The Jacksonville Jaguars pulled off a statement trade on Monday morning with the Atlanta Falcons to acquire Jessie Bates III, a talented safety.
The deal may have looked like some to be an overpay, with both a second-round pick and a fifth-round pick going to Atlanta but the Jags likely figure that second-rounder will be more like pick 60 than pick 35.
And besides, this is a Jags team that has clearly signaled now that it’s going for it all. They believe they can win the Super Bowl. They wouldn’t have traded for Bates in his contract year if they didn’t think that.
There’s often a fun aspect to trades beyond just the basic football details, though, and the Bates deal has at least one thing like that. In this case, it’s the fact that Bates can now play 18 games this season even though the campaign is just 17 games long for each team in the NFL.
How Jessie Bates Can Play 18 Games
Bates can play 18 games thanks to the spacing out of bye weeks in the NFL.
If a player doesn’t change teams, he has 17 weeks with a game and one week with a bye out of the 18-week NFL schedule.
But in Bates’ case, he has found a loophole.
The Falcons didn’t have a bye yet, so through nine weeks, they played nine games — and Bates appeared in them all.
The Jaguars did already have their bye, so through nine weeks, they’ve played eight games. They still have to play nine.
So if Bates plays in all the Jaguars’ games for the rest of the season, he’ll have never had a bye — and instead will have played 18 games in a 17-game season.
Two Potential Ruin Spots
There are two ways this possibility could get ruined, aside from the obvious point of an injury.
The Jaguars could choose to let Bates get a week to acclimate after the trade and not play him in Week 10 — although getting him on Monday morning likely makes that a moot point.
The more pertinent scenario involves Week 18 — with the Jags’ dominant control of their division, there’s always a chance they’ve clinched everything they can before Week 18 and want to sit starters that week. They’ll go for the No. 1 seed and bye that comes with it if possible, but if there’s nothing for the Jaguars to achieve in Week 18, Bates could sit.
But yeah, there’s a real chance Bates plays an 18-game individual regular season.
Jaguars’ Jessie Bates Can Play 18 Games in 17-Game Season — Here’s How