Packers got no help from schedule makers in 2022 and it affected season

In the NBA and MLB, star players sit out games without injury for one reason: rest. But with 17 games in an NFL season, NFL teams don’t have the luxury of sitting their best players just to keep them fresh for a stretch run.

The way the schedule broke for the Packers, their inability to get rest — especially in the middle of the defining (losing) stretch of their season — played a role in what ultimately put them in a position to have to win out to even have a chance at the postseason.

Warren Sharp and his team at Sharp Football researched rest advantage for betting purposes and found there’s a material difference in underdogs covering 4+ with a rest disadvantage vs. without one. The team with the single worse rest advantage over the course of the season? The Green Bay Packers. And we knew this coming into the year even before accounting for strength of schedule, though by DVOA, the Packers have played the 11th toughest so far.

Per Sharp’s analysis, “teams with a rest advantage over their opponent from weeks 14 thru 18 went 21-11 (66%),” which means the rest advantage starts to matter more later in the season, an intuitive notion given the nature of a grueling 18 week season. That has meaningful relevance for every team in the NFL down the stretch, not just the Packers.

(Via Sharp Football)

Not only do the Packers have an aggregate rest disadvantage, but they also went through an absolutely brutal stretch of games where they faced one in consecutive weeks.