1. The first thing you might’ve noticed is…
…The Colts did not opt for a bye week following their Week 4 game against the Washington Commanders at London’s Tottenham Stadium.
Conventional wisdom is that teams opt to take their lone bye week following a game played in Europe, given the time difference and transatlantic flights involved in playing those games. The Colts did this the last two times they played internationally, with bye weeks following games in Berlin (2025) and Frankfurt (2023). Those games, though, were each played in Week 10, so the Colts’ bye week was right around the halfway point of each season; they were also played in Germany, which takes a couple hours longer to get to than England.
So let’s just look at games played in the British Isles – at London’s Wembley Stadium and Tottenham Stadium, and Dublin’s Croke Park – since 2021, when the NFL schedule expanded to 17 games. There have been 15 such games over the last five seasons, with 27 teams having the option to take their bye week or play after returning stateside (the Jacksonville Jaguars played consecutive games in London in 2023 and 2024; the Minnesota Vikings played in Dublin and London in consecutive weeks in 2025).
Of those 27 teams, only 11 opted for a post-London bye (including the Jaguars in 2024 and the Vikings in 2025). The teams that did not take a bye went 10-6 in their games following trips to London.