I posted the Strength of Schedule info yesterday, and a reader pointed out he’d prefer to see numbers of points allowed. A team like Buffalo or Houston, he pointed out, could finish around .500 but have a very tough defense. This is a fair point, and I recognize many prefer to look at points allowed.
The advantage of wins and losses is that they’re constant. You’ve always got 256 games each year, with 256 wins and 256 losses (barring ties). With other stats – yards, scoring – you then get into issues of the game changing. There’s more offense in the game now, making it less meaningful to compare across years.
But I’ll take a stab at it.
Below are the 50 easiest schedules since 2003. (The league went to 32 teams in 2002, so we have perfect data from 2003 on.) The 2015 is well represented in this pool of teams, with 12 of the 50.
In this schedule chart, the NFC West leads the way. Tampa Bay projects to play the 2nd-easiest schedule of the last 12 years. Carolina and Atlanta aren’t far behind.
I have also, for your reading pleasure, included the end result of how things actually turned out. That is, just because a team is supposed to play an easy schedule doesn’t mean it will actually play out that way. San Francisco, most famously, was supposed to play the 2nd-easiest schedule in 2009, but in fact it ended up being the 2nd-hardest.
There are 38 teams in this pool (we don’t have finishing data for the 2015 teams, of course). Of those only three played the league’s easiest schedule. Eight others (so 11 of 38 total) played top-5 schedules – easy schedules.
Another eight played top-10 schedules (so including the top-5s, 19 of the 38 – exactly half) played top-10 schedules.
Four played bottom-5 schedules, and nine total (including those first four) played bottom-10 schedules. The remaining 10 played what I would call middle-of-the-pack schedules.
Bottom line: when you go into a season with what you think is an easy schedule, there’s about a 50 percent chance it actually will be an easy schedule.
50 EASIEST SCHEDULES SINCE 2003 | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Year | Team | Pre | Rk | Act | Rk |
2014 | Indianapolis | 24.8 | 1st | 22.8 | 15th |
2015 | Tampa Bay | 24.8 | 1st | ? | ? |
2014 | Detroit | 24.6 | 2nd | 23.5 | 4th |
2014 | Miami | 24.6 | 3rd | 21.6 | 29th |
2014 | Houston | 24.5 | 4th | 24.0 | 1st |
2012 | Atlanta | 24.4 | 1st | 24.4 | 1st |
2014 | Minnesota | 24.3 | 5th | 23.4 | 7th |
2014 | Tennessee | 24.3 | 6th | 23.1 | 10th |
2014 | Buffalo | 24.3 | 7th | 22.2 | 22nd |
2015 | Carolina | 24.3 | 2nd | ? | ? |
2015 | Atlanta | 24.3 | 3rd | ? | ? |
2014 | NY Giants | 24.2 | 8th | 22.8 | 13th |
2013 | Denver | 24.0 | 1st | 23.2 | 16th |
2014 | NY Jets | 24.0 | 9th | 22.2 | 23rd |
2014 | New England | 23.9 | 10th | 21.8 | 28th |
2003 | Chicago | 23.9 | 1st | 22.4 | 1st |
2012 | New Orleans | 23.9 | 2nd | 22.1 | 26th |
2014 | Green Bay | 23.9 | 11th | 22.1 | 26th |
2009 | Seattle | 23.8 | 1st | 23.6 | 3rd |
2003 | Seattle | 23.8 | 2nd | 21.8 | 4th |
2015 | Washington | 23.8 | 4th | ? | ? |
2015 | New Orleans | 23.8 | 5th | ? | ? |
2014 | Chicago | 23.8 | 12th | 22.2 | 24th |
2014 | Jacksonville | 23.8 | 13th | 23.5 | 5th |
2014 | Carolina | 23.8 | 14th | 23.3 | 8th |
2015 | Dallas | 23.7 | 6th | ? | ? |
2012 | Tampa Bay | 23.7 | 3rd | 23.3 | 9th |
2015 | Houston | 23.7 | 7th | ? | ? |
2015 | NY Giants | 23.7 | 8th | ? | ? |
2009 | San Francisco | 23.6 | 2nd | 19.3 | 31st |
2014 | Dallas | 23.6 | 15th | 23.5 | 3rd |
2014 | Washington | 23.6 | 16th | 23.0 | 11th |
2014 | New Orleans | 23.6 | 17th | 22.7 | 16th |
2014 | Philadelphia | 23.6 | 18th | 22.5 | 17th |
2015 | Indianapolis | 23.6 | 9th | ? | ? |
2013 | Dallas | 23.5 | 2nd | 24.9 | 7th |
2014 | Tampa Bay | 23.5 | 19th | 23.8 | 2nd |
2012 | Carolina | 23.4 | 4th | 23.0 | 12th |
2013 | Kansas City | 23.4 | 3rd | 25.1 | 5th |
2012 | Kansas City | 23.4 | 5th | 23.5 | 6th |
2013 | San Diego | 23.4 | 4th | 24.3 | 10th |
2009 | Arizona | 23.3 | 3rd | 20.3 | 29th |
2015 | Tennessee | 23.3 | 10th | ? | ? |
2011 | Washington | 23.3 | 1st | 22.9 | 12th |
2015 | New England | 23.3 | 11th | ? | ? |
2014 | Cincinnati | 23.3 | 20th | 22.8 | 14th |
2015 | Philadelphia | 23.3 | 12th | ? | ? |
2009 | Minnesota | 23.3 | 4th | 23.4 | 5th |
2009 | St. Louis | 23.3 | 5th | 20.6 | 27th |
2003 | Oakland | 23.3 | 3rd | 21.6 | 9th |
—Ian Allan