Breaking Down the Chiefs' 2026 Rest Differential

Which teams get extra rest vs their opponents, and which teams got shafted by the schedule?

I wrote about the schedule last week and discussed the strength of the schedule and early odds for the games. Something else that comes up immediately after the schedules all come out is the idea of “rest advantage”. The rest advantage is when one team has more days of rest than the other team when they play. Perhaps Team A played on Sunday, while Team B played on Monday, and now they are playing each other on Sunday. This means that Team A has one more day of rest than Team B, and thus has a theoretical advantage over Team B, which had to play on Monday.

Most teams will have a couple of games with an advantage of 2+ days, and a couple with a disadvantage of 2+ days. Typically, it evens out for most teams, but there are always those teams on the upper and lower end of this rest differential. For this exercise, I want to first take a look at the Chiefs’ rest advantage (or disadvantage), and then take a look at the NFL as a whole.

The Chiefs start their season off with a Monday night tilt against the Broncos. The first game of the season is always the same for all teams, since no games have yet been played. Playing on Monday means the Chiefs lose one day of rest when they face the Colts in week 2. A one-day disadvantage, especially early in the season, is not an issue in any way, unless an injury or concussion pops up, and a player is not able to pass protocol to get back on the field.