{"id":113731,"date":"2025-10-14T06:43:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T10:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/?p=113731"},"modified":"2025-10-14T06:43:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T10:43:13","slug":"nfl-week-6-recap-rest-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/analysis\/nfl-week-6-recap-rest-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL Week 6 Recap: Steelers Take Advantage of Rest Edge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NFL will insist rest doesn\u2019t give any form of measurable edge, but we know better.<\/p>\n<p>Two of the biggest circled rest situations of the year proved massive edges.<\/p>\n<p>One of those spots was the Pittsburgh Steelers playing at home after a bye week against the Cleveland Browns, playing on the road following a trip to London.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-shortcode\"><iframe title=\"NFL Rest Advantage Is Real & The League Keeps Ignoring It\" width=\"1100\" height=\"619\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/V8D05GbdedI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Browns had to fly all the way to London and back home only to turn around and travel on a short trip to Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n<p>The Steelers mauled them 23-9, outgaining the Browns 5.8 yards per play to 3.3 and easily covering the spread.<\/p>\n<p>And the sharp money knew of this rest edge and hammered the line up from as low as Steelers -4 to as high as Steelers -6.5 before closing Steelers -6 at many spots.<\/p>\n<p>The second-most circled rest spot of the year occurred in Week 3, where the Raiders, off of a later-than-usual Monday night game in Week 2 (10 p.m. ET start time), had to travel to the East Coast for a 1 p.m. ET Sunday kickoff on short rest to face the Commanders, who were on extra rest.<\/p>\n<p>The Commanders played the prior Thursday night and thus had a four-day rest edge over the Raiders, who had only five days of rest between games.<\/p>\n<p>The Commanders destroyed the Raiders, 41-24, leading 34-10 at the start of the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n<p>The Commanders outgained the Raiders 7.4 yards per play to 5.7.<\/p>\n<p>Washington easily covered the 3-point spread as a favorite, and this was despite the fact that Washington had to start backup QB <strong>Marcus<\/strong> <strong>Mariota<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>I was interviewed by the Washington Post before that game to discuss rest edges.<\/p>\n<p>As I was quoted in the article: \u201cI\u2019ve always believed the best teams and coaches can overcome bad \u2018net rest\u2019 \u2014 but that doesn\u2019t make it fair.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In that same article, NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy wrote an email to the author and stated that rest advantage is not a factor in the league\u2019s annual process of building the schedule.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t take data to think that a team that has a multi-day rest advantage might have an edge on a team coming off a short week, for example.<\/p>\n<p>But the data is there to support the notion.<\/p>\n<p>The league is primarily about building a schedule that is good for TV and will overlook rest disadvantages to accomplish that goal.<\/p>\n<p>But knowing which spots to circle is advantageous when betting on these games, and that appears unlikely to change anytime soon.<\/p>\n\t<div class='sfa-image-adds' style=\"margin-bottom: 20px;\">\n\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/newsletter\/'>\n\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Sharp-Football-Analysis-Newsletter-Ad.jpg\" class=\"attachment-size-full size-size-full\" alt=\"Sharp Football Analysis Newsletter\" \/>\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NFL will insist rest doesn\u2019t give any form of  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111914,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"NFL Week 6 Recap: Steelers Take Advantage of Rest Edge","_seopress_titles_desc":"Warren Sharp outlines why rest matters in the NFL and how the Steelers took advantage of their rest edge to beat the Browns in Week 6.","_seopress_robots_index":"","mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-113731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","tag-articles"],"acf":[],"featured_image_urls":{"medium":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-300x200.jpg","thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-150x150.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-768x512.jpg","custom-size":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-694x683.jpg","custom-size-content":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-300x300.jpg","podcast-custom-size":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-350x350.jpg","homecustom-size-content":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-500x500.jpg","viz-thumb":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-255x140.jpg","amp-wp-small":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-100x100.jpg","amp-wp-large":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-738x430.jpg","amp-wp-normal":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-230x160.jpg","blog-large":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-669x272.jpg","blog-medium":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-320x202.jpg","recent-posts":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2236617360-700x441.jpg"},"appp_media":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113735,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113731\/revisions\/113735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sharpfootballanalysis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}