No byes week 10?

[Hammer]

but there are byes in week 11. Anyone know why?

[Andrewski]

Perhaps a hedge for the lockout?

"In what may be viewed as something of a hedge to the season starting late, in almost the entire time during the concept of the bye week, byes began in Week 4, expect for the hideous time when the league had an odd number of teams and there were bye weeks every week. There are two interesting indicators worked into the bye schedule. It doesn’t start until Week 5 and, for some reason, there are no byes in Week 10, yet four teams (Houston, Indianapolis, New Orleans and Pittsburgh) have Week 11 off for a bye. Those of us who see conspiracy among anomalies see these two variations that lead us to believe there is a secondary schedule – which wasn’t released – that envisions how a 16-game, 17-week schedule could be played with the first week of the regular season being missed. As we see it, under this scenario, Week 1 games would be shifted to the final week of the regular season (much like the games scheduled for the weekend after the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedies were shuttled, the bye weeks would be condensed – Week 11 bye weeks would revert to Week 10 and the Week 5 bye weeks become the standard Week 4 beginning. It’s a theory that makes sense"

[Erik]

It does indeed have to do with a contingency plan in case the lockout nixed Week 1.

[Long John]

I was curious about this myself. I tend to think it has something to do with week 10 being the first week of Thursday night games and something to do with week 11 being just before Thanksgiving. Of course, none of the teams with a week 11 bye are playing on Thanksgiving Thursday... I don't know.