benefit from the extra recovery time.

Edited June 20, 2013 by BuffaloBob

[MattM]

This thread seems to turn on the assumption that teams benefit from getting extra time prepare for the Bills.

 

A bit far fetched. Such extra prep has hardly been necessary for over a decade.

 

You mean like that 6 point, down to the last minute win your darling Pats* had after their usual extra week of rest last year?

[San Jose Bills Fan]

This thread seems to turn on the assumption that teams benefit from getting extra time prepare for the Bills.

 

A bit far fetched. Such extra prep has hardly been necessary for over a decade.

 

Half of all NFL games are decided by 7 points or less. The difference between victory and defeat is quite thin, often just one or two plays per game.

 

Last year the Bills lost 4 such games, by 6 to the Cheatriots who were coming off their bye and by 1 point to Tennessee who were coming off a mini-bye.

 

People can be as dismissive of scheduling fairness as they want but if I was a team owner, being at a significant competitive disadvantage two years running would certainly be an issue for me.

 

 

 

Last year Buffalo had four games in a five-week span in which their opponent had extra rest and prep time via a bye week or having played a Thursday night game the week prior. In that span the Bills also had their own bye week, but the benefits were nullified by the fact that their opponent (Houston) also had a bye the same week.

Buffalo went 1-3 in those games in 2012.

In 2013 Buffalo is the only team in the league in which five of their games are against clubs coming off extra rest. They’re also the only team with three of those games against divisional opponents.

The only other NFL club that comes close is the Atlanta Falcons. They have four games against teams coming off extra rest including a pair of division opponents in Carolina and Tampa Bay.

Six teams play three games against opponents coming off extra rest (Arizona, Carolina, NY Giants, Oakland, Philadelphia, Tampa Bay). Another seven have just two games against clubs with extra preparation time.

A whopping 14 teams have just one game against an opponent coming off more than a week of rest leaving just three teams which have no scheduling disadvantage.

As I said upthread, if the range was much narrower than 0 and 5, this probably wouldn't be an issue.

[Joe W]

Read the site graham links to sharp football he shows what whiny little bitches the bills run blog comes off as. Blame Branden he insists on the Toronto fiasco and closing the season with all those road games not the league schedulers

[machine gun kelly]

The earlier post regarding the whining and complaining on travel is on point. How about we start winning, maintain an organizational structure from a mgmt and coaching staff and provide continuity. I didn't see anyone complain we had the third easiest schedule last year supposedly and still went 6-10. Why, because a lot of those team improved and was a meaningless stat.

 

Another earlier post was insightful in that our losing record forces us to have almost all games at 1 pm, and only the mandatory Thursday night game with Cleveland. Why? Because no one outside of Buffalo or from Buffalo will watch us. We're the losingest (sorry not a word) franchise in over a decade. We continuously get the 4th ranked team of the two open games each year outside of the rotating divisional schedules.

 

If we just put a staff and team together that can win in the playoffs we will get Monday, and Sunday night games back. Thus we will get better schedules with this post time off vs. opponents. Guys, this thread is embarrassing.

 

I'm sure Patriots and Packer fans are not complaining about these issues as they have a continuously winning franchise.

 

Losers complain. Winners don't make excuses. They just find ways around their obstacles. Chris Brown should be embarrassed for posting this article.

[MattM]

The earlier post regarding the whining and complaining on travel is on point. How about we start winning, maintain an organizational structure from a mgmt and coaching staff and provide continuity. I didn't see anyone complain we had the third easiest schedule last year supposedly and still went 6-10. Why, because a lot of those team improved and was a meaningless stat.

 

Another earlier post was insightful in that our losing record forces us to have almost all games at 1 pm, and only the mandatory Thursday night game with Cleveland. Why? Because no one outside of Buffalo or from Buffalo will watch us. We're the losingest (sorry not a word) franchise in over a decade. We continuously get the 4th ranked team of the two open games each year outside of the rotating divisional schedules.

 

If we just put a staff and team together that can win in the playoffs we will get Monday, and Sunday night games back. Thus we will get better schedules with this post time off vs. opponents. Guys, this thread is embarrassing.

 

I'm sure Patriots and Packer fans are not complaining about these issues as they have a continuously winning franchise.

 

Losers complain. Winners don't make excuses. They just find ways around their obstacles. Chris Brown should be embarrassed for posting this article.

 

People who make arguments like that bolded just show me that they don't understand the issue--Monday night games and late starts are not what they're talking about here. What they're talking about are bye weeks and Thursday night games. Things that each time has one of now. Because each team has only one of them (just like all other teams), teams should be treated roughly the same with respect to them, including playing other teams coming off extra rest (i.e., bye weeks or Thursday night games). As Chris Brown's article, and some of the research above, show, however, they're not. That should be changed. Seems pretty simple of a concept to me. I really can't see how anyone could possibly argue otherwise.

 

For those who argue that it eventually evens out, there's been evidence shown above (like the post above showing how Buffalo has gotten 9 such games in just the last two years while the Pats* have had one such game in the last five years) that shows that doesn't seem to happen in some cases, for whatever reason. Personally, I'm glad that the Bills have put the League on notice that they're paying attention. Heck, if posters on this board have noticed it (and we have), you'd think the team should as well. Maybe the sign of a new leaf of sharpness being turned over at OBD....

[JohnC]

For those who argue that it eventually evens out, there's been evidence shown above (like the post above showing how Buffalo has gotten 9 such games in just the last two years while the Pats* have had one such game in the last five years) that shows that doesn't seem to happen in some cases, for whatever reason. Personally, I'm glad that the Bills have put the League on notice that they're paying attention. Heck, if posters on this board have noticed it (and we have), you'd think the team should as well. Maybe the sign of a new leaf of sharpness being turned over at OBD....

 

The Bills have been bad for a generation. The scheduling has lilttle to do with its dismal record. Wasting time doing a detailed analysis on the variables of a schedule is pointless when compared to the influences of weird ownership and incompetent people making outlandishly bad football decisions.

 

As I and others have already pointed out when an organization chooses to sell off a home game to another location it has no credibility in its complaints about the schedule. For those who are putting a lot of effort in proving that the schedule is unbalanced against the Bills my response is so what? Even when the schedule has been in our favor the Bills have consistently lost..

 

It is pathetic how so many people put so much effort in rationalizing why the Bills lose and why other teams more often win. I find the excuse mongering responses to be embarrassing.

Edited June 21, 2013 by JohnC