Bye weeks. They are an ultimate inevitability of fantasy football season and often come during the most inconvenient matchups. So, how should we approach bye weeks during the most crucial time of the season, draft day? There are three vastly different bye week strategies you can utilize during your draft. Let’s take a look at each strategy and the advantages they bring.
Bye Week Strategy for 2024 Fantasy Football
Spread Them Out
This is the basic bye week strategy that most teams employ. The thought is you spread your bye weeks out so you’re at near full strength most of the season. This bye week strategy is easier to implement in recent years due to the NFL spreading out their bye weeks more. Still, there are times, like Week 12 and Week 14, when six teams are on bye. Drafting and maintaining a roster with this bye week strategy can be difficult but here are a couple of tips to make it easier
- Focus on weeks with fewer teams on BYE – This includes Weeks 7 and 9. In Week 7, the Bears and Cowboys are the only teams on BYE while in week 9 it’s the Steelers and 49ers. So if you take Christian McCaffrey or CeeDee Lamb in round one, you’re less likely to find yourself with more than a few players on a BYE in those weeks unless you heavily invest in one or both of those teams.
- Know your league schedule – Does your league have certain weeks set for rivalries or divisional games? Week 14 is a popular week to have divisonal rivals play to end the fantasy regular season. Consider you might be playing a must-win game to end your regular season when drafting players from the Ravens, Broncos, Texans, Colts, Patriots, and Commanders.
Stack ’em Up
It’s the opposite mindset of the traditional method and while it sounds crazy, it does make sense in a way. Traditionally if you spread them out you aren’t at full strength most of the year. You’ll find yourself missing your top WR one week, your top RB the next, and your QB the week after. What if all but one, maybe two weeks you were at full strength? Consistently facing teams missing one or two players? That’s the vision when utilizing this approach.
This approach is a sacrificial play. By stacking as many bye weeks as you can into one single week, you’re almost throwing in the towel for that matchup but assuring your team is at or close to 100% available the rest of the season. It’s a risk because you could find yourself needing to go on a winning streak to make the playoffs, knowing that one week with everyone on bye is lurking around the corner.
As I mentioned earlier, with bye weeks more spread out, this approach can be harder to pull off. With only two weeks with more than 4 teams on a bye, you might find yourself having multiple players on the same team which is always risky to begin with. Those two weeks also come in weeks 12 and 14, when teams are jockeying for a playoff spot or potentially a first-round bye. Still, playing yourself into first place at full strength through most of the season can be too tempting to pass on.
No Bye Week Strategy?
Arguably the boldest and personally my favorite approach: who cares? The line of thinking is why should I let a BYE week change my opinion about who I draft? Let me break it down like this:
The NFL Season is 18 weeks long. Most leagues wrap up their regular season after week 14 and don’t play a week 18 schedule. So BYE weeks account for just north of 7% of the regular season and 5.8% of the year with playoff weeks included. Are you seriously going to choose one player over someone you like because of 1/17th of their schedule three months down the road? What will your roster look like at that time? Not like the one you have at the end of your draft, I can tell you that.
With this strategy, bye weeks are the last thing you look at as a tie-breaker, if you consider it at all. After all, you are building your team for week 1 when you draft, not week 12. Don’t let one single week sway you from taking who you believe to be the best player on the board when you’re on the clock.
So there you have it. Three different approaches you can use to try and build the best roster you can to start the season. There is no right or wrong answer to these approaches, each have their benefits and risks. Go with whichever one you feel most comfortable with. Below I’ve left a handy chart showing bye weeks. Feel free to use it for your in person drafts to help you keep track of who is on bye when.
2024 NFL Bye Weeks
| Week | # of Teams on Bye | Team |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 | |
| 2 | 0 | |
| 3 | 0 | |
| 4 | 0 | |
| 5 | 4 | DET,LAC, PHI, TEN |
| 6 | 4 | KC, LAR, MIA, MIN |
| 7 | 2 | CHI, DAL |
| 8 | 0 | |
| 9 | 2 | PIT, SF |
| 10 | 4 | CLE, GB, LV, SEA |
| 11 | 4 | ARI, CAR, NYG, TB |
| 12 | 6 | ATL, BUF, CIN, JAC, NYJ, NOS |
| 13 | 0 | |
| 14 | 6 | BAL, DEN, HOU, IND, NEP, WAS |
| 15 | 0 | |
| 14 | 0 | |
| 16 | 0 | |
| 17 | 0 | |
| 18 | 0 |
Who’s your favorite dark horse QB1? Drop some names in the comments below and then make sure to check out our 2024 Fantasy Football Draft Kit for more great rankings and analysis.