Andy Reid After Bye Week

Disturbed by the news that Andy Reid is 11-0 all time coming off a bye week, reader Dan Svirsky set out to investigate if that was lucky or a trend.

This week the Colts face an Eagles team fresh off a bye. As some have noted, Andy Reid’s teams have gone 11-0 after bye weeks since 1999. So, are the Colts in trouble? This analysis looks at two questions:

(1) Are teams really better after bye weeks?

(2) Is Andy Reid specifically better after bye weeks?

To do the analysis, I got data from 3,041 games over the past 11 years. For each game, I looked at three variables: Was the team playing at home? Was the team coming off a bye? What was the DVOA spread of the game (or the difference between the team’s weighted DVOA and the opponent’s weighted DVOA)? Then, I ran a test to see what happens to a team’s margin of victory as these variables change (I used a multiple regression test, for the stats nerds out there).

So, on to the results…