{"id":200862,"date":"2025-10-09T17:04:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T17:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/200862\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T17:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T17:04:08","slug":"browns-get-hit-with-brutal-nfl-scheduling-quirk-in-week-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/200862\/","title":{"rendered":"Browns get hit with brutal NFL scheduling quirk in Week 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the 2025 NFL schedule<\/a> came out in May, the Cleveland Browns<\/a> should have filed a protest and asked the league to redo Week 6, because the Browns have been hit with a brutal scheduling quirk that only one other team in NFL<\/a> history has ever had to face.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Browns will be going into Week 6 coming off an international game in London, and they’ll be facing a Steelers<\/a> team coming off a bye week. It’s a setup the NFL tries to avoid, which is why this is only the second time this has ever happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let’s take a quick look at the one previous game where a team that played in Europe had to face a team coming off a bye.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the 2021 season, the Dolphins were sent to London to play the Jaguars<\/a> in Week 6. In Week 7, they were forced to play a Falcons team that was coming off a Week 6 bye. It’s hard to say if the London trip had any impact, but the Dolphins fell behind 20-7 early in the game. In the fourth quarter, the Falcons took a 27-14 lead before Miami was able to storm back, but in the end, the Dolphins’ ended up losing, 30-28, on a field goal as time expired.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is the only instance in NFL history where a team played in Europe one week and then faced a team coming off a bye the next week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first London game was played back in 2007, and for the first nine years of the series, getting stuck in a situation like this wouldn’t have even been possible because every team sent abroad was given a bye after their international game.\u00a0 In 2016, the Colts<\/a> decided they didn’t WANT a bye after their London game<\/a> — because they didn’t want it so early in the season — and since then, the NFL has allowed teams to request whether they want the bye after playing abroad. (The Steelers were on a bye in Week 6 following their international game in Ireland in Week 5.)<\/p>\n

Although the Browns are only the second team to play in Europe and face a team coming off a bye, there are two other instances where a team played an international game in North America and then had to play a team coming off a bye the following week. Unfortunately for the Browns, those teams went 0-2. If you throw in Miami’s loss, that means no team has ever won a game in the situation that Cleveland will find itself in Sunday against Pittsburgh.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let’s take a look at the other instances where this happened:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jets<\/a> at Bills<\/a> (Week 9, 2011)<\/p>\n

From 2008 thru 2013, the Bills played an annual game in Toronto. During the 2011 season, they played a Week 8 game in Canada, which turned out to be one of their most impressive wins of the year, a 23-0 victory over Washington. One week later, they faced a Jets team coming off a bye, and the 5-2 Bills got destroyed, 27-11, in a game where Buffalo was favored by 2.5.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2016, the NFL put the Texans in an awkward spot: Not only did they have to play the Raiders<\/a> in Mexico City in Week 11, but the game was on a Monday night, so they had to turn around and play the Chargers on a short rest in Week 12. In a game where the Texans were 2.5-point underdogs, the Chargers ended up winning 21-13.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When you look at all three of these games, the team coming off a bye outscored the team coming off the international game, 54-24, over the first three quarters. The team coming off the bye is also 2-0-1 against the spread.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not only are the Browns being forced to face a team coming off a bye, but they’re facing a Steelers team that almost never loses after a bye. Since Mike Tomlin was hired in 2007, the Steelers are 14-4 after a bye, which is tied for the best record in the NFL over that span.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Browns will also be starting a rookie quarterback in Dillon Gabriel<\/a>, which will also work out in Pittsburgh’s favor. The Steelers have now had two weeks to prepare for Gabriel, and they also have the best coach in the NFL at beating rookie quarterbacks. Tomlin has a 26-6 career record against rookies, which is the highest active winning percentage and third-highest in NFL history (Only Don Shula and Hank Stram have been better).\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the Browns get blown out, the NFL might think again before asking a team coming off an international game in Europe to face a team coming off a bye.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the 2025 NFL schedule came out in May, the Cleveland Browns should have filed a protest and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,125549,125548,1238,1266,593,125550,85],"class_list":["post-200862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-browns-scheduling-quirk","tag-browns-vs-steelers-week-6","tag-cleveland-browns","tag-dillon-gabriel","tag-nfl","tag-rare-nfl-scheduling-quirk","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}