2025 NFL Schedule Release: The Worst Bye Weeks of the Year

The NFL schedule release is pretty silly. We already know who everybody is playing, this is just the order. It’s like telling someone playing poker that they’ll get a straight but then being all excited when you tell them what order the cards will come in.

On the other hand, it gets us some fun team videos. And of course, the biggest thing we learn for fantasy football purposes is when teams aren’t playing.

Schedule release day tells us who plays whom and when, and sure, there’s some information there — rest advantages, travel advantages, weird Wednesday games because the league is greedy, and so on. But for 90% of our fantasy football rosters, it won’t matter much, because we either play them or we don’t. But when a player is on a bye, we know we can’t play him. That’s a different matter altogether.

So with the schedule now fully announced, below I’m going to go through the 2025 bye schedule to try to find what we need to know, what we can do to overcome the absences, and what week of the 2025 season is our Byepocalypse Week.

2025 NFL Schedule Release: The Bye Weeks

Here are the byes for the 2025 season:

There are no byes in Week 13 because of Thanksgiving. It’s been that way for several years now. But the last two years, there was a stray no-bye week (Week 8 both times) for reasons I never really understood. This year, there’s no such random byeless week. But we still have four byes in Week 14, because the league hates fantasy and wants fantasy players to be sad. (That’s probably not the actual reason, but it feels like it.)

Let’s go through them one by one to find the worst bye week of 2025 for fantasy football.

Week 5 (Falcons, Bears, Packers, Steelers)

Key names on a bye (in order of their place in the FTN Fantasy rankings):

• Quarterback: Caleb Williams, Jordan Love, Michael Penix Jr. (and Aaron Rodgers?)
• Running Back: Bijan Robinson, Josh Jacobs, Kaleb Johnson, D’Andre Swift
• Wide Receiver: Drake London, DJ Moore, DK Metcalf, Matthew Golden, Rome Odunze, Jayden Reed
• Tight End: Tucker Kraft, Colston Loveland, Kyle Pitts, Pat Freiermuth

For the most part, this is a bunch of B+ players being out — Robinson is the only first-rounder we’ll be down in Week 5. There are names we care about being gone from all four teams (especially if Rodgers does end up landing in Pittsburgh) is cumbersome, with all four teams dropping notable names, but nobody is calling for help because of this week.

Week 6 (Texans, Vikings)

Key names on a bye (in order of their place in the FTN Fantasy rankings):

• Quarterback: C.J. Stroud, J.J. McCarthy
• Running Back: Joe Mixon, Aaron Jones Sr.
• Wide Receiver: Justin Jefferson, Nico Collins, Jordan Addison
• Tight End: T.J. Hockenson, Dalton Schultz

Two teams. Why does the NFL have some two-team weeks and some six-team weeks? Because they hate you, apparently. The receiver casualties in Week 6 are brutal, but at least its offset by there being so few absences.

Week 7 (Ravens, Bills)

Key names on a bye (in order of their place in the FTN Fantasy rankings):

• Quarterback: Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson
• Running Back: Derrick Henry, James Cook
• Wide Receiver: Zay Flowers, Khalil Shakir
• Tight End: Mark Andrews, Dalton Kincaid, Isaiah Likely

Again, two teams. But this one is particularly brutal, costing us potentially the top two quarterbacks in all of fantasy football and a pair of top-15 running backs. Week 7 is saved a bit by relatively light group of receiver casualties, but man, the losses at quarterback are crushing.

Week 8 (Cardinals, Lions, Jaguars, Raiders, Rams, Seahawks)

Key names on a bye (in order of their place in the FTN Fantasy rankings):

• Quarterback: Kyler Murray, Jared Goff, Trevor Lawrence, Matthew Stafford, Geno Smith, Sam Darnold
• Running Back: Jahmyr Gibbs, Ashton Jeanty, Kyren Williams, Kenneth Walker III, James Conner, Travis Etienne Jr., Zach Charbonnet
• Wide Receiver: Puka Nacua, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Brian Thomas Jr., Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Marvin Harrison Jr., Davante Adams, Travis Hunter, Jameson Williams, Jakobi Meyers, Cooper Kupp
• Tight End: Brock Bowers, Trey McBride, Sam LaPorta

Six teams. The pre-Halloween week is scary for fantasy players. The list of quarterback losses in Week 8 is not crushing, but everywhere else, it could be bad. The top two tight ends? Three top-10 receivers and four more in the top 20? Last year’s top running back and the generational rookie? This was mean, NFL.  

Week 9 (Browns, Jets, Eagles, Buccaneers)

Key names on a bye (in order of their place in the FTN Fantasy rankings):

• Quarterback: Jalen Hurts, Baker Mayfield, Justin Fields
• Running Back: Saquon Barkley, Bucky Irving, Breece Hall, Quinshon Judkins
• Wide Receiver: A.J. Brown, Garrett Wilson, Mike Evans, DeVonta Smith, Chris Godwin, Emeka Egbuka, Jerry Jeudy
• Tight End: David Njoku, Dallas Goedert, Cade Otton

A three-team bye! That’s weird!

OK, it’s four, but how many Browns are we really going to care about? Losing the Eagles is always going to cost us a lot of heartache (just ask my son), and the Buccaneers have some names we really care about, but complementing those two with the Browns and Jets is a nice offset.

Week 10 (Bengals, Cowboys, Chiefs, Titans)

Key names on a bye (in order of their place in the FTN Fantasy rankings):

• Quarterback: Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, Dak Prescott, Cameron Ward
• Running Back: Chase Brown, Tony Pollard, Isiah Pacheco, Javonte Williams
• Wide Receiver: Ja’Marr Chase, CeeDee Lamb, Tee Higgins, Rashee Rice, Xavier Worthy, George Pickens, Calvin Ridley
• Tight End: Travis Kelce, Jake Ferguson, Mike Gesicki

Any time you lose the Bengals’ offensive players from your list of usable candidates, it’s rough. This offense could be electric yet again. That said, the Chiefs’ offense isn’t as formidable as it once was, the Cowboys don’t have a lot after CeeDee Lamb, and the Titans are a huge question mark.

Week 11 (Colts, Saints)

Key names on a bye (in order of their place in the FTN Fantasy rankings):

• Quarterback: Anthony Richardson Sr., Tyler Shough
• Running Back: Jonathan Taylor, Alvin Kamara
• Wide Receiver: Chris Olave, Josh Downs, Michael Pittman Jr.
• Tight End: Tyler Warren

You could legitimately see no fantasy teams in your league have to bench anyone but running backs in Week 11 because of byes. There’s a path for the Colts to have a good offense, but ultimately, these are not two very stressful absences.

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Week 12 (Broncos, Chargers, Dolphins, Commanders)

Key names on a bye (in order of their place in the FTN Fantasy rankings):

• Quarterback: Jayden Daniels, Bo Nix, Justin Herbert, Tua Tagovailoa
• Running Back: De’Von Achane, Omarion Hampton, RJ Harvey, Brian Robinson Jr.
• Wide Receiver: Ladd McConkey, Tyreek Hill, Terry McLaurin, Courtland Sutton, Jaylen Waddle, Deebo Samuel
• Tight End: Evan Engram, Jonnu Smith, Zach Ertz

The regular season winding down and three (maybe four) starting quarterbacks taking a break is very rough, to say nothing of the roster of good receivers sitting out that week. The running back absences aren’t nearly as bad, especially if the rookies don’t step in like gangbusters. But the pain of this week is mostly under center.

Week 14 (Panthers, Patriots, Giants, 49ers)

Key names on a bye (in order of their place in the FTN Fantasy rankings):

• Quarterback: Drake Maye, Brock Purdy, Bryce Young, Russell Wilson
• Running Back: Christian McCaffrey, Chuba Hubbard, TreVeyon Henderson, Tyrone Tracy Jr.
• Wide Receiver: Malik Nabers, Tetairoa McMillan, Brandon Aiyuk, Jauan Jennings, Ricky Pearsall
• Tight End: George Kittle, Hunter Henry

A year ago, there were six Week 14 byes, and the list included the Ravens, Colts and Texans. There were some big names. This year … I mean, it’s still bad. Absolutely no one would be surprised if Christian McCaffrey, Malik Nabers and/or George Kittle finished as the top scorers at their respective positions. But it’s not a deep list of losses. You don’t want to be down CMC or Nabers in the last week of your fantasy regular season, but at least you aren’t likely to lose a mass of players.

Which Week Is the 2025 Byemageddon?

Usually, this is a hard decision. Do you pick the week with six byes but a bunch of good-not-great teams or the week with four byes of all star-laden rosters? Do you pick the worse bye that is early in the season or the slightly easier bye but late in the season for maximum stress? There’s one “worst” week of byes for fantasy, but identifying which one it is isn’t always so simple.

This year? It’s simple. Week 8 features six byes. It features an absolutely brutal slates of receivers sitting out (seriously, Davante Adams is, like, only the sixth-best receiver we’ll be missing), and the running back and tight end absences aren’t any nicer. Quarterback skates by relatively unscathed, but it’s not like losing Kyler Murray and Jared Goff is all that great. It’s hard sometimes. It’s not hard this year.

Week 8 is the Fantasy Byemageddon Week of the 2025 NFL season.