The schedule makers seem to have been kind to the Falcons this season.
Welcome to the NFL schedule release, when our excitement for a season which is still months away gets renewed yet again, as it was during the draft and as it will be when Training Camp rolls around.
We now know the exact dates of when each team will be playing, and within those dates I would like to take a bit of a nuanced approach in viewing the schedule.
While it’s true that the Falcons will play 17 games in 18 weeks just like everyone else, not all weeks will be the same when factoring rest and recovery into the equation. In this article, the third edition of a schedule preview I started two years ago, we’ll take a look at which specific weeks will have the Birds disadvantaged due to the opposition having extra rest and when they will have more of an advantage.
First, for the purposes of this breakdown, let’s define what the terms “rest advantage” and “rest disadvantage” are.
A rest advantage is when the Falcons have more time to prepare than their opponent for a specific matchup than vice versa. This could be because their opposition is coming off of a Monday Night Football Game, because Atlanta is coming off of a bye week or when the Birds are coming off of a Thursday Night Football game and have an extra three days of rest. If the Falcons have at least one more day to prepare than their opponent, that will be classified as a “rest advantage” game.
As you may 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 are coming off of a bye week or their own Thursday Night Football Game. Atlanta would also be at a disadvantage if they were to be coming off of a Monday Night Football game, giving them one fewer day to recover and prepare for the next matchup.
Last season, the 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 lone victory coming against a Tim Boyle and Trevor Siemian quarterbacked Jets team. If you would like to read last year’s breakdown, you can find that 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 ponder over that and I promise there will be plenty of predictions made in that time. This will specifically highlight just the games where the Falcons will have more rest than their opponent and the games where they will have less.
First, let’s take a look at this season’s schedule as a whole:
Week 1: vs. Pittsburgh Steelers, 1 p.m. EST, September 8
Week 2: @ Philadelphia Eagles, Monday Night Football, 8:15 p.m., September 16
Week 3: vs. Kansas City Chiefs, Sunday Night Football, 8:20 p.m., September 22
Week 4: vs. New Orleans Saints, 1 p.m., September 29
Week 5: vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Thursday Night Football, 8:15 p.m., October 3
Week 6: @ Carolina Panthers, 4:25 p.m., October 13
Week 7: vs. Seattle Seahawks, 1 p.m., October 20
Week 8: @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 1 p.m., October 27
Week 9: vs. Dallas Cowboys, 1 p.m., November 3
Week 10: @ New Orleans Saints, 1 p.m., November 10
Week 11: @ Denver Broncos, 4:05 p.m., November 17
Week 12: BYE WEEK
Week 13: vs. Los Angeles Chargers, 1 p.m., December 1
Week 14: @ Minnesota Vikings, 1 p.m., December 8
Week 15: @ Las Vegas Raiders, Monday Night Football, 8:15 p.m., December 16
Week 16: vs. New York Giants, 1 p.m., December 22
Week 17: @ Washington Commanders, TBD
Week 18: vs. Carolina Panthers, TBD
Rest Advantage Weeks
This is defined as weeks when the Falcons will have a longer period of time to prepare for an opponent than their opponent will have to prepare for them.
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 extra preparation over their opponent will come in Week 6 and will be the result of a Thursday Night Football matchup against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 5, giving them an extra three days of recuperation.
Week 8: @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Sunday, October 27, 1:00 p.m. ET – 1 day
The Falcons don’t have anything special going on between weeks 7 and 8, playing on Sunday afternoon on each of those game days. The advantage comes from the Buccaneers being tagged for a Monday Night Football matchup against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 7, giving them one fewer day of preparation for Atlanta. Tampa, coincidentally, will go right back to another MNF matchup, against the Chiefs, the very next week after this game.
Week 13: vs. Los Angeles Chargers, Sunday, December 1, 1:00 p.m. ET – 7 days
Atlanta has its bye in Week 12, which plays into one of the NFL’s roughest scheduling spots of the season for the Chargers. Not only will the Falcons get an extra week of rest, but the Bolts will be coming off of a MNF game against the Ravens in Week 12, giving them a short turnaround before also having to flip timezones from the west coast to the east coast. This is what we call a scheduling nightmare.
Total Rest Advantage Time: 11 days
Rest Disadvantage Weeks
This is defined as weeks when the Falcons will have a shorter period of time to prepare for their opponent than their opponent will have to prepare for them.
Week 2: @ Philadelphia Eagles, Monday, September 16, 8:15 p.m. ET – 2 days
The Eagles will be cashing in two extra days of rest to prepare for Atlanta, with their Week 1 matchup against the Green Bay Packers coming on Friday, September 6 in Brazil. While that game will technically be tallied as a home game for them, Week 2 will be Philly’s true home opener.
Week 3: vs. Kansas City Chiefs, Sunday, September 22, 8:15 p.m. ET – 1 day
This one day rest advantage for the defending champions is the direct result of the Falcons playing Week 2, against the Eagles, on Monday Night Football.
Week 7: vs. Seattle Seahawks, Sunday, October 20, 1:00 p.m. ET – 3 days
A Week 6 Thursday Night Football matchup against the San Francisco 49ers will give Seattle an extra three days of rest, which will help mitigate the time change adjustment they will 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: vs. New York Giants, Sunday, December 22, 1:00 p.m. ET – 1 day
Another 1-day special, which is the result of a Monday Night Football appearance for Atlanta at Las Vegas. The bigger issue for the Falcons here than that one day is that they’ll have to change time zones in what will be a short week between weeks 15 and 16.
Total Rest Disadvantage Time: 7 days
Other Schedule Notes:
- The Falcons will not have to face any team that’s coming off of a bye week this season. This is a major bit of fortune the schedule makers have bestowed upon them.
- The four primetime matchups the Falcons have slated for this season are as many as they have had in each of the past four seasons combined. They had zero primetime slots in all of 2023. Over the course of 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 have just two cold weather games on the schedule — Week 11 at Denver and Week 17 at Washington. They will play every other game from November through the regular season finale in January in a domed stadium.
- There will be just 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 at Denver), and weeks 14 and 15 (at Minnesota and at Las Vegas). Every other time they play on the road they will return to Atlanta the very next week. The team’s longest home stand is three games, between weeks 3 and 5.
- Atlanta will have to play just two games out west this season — at Las Vegas and at Denver. While the Birds will have a shorter turnaround coming back home following the Raiders game, they will enjoy a bye week right after the Broncos game.
- Outside of their primetime games and possibly the last two games of the season (none 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 what’s a weird quirk, there will be three different instances where the team Atlanta faces will be coming off of a matchup with the Baltimore Ravens the week before — Week 8 against the Bucs, Week 13 against the Chargers and Week 16 against the Giants.
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