‘Schedule Release Day’ is one of the more bizarre days of the NFL calendar. The videos released by the teams across their social channels rock, but otherwise almost all of the excitement feels manufactured by the league in an attempt to keep the NFL trending throughout the post-Draft doldrums. As much as the NFL tries, it’s not the same as Selection Sunday – especially since opponents are confirmed months in advance and only game order and timing are actually announced. Fans can yell into the void all they want about how the league screwed over their favorite team because of the home/away sequencing and travel requirements, but it largely doesn’t matter all that much. You gotta play all of the games on your schedule, and traveling in 2023 isn’t the same as traveling in 1973.

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Fantasy Football Players Negatively Impacted by 2023 NFL Schedule

For fantasy purposes, there are noteworthy takeaways from the schedule releases. Here are some trends and the players potentially impacted negatively by them.

Week 18

This first takeaway, though obvious, might be the most important. The typical season-long format omits Week 18 altogether, so naturally it hurts when a key player on your team has a cozy matchup go to waste in the regular season finale. I’d normally advise against getting preoccupied with preseason strength-of-schedule metrics – and year-over-year team defensive performance is more volatile than team offensive performance – though it still doesn’t hurt to look into the weaker team defenses from 2022. By DVOA, these were the particularly bad units from last season, and listed beneath them are players who we just learned will miss a fantasy matchup against them:

1. Defense Pass DVOA: Chicago, Las Vegas, Jacksonville, Atlanta
2. Defense Rush DVOA: New York (Giants), Green Bay, Chicago, Los Angeles (Chargers)

Impacted Players: Chris Olave, Aaron Jones, Isiah Pacheco, Christian Watson, Treylon Burks, Broncos WRs, Eagles RBs, Bears RBs

Bye Weeks

In my opinion, the most important element of ‘Schedule Release Day’ is the reveal of where bye weeks fall on each team’s schedule. It’s an odd and overlooked – yet consequential – thing that the NFL does where some teams get their one week of mandated rest two months prior to other teams, and they just have to deal with it. We know it’s unfair and unpopular with players of affected teams, but does it have a fantasy impact too?

I charted the RB1 from teams between 2020-2022 who fit into one of these groups: first possible bye week, middle bye week, and last possible bye week. Here are the results:

Though lacking some context for certain players included within the data, each group having 12-14 players represented is enough to observe the conclusion that RBs with earlier bye weeks typically see their production drop over the course of the season more than RBs with later bye weeks. Of the 14 RBs with the earliest possible bye week, only 3 of them had upwards trendlines over the 8-week span – one of them being only gradual and done by 2022’s rushing leader, Josh Jacobs. Compare that to the 12 RBs with the latest possible bye week and it’s a total mixed bag, presenting nothing definitive enough to draw a conclusion.

Impacted Players: Nick Chubb, Austin Ekeler, Kenneth Walker III, Rachaad White

International Games

The historical sample size of the NFL International Series is too small and scattered to draw any meaningful conclusions from that data, though the announcement of the international slate is still important because five teams lose stateside home games due to them. For 2023, those teams are the Jaguars, Bills, Titans, Chiefs, and Patriots. For players on these teams with at least one season of experience playing in their respective teams’ stadiums, let’s see if any of them have drastic home/away splits, since you’re effectively playing one home game down with any of these guys on your fantasy team.

You probably don’t have the best team in your league if you are starting either Ryan Tannehill or Mac Jones in a 1 QB league in 2023, but for 2 QB managers: both Tannehill and Jones have extreme home/away splits. As for skill position players, only Gabe Davis is meaningfully affected among the listed group. He’s a way more productive player in Buffalo, and 2 of the Bills’ 8 true home games occur during the fantasy playoffs too in Weeks 15 and 17.

Impacted Players: Gabe Davis, Ryan Tannehill, Mac Jones

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