Simple NFL Systems - #84: Teams coming off a bye week
By: DENNIS ARTHUR

Prior to the 1990 season, NFL handicappers could count on one scheduling constant: with-out exception, all teams in the league played each and every week of the regular season.

Teams did not necessarily all play on Sunday of course—Thanksgiving day games and Monday night games were part of the schedule. But, for the most part, all teams in the league had a similar amount of rest and preparation time leading up to their next game.

This all changed in 1990 when the league's brain-trust came up with a novel idea to increase the length of the season—thereby increasing the potential revenues from lucrative advertising and TV contracts—with-out actually adding any games to what was an already gruelling 16-game regular-season schedule.

Starting in Week 4 of the 1990 season, NFL teams began a rotating schedule of bye week's. 4 teams were off at a time—usually from the same division—resulting in a total of 7 different weeks where only 24 teams were playing.

The concept proved popular enough in its first 3 years of use that the league decided to expand the number of bye weeks to 2 in 1993 (16 games played over 18 weeks).

This extra week-off proved to be too much of a disruption for players and coaches and the schedule reverted back to 16 games in 17 weeks in 1994, where it has remained since.

The questions that need to be asked as far as the point-spread goes are fairly obvious: Do teams coming off a bye have an edge when facing an opponent with only 6-days rest? And, which teams are more likely to come out stronger after a bye? Those with losing records, or winning records; teams that lost the week before, or those that won?

Exactly how teams respond to an extra weeks rest is a topic I have been studying closely over the past few seasons and the results of this research has yielded a number of profitable trends that have been very effective against the spread over the past 15 years or so.

Most of these trends involve teams that are either coming off a bad result in the last game before their bye, or, have some glaring offensive or defensive deficiencies that have the tendency to improve dramatically when players and coaches have the luxury of an extra week to work on them.

One such situation involves teams coming off a bye that have a high Offensive Holding Penalty average against (OHPA > 1.6). Teams in this position are an awesome 65-29 (69.1%) ATS since 2001.

This does happen to be a 'Simple Systems' article; however, and I wouldn't expect any of you to take the time to calculate OHPA on a weekly basis (the trend above will be the focus of a future Situation Spotlight article).

This particular article involves the situation where a team is coming off a bye week that was immediately preceded by a Clutch loss.

Those of you that have read some of my other articles have probably come across my definition of 'Clutch wins and losses' before, but, for those who have not—a Clutch loss occurs when a team gives up what proves to be the final score of the game, in either the 4th quarter or overtime, moving them from a tied or winning position, into a losing one.

This disappointing loss combined with an off-week immediately after seems to be a motivating factor for teams in the first game they play after the bye.

Teams coming off the above situation have been 39-14 (73.6%) ATS since 1994, for a profit of $2,360 when wagering $110 to win back $100 on each game.

There is also one secondary condition the can be included with this trend to further tighten its results. This condition involves excluding any teams that had a higher or equal number of rushing yards in their Clutch loss prior to the bye. Once this condition is added, we are left with a situation that has been a solid 24-3 ATS since 1994.

Here are all the details.

(Notes: ASMR stands for Average Spread Margin Rating. A positive rating indicates a trend that is stronger than average versus the line, negative—weaker than average. TDIS% is the percentage of teams in the league that have been involved in this situation at one time or another. WT% is the percentage of teams that are .500 or better and SPR is the average spread for teams in this situation. For more details, please consult Page 13 of my 2007 NFL Game Sheets Guide.)

System #84 Summary

Primary Conditions (Building Blocks)
1) Team is coming off a bye week.
2) Last game was a Clutch loss (CL).

Secondary Conditions (Tighteners)
1) Last game Rushing Yards Against > For (RYA > RYF).

System Stats
ASMR: -1.3
Home%: 58.6
Dog%: 55.2
TDIS%: 62.5
WT%: 34.5
SPR: +1.20
Top Teams: IND(3); CAR(2); CIN(2); DET(2)

System Records
Overall (Since '94): 24-3 ATS
2007 Season: 3-0 ATS
2006 Season: 2-1 ATS
2005 Season: 2-0 ATS
2004 Season: 0-0 ATS

Last 3 Results. Pick in Brackets.
2007 WK11—NYJ 19 PIT 16 (NYJ +9.5) W
2007 WK9—ATL 20 SF 16 (ATL -3) W
2007 WK5—WAS 34 DET 3 (WAS -3.5) W

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