Scheduling the NFL playoffs every year is one of the most overlooked tasks the league undertakes, and Super Bowl champion Tony Dungy is very much aware of that. Scheduling overall is a daunting challenge, and the regular season is obviously the biggest challenge of all for the matchmakers. The league naturally wants a level playing field when it comes to scheduling games; however, achieving that is much harder than it seems.
What does Dungy think of the NFL schedule?
Tony Dungy Says NFL Playoffs, Regular Season Schedule Is ‘Unfair’
With the NFL scheduling a single week’s action across a five-day span (Thursday to Monday), complications arise between game weeks. The most familiar issue is teams facing a “short week” — when they played late in one week and early in the next. This means they have less time to recover for the second game compared to their rivals, who might’ve had a “long week.”
The fairness of this is particularly questioned in the playoffs, when the stakes are much higher.
Super Bowl-winning head coach Tony Dungy, who led the Indianapolis Colts to Peyton Manning’s first ring, raised awareness of this issue. On Day 2 of Super Bowl Radio Row, PFSN asked him,
“You tweeted out that the playoff schedule was unfair, a few weeks ago. Now we’re talking about international games where some teams might have to fly 16 hours. What are your thoughts on that?”
Dungy responded with cautious optimism regarding the NFL’s expansion.
“Well, I’m all for growing the game and building the game, but you do have to make it fair,” he said. “And I know when I was coaching, that was always the first thing that I looked at, is not who we were playing, but when we were playing.”
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Bye weeks, Monday night games, and Thursday night games play the biggest role in skewing the fairness of the NFL schedule. If a team comes off a Monday Night Football game and then has to play a team coming off a bye, it’s naturally going into the matchup on the back foot.
“You’re coming off byes, you’re coming off Monday nights, you’re coming off late, you’re coming off west coast trips. And there’s some things you can’t do anything about that, but we have to understand, when we schedule overseas games, when we schedule Monday nights and Thursday nights, there are unintended consequences.”
Dungy zeroed in on the postseason, emphasizing the importance of keeping the playing field as level as possible to achieve a fair outcome.
“I know we wanted more TV for the playoffs,” he added. “But when you play a playoff game on the road on Monday night, you’re the Houston Texans, and you go to Pittsburgh, and you win, and you get back Tuesday morning at 5 a.m. And then you’ve got to go on the road again. That’s a disadvantage on a short week. And we try not to have that happen in a regular season. And now I’m saying, why do we create it so it’s going to happen in the playoffs? That’s not fair.”
Scheduling issues are usually overlooked by general fans. As if schedule timing isn’t enough, matchmakers are stuck figuring out which divisions will play each other every season, since every team cannot play against every other team.
