NFL schedule Week 8: Which teams have a bye this week?
By John Buhler
The NFL rolls along into Week 8. Which teams will be on byes this week? Who needs the Week 8 bye the most of all? Could it be your favorite team?
It’s already Week 8 of the 2017 NFL season. Though not quite, we’re about halfway through the regular season. As the weather changes, more and more teams will be on their bye weeks. Last week, only two teams in the Detroit Lions and the Houston Texans were on byes. This week, there are six teams.
The six teams that will not be playing football this week are the Arizona Cardinals, the Green Bay Packers, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Los Angeles Rams, the New York Giants and the Tennessee Titans. Which of these teams needs a bye the most?
Well, it’s definitely not the Jaguars or Rams, who are playing great ball right now. Jacksonville is 4-3 and very much alive in the AFC playoff mix. The Jaguars just shut out the division rival Colts. Los Angeles is 5-2 on the year and leads the NFC West. They are coming back from London, where they stomped the Cardinals.
Arizona probably needs a bye with its aging roster, but it already feels like a lost season for the Cardinals. That’s because quarterback Carson Palmer broke his arm at Twickenham and will now miss eight weeks. Arizona will struggle to finish 6-10 this season.
Green Bay is another team that is without its starting quarterback for the foreseeable future. We saw last we what Brett Hundley can do in relief of Aaron Rodgers. He’s serviceable, but Green Bay doesn’t have the roster to win games with him under center.
New York is awful and will struggle to win even five games this year. The Giants are all sorts of banged up, but most of their injuries are of the longer, season-long variety. So with the Jaguars and Rams playing well and not in dire need of a bye and the Cardinals, Packers and Giants realizing their seasons are almost lost, that leaves us with one team.
The Titans need the bye the most out of these six teams. Why? Because they couldn’t score a touchdown on the Cleveland Browns! Tennessee won a field goal battle over Cleveland in overtime, 4-3.
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This team has four wins on the year, but has to realize that Houston and Jacksonville are more dynamic teams in the AFC South. Tennessee needs a bye to recalibrate after almost snoozing away a certain victory over the Browns on Sunday afternoon.