An in-depth rest breakdown for the Atlanta Falcons schedule

Welcome to the NFL schedule release, when our excitement for a season that is still months away is renewed once again, as it was during the draft and as it will be when training camp will take place.

We now know the exact dates each team will play, and within those dates, I’d like to take a somewhat nuanced approach to displaying the schedule.

While it’s true that the Falcons will play 17 games in 18 weeks, like everyone else, not every week will be the same when you factor rest and recovery into the equation. In this article, the third edition of a overview of the schedule I started two years agowe’ll look at which specific weeks the Birds will be at a disadvantage due to the opposition’s extra rest and when they will have more advantages.

First, for the purposes of this breakdown, let’s define what the terms “rest advantage” and “rest disadvantage” are.

A rest advantage occurs when the Falcons have more time to prepare than their opponent for a specific game than the other way around. This could be because their opposition is coming off a Monday Night Football game, because Atlanta is coming off a bye week or when the Birds are coming off a Thursday Night Football game and have three additional days of rest. If the Falcons have at least one day more to prepare than their opponent, it will be classified as a “rest advantage” game.

As you might have guessed, a rest disadvantage is the exact opposite: it’s when the opponent has more time to prepare for their matchup against the Falcons. This could be because they just finished a bye week or their own Thursday Night Football game. Atlanta would also be at a disadvantage if they came out of a Monday Night Football game, which would give them one less day to recover and prepare for the next game.

Last season, schedule makers were not kind to the Falcons, giving them zero games with any sort of rest advantage.

Conversely, the team had three games where they had a rest disadvantage and went 1-2 in those weeks with the only win coming against a Jets team quarterbacked by Tim Boyle and Trevor Siemian. If you want to read last year’s breakdown, you can find it here.

Before we begin, I would just like to say that this is not a season prediction article nor will it predict any wins or losses. We will have months to think about this and I promise you that many predictions will be made during that time. This will specifically highlight only games where the Falcons will have more rest than their opponent and games where they will have less.

First, let’s look at this season’s schedule as a whole:

Week 1: cons. Pittsburgh Steelers1 p.m. EST, September 8

Week 2: @ Philadelphia EaglesMonday Night Football, 8:15 p.m., September 16

Week 3: cons. Kansas City ChiefsSunday Night Football, 8:20 p.m., September 22

Week 4: cons. New Orleans Saints1 p.m., September 29

Week 5: cons. Tampa Bay BuccaneersThursday Night Football, 8:15 p.m., October 3

Week 6: @ Carolina Panthers4:25 p.m., October 13

Week 7: cons. Seattle Seahawks1 p.m., October 20

Week 8: @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers1 p.m., October 27

Week 9: against. Dallas Cowboys1 p.m., November 3

Week 10: @ New Orleans Saints1 p.m., November 10

Week 11: @ Denver Broncos4:05 p.m., November 17

Week 12: BYE WEEK

Week 13: against. Los Angeles Chargers1 p.m., December 1

Week 14: @ Minnesota Vikings1 p.m., December 8

Week 15: @ Las Vegas RaidersMonday Night Football, 8:15 p.m., December 16

Week 16: against. New York Giants1 p.m., December 22

Week 17: @ Washington Commandersto be determined

Week 18: against. Carolina Panthersto be determined

Advantage Weeks Rest

This is defined as weeks where the Falcons will have a longer period of time to prepare for an opponent than their opponent will need to prepare.

Week 6: @ Carolina Panthers, Sunday, October 13, 4:25 p.m. ET – 3 days

Atlanta’s first game of the season in which they will have additional preparation against their opponent will take place in Week 6 and will be the result of a Thursday Night Football game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during week 5, giving them three additional days of recovery.

Week 8: @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Sunday October 27, 1 p.m. ET – 1 day

The Falcons don’t have anything special going on between Weeks 7 and 8, playing on Sunday afternoons on each of those game days. The advantage comes because the Buccaneers are marked for a Monday Night Football game against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 7, giving them one less day of preparation for Atlanta. Tampa, coincidentally, will return to another MNF game, against the Chiefs, next week after this game.

Week 13: against. Los Angeles ChargersSunday, December 1, 1 p.m. ET – 7 days

Atlanta has its bye in Week 12, which serves as one of the toughest schedule times of the NFL season for the Chargers. Not only will the Falcons get an extra week off, but the Bolts will be coming off an MNF game against the Ravens in Week 12, giving them a short lead time before they also have to reverse coast time zones west to the east coast. This is what we call a planning nightmare.

Total rest benefit time: 11 days

Disadvantageous rest weeks

This is defined as weeks where the Falcons will have a shorter period of time to prepare for their opponent than their opponent will need to prepare.

Week 2: @ Philadelphia EaglesMonday, September 16, 8:15 p.m. ET – 2 days

The Eagles will have two additional days off to prepare for Atlanta, with their Week 1 game against the Green Bay Packers taking place on Friday, September 6 in Brazil. Although this game is technically considered a home game for them, Week 2 will be Philly’s true home opener.

Week 3: cons. Kansas City ChiefsSunday, September 22, 8:15 p.m. ET – 1 day

This one-day off advantage for the defending champions is a direct result of the Falcons playing Week 2, against the Eagles, on Monday Night Football.

Week 7: cons. Seattle SeahawksSunday, October 20, 1 p.m. ET – 3 days

A Week 6 Thursday Night Football game against the San Francisco 49ers will give Seattle three extra days off, helping to alleviate the time change they’ll have to make from Pacific Time to Eastern time. A trip to Atlanta will be the Seahawks’ only road game in what will be a stretch of four games in five weeks in the Pacific Northwest.

Week 16: against. New York GiantsSunday, December 22, 1 p.m. ET – 1 day

Another one-day special, which is the result of a Monday Night Football appearance for Atlanta in Las Vegas. The bigger problem for the Falcons here than on this day is that they will have to change time zones during what will be a short week between Weeks 15 and 16.

Total rest inconvenience time: 7 days

Other notes on the calendar:

• The Falcons won’t face any team coming off a bye week this season. This is a considerable fortune that the planners granted them.
• The four prime-time matchups the Falcons have scheduled for this season are as many as they have had in each of the last four seasons combined. They have had no primetime slots for all of 2023. In Weeks 2 and 3, they will play their first Monday Night Football game since 2020 and their first Sunday Night Football game since 2019.
• Atlanta will only have two cold-weather games on the schedule: Week 11 at Denver and Week 17 at Washington. They will play every other game from November until the regular season finale in January in a domed stadium.
• There will only be two instances of “road trips” for the Falcons, where they play multiple games in a row away from home: Weeks 10 and 11 (at New Orleans and Denver) and weeks 14 and 15 (in Minnesota and Denver). Las Vegas). Every other time they play on the road, they’ll come back to Atlanta next week. The team’s longest home game is three games, between Weeks 3 and 5.
• Atlanta will only have to play two games out west this season – in Las Vegas and Denver. While the Birds will have a shorter turnaround time to get home after the Raiders game, they will have a bye week right after the Broncos game.
• Outside of their primetime games and perhaps the final two games of the season (neither of which will have a set time until much later in the year), Atlanta will play all but two games at 1:00 p.m. with Week 6 at Carolina (4:25 p.m.) and Week 12 at Denver (4:05 p.m.) being the only late afternoon kickoffs.
• In the odd twist, there will be three different instances where the team Atlanta faces comes out of a game with the Baltimore Ravens the previous week – Week 8 against the Bucs, Week 13 against the Chargers, and Week 16 against the Giants.