The 5 O’Clock Club: 2025 Commanders have 3rd-worst “net rest days” in NFL per Sharp Football analysis

It’s 5 o’clock somewhere…

The 5 o’clock club is published from time to time during the season, and aims to provide a forum for reader-driven discussion at a time of day when there isn’t much NFL news being published. Feel free to introduce topics that interest you in the comments below.

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Recently, Warren Sharp released his annual analysis of “net rest days”, which analyzes all 32 teams on a week-by-week basis (and cumulatively for the season) to assess which teams are advantaged or disadvantaged by having more or fewer days of rest compared to their opponents.

Sharp gets about 48 hours of attention in mid-May every year by discussing his concerns about this aspect of schedule imbalance at a time when the NFL schedule is the only real topic of conversation among the league’s year-round fans.

This year’s analysis is generally a bit kinder to the NFL than last year’s; in 2024, Sharp declared that the NFL had created the most imbalanced schedule in league history. This year, he sees some overall improvement.

The news is a bit worse for Washington. In 2024, Sharp found that the Commanders were in a 3-way tie for the 9th-worst net rest days at -2.

This year, he finds that Washington has the 3rd-worst situation at a hefty -13.

You can read the entire article by clicking on the linked title below, but I have provided an extended excerpt to give you the flavor of Sharp’s comments about this season’s net rest days.

Sharp Football Analysis

Teams Helped & Hurt By NFL Schedule: Lions, Commanders & More

This year, for example:

• The New York Giants play 11 games against teams expected to have a winning record this season. They play five games against teams with 14+ wins last year and nine games against teams with 11+ wins last year.
• The New England Patriots play five games against teams expected to have a winning record this season. They play zero games against teams with 14+ wins last year and three games against teams with 11+ wins last year.

Theoretically, these two teams are expected to have an even chance to compete for the Super Bowl this year, but the schedule of opponents they face makes it extremely likely that there will be nothing “even” about their likelihood of winning a Super Bowl.

The path through the 2025 schedule for the Giants is orders of magnitude more difficult.

There aren’t enough games played to distribute all the opponents evenly (think 31 games played each year, one against every other team in the NFL).

More than any other professional league, WHO you play matters more in the NFL, and the schedules are not going to be balanced.

As a result, if we know the opponents each team plays are not going to be balanced, the least the NFL could do is to try and keep the looks that they are trying to spread out the disadvantages from a game timing perspective as evenly as possible around the NFL.

Teams don’t want to play on short rest.

Teams don’t want to play opponents who have more rest than they do.

Considering all teams feel the same in this regard, the NFL might think to prioritize its schedule to balance the inequalities that inevitably will present themselves when you’re trying to schedule 272 games throughout a four-month season.

Which leads us to the second point.

The NFL does not prioritize making the schedule equitable.

There are guardrails to ensure the schedule they choose does not get too biased for their liking, but making a fair schedule is not a top priority, and who is to say the NFL’s opinion of what is “acceptable unfairness” is appropriate?

If this surprises you, you need to hear from the NFL’s VP of Broadcast Planning, Mike North, who said this about the schedule:

“You’ve got these 272 games and they are their assets… they are all worth a little something different. So we want to make sure that the ones that are worth the most are available to as many fans as possible.

Put them in national television windows get maximum value out of them.

We’re trying to drive engagement, drive viewership and obviously it’s a business, so drive revenue”

The NFL has made it clear that increasing viewership to increase ratings to land more lucrative media rights deals in the future is the #1 priority

They could make a perfectly fair schedule from a rest and prep perspective, but the schedule may not have as many great teams playing in prime time in a given week.

So, to place those “assets” where they are most likely to create spikes in viewership and ratings, the byproduct will be an increase in inequality.

The 2024 NFL schedule represented the all-time worst marks in several areas, and the 2025 NFL schedule, in most instances, adjusted to reduce these inequalities.

In summary, when it comes to this year’s schedule compared to prior iterations, there were more improvements made than problems added, which I couldn’t say at this time last year.

However, there is still work to be done to make the schedule more equitable.

For example:

• Last year, the #1 largest net rest edge was +16 days (Ravens), which was the largest in NFL history.
• This year, the #1 largest net rest edge is +13 days (Lions).

While an improvement, it still ranks as the #7 largest delta of the last 25 years (since 2000).

• Last year, there were 66 games played where one team had 3+ days of rest advantage, the most in NFL history.
• This year, there are 61 such games.

While an improvement, 61 games ranks as the #4 most in NFL history.

• Last year, there were 101 games played out of 272 (37%) where one team had a rest advantage over their opponent, the most in NFL history.
• This year, there are still an identical 101 games being played out of 272 (37%) where one team has a rest advantage over their opponent, tied for the most in NFL history.

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