Ravens Have Slight Schedule Advantage

Even when the Baltimore Ravens and all of the other teams around the league know their opponents months in advance, the NFL schedule release still matters because of how many other factors are at play.

How many primetime games each team gets, who plays on the league's big holidays, who plays international games, and more questions only get answered once the league unveils the full schedule. So while the event may be drawn-out, it's still an exciting time around the league.

From a more competitive sense, one aspect of the schedule to always keep an eye on is which teams get a rest advantage over their opponents. A rest advantage is essentially when a team has more days off before a game than its opponent. For example, a team coming off its bye week would usually have an advantage of seven days over an opponent that played the week before.

This year, the Ravens were fortunate enough to end up with a net rest edge of +5 days compared to their opponents, according to Sharp Football Analysis. A full breakdown of the weeks where they're at a rest advantage or disadvantage is as follows:

• -1: Week 4 at Kansas City Chiefs
• -3: Week 6 vs. Los Angeles Rams
• +7: Week 8 vs. Chicago Bears
• +3: Week 10 at Minnesota Vikings
• -3: Week 12 vs. New York Jets
• +3: Week 14 vs. Pittsburgh Steelers
• -1: Week 17 at Green Bay Packers

It's important to note that the game against the Packers could end up being on a Saturday, which wouldn't change the number for that game, but could give the Ravens another +1 for their Week 18 game against the Steelers.

The Ravens don't have quite as much of an advantage as last year when they had a net rest edge of +16, which Sharp Football Analysis claims is the largest in NFL history.

The team with the largest net rest edge is the Detroit Lions, who have a difference of +13 days compared to their opponents. On the other side of the coin, the Las Vegas Raiders have the largest net rest disadvantage at -19 days.

Even if the rest differential isn't the biggest advantage, any advantage is welcome during the grind that is the NFL season.