Fantasy Football: Surviving NFL bye weeks with useful tips, strategy and how to approach trade negotiations

The first quarter of the fantasy football season is just about done. When the two Monday night games are complete, everyone will have four games on their record — both in the NFL and in fantasy leagues.

Take a breath. Get out your notebook. The season just got interesting.

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The bye weeks come knocking in Week 5, and I’ve always maintained this is more feature than bug — at least for the better fantasy players. When the bye schedule starts, our game becomes more challenging, more dynamic. And the standings in your league now have some personality to them — some teams are riding high at 3-1 or 4-0, while other teams are becoming desperate after a rocky 1-3 or 0-4 start.

Let’s talk about the important themes:

Now’s the time for honest self-scouting

How good, exactly, is your fantasy team? Don’t just consider your record, but also your overall points scored — a much better barometer for team strength. Where are you deep? Where are you challenged? Would you project for a playoff spot right now? Would you secure a bye? How far from the playoffs are you?

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Don’t just analyze your own situation, but compare it to your opponents. Scout them, too. Note which teams have similar shapes to yours, and more importantly, identify teams that have contrasting problems to yours. Those could be potential trade partners.

What’s more important for your team — today or tomorrow?

If you’re one of those glorious 4-0 teams, life is pretty great right now. You’ll want to keep the winning going in Week 5, sure, but you have the luxury of looking ahead with your roster decisions and trade negotiations. You might be able to pick off CeeDee Lamb or Rashee Rice at less than market price because you can afford to wait. Or perhaps you can target a player with an early bye week in a trade, because October games aren’t as important to you as they might be to other managers.

Meanwhile, if the Lamb or Rice manager is on a losing team (or gasp, a winless team), he or she might need to mobilize quickly. Those teams could already be in must-win mode. That also goes for a team that might fall into bye-week problems while they’re still sitting on a poor record.

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Understand all bye weeks are not uniform

It’s always puzzled me why the NFL doesn’t roll out eight different bye weeks of equal size — four teams per week. And it’s long been posited that a double-bye system might make sense, to give players more rest and to even make Thursday night football a more watchable product (you could tuck a bye week next to a Thursday game week, so the players wouldn’t have those absurd four-day turnarounds every so often).

But the schedule is what it is. So let’s check when everyone rests for 2025.

• Week 5: Falcons, Bears, Packers, Steelers

• Week 8: Cardinals, Lions, Jaguars, Raiders, Rams, Seahawks

• Week 9: Browns, Jets, Eagles, Buccaneers

• Week 10: Bengals, Cowboys, Chiefs, Titans

• Week 12: Broncos, Chargers, Dolphins, Commanders

• Week 14: Panthers, Patriots, Giants, 49ers

While most of the bye weeks feature four teams resting, we have a few weeks with different sizing. In Weeks 6, 7 and 11, just two teams sit out. I call that a Skinny Bye. In Week 8, we have six teams on holiday. That’s our only Bye-pocalypse of the 2025 season.

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While it’s merely a lower-level tiebreaker, I do like rostering players with a skinny bye. It might not be that difficult to replace them during their rest week, since 30 NFL teams still play in that cycle. But a skinny bye player will be theoretically available to you for all the byes that include four or six teams. A lot of utility there.

Week 8 will obviously be a challenge, with six teams — some of them very good teams — taking their break. I might be a little more proactive in the Week 6 and Week 7 waiver runs, knowing the heavy bye is ahead. But also keep in mind, you’ll need fewer points to compete and to win during the byes, and that should be especially prevalent in Week 8.

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Your opponents have to make more reluctant choices

Injuries are always a pain in fantasy football, but they’re easier to navigate in September because there are no byes yet and most of your roster is ostensibly healthy. Come October, the injury report starts to get out of hand and now we have lighter schedules to manage. Even if you have IR spots in your league, those will start to fill up, too.

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This leads to one important distinction: now is the time of year your opponents will start dropping players they don’t want to. The need to win now might be overwhelming. Perhaps a set of cluster injuries will go past even their IR resources and will force them to cut a player who would have value to someone else. Stash-and-hope isn’t always a plausible strategy for that 1-3 or 0-4 manager.

I always want you to carefully audit the players dropped in your league every week, but that’s especially critical now. Much better players get cut in October and onward because of the changing shape of the fantasy environment.

Look ahead, but not too far ahead

Maybe that jumbo bye in Week 8 is bad for your roster. Maybe Week 10 is out to get you, or Week 12, or Week 14.

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Don’t get distracted by all that. Your roster will look a lot different by the end of Week 8, and significantly different by the latter stages of bye season.

It’s a lot like life, really. Learn from the past, look forward to the future, but try to focus on the most important thing we have — the present. Make good choices this week with your waivers, with your roster, with your lineup decisions. Plan for the near future and even the extended future, but not at the expense of losing the present.

Too long, didn’t read

Here are some quick-hitters to finish up:

• If you’re 3-1 or 4-0, try to identify losing fantasy teams who might want to trade a star (perhaps an injured or suspended star) to fill pressing, immediate needs. You might package multiple good players to land one transcendent player.

• If you’re 1-3 or 0-4, it might make sense to shop your most appealing player to patch up several starting spots immediately. Generally we advise against trading the best player in a swap, but it might make sense in your current situation.

• Don’t let the bye weeks emotionally mess with you. The decisions are more challenging, but this time of the year also rewards skill more directly.

• Audit every player dropped; now is when your opponents start cutting players they really don’t want to.

• Eyeball the bye-week schedule and do some proactive planning where it makes sense, but also remember that your future roster will probably look a lot different when those far-away bye weeks finally land.

• Four weeks is about the right time to start leaning into defensive strength around the league. What we care about is outliers — what defensive units are great or awful at defending a certain type of play or position? Put this data to good use; now, the numbers have some meaning.