Analyst Warren Sharp on the unprecedented unfairness in the NFL schedule

SoggyBottomBoy said

We have two Thursday night games, but don't seem to be playing a team coming off their bye week. That might be a first.

That is a pretty lopsided schedule. There will always inequity in this regard as it is difficult to meet a lot of criteria when scheduling, but this is on the extreme side. SF will be playing a lot of rested teams.

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With 32 teams and 17 games over 18 weeks with four different time categories (Sunday afternoon, SNF, MNF, TNF), they could use an algorithm to set a schedule to favor things like minimizing rest differentials, or travel times, etc.

What this says to me is they're not doing that. They're most likely doing it purely by humans setting games for various interests, matchups, television appeal, etc. - and they might even be doing shady things like trying to favor certain teams, which totally sucks. The Jets going from two years in a row near the league worst on rest to the league best after getting Rodgers is a pretty suspicious result.

They could use technology to minimize these inequities but they're not, which suggests they don't really value that as something to try to fix. That's their prerogative I guess, it's a business and they sell a TV product, but they could at least just admit it.