Internet decries extra rest for 49ers in divisional round against Bucs or Cowboys
Bucs #Bucs
The NFL announced Sunday night the San Francisco 49ers will face the winner of tonight’s Buccaneers-Cowboys game in the NFC divisional round in next Sunday afternoon’s 3:30 p.m. window.
And the internet is already mad about it.
Notorious reply guys, NFL pundits and former players took to Twitter over the weekend to decry a competitive advantage for the Niners, who will get a little more than two days’ extra rest by virtue of playing in the Saturday afternoon window while their opponent plays Monday evening of wild card weekend.
Following the playoff expansion to 14 teams in 2020 — a move that eliminated a bye for the NFC and AFC 2-seeds — the NFL moved one of the wild card weekend games to Monday in 2021. Last season that Monday night winner (the eventual Super Bowl Champion Los Angeles Rams) had six days’ rest to the Bucs’ seven days’ rest in the divisional round. This year, the 49ers will enter with eight days’ rest to their opponent’s six.
Former Super Bowl champion Patriots running back Shane Vereen (who also played locally at Cal) was one of the most vocal on Sunday, tweeting “So, the winner of the Tampa/Dallas game will play the 49ers who will have had TWO days of extra rest… Make that make sense to me.”
“Two days might not sound like much to the casual fan. But let me tell you at this time of the season ever hour of recovery matters,” he continued. “Especially in the damn Playoffs!!!!!”
Prior to the playoff expansion, extra rest was seemingly a pretty big deal. From 2012-2019, every single Super Bowl participant had received a first round bye by virtue of being a one- or two-seed. The last team to make it that far without a bye was the 2012 Baltimore Ravens. But the last two years have seriously bucked that trend: in 2020, the Bucs made it to the Super Bowl as the 5-seed, and in 2021 both the Rams and the Bengals made it as 4-seeds. Three of the four teams playing on shorter rest last season won in the divisional round — including the 49ers, who shocked the top-seeded Packers in Lambeau. The Niners were playing on six days’ rest, while Green Bay was playing after two weeks off.
Obviously the flip side to this is Tampa Bay and Dallas had a full two extra days to prepare for their wild card game (something Seattle coach Pete Carroll likely would’ve appreciated).
The NFL schedule absolutely isn’t perfect and is entirely driven by what TV windows will make them the most ad dollars — not which slots maintain the best competitive advantage. That’s why the 49ers don’t have a bye this week and why Dallas-Tampa Bay is in the Monday evening window — not because the NFL is favoring any single team, but because they’re favoring something far more important to them: money.