Speaker 1: Check it down, Man now down. Then it's the Beating
Speaker 1: the Book Podcast, Hill Alexander. Last week, Warren Sharp was
Speaker 1: kind enough to come on the show, as he does annually,
Speaker 1: to talk about strength of schedule in the upcoming National
Speaker 1: Football League season. He did that last week as per usual,
Speaker 1: We appreciate it, but Warren took it one step further
Speaker 1: this week. Uh. He did a study on historical NFL schedule.
Speaker 1: So something about his study into this upcoming season schedule
Speaker 1: sparked the thought and what it led to was, I
Speaker 1: believe the only such study done on the National Football
Speaker 1: League schedule historically speaking over the last decade. That was
Speaker 1: the sample size used. So, in other words, if you
Speaker 1: ever thought that a team that you root against always
Speaker 1: seems to get the best of it schedule wise, year
Speaker 1: to year, maybe you think your team gets the worst
Speaker 1: of it, this is the show for you. Might piss
Speaker 1: you off, might confirm a lot of your suspicions. Warren
Speaker 1: Sharp schedule analysis from a historical perspective on today's Beating
Speaker 1: the Book Podcast. Enjoy It's a numbers game with your
Speaker 1: host Ji Alexander too to believe in Adams, It is
Speaker 1: the numbers game right here at Visa, the Vega Stats
Speaker 1: in Information Network, the Sports Betting Network series EXEPT Channel
Speaker 1: two oh four, Visa dot Com, the VISAP food bo
Speaker 1: sling a Game plus first though this is tremendous. Last week,
Speaker 1: this gentleman was kind enough to come on the show
Speaker 1: to discuss, as he does every year with us, UH,
Speaker 1: the quirks of the upcoming NFL schedule, the handicapping angles,
Speaker 1: what team got the best of it, what teams didn't
Speaker 1: in any number of ways through different lenses. UH. He
Speaker 1: had decided to take this a step further in what
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say could be some of
Speaker 1: the most impactful work he has ever done, taking this
Speaker 1: to another level, thinking beyond just the coming season, and
Speaker 1: saying to himself, Hey, wait a minute, I wonder if
Speaker 1: we looked back over time, have certain teams in the
Speaker 1: NFL gotten the best of it? Have certain teams gotten
Speaker 1: the worst of it with scheduling UH specifics and we
Speaker 1: bring back on the show once again to discuss it. UH.
Speaker 1: The author of this report, it's Warren Sharp from Sharp
Speaker 1: Football Stats and Sharp Football Analysis. Good morning to your
Speaker 1: warrn man. How you doing Hey, good morning, Gail. I'm
Speaker 1: doing well. You, I'm doing very well. And that's not
Speaker 1: a understatement, is it that this could be if it's
Speaker 1: latched onto some of the most impactful stuff you've done. No,
Speaker 1: I definitely believe so every type of study, and I've
Speaker 1: done a lot of different studies over my years. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you're just looking at analysis. You're looking at on
Speaker 1: covering factor. Is they're going to going to matter in
Speaker 1: a particular game that you're trying to handicap or analyze
Speaker 1: for a team. But in this case, this goes well
Speaker 1: beyond that. This gets down the root of this is
Speaker 1: equality and a level playing field. And what the NFL
Speaker 1: strives to project with everything that it says publicly, and
Speaker 1: that is competitive balance. And in order to have competitive balance,
Speaker 1: there has to be equality in scheduling. Now we'll we'll
Speaker 1: dive into all the details of it as you navigate
Speaker 1: us through this, but the bottom line here is that
Speaker 1: it has become painfully clear to me in this study
Speaker 1: of the last ten years of NFL scheduling that there
Speaker 1: is a significant lack of competitive balance with which the
Speaker 1: NFL ivies up the schedule and put certain teams in
Speaker 1: difficult situations. While I don't want to say, pandering, but
Speaker 1: certainly benefiting other teams. And it's not just the flight
Speaker 1: gap between the halves and the have not. There are
Speaker 1: some major issues going on here with the schedule. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it occurs to me this is going to make certain
Speaker 1: fan bases really angry, and certain ones are gonna try
Speaker 1: to keep this quiet, like, oh, we've got the best.
Speaker 1: But before we launch into it, one question that I've
Speaker 1: been curious about since reading this. What was the seed
Speaker 1: that sparked this for you? Was there something you saw
Speaker 1: in this upcoming schedule where you were like, huh, that
Speaker 1: seems to happen more than just this one time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: great question. Um. What I did was I first started
Speaker 1: looking at the Baltimore Ravens and their Monday night football games,
Speaker 1: and I looked back since two thousand and eight, like,
Speaker 1: what the heck? They They've played fourteen Monday night games,
Speaker 1: but only two of them were in Baltimore. Twelve of
Speaker 1: their game have been on the road. I was like, this,
Speaker 1: this does not seem very fair because Monday Night provides
Speaker 1: such a big home field advantage. You know, Monday Night
Speaker 1: tends to with the crowd and it's got all day
Speaker 1: to get ready for this game, you would think the
Speaker 1: crowd noise and everything feeding into it is strong. Now,
Speaker 1: the one thing that um that so that sparked me
Speaker 1: researching uh, different primetime situations because definitely Thursday night, while
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily the crowd noise, it's the lack of
Speaker 1: rest that makes Thursday night games more unfair to the
Speaker 1: road team. And then that kind of got me started
Speaker 1: thinking in the process of what are the most unfair
Speaker 1: situations that are going to benefit a team at home
Speaker 1: hosting a game. What are the most difficult things for
Speaker 1: a road team to have to deal with, whether it's
Speaker 1: you know, the prep time, the lack of rest, the
Speaker 1: back to backs, um, those types of things. But the
Speaker 1: one thing that I'll note when we talk about this study,
Speaker 1: just big picture wise, that Baltimore got me started on
Speaker 1: the notion that it's wrong for us to look at
Speaker 1: the results, the win loss results and say, well, see,
Speaker 1: look this scheduling spot. Yeah, it doesn't sound great, but
Speaker 1: it really doesn't matter because overall it's it's only like
Speaker 1: a one percent difference, So it's it's relatively irrelevant, right,
Speaker 1: Like Baltimore could have been in those twelve road Monday
Speaker 1: night games, right, they're a good team. They ended up
Speaker 1: winning a lot of those games. That does not mean
Speaker 1: that it is fair to send Baltimore on the road
Speaker 1: for twelve out of fourteen Monday Night games, whereas other
Speaker 1: teams in the last decade are hosting, you know, six
Speaker 1: Monday Night games and going on the road for just one.
Speaker 1: There needs to be a little bit of a balance.
Speaker 1: And if you're going to stick certain teams on Monday
Speaker 1: Night for Thursday night because of the TV audience. And
Speaker 1: I completely understand that you don't want Jacksonville on there
Speaker 1: as much as you would want the Dallas Cowboys, are
Speaker 1: the New York Giants or the New England Patriots. I
Speaker 1: understand that that's perfectly fine. The issue is are you
Speaker 1: going to give them a little bit of balance in
Speaker 1: terms of home versus road splits. You can't allow one
Speaker 1: of these teams to host all these Thursday games wires another.
Speaker 1: You want them on Thursdays, but you make them travel
Speaker 1: all the time. It's just not fair. There needs to
Speaker 1: be more balanced there. Gil Alexander Warren Sharp right here
Speaker 1: on a numbers game at Visa. These Sports Betting Network
Speaker 1: series XM Channel two O four, you can follow Warren
Speaker 1: at Sharp Football on Twitter, one of the great Twitter
Speaker 1: feeds you could possibly follow for all things NFL. Okay,
Speaker 1: so for those just landing here, let's reset it. So
Speaker 1: this is beyond last week. Warren was here, we looked
Speaker 1: ahead at the schedule that's coming up. This is perhaps
Speaker 1: his most impactful work, certainly among his most impactful work.
Speaker 1: It's a historical look over the past decade, at least
Speaker 1: took it that far back. Uh As to have there
Speaker 1: been any patterns? Have there been any teams over time
Speaker 1: that have gotten the worst of it with scheduling? And
Speaker 1: which teams have gotten the best of it? Now, you've
Speaker 1: broken this down into a couple of major scheduling avarreables,
Speaker 1: one of which is preparation and rest. The other is
Speaker 1: prime time games. And then you went even further than that,
Speaker 1: Lauren and you you talked about things like negated by
Speaker 1: weeks and four games in seventeen days. We'll get to that.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the notion of preparation and rest. What
Speaker 1: were some of your findings in that category? Right? So
Speaker 1: what I did is I I tried to figure out
Speaker 1: which of the situations Because the NFL does not control
Speaker 1: who you play that's set on a rocational schedule, it's determined.
Speaker 1: Fourteen of your sixteen games are determined years in advance.
Speaker 1: You'll just come to that schedule and it's three. These
Speaker 1: are who you're going to These are the divisions that
Speaker 1: you're going to be playing, and the teams that are
Speaker 1: going to bepelling. People don't realize that that's the side
Speaker 1: of years in advance, and it just rotates. And two
Speaker 1: of your sixteen games are determined based upon where you finished.
Speaker 1: So a fourth place finish in your division gives you
Speaker 1: other fourth place fourth place opponents. Um, So all of
Speaker 1: that is like predetermined. The NFL can't control that. What
Speaker 1: the NFL can control is what time and when you
Speaker 1: play these teams. And so when you're looking at it
Speaker 1: from a preparation and rest perspective, it's important to note
Speaker 1: certain factors. Number one, do you have more rest than
Speaker 1: your opponent does? That helps you get your players ready
Speaker 1: closer to as well as your head coach and your
Speaker 1: you know, coordinators, more time to prepare. Are you playing
Speaker 1: short week road games very difficult to get ready and
Speaker 1: travel on less than a full week of rest. Are
Speaker 1: you playing off of a Monday night game or even
Speaker 1: a Sunday night game where which was on the road,
Speaker 1: because you may be playing at home on a Sunday,
Speaker 1: but if you just played I'm sorry, you may be
Speaker 1: playing on home on a Sunday, But if you just
Speaker 1: played Monday night on the road and you had to
Speaker 1: travel two time zones to get back home, your rest
Speaker 1: and your prep is going to be far different. And
Speaker 1: I've talked to some coaches inside the need to tell
Speaker 1: me the impact of that is definitely a factor and
Speaker 1: getting ready for that next Sunday, even if it's a
Speaker 1: home game. Um. And then negated bye weeks. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: get a bye. Everybody gets a buy. But did the
Speaker 1: opponent that you're playing out of your by have the
Speaker 1: same exact bye week? So while your team has had
Speaker 1: the chance to rest and your coaches have had extra
Speaker 1: time to prepare, you don't have an edge in that
Speaker 1: over your opponent. You may so, so it's not quite
Speaker 1: as significant. UM. Anyways, accumulating all of those things together,
Speaker 1: what I found was the teams that have had the
Speaker 1: worst luck the most shafted shafted teams in the league
Speaker 1: over last decade, or the Eagles, the Giants, the Colts,
Speaker 1: the Seahawks and the Bears. Those are the top five
Speaker 1: teams that have been screwed the most. And let's put
Speaker 1: some of these things into perspective. The Eagles have had
Speaker 1: to play forty four different teams that have had over
Speaker 1: seven days to prepare for them. The Jaguars, the team
Speaker 1: with the best dress situation, have only had to play
Speaker 1: twenty teams like that. So we're talking about the difference
Speaker 1: between forty four games with extra rest versus only twenty.
Speaker 1: That's a massive change. Again, I told you at the top,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about small inefficiencies. We're talking about major issues.
Speaker 1: A team like the Bears. The Bears have had to
Speaker 1: play sixteen games on the road with a short week
Speaker 1: of rest, and a team like the Lions have only
Speaker 1: played two. So the difference between sixteen of these games
Speaker 1: over ten years versus only two, that's a massive deal,
Speaker 1: a massive deal. A team like the Giants, who had
Speaker 1: the second worst situation, they've had to play twenty two
Speaker 1: games off of Monday night or Sunday night on the road.
Speaker 1: I already told you how that's difficult for teams getting
Speaker 1: ready the next week. Twenty two times they've played in
Speaker 1: that situation, the Arizona Cardos haven't played in that situation
Speaker 1: as at all, and in ten years they've never played.
Speaker 1: You've got one team dealing with it twenty two times.
Speaker 1: Another team hasn't dealt with it at all. This one
Speaker 1: is even crazier. The Cults the third work scheduling situation.
Speaker 1: They have dealt with six of ten bye weeks, right,
Speaker 1: you get one per year ten years, Six out of
Speaker 1: their ten have been negated. Their opponent has had a
Speaker 1: bye week the same exact week that they did, or
Speaker 1: a Thursday night game in one of the six situations
Speaker 1: to get a mini by heading into it. Half the
Speaker 1: league has had zero or one negated by weeks. The
Speaker 1: league average is only one point eight. Half the teams
Speaker 1: haven't even had this happened to him zero times and
Speaker 1: some only once. And we're talking about the Colts have
Speaker 1: had it happened to them six out of ten times.
Speaker 1: There is absolutely zero way, and this is why I'm
Speaker 1: saying this could be one of the most impactful things.
Speaker 1: There is no possible way if the focus on creating
Speaker 1: a schedule is competitive balanced, that the NFL has ever
Speaker 1: looked into any of this information, because if they did,
Speaker 1: they could not possibly rationalized. Giving a team negating six
Speaker 1: of their buys, whereas most league doesn't even have more
Speaker 1: than one negated. It's just completely unfair. So I don't
Speaker 1: think they've looked at any of this information. And let
Speaker 1: me just step in there too, because the top two
Speaker 1: teams that you mentioned, by the way, this is again
Speaker 1: under the subcategory of rest. It's not an overall this
Speaker 1: is under rest. The teams that got the worst of it,
Speaker 1: Eagles and Giants, you make I think perhaps the best
Speaker 1: point of all here is that those are two teams
Speaker 1: in the same division. There's another team in that division
Speaker 1: who really gets the best of it, like completely on
Speaker 1: the other end, and this is not going to make
Speaker 1: people happy. Who is that team more? And yeah, the
Speaker 1: Dallas Cowboys America's team, so to speak, well, well, maybe
Speaker 1: you should recall them the NFL's team because the Dallas Cowboys,
Speaker 1: if you look at all overall schedule inequality over the
Speaker 1: last decade, the Cowboys have had the third most favorable
Speaker 1: schedule situations occur with their team, whereas if you look
Speaker 1: at the Giants, the Eagles, and the Redskins, those three
Speaker 1: teams all in the NFC East, have had bottom ten
Speaker 1: scheduled situations over the last decade so in the same
Speaker 1: time frame, yet one team top five, three teams bottom ten,
Speaker 1: two of which are actually bottom five in the in
Speaker 1: the Eagles and the Giants. That how can that possibly
Speaker 1: be fair? I mean things that are benefiting the Dallas Cowboys. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we know that they host Thursday on Thanksgiving, and inherently
Speaker 1: for them to do that every single year, I know
Speaker 1: there's tradition associated with it, but it's patently unfair. The
Speaker 1: home field edge to not have to travel on a
Speaker 1: Thursday game is massive. There's not a scheduling edge in
Speaker 1: the league that's better than hosting a Thursday game, especially
Speaker 1: one not at Thursday night. Right, We're talking about the
Speaker 1: Thursday afternoon game. It's so strong, and they get that
Speaker 1: every single year. Now, I understand that the NFL, if
Speaker 1: they don't want to part with tradition, they want to
Speaker 1: allow them to keep doing this, even though it's unfair.
Speaker 1: You have to go the other way with the Cowboys schedule.
Speaker 1: You have to figure out what are the worst scheduling
Speaker 1: spots of the team's face and how can we put
Speaker 1: the Cowboys into a couple of those each year to
Speaker 1: offset the edge that they gain from hosting a Thursday
Speaker 1: night game. What the NFL tried to do then is
Speaker 1: they said, okay, we will the last few years, we'll
Speaker 1: send Dallas on the road the Thursday after Thanksgiving so
Speaker 1: that they have to play a road Thursday game, not
Speaker 1: realizing that it's not the fact that you're playing on
Speaker 1: the road in this primetime game, it's the prep that
Speaker 1: you have leading into it. And if you have a
Speaker 1: full week of prep because you played Thursday the week
Speaker 1: before at home, then you're not really impacted anymore than
Speaker 1: you would be for a regular road game to travel.
Speaker 1: The issue is you've got to stick them on a
Speaker 1: road Thursday game when they've just played a Sunday game,
Speaker 1: And if you're not going to do that, then you
Speaker 1: have to figure out other spots where you can kind
Speaker 1: of negatively benefit their schedule. Um. And it's just these
Speaker 1: types of things can be adjusted. And one thing I'll
Speaker 1: throw in here, Gil is that I've been asked questions, well,
Speaker 1: could the NFL make some adjustments so that if your
Speaker 1: schedule is real favorable in then like the schedule, they
Speaker 1: can do some things to make that less favorable. And
Speaker 1: my response is absolutely not. You can't have the schedule
Speaker 1: completely favor a team and then hurt a team because
Speaker 1: so much on a year to year basis is what's
Speaker 1: the perception of this player based on what he just
Speaker 1: did last year, what the coaches are doing, and if
Speaker 1: you've got teams that are having far less rest, that
Speaker 1: impacts their in three health injuries can affect careers. You
Speaker 1: have to do the best you possibly can to keep
Speaker 1: a schedule within the same season as balanced as possible
Speaker 1: across all thirty two teams. And I know you can't
Speaker 1: account for travel, right because the schedules predetermined years in advance.
Speaker 1: So if a team in the West Coast has to
Speaker 1: go out to the East Coast a bunch of times
Speaker 1: in a certain year, it is what it is. The
Speaker 1: league is doing a better job. We talked about this
Speaker 1: last time around about allowing them to stay out on
Speaker 1: the East Coast and scheduling a couple of games back
Speaker 1: to back weeks so they don't have to travel back
Speaker 1: and forth across the country four different times. They only
Speaker 1: have to do it twice um for that for those
Speaker 1: couple of opponents. But you know, you can't account for that.
Speaker 1: But what you can account for is when you schedule
Speaker 1: these teams and how you're scheduling them. Um, and the
Speaker 1: NFL needs to do a lot better job to create
Speaker 1: the balance within the course of the season so that
Speaker 1: all thirty two teams have as fair a shot as
Speaker 1: possible at winning the championship each year. That is much
Speaker 1: an overarching key point to this. Also the point you
Speaker 1: made earlier warrant about for those listening who are like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: those teams that got shafted, those teams that got the
Speaker 1: best of it, how did they perform? Too many variables
Speaker 1: to get into that. The process here is what matters,
Speaker 1: and the process is deeply flawed. Just to move this
Speaker 1: along war because we won't with this is so dense
Speaker 1: this study that we won't get to all of it here.
Speaker 1: But in terms of that category again, just a review, uh,
Speaker 1: talking about the notion of rest again. The teams that
Speaker 1: got the worst of it, the Eagles, Giants, Colt, Seahawks,
Speaker 1: and Bears. This is over the last decade. The teams
Speaker 1: that got the best of it Jaguars, Brown's, Panthers, Lions, Buccaneers. Uh.
Speaker 1: Didn't help a lot of those teams obviously, Just a
Speaker 1: quick review as far as prime time games are concerned.
Speaker 1: We have about three minutes here before the break. Uh,
Speaker 1: the teams that got the shaft in terms of primetime
Speaker 1: game scheduling, who would they be? Right? So you know
Speaker 1: the Cowboys are definitely in there. Um the Lions. Lions
Speaker 1: have not traveled for a Thursday game over the last decade,
Speaker 1: but they actually only ranked ninth in this because they
Speaker 1: haven't gotten affair shake on Monday night games. But the
Speaker 1: teams that have had the best, um most favorable thursd uh. Sorry,
Speaker 1: primetime scheduling basically comes down to whether you're hosting or
Speaker 1: traveling to these games. Um, the Cardinals number one, the
Speaker 1: Jaguars number two, the Cowboys number three, forty number four,
Speaker 1: and the Seahawks at number five. And then on the
Speaker 1: flip end, the teams that have been hurt the worst
Speaker 1: by prime time schedulings, who have had to play so
Speaker 1: many of these road games, the Colts number one, the
Speaker 1: Giants number two, the Texans number three, the Browns number four,
Speaker 1: and the Dolphins number five and just two get into
Speaker 1: the Colts. Okay, this is a team that's played. You know,
Speaker 1: you want something. The league sometimes wants good teams to
Speaker 1: play a lot of prime time games. It helps their
Speaker 1: marketing and dollar overall dollar h what they can command
Speaker 1: for these as in the TV deals, etcetera. So they
Speaker 1: put them on prime time twenty different games over the
Speaker 1: last decade. That's fine, but they've played fourteen of the
Speaker 1: twenty on the road and hosted only six. They've played
Speaker 1: seventy percent of their games on the road. Meanwhile, there's
Speaker 1: teams in the league that have hosted eleven of fourteen
Speaker 1: prime time games and so they've only played on the road.
Speaker 1: You just can't have disparity between the best and the
Speaker 1: worst in terms of the teams only go on the
Speaker 1: road twenty one percent time. This teams goes on the
Speaker 1: road seventy percent of the time. And I know there's
Speaker 1: teams around the league who have been frustrated for years
Speaker 1: with the lack of giving teams prime time games and
Speaker 1: making them travel. And the Colts, for example, this year,
Speaker 1: they only were in one prime time game. Guess what
Speaker 1: it is. It's on Thursday, and it's on the road.
Speaker 1: That's the only game they've been given. I haven't even
Speaker 1: included that in this study because this looks at what
Speaker 1: has actually happened in the past decade. But they're a
Speaker 1: team that it's only getting worse for them, you know,
Speaker 1: in the coming year. This, I mean, this is so
Speaker 1: so interesting, Warren. And it's one of these things too
Speaker 1: that as I'm listening to you and as I read
Speaker 1: the piece that you did on this and by the way,
Speaker 1: those who want to read the piece can go to
Speaker 1: Warren's Twitter at sharp Football. He links to it there.
Speaker 1: That's probably the easiest way to get to it. It's
Speaker 1: one of these things where when you hear it, when
Speaker 1: you read it, you're like, why has this not been
Speaker 1: done before? Like why, Like it's so obvious right in retrospect,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, this is so smart to have done. Now.
Speaker 1: I hope people listening understand what we've gone through. Here
Speaker 1: is the category of preparation, uh and rest and the
Speaker 1: category of prime time games. When we come back from
Speaker 1: the break, we're gonna throw both of those into the mix,
Speaker 1: and Warren will give the five teams that have benefited
Speaker 1: most overall from the schedule the last ten years and
Speaker 1: the five teams that have gotten screwed the most by
Speaker 1: the schedule overall the last ten years. We're gonna throw
Speaker 1: basically everything we've just talked about in the mix, and
Speaker 1: I hear you everybody who ates the Cowboys, I mean
Speaker 1: that is an overriding theme in all this. I know
Speaker 1: they're going to show up in the top five of
Speaker 1: teams that benefited the most. And perhaps most important, or
Speaker 1: just as important as all of that, the notion of
Speaker 1: injuries in the NFL. Is there correlation between these scheduling quirks,
Speaker 1: who's benefited the most, who's gotten the worst of it?
Speaker 1: And injuries with teams? This perhaps the most fascinating thing
Speaker 1: about all that. Coming back with Warren Sharp on a
Speaker 1: numbers game at Visa the Sports Betting Network, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to a numbers game with Jill Alexander. A numbers game
Speaker 1: proudly brought to you by manscape dot Com and Escape
Speaker 1: dot Com has the tools for your family jewels. You
Speaker 1: get off plus free shipping with the code VISA at
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Speaker 1: code v s I N That's man scaped dot Com.
Speaker 1: Kill Alexander Live in San Francisco. Warren Sharp just out
Speaker 1: sute of d C. Warren I said it to you
Speaker 1: off air, I'll say it to you again here. I
Speaker 1: know you do some proprietary work that might be your
Speaker 1: most tangible work. Tangible in terms of its impact, but
Speaker 1: in terms of your public work, I really do feel
Speaker 1: and it may not get you know, it may not
Speaker 1: get the sort of how can I put this the
Speaker 1: attribution that it deserves in the short term, But whether
Speaker 1: it's a couple of years from now, three years, whenever
Speaker 1: this gets implemented, I think this is really your most
Speaker 1: impactful public tangible work. I really do. I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think that um, the NFL is going to take
Speaker 1: these things under consideration and make adjustments. Whether or not
Speaker 1: they will ever say anything publicly, highly doubt that. I
Speaker 1: would bet a lot of money against that. They rarely
Speaker 1: like to admit mistakes, and they're certainly gonna not admit
Speaker 1: to making it so called on certain teams is so
Speaker 1: much easier on other teams. But my goal with this,
Speaker 1: in terms of promoting it, is just to make it
Speaker 1: public so that they can fix it and make a
Speaker 1: better level playing field amongst the thirty two teams, to
Speaker 1: give everybody more of a fair shot. And I'll just
Speaker 1: say over the weekend I have talked to very important
Speaker 1: people with a number of different teams and They have
Speaker 1: all agreed privately with me that this is something they've
Speaker 1: never seen done before, not to this robust level, and
Speaker 1: they think it's going to make some differences hopefully. I
Speaker 1: love it again. Last week we talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: betting implications of this year. But obviously this is one
Speaker 1: of these macro things where you know it it it
Speaker 1: informs narratives. It's like it's like the old Dean Oliver
Speaker 1: line where he says, you know, any human being can
Speaker 1: can understand one game better than analytics, but analytics sees everything.
Speaker 1: And this is one of these things that our brains
Speaker 1: don't acknowledge as we watch football from week to week
Speaker 1: and year to year. But when you look back, you're like,
Speaker 1: my god, this is completely not a level playing field.
Speaker 1: We don't have much time warrant, so let's cut right
Speaker 1: to the chase. Will go to the overall numbers, the
Speaker 1: strongest overall benefit from the NFL schedule over the last
Speaker 1: ten years, and the most the team's most impacted negatively.
Speaker 1: Who are They will flash them up on the screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the teams will start with the overall benefit, the Jaguars,
Speaker 1: the Cardinals, the Cowboys, the Lions, and the Panthers. Those
Speaker 1: are the top five teams that have had the best
Speaker 1: benefit and the teams that have been hurt the worst
Speaker 1: by the unfair NFL scheduling practices over the last decade.
Speaker 1: The Giants, the Colts, the Eagles, the Bears, and the Texans.
Speaker 1: Those are the five teams that have been hurt the most.
Speaker 1: And I think, just you know, maybe the maybe the
Speaker 1: big headline. I don't know if it's the biggest headline
Speaker 1: from all this, but the correlation between what you just
Speaker 1: said there at the bottom the most negatively impacted by
Speaker 1: the schedule and the notion of injuries. Walk us through
Speaker 1: that in two minutes if you could. Yeah, it's very important.
Speaker 1: The amount of rest that a player has between games
Speaker 1: to get his body as close to as possible for
Speaker 1: before putting it through the grueling process of a sixty
Speaker 1: minute game is vital. And when you have teams that
Speaker 1: are getting screwed in. Again, we're not talking about a
Speaker 1: small gap between the teams that are getting screwed in
Speaker 1: the teams that are getting helped. It's a major gap.
Speaker 1: And what we've seen is that over the last decade,
Speaker 1: I did the study on the adjusted injury rates as
Speaker 1: it compares to unfair scheduling. Two of the three teams
Speaker 1: that have been most unfairly impacted by scheduling were also
Speaker 1: two of the three most injured teams over the last decade,
Speaker 1: and of the top five teams that have been the
Speaker 1: most injured over the last decade, four of those five
Speaker 1: teams have had top ten worst and most unfair rest situations.
Speaker 1: So there's not a perfect correlation one to thirty two
Speaker 1: between injuries and rest because injuries happen, and certain teams
Speaker 1: get good injury luck one year and bad injury luck
Speaker 1: the next, like different things happen to different teams. But
Speaker 1: when you look at the extreme end of the spectrum,
Speaker 1: the teams that have had the worst and most unfair
Speaker 1: rest situations, the fact that most of those teams are
Speaker 1: also falling out as being the most injured should open
Speaker 1: up eyes that beyond just being unfair and giving a
Speaker 1: team a competitive edge in that particular game, This also
Speaker 1: has a cumulate effect over the course of the season
Speaker 1: um and teams are losing players because of this unfair
Speaker 1: scheduling uh edges and disadvantages that the NFL is providing
Speaker 1: based upon the way they do their schedule and it's
Speaker 1: just it's just not fair. Warren phenomenal. By the way,
Speaker 1: the teams he was talking about, the Giants and Colts
Speaker 1: second and third, most injured, second and third worst prep
Speaker 1: rest ranking. Redskin is most injured, it's worst preparest ranking.
Speaker 1: Patriots fifth lows injured, sixth worst preparest ranking. Warren, great stuff.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, man, appreciate it. Thank Joe Warren.
Speaker 1: Sharbauck sacks football