Beating The Book: Warren Sharp, NFL Historical Schedule Inequality Analysis

So something about his study into this upcoming season schedule sparked the thought and what it led to was, I believe the only such study done on the National Football League schedule historically speaking over the last decade. That was the sample size used. So, in other words, if you ever thought that a team that you root against always seems to get the best of it schedule wise, year to year, maybe you think your team gets the worst of it, this is the show for you. Might piss

you off, might confirm a lot of your suspicions. Warren Sharp schedule analysis from a historical perspective on today's Beating the Book Podcast. Enjoy It's a numbers game with your host Ji Alexander too to believe in Adams, It is the numbers game right here at Visa, the Vega Stats in Information Network, the Sports Betting Network series EXEPT Channel two oh four, Visa dot Com, the VISAP food bo

sling a Game plus first though this is tremendous. Last week, this gentleman was kind enough to come on the show to discuss, as he does every year with us, UH, the quirks of the upcoming NFL schedule, the handicapping angles, what team got the best of it, what teams didn't

in any number of ways through different lenses. UH. He had decided to take this a step further in what I think it's fair to say could be some of the most impactful work he has ever done, taking this to another level, thinking beyond just the coming season, and saying to himself, Hey, wait a minute, I wonder if we looked back over time, have certain teams in the NFL gotten the best of it? Have certain teams gotten the worst of it with scheduling UH specifics and we

bring back on the show once again to discuss it. UH. The author of this report, it's Warren Sharp from Sharp Football Stats and Sharp Football Analysis. Good morning to your warrn man. How you doing Hey, good morning, Gail. I'm doing well. You, I'm doing very well. And that's not a understatement, is it that this could be if it's latched onto some of the most impactful stuff you've done. No, I definitely believe so every type of study, and I've

done a lot of different studies over my years. You know, sometimes you're just looking at analysis. You're looking at on covering factor. Is they're going to going to matter in a particular game that you're trying to handicap or analyze for a team. But in this case, this goes well beyond that. This gets down the root of this is equality and a level playing field. And what the NFL strives to project with everything that it says publicly, and

that is competitive balance. And in order to have competitive balance, there has to be equality in scheduling. Now we'll we'll dive into all the details of it as you navigate us through this, but the bottom line here is that it has become painfully clear to me in this study of the last ten years of NFL scheduling that there is a significant lack of competitive balance with which the NFL ivies up the schedule and put certain teams in difficult situations. While I don't want to say, pandering, but

certainly benefiting other teams. And it's not just the flight gap between the halves and the have not. There are some major issues going on here with the schedule. Yeah, it occurs to me this is going to make certain fan bases really angry, and certain ones are gonna try to keep this quiet, like, oh, we've got the best. But before we launch into it, one question that I've been curious about since reading this. What was the seed

that sparked this for you? Was there something you saw in this upcoming schedule where you were like, huh, that seems to happen more than just this one time. Yeah, great question. Um. What I did was I first started looking at the Baltimore Ravens and their Monday night football games, and I looked back since two thousand and eight, like, what the heck? They They've played fourteen Monday night games, but only two of them were in Baltimore. Twelve of

their game have been on the road. I was like, this, this does not seem very fair because Monday Night provides such a big home field advantage. You know, Monday Night tends to with the crowd and it's got all day to get ready for this game, you would think the

crowd noise and everything feeding into it is strong. Now, the one thing that um that so that sparked me researching uh, different primetime situations because definitely Thursday night, while it's not necessarily the crowd noise, it's the lack of rest that makes Thursday night games more unfair to the road team. And then that kind of got me started thinking in the process of what are the most unfair situations that are going to benefit a team at home

hosting a game. What are the most difficult things for a road team to have to deal with, whether it's you know, the prep time, the lack of rest, the back to backs, um, those types of things. But the one thing that I'll note when we talk about this study, just big picture wise, that Baltimore got me started on the notion that it's wrong for us to look at the results, the win loss results and say, well, see,

look this scheduling spot. Yeah, it doesn't sound great, but it really doesn't matter because overall it's it's only like a one percent difference, So it's it's relatively irrelevant, right, Like Baltimore could have been in those twelve road Monday night games, right, they're a good team. They ended up

winning a lot of those games. That does not mean that it is fair to send Baltimore on the road for twelve out of fourteen Monday Night games, whereas other teams in the last decade are hosting, you know, six Monday Night games and going on the road for just one. There needs to be a little bit of a balance. And if you're going to stick certain teams on Monday

Night for Thursday night because of the TV audience. And I completely understand that you don't want Jacksonville on there as much as you would want the Dallas Cowboys, are the New York Giants or the New England Patriots. I understand that that's perfectly fine. The issue is are you going to give them a little bit of balance in terms of home versus road splits. You can't allow one of these teams to host all these Thursday games wires another. You want them on Thursdays, but you make them travel

all the time. It's just not fair. There needs to be more balanced there. Gil Alexander Warren Sharp right here on a numbers game at Visa. These Sports Betting Network series XM Channel two O four, you can follow Warren at Sharp Football on Twitter, one of the great Twitter feeds you could possibly follow for all things NFL. Okay, so for those just landing here, let's reset it. So this is beyond last week. Warren was here, we looked

ahead at the schedule that's coming up. This is perhaps his most impactful work, certainly among his most impactful work. It's a historical look over the past decade, at least took it that far back. Uh As to have there been any patterns? Have there been any teams over time that have gotten the worst of it with scheduling? And which teams have gotten the best of it? Now, you've broken this down into a couple of major scheduling avarreables, one of which is preparation and rest. The other is

prime time games. And then you went even further than that, Lauren and you you talked about things like negated by weeks and four games in seventeen days. We'll get to that. Let's start with the notion of preparation and rest. What were some of your findings in that category? Right? So what I did is I I tried to figure out which of the situations Because the NFL does not control who you play that's set on a rocational schedule, it's determined.

Fourteen of your sixteen games are determined years in advance. You'll just come to that schedule and it's three. These are who you're going to These are the divisions that you're going to be playing, and the teams that are going to bepelling. People don't realize that that's the side of years in advance, and it just rotates. And two of your sixteen games are determined based upon where you finished. So a fourth place finish in your division gives you

other fourth place fourth place opponents. Um, So all of that is like predetermined. The NFL can't control that. What the NFL can control is what time and when you play these teams. And so when you're looking at it from a preparation and rest perspective, it's important to note certain factors. Number one, do you have more rest than your opponent does? That helps you get your players ready closer to as well as your head coach and your

you know, coordinators, more time to prepare. Are you playing short week road games very difficult to get ready and travel on less than a full week of rest. Are you playing off of a Monday night game or even a Sunday night game where which was on the road, because you may be playing at home on a Sunday, but if you just played I'm sorry, you may be playing on home on a Sunday, But if you just played Monday night on the road and you had to travel two time zones to get back home, your rest

and your prep is going to be far different. And I've talked to some coaches inside the need to tell me the impact of that is definitely a factor and getting ready for that next Sunday, even if it's a home game. Um. And then negated bye weeks. Yeah, you get a bye. Everybody gets a buy. But did the opponent that you're playing out of your by have the same exact bye week? So while your team has had the chance to rest and your coaches have had extra time to prepare, you don't have an edge in that

over your opponent. You may so, so it's not quite as significant. UM. Anyways, accumulating all of those things together, what I found was the teams that have had the worst luck the most shafted shafted teams in the league over last decade, or the Eagles, the Giants, the Colts, the Seahawks and the Bears. Those are the top five teams that have been screwed the most. And let's put some of these things into perspective. The Eagles have had to play forty four different teams that have had over

seven days to prepare for them. The Jaguars, the team with the best dress situation, have only had to play twenty teams like that. So we're talking about the difference between forty four games with extra rest versus only twenty. That's a massive change. Again, I told you at the top, we're not talking about small inefficiencies. We're talking about major issues.

A team like the Bears. The Bears have had to play sixteen games on the road with a short week of rest, and a team like the Lions have only played two. So the difference between sixteen of these games over ten years versus only two, that's a massive deal, a massive deal. A team like the Giants, who had the second worst situation, they've had to play twenty two games off of Monday night or Sunday night on the road. I already told you how that's difficult for teams getting

ready the next week. Twenty two times they've played in that situation, the Arizona Cardos haven't played in that situation as at all, and in ten years they've never played. You've got one team dealing with it twenty two times. Another team hasn't dealt with it at all. This one is even crazier. The Cults the third work scheduling situation. They have dealt with six of ten bye weeks, right, you get one per year ten years, Six out of

their ten have been negated. Their opponent has had a bye week the same exact week that they did, or a Thursday night game in one of the six situations to get a mini by heading into it. Half the league has had zero or one negated by weeks. The league average is only one point eight. Half the teams haven't even had this happened to him zero times and some only once. And we're talking about the Colts have had it happened to them six out of ten times.

There is absolutely zero way, and this is why I'm saying this could be one of the most impactful things. There is no possible way if the focus on creating a schedule is competitive balanced, that the NFL has ever looked into any of this information, because if they did, they could not possibly rationalized. Giving a team negating six of their buys, whereas most league doesn't even have more than one negated. It's just completely unfair. So I don't

think they've looked at any of this information. And let me just step in there too, because the top two teams that you mentioned, by the way, this is again under the subcategory of rest. It's not an overall this is under rest. The teams that got the worst of it, Eagles and Giants, you make I think perhaps the best point of all here is that those are two teams

in the same division. There's another team in that division who really gets the best of it, like completely on the other end, and this is not going to make

people happy. Who is that team more? And yeah, the Dallas Cowboys America's team, so to speak, well, well, maybe you should recall them the NFL's team because the Dallas Cowboys, if you look at all overall schedule inequality over the last decade, the Cowboys have had the third most favorable schedule situations occur with their team, whereas if you look at the Giants, the Eagles, and the Redskins, those three teams all in the NFC East, have had bottom ten

scheduled situations over the last decade so in the same time frame, yet one team top five, three teams bottom ten, two of which are actually bottom five in the in the Eagles and the Giants. That how can that possibly be fair? I mean things that are benefiting the Dallas Cowboys. Obviously, we know that they host Thursday on Thanksgiving, and inherently for them to do that every single year, I know

there's tradition associated with it, but it's patently unfair. The home field edge to not have to travel on a Thursday game is massive. There's not a scheduling edge in the league that's better than hosting a Thursday game, especially one not at Thursday night. Right, We're talking about the Thursday afternoon game. It's so strong, and they get that

every single year. Now, I understand that the NFL, if they don't want to part with tradition, they want to allow them to keep doing this, even though it's unfair. You have to go the other way with the Cowboys schedule. You have to figure out what are the worst scheduling spots of the team's face and how can we put the Cowboys into a couple of those each year to offset the edge that they gain from hosting a Thursday

night game. What the NFL tried to do then is they said, okay, we will the last few years, we'll send Dallas on the road the Thursday after Thanksgiving so that they have to play a road Thursday game, not realizing that it's not the fact that you're playing on the road in this primetime game, it's the prep that

you have leading into it. And if you have a full week of prep because you played Thursday the week before at home, then you're not really impacted anymore than you would be for a regular road game to travel. The issue is you've got to stick them on a road Thursday game when they've just played a Sunday game, And if you're not going to do that, then you have to figure out other spots where you can kind of negatively benefit their schedule. Um. And it's just these

types of things can be adjusted. And one thing I'll throw in here, Gil is that I've been asked questions, well, could the NFL make some adjustments so that if your schedule is real favorable in then like the schedule, they can do some things to make that less favorable. And

my response is absolutely not. You can't have the schedule completely favor a team and then hurt a team because so much on a year to year basis is what's the perception of this player based on what he just did last year, what the coaches are doing, and if you've got teams that are having far less rest, that impacts their in three health injuries can affect careers. You have to do the best you possibly can to keep a schedule within the same season as balanced as possible

across all thirty two teams. And I know you can't account for travel, right because the schedules predetermined years in advance. So if a team in the West Coast has to go out to the East Coast a bunch of times in a certain year, it is what it is. The league is doing a better job. We talked about this last time around about allowing them to stay out on the East Coast and scheduling a couple of games back to back weeks so they don't have to travel back

and forth across the country four different times. They only have to do it twice um for that for those couple of opponents. But you know, you can't account for that. But what you can account for is when you schedule these teams and how you're scheduling them. Um, and the NFL needs to do a lot better job to create the balance within the course of the season so that all thirty two teams have as fair a shot as possible at winning the championship each year. That is much

an overarching key point to this. Also the point you made earlier warrant about for those listening who are like, Okay, well, those teams that got shafted, those teams that got the best of it, how did they perform? Too many variables to get into that. The process here is what matters, and the process is deeply flawed. Just to move this along war because we won't with this is so dense this study that we won't get to all of it here. But in terms of that category again, just a review, uh,

talking about the notion of rest again. The teams that got the worst of it, the Eagles, Giants, Colt, Seahawks, and Bears. This is over the last decade. The teams that got the best of it Jaguars, Brown's, Panthers, Lions, Buccaneers. Uh. Didn't help a lot of those teams obviously, Just a quick review as far as prime time games are concerned. We have about three minutes here before the break. Uh, the teams that got the shaft in terms of primetime

game scheduling, who would they be? Right? So you know the Cowboys are definitely in there. Um the Lions. Lions have not traveled for a Thursday game over the last decade, but they actually only ranked ninth in this because they haven't gotten affair shake on Monday night games. But the teams that have had the best, um most favorable thursd uh. Sorry, primetime scheduling basically comes down to whether you're hosting or

traveling to these games. Um, the Cardinals number one, the Jaguars number two, the Cowboys number three, forty number four, and the Seahawks at number five. And then on the flip end, the teams that have been hurt the worst by prime time schedulings, who have had to play so many of these road games, the Colts number one, the Giants number two, the Texans number three, the Browns number four, and the Dolphins number five and just two get into

the Colts. Okay, this is a team that's played. You know, you want something. The league sometimes wants good teams to play a lot of prime time games. It helps their marketing and dollar overall dollar h what they can command for these as in the TV deals, etcetera. So they put them on prime time twenty different games over the last decade. That's fine, but they've played fourteen of the twenty on the road and hosted only six. They've played

seventy percent of their games on the road. Meanwhile, there's teams in the league that have hosted eleven of fourteen prime time games and so they've only played on the road. You just can't have disparity between the best and the worst in terms of the teams only go on the road twenty one percent time. This teams goes on the road seventy percent of the time. And I know there's teams around the league who have been frustrated for years with the lack of giving teams prime time games and

making them travel. And the Colts, for example, this year, they only were in one prime time game. Guess what it is. It's on Thursday, and it's on the road. That's the only game they've been given. I haven't even included that in this study because this looks at what has actually happened in the past decade. But they're a team that it's only getting worse for them, you know, in the coming year. This, I mean, this is so

so interesting, Warren. And it's one of these things too that as I'm listening to you and as I read the piece that you did on this and by the way, those who want to read the piece can go to Warren's Twitter at sharp Football. He links to it there. That's probably the easiest way to get to it. It's one of these things where when you hear it, when you read it, you're like, why has this not been done before? Like why, Like it's so obvious right in retrospect,

I'm just like, this is so smart to have done. Now. I hope people listening understand what we've gone through. Here is the category of preparation, uh and rest and the category of prime time games. When we come back from the break, we're gonna throw both of those into the mix, and Warren will give the five teams that have benefited most overall from the schedule the last ten years and the five teams that have gotten screwed the most by

the schedule overall the last ten years. We're gonna throw basically everything we've just talked about in the mix, and I hear you everybody who ates the Cowboys, I mean that is an overriding theme in all this. I know they're going to show up in the top five of teams that benefited the most. And perhaps most important, or just as important as all of that, the notion of

injuries in the NFL. Is there correlation between these scheduling quirks, who's benefited the most, who's gotten the worst of it? And injuries with teams? This perhaps the most fascinating thing about all that. Coming back with Warren Sharp on a numbers game at Visa the Sports Betting Network, Welcome back to a numbers game with Jill Alexander. A numbers game proudly brought to you by manscape dot Com and Escape

dot Com has the tools for your family jewels. You get off plus free shipping with the code VISA at manscaped dot com. That's at manscape dot com with promo code v s I N That's man scaped dot Com. Kill Alexander Live in San Francisco. Warren Sharp just out sute of d C. Warren I said it to you off air, I'll say it to you again here. I know you do some proprietary work that might be your

most tangible work. Tangible in terms of its impact, but in terms of your public work, I really do feel and it may not get you know, it may not get the sort of how can I put this the attribution that it deserves in the short term, But whether it's a couple of years from now, three years, whenever this gets implemented, I think this is really your most impactful public tangible work. I really do. I think you're right. I think that um, the NFL is going to take

these things under consideration and make adjustments. Whether or not they will ever say anything publicly, highly doubt that. I would bet a lot of money against that. They rarely like to admit mistakes, and they're certainly gonna not admit to making it so called on certain teams is so much easier on other teams. But my goal with this, in terms of promoting it, is just to make it public so that they can fix it and make a better level playing field amongst the thirty two teams, to

give everybody more of a fair shot. And I'll just say over the weekend I have talked to very important people with a number of different teams and They have all agreed privately with me that this is something they've never seen done before, not to this robust level, and they think it's going to make some differences hopefully. I love it again. Last week we talked about, you know, betting implications of this year. But obviously this is one of these macro things where you know it it it

informs narratives. It's like it's like the old Dean Oliver line where he says, you know, any human being can can understand one game better than analytics, but analytics sees everything. And this is one of these things that our brains don't acknowledge as we watch football from week to week and year to year. But when you look back, you're like, my god, this is completely not a level playing field. We don't have much time warrant, so let's cut right

to the chase. Will go to the overall numbers, the strongest overall benefit from the NFL schedule over the last ten years, and the most the team's most impacted negatively. Who are They will flash them up on the screen. Yeah, the teams will start with the overall benefit, the Jaguars,

the Cardinals, the Cowboys, the Lions, and the Panthers. Those are the top five teams that have had the best benefit and the teams that have been hurt the worst by the unfair NFL scheduling practices over the last decade. The Giants, the Colts, the Eagles, the Bears, and the Texans. Those are the five teams that have been hurt the most. And I think, just you know, maybe the maybe the

big headline. I don't know if it's the biggest headline from all this, but the correlation between what you just said there at the bottom the most negatively impacted by the schedule and the notion of injuries. Walk us through that in two minutes if you could. Yeah, it's very important. The amount of rest that a player has between games to get his body as close to as possible for before putting it through the grueling process of a sixty minute game is vital. And when you have teams that

are getting screwed in. Again, we're not talking about a small gap between the teams that are getting screwed in the teams that are getting helped. It's a major gap. And what we've seen is that over the last decade, I did the study on the adjusted injury rates as

it compares to unfair scheduling. Two of the three teams that have been most unfairly impacted by scheduling were also two of the three most injured teams over the last decade, and of the top five teams that have been the most injured over the last decade, four of those five teams have had top ten worst and most unfair rest situations.

So there's not a perfect correlation one to thirty two between injuries and rest because injuries happen, and certain teams get good injury luck one year and bad injury luck

the next, like different things happen to different teams. But when you look at the extreme end of the spectrum, the teams that have had the worst and most unfair rest situations, the fact that most of those teams are also falling out as being the most injured should open up eyes that beyond just being unfair and giving a team a competitive edge in that particular game, This also has a cumulate effect over the course of the season um and teams are losing players because of this unfair

scheduling uh edges and disadvantages that the NFL is providing based upon the way they do their schedule and it's just it's just not fair. Warren phenomenal. By the way, the teams he was talking about, the Giants and Colts second and third, most injured, second and third worst prep rest ranking. Redskin is most injured, it's worst preparest ranking. Patriots fifth lows injured, sixth worst preparest ranking. Warren, great stuff. Thank you so much, man, appreciate it. Thank Joe Warren.

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