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Strength of schedule

SOS using over-under win total projections

One of the problems with strength of schedule is that it’s based on last year. Teams change, so it doesn’t really make sense to calculate schedule difficulty over what they used to be.

The Titans, for example, went 12-5 last year, but that’s not an opponent that people are scared off. They easily could be a sub-.500 team. The Falcons, meanwhile, finished 7-10 last year, which looks optimistic for how their season will likely go. Everyone would love to play Atlanta every week.

It makes more sense, therefore, to work off the projected over-under win totals published by the various sportsbooks. You take those numbers, plug them into the 2022 schedule, and see what comes out.

For this projected, I took projected over-under totals for each team, then smoothed them to ensure the proper balance of wins and losses. (The betting totals tend to run high, and there were a few teams that I thought looked off anyway.) Nobody has published anything for Cleveland yet, with the Deshaun Watson situation up in the air. For the Browns, I went with 6.5 wins for the first half of the season, and 9.5 wins for the second half.

PROJECTED WINS
TeamWins
Buffalo12
Green Bay11.5
Tampa Bay11.5
Denver10.5
Kansas City10.5
LA Chargers10.5
LA Rams10.5
Cincinnati10
Dallas10
San Francisco10
Baltimore9.5
Indianapolis9.5
New England9.5
Philadelphia9
Tennessee9
Arizona8.5
Las Vegas8.5
Miami8.5
Minnesota8.5
Cleveland8
New Orleans7.5
NY Giants7.5
Pittsburgh7.5
Washington7.5
Carolina6.5
Detroit6.5
Jacksonville6.5
Seattle6.5
Chicago5.5
NY Jets5.5
Atlanta5
Houston4.5

Plugging those over-unders into the schedule (and also leaving out Week 18, which isn’t used by most fantasy leagues), I get the Lions, Giants and Commanders playing the easiest schedules. And these numbers suggest the Rams, Raiders, Titans and Kansas City will play the hardest schedules.

If you’re a fan of D’Andre Swift (pictured) this could be interpreted as good news, with the Lions perhaps helped along by a softer schedule.

Four teams are in bold. Those are the teams whose schedules increased the most in difficulty (relative to traditional methods). Teams with black dots, those are the ones whose schedules got easier. (The Rams rank last using either method, but not by as much here.)

STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE (over-unders)
TeamWLTPct
Detroit1261451.465
NY Giants1281440.471
Washington1291430.474
Philadelphia1291421.476
Chicago1311401.483
Baltimore1311401.483
New Orleans1321400.485
Jacksonville1321391.487
Green Bay1331390.489
Indianapolis1331390.489
LA Chargers1331381.491
Dallas1341380.493
Buffalo1341380.493
Cleveland1351370.496
Denver1351370.496
Carolina1361360.500
• Atlanta1361360.500
• Cincinnati1361360.500
Minnesota1361351.502
Miami1361351.502
NY Jets1361351.502
• San Francisco1361351.502
New England1371341.506
Houston1381340.507
Pittsburgh1381331.509
Seattle1391321.513
Tampa Bay1411310.518
Arizona1411301.520
Tennessee1421300.522
Las Vegas1421300.522
Kansas City1491230.548
• LA Rams1491221.550

—Ian Allan

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