Fantasy Football: How to navigate bye-mageddon with 6 NFL teams off in Week 8

https://sports.yahoo.com/fantasy/article/fantasy-football-how-to-navigate-bye-mageddon-with-6-nfl-teams-off-in-week-8-174109912.html

In late September, we opened up the bye week discussion. We outlined the schedule for the next two months, we outlined different strategies. Like any good manager, you made some notes in your head and got to work. That’s what winners do.

But it’s time to revisit all of this stuff, because the next week of the fantasy football season is the most challenging of the year. The Bye-mageddon is just about here.

Let’s review the bye week schedule, including the three weeks that have already passed:

Week 5: Falcons, Bears, Packers, Steelers
Week 6: Texans, Vikings
Week 7: Ravens, Bills
Week 8: Cardinals, Lions, Jaguars, Raiders, Rams, Seahawks
Week 9: Browns, Jets, Eagles, Buccaneers
Week 10: Bengals, Cowboys, Chiefs, Titans
Week 11: Colts, Saints
Week 12: Broncos, Chargers, Dolphins, Commanders
Week 13: Everyone plays
Week 14: Panthers, Patriots, Giants, 49ers

Week 8 is obviously the worst bye week slate of the year, with six teams (some of them very good teams) out of action. And the challenge continues in Weeks 9 and 10, when four teams sit in each of those respective weeks. Now is the biggest part of bye-week season. This is the challenge.

Let’s revisit the critical themes.

Now’s the time for honest self-scouting

How good, exactly, is your fantasy team? Don’t just consider your record, but also your overall points scored — a much better barometer for team strength. Where are you deep? Where are you challenged? Would you project for a playoff spot right now? Would you secure a bye? How far from the playoffs are you?

Don’t just analyze your own situation, but compare it to your opponents. Scout them, too. Note which teams have similar shapes to yours, and more importantly, identify teams that have contrasting problems to yours. Those could be potential trade partners.

What’s more important for your team — today or tomorrow?

If you’re one of those glorious 7-0 or 6-1 or even 5-2 teams, life is pretty great right now. You’ll want to keep the winning going in Week 8, sure, but you have the luxury of looking ahead with your roster decisions and trade negotiations. You might be able to pick off a Puka Nacua or Bucky Irving at less than market price because you can afford to wait. Or perhaps you can target a player with a looming bye week in a trade, because the immediate games aren’t as important to you as they might be to other managers.

Meanwhile, if the Nacua or Irving or Brock Bowers manager is dealing with a losing team, he or she might need to mobilize quickly. Those teams could already be in must-win mode. That also goes for a team that might fall into bye-week problems while they’re still sitting on a mediocre record.

Understand all bye weeks are not uniform

It’s always puzzled me why the NFL doesn’t roll out eight different bye weeks of equal size — four teams per week. And it’s long been posited that a double-bye system might make sense, to give players more rest and to even make Thursday night football a more watchable product (you could tuck a bye week next to a Thursday game week, so the players wouldn’t have those absurd four-day turnarounds every so often).

In Week 8, we have six teams on holiday. That’s our only Bye-mageddon of the 2025 season. Also be mindful that eight teams have already taken their bye. One reason to fall in love with Bijan Robinson this year — health permitting, he can assist you every week from this point forward. Same goes for Josh Allen, or Nico Collins.

I can’t say this enough — during the heaviest bye weeks, you want to audit every roster in your league and judge how much the resting teams impact each roster. The motivation to make trades will never be higher than it is in this pocket.

Your opponents have to make more reluctant choices

Injuries are always a pain in fantasy football, but they’re easier to navigate in September because there are no byes yet and most of your roster is ostensibly healthy. Come October, the injury report starts to get out of hand and now we have lighter schedules to manage. Even if you have IR spots in your league, those will start to fill up, too.

This leads to one important distinction: now is the time of year your opponents will start dropping players they don’t want to. The need to win now might be overwhelming. Perhaps a set of cluster injuries will go past even their IR resources and will force them to cut a player who would have value to someone else. Stash-and-hope isn’t always a plausible strategy for that manager struggling to collect wins.

I always want you to carefully audit the players dropped in your league every week, but that’s especially critical now. Much better players get cut in October and onward because of the changing shape of the fantasy environment.

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Look ahead, but not too far ahead

Maybe that jumbo bye in Week 8 is bad for your roster, or maybe a different week hits your roster hard. Maybe Week 10 is out to get you, or Week 12, or Week 14.

Don’t get distracted by all that. Your roster will look a lot different by the latter stages of bye season.

It’s a lot like life, really. Learn from the past, look forward to the future, but try to focus on the most important thing we have — the present. Make good choices this week with your waivers, with your roster, with your lineup decisions. Plan for the near future and even the extended future, but not at the expense of losing the present.

Sometimes punting is okay

Let’s say you’re the monster in your fantasy league, in first place with a perfect record or a 6-1 mark. Let’s also assume you’re hit hard with byes in an approaching week. Maybe it’s Week 8. Maybe it’s one of the other four-packs to come.

Generally, I want to be competitive every week. I don’t want to concede any game. But a team with a juggernaut record might be able to shrug off a steep bye-week challenge and not go overboard just to compete in one game. Maybe this means taking one zero in a starting spot (consider what your opponent is starting; they might be hurting, too). Or maybe you wind up tanking a game because it’s really not that important in the long run.

It’s an outlier strategy that I’d only consider in the perfect circumstance, but if I were sitting on an undefeated team right now, I might trade into a specific bye week. I’d take on all the immediate liability I could (with star players, of course), knowing one loss won’t hurt as much. Think of the ridiculous roster you could have ready to go once the rest weeks were complete, at the modest price of one game.

It’s not for everyone. If you’re close to .500, don’t consider this move. But in the right outlier spot, it might make sense.

Too long, didn’t read

Here are some quick-hitters to finish up:

If you’re near the top of the standings, try to identify losing fantasy teams who might want to trade a star (perhaps an injured star) to fill pressing, immediate needs. You might package multiple good players to land one transcendent player.
If you’re near the bottom it might make sense to shop your most appealing player to patch up several starting spots immediately. Generally we advise against trading the best player in a swap, but it might make sense in your current situation.
Don’t let the bye weeks emotionally mess with you. The decisions are more challenging, but this time of the year also rewards skill more directly. And you might need fewer points to win your game than usual; look at your opponent, they might be struggling for answers, too.
Audit every player dropped; now is when your opponents start cutting players they really don’t want to. This is especially critical in Week 8, the heaviest bye week of the year.
Eyeball the bye-week schedule and do some proactive planning where it makes sense, but also remember that your future roster will probably look a lot different when those far-away bye weeks finally land.
Now that we’re in midseason, it’s appropriate to start leaning into defensive strength around the league. What we care about is outliers — what defensive units are great or awful at defending a certain type of play or position? Put this data to good use; now the numbers have some meaning. And now that we’re in the second half of October, I’ll start to look at the later weeks in the season, eyeball what potential playoff schedules are attractive.