Our 2-6 Cleveland Browns are on their bye week for this Sunday and will be off until they play against the New York Jets on the road in Week 10. I was bored lying in bed, couldn’t sleep and this idea came into my head…
What if the bye week mattered in a different way?
Now, currently, the point of the bye week is mainly to recover from the various injuries the team has and simply get prepared for the second half of the season. It’s not looking good for the Dawgs this year, we all know that with the current record and all the drama in these parts…
What I thought would be an interesting idea is what if the “bye week” mattered for a team that was assigned to another? That you would be rooting for another team to win that week instead of it just being an off week. I mean, there are various instances closer to playoff time where one team is rooting for their usual foe to try and beat another team to clinch a playoff spot or whatnot.
This would be cool because instead of just sitting around waiting for the following week, a franchise would actually have an entirely different team to root for… It’s a bit different than just fantasy football players, making the weekend entertaining unless you have a smoking hot girlfriend in a good mood.
For this year, let’s say our Browns team assigned was the Chicago Bears…
They play Cincinnati. Thus, we Browns fans would want them to get the win against the Bengals so it would count for a win for the Browns on the W-L record instead of the weekend meaning nothing.
The Bears had a bye week this past Week Five. That week, the Browns played the Minnesota Vikings and lost. This would’ve meant the Bears took a loss on their W-L back then because of the Browns.
Another way to do this is simply to have one team’s win or loss count for the bye week team and not for each other.
Now, I’m sure plenty of fans would hate this idea because it makes part of your team’s record dependent on a different team’s outcome. I certainly understand that, but it would make it part of the fun. Also, it’s only a single game of the season and not anything more than that for the year.
Yes, this is just an idea in the works and would have to have a lot of rules and regulations to be solidified by the league as a whole. Even so, every rule and whatnot starts somewhere and this could actually be something.
Also, imagine each season having a “matchup show” where the league randomly assigns which teams play for each other that season and how that could be a big thing for who your team gets assigned to. It adds even more fun for this great league.
What fan bases look for on their team’s bye week is division rivals and who they play and simply top teams in their conference and who they are against.
Let’s make it something more…
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