The NFL Scheduling Process Must Be Good if These are the Complaints (and some bonus 2023 updates)

The post I did a few days ago on the NFL scheduling problem was based on a webinar recorded in 2020.

In that post, I mentioned how they knew they did a good job if everyone was mildly annoyed.

I was curious to see the complaints from fans and journalists on the 2023 schedule.

I found a Sports Illustrated¹ article with the top eight teams screwed by the scheduling process. This writer seemed upset and said these “teams can rightfully hold a grudge against the schedule makers.”

I like this article for two reasons.

First, all the things the author complains about give you a sense of the objectives the NFL needs to balance. These objectives include: how far teams have to travel, stretches of road games, rest between games (since games can be on Monday or Thursday, you can have different rest periods), when you get an off-week, how many teams you play after their off-week (they are more rested and have had longer to prepare), and time between playing the same team (each team plays a few teams twice in a year).

Second, the complaints don’t seem that bad. Here are the worst three team schedules, according to the article.

#1: NY Giants.

No punches were spared in critiquing this schedule: “This schedule is borderline criminal… forcing one of the NFL’s stalwart franchises…to go on the road for seven of the first 10 games is ridiculous.”

Let’s see if this is warranted.

If I look at the schedule (see picture below), I count 7 of the first 11 games on the road, which isn’t as bad. However, this statistic is misleading. Only two of the first four games are on the road. And only four of the first eight games are on the road. Doing a 50/50 road split for the first eight games seems balanced.

The better complaint might be three straight road games in Weeks 9, 10, and 11 (which is not close to the season’s start). In the last post, the NFL mentioned trying to avoid this. And their analysis suggests that it doesn’t have an impact.

They also mention that the NY Giants don’t get as much rest, but I’m guessing they weren’t much of an outlier.

#2: NY Jets

The big complaint is that the Jets have six games in prime slots (when they are the only game). I assumed that NFL players and teams like the prime-time. And this is a question of the value of the games, not a scheduling disadvantage.

#3: Seattle Seahawks

The big complaint is that Seattle has to travel the most miles of any team.

Well, I popped up a map of the teams (see below). With Seattle sitting all by itself in the upper left corner, no optimization can change the fact they have to travel a lot.

If these are the three worst schedules, I’d say the optimization process is going a great job!

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Bonus Material: Speaking of the optimization process, another Sports Illustrated article gave a 2023 update that I'll use in my talks:

1. The optimization process generated 112,000 possible schedules. Of those, they did a deep dive into 450. Therefore, they must have some quick dashboards that help them filter to 450.

2. The NFL changed some broadcasting rights, which gave them more flexibility. This added flexibility led to more possible scenarios and potential schedules to analyze. I wonder if they used the optimization models in the off-season to show the value of new contract terms.

3. Since the webinar in 2020, it sounded like they’ve improved their ability to determine the value of each game in every time slot.

4. In the webinar, they talk about splitting the problem by developing initial solutions with just the prime-time games. From this article, you can tell they have a lot of interesting discussions on these match-ups. This means that splitting the problem like this makes sense from both the business side (having the right conversations) and the technical side (being able to solve the problem).

5. The uncertainty around Aaron Rodgers caused them to have some backup plans. Every business is full of uncertainties.

1. I didn’t search very hard. Sports Illustrated and this author seemed legitimate, so I didn’t search more.