The NFL loves to hype up its schedule release and turn it into a much bigger deal than it actually is. Sure, fans want to know when their team is going to play, but the opponents, which are arguably more important, have been set for months.
While it is nice to know who is going to be playing in prime time and on holidays, there are really only two important things that come out of the NFL's schedule release extravaganza.
- Week 1 schedule
- Bye weeks
Fans will cling to the Week 1 excitement throughout the NFL's slow summer. While perusing Week 14 matchups may be appealing to some, so much can happen between now and then that Week 1 is really the highlight here.
Bye weeks tend to fly under the radar, but they are largely important. An early bye week means a team is going to have to run the gauntlet down the stretch of the season. A late bye week could provide a nice break for a team, but we have seen a hot team losing all momentum coming out of its late bye plenty of times.
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Here is a look at the bye week schedule for the 2025 NFL season.
NFL bye weeks 2025
The NFL's bye week for 2025 will be announced as part of the league's schedule release on May 14. Bye weeks will begin in Week 5 and run through Week 14, with one exception. There will be no bye week in Week 13, so every team will be in action for Thanksgiving weekend.
Below is a complete, week-by-week look at when each NFL team has its bye in 2025:
Week 1
- None
Week 2
- None
Week 3
- None
Week 4
- None
Week 5
- Chicago Bears
- Green Bay Packers
- Atlanta Falcons
- Pittsburgh Steelers
Week 6
- Minnesota Vikings
- Houston Texans
Week 7
- Buffalo Bills
- Baltimore Ravens
Week 8
- Detroit Lions
- Arizona Cardinals
- Los Angeles Rams
- Seattle Seahawks
- Jacksonville Jaguars
- Las Vegas Raiders
Week 9
- Philadelphia Eagles
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers
- New York Jets
- Cleveland Browns
Week 10
- Dallas Cowboys
- Cincinnati Bengals
- Tennessee Titans
- Kansas City Chiefs
Week 11
- New Orleans Saints
- Indianapolis Colts
Week 12
- Washington Commanders
- Miami Dolphins
- Denver Broncos
- Los Angeles Chargers
Week 13
- None
Week 14
- New York Giants
- Carolina Panthers
- San Francisco 49ers
- New England Patriots
Week 15
- None
Week 16
- None
Week 17
- None
Week 18
- None
When do NFL bye weeks start?
Bye weeks will start in Week 5. Scheduling them is only going to get tougher as the NFL plays more international games, as the league often tries to give the teams that play internationally a bye week to adjust back to the time zones here in the U.S.
The current NFL bye week system ensures that every team will play in the first four and final four weeks of the season. The players are pushing for a second bye week, and one of the hurdles to enacting the change would be how it affects scheduling and the Tetris game that would ensue moving all the teams around.
How are NFL bye weeks determined?
The NFL says having a bye week for each team "presents additional challenges for the schedule makers," as they try to avoid giving teams many games with rest advantages or disadvantages. The league is always looking to balance its schedule, so this is a key factor in determining each bye week.
So, too, is the consideration of where a team's bye week fell in previous seasons. They like to avoid giving teams consecutive early-season byes or late-season byes, but that doesn't always work with putting the bye-week puzzle together.
The NFL's 32 teams have their bye weeks fit into a 10-week span from Weeks 5 through 14, with the exception of Week 13 this year. That averages out to 3.2 byes per week.