2025 NFL Schedule: Fantasy football breakdown

Being technical about it, we've known the 2025 NFL schedule all along. The rules for upcoming opponents are locked in, it's a formula. But the ordering of the games is something the NFL makes you wait for, and the league is shrewd to make an event out of it. And as you know, the full 2025 schedule was gloriously released Wednesday night - and there are plenty of games to get excited about.

[Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season]

Because we're fantasy-obsessed over in this corner of the internet, our 2025 NFL schedule analysis starts with when teams aren't playing. Let's roll out those 2025 bye weeks.

2025 Bye Week Schedule

- Week 5: Pittsburgh Steelers, Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, Atlanta Falcons

- Week 6: Houston Texans, Minnesota Vikings

- Week 7: Baltimore Ravens, Buffalo Bills

- Week 8: Jacksonville Jaguars, Las Vegas Raiders, Detroit Lions, Arizona Cardinals, Seattle Seahawks, Los Angeles Rams

- Week 9: Philadelphia Eagles, Cleveland Browns, New York Jets, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

- Week 10: Kansas City Chiefs, Cincinnati Bengals, Tennessee Titans, Dallas Cowboys

- Week 11: Indianapolis Colts, New Orleans Saints

- Week 12: Miami Dolphins, Denver Broncos, Los Angeles Chargers, Washington

Commanders

- Week 13: None

- Week 14: New York Giants, New England Patriots, Carolina Panthers, San Francisco 49ers

Bye week tips

Let's establish some bye-week rules up front. I think it's a folly to draft with a heavy lean into bye weeks. The future is unwritten and unknowable. The roster you draft today (or even in August or September) can and will often look radically different by the time bye weeks step into your life. Bye weeks can be a draft-day tiebreaker, but it's generally a mistake to take it past that.

I'll never quite understand why every NFL bye week isn't a standard four teams, but you'll notice (as usual) that some of these bye weeks aren't like the others. Only two teams are sitting in Weeks 6, 7 and 11. The NFL was a little kinder on the other end of things - there is just one Byepocalypse Week this season, Week 8. That's when six teams take their rest (Jaguars, Raiders, Lions, Cardinals, Seahawks, Rams).

Last season, we had two of these six-pack nightmares, one of them in Week 14. Progress, NFL, progress.

In my years as a fantasy player, I've heard a number of bye-week strategies. Some managers like to draft late bye weeks, kick the can down the road, figure their roster will turn over significantly before they ever have to face a roster deficit (or they can do some roster massaging later in the season, when the decisions are made off a greater understanding of the player pool and team needs). Some managers stack their byes together, figure they can punt one week but do great in the other weeks. Plenty of managers draft with little or zero consideration to bye weeks, and I don't think that's unreasonable, in the right league. You know your context better than outsiders do.

One thing I'm usually open to considering - and please understand this is a low-end tiebreak, nothing else - is trying to land a few players on the "skinny byes"; that is, players tied to teams that share a bye with just one other NFL club. The idea is that when you roster those players, you won't miss them that much when they're off (since 30 other NFL teams play that week) and they'll offer utility when the heavier byes kick in. But you know the NFL is a snow-globe league, and how quickly injuries and chaos take over. I'd never aggressively steer into this idea, it's just a way to break a tie after several more important factors have produced a stalemate.

Here are the teams that enjoy a skinny bye in 2025:

• Texans, Week 6

• Vikings, Week 6

• Ravens, Week 7

• Bills, Week 7

• Colts, Week 11

• Saints, Week 11

One of my primary fantasy goals is to get off to a good start, acquire some leverage. I like to play fantasy football with a microscope (focus on what's in front of me) and not necessarily a telescope (focus on things far away from me).

Let's be clear on one thing - right now we're looking at all of this stuff with a telescope - September is almost four months away. We have no idea what teams will be injury-ravaged before the first kickoff. But it's fun to imagine who might come out hot in September, so let's examine the schedules as such.

With that in mind, here are the 10 easiest schedules for September, with a nod to NFL data analyst Warren Sharp, who ran the numbers Wednesday night. Sharp adds up the projected win totals for each team's set of opponents, a novel way of reimagining strength of schedule. There's an obvious caveat - this doesn't account for the sites of the games, the weather, the specific defensive strength or weakness of the opponent. It's a general way of examining the slate. It's still worth a quick look, though.

September's Easiest Schedules

1. Commanders (Giants, Packers, Raiders, Falcons)

2. Steelers

3. Patriots

4. 49ers

5. Bengals

6. Cardinals

7. Panthers

8. Packers

9. Bills

10. Texans

It's a zero-sum game, of course. For someone to have an easier push to start, some have to have a harder push. Here are the 10 hardest schedules for September, according to the Sharp conceit - the sum of the win totals of each opponent.

September's Hardest Schedules

1. Browns (by a fair amount; they draw the Bengals, Ravens, Packers, Lions)

2. Ravens

3. Saints

4. Eagles

5. Chiefs

6. Jets

7. Titans

8. Jaguars

9. Raiders

10. Cowboys

Who will end the season with the easiest schedule? I hesitate to look so far ahead with stuff like this, understanding that so much is going to change between now and then - and so much NFL stuff is unknowable, anyway. That said, Sharp ran the numbers for Weeks 12-18 (I realize fantasy managers don't care about Week 18) and these are the extremes:

Easiest Week 12-18 schedules:

1. 49ers (note, a Week 14 bye)

2. Jaguars

3. Saints

4. Buccaneers

5. Falcons

It's also interesting to note that all of those teams are warm-weather squads and/or play in a dome. A clean track is a lovely thing when the games are most critical.

Hardest Week 12-18 schedules:

1. Steelers, by a considerable amount

2. Cowboys

3. Chargers

4. Packers

5. Bears

Again, it's a funky coincidence; look at the cold-weather teams (Steelers, Packers, Bears) clustered into this grouping.

The Cowboys' ending kick is something else. From Weeks 12-17, they run through this gauntlet: Eagles, Chiefs, Lions, Vikings, Chargers, Commanders. Good grief, Charlie Brown. That Week 18 game with the Giants won't count in most fantasy leagues.

Maybe you want the whole enchilada, you want to consider who has the easiest or the hardest schedule for the entire season. Here's how that shakes out:

Easiest 2025 Schedules - Full

1. 49ers (have a blast, Kyle Shanahan)

2. Patriots (a winning season would not surprise me)

3. Saints (ahh shucks, it looks like Tyler Shough)

4. Falcons (if Penix is good, this offense is fun)

5. Bills (is this the year Josh Allen finally makes a Super Bowl appearance?)

Hardest 2025 Schedules - Full

1. Giants (all three quarterbacks might get to play)

2. Browns (all 27 quarterbacks - estimate - might get to play)

3. Lions (so much talent, but curious to see how they handle the loss of both coordinators; they also have a very difficult road schedule, the hardest in the league)

4. Eagles

5. Vikings

Just for fun, let's examine Week 17, when most fantasy championships are decided. You want to dream your title dreams every day. Christmas falls during championship week again this year, but at least it's on a Thursday, not the Wednesday games we navigated last season. So here is what your championship week will look like, a four-day slate of games with, in my opinion, a cool flow and cadence:

- Christmas Thursday, three games (Cowboys at Commanders, Lions at Vikings, Broncos at Chiefs)

- Saturday, five games

- Sunday, seven games

- Monday, one game (Rams at Falcons)

If you want even more on the schedule, I also wrote about the 10 most fantasy-friendly matchups of the season. The schedule stuff is a blast, but just remember our primary goal as fantasy football gamers - analyzing the teams and the players.