Last year, for the first time in NFL history, a team had five prime-time games within the first eight weeks of the season. That team, the Chiefs, went 1–7 in the weeks after that grueling slate. Its quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, the face of the NFL, had to scramble so much behind an understaffed offense and line that the sheer volume of hard hits he took became a legitimate NFL storyline. By week 15, he had torn his ACL.
Also, last year, the Vikings, starting (essentially) a rookie quarterback, were given five stand-alone games in the first eight weeks, including a two-week international road trip. That quarterback, J.J. McCarthy, spent the season vacillating on and off the injury report and dealing with the immediately overwhelming expectations of life in the NFL. His backup, Carson Wentz, also played one of those games with a labrum tear and fractured socket.
In 2024, the two teams with the most prime-time games—the Jets and Cowboys—both missed the playoffs. The Cowboys again had among the most prime-time games in ’25 and missed the playoffs. So, too, did the Lions, Falcons, Commanders and Chiefs.
Among the 11 teams with the easiest schedules in the NFL last year in terms of opponent strength of schedule (there was a tie at No. 10), only three missed the playoffs. The team with the easiest schedule, the Patriots, made it to the Super Bowl. Of the five teams with the best net rest differential—a metric that takes into account the rest between games that each team has coming into the matchup—three of the five best teams reached the playoffs, and one, the Seahawks, won the Super Bowl.
Among the teams with the worst net rest differentials, the Commanders had arguably the most disappointing 2025 season, and the Raiders ended up with the No. 1 pick. Only one of the teams with the six worst net rest differentials (the Bills) made the playoffs, and they were clearly gassed upon arrival. Only two of the 10 teams with the hardest strength of schedule (the Rams and Texans) made the playoffs (perhaps shedding more light on just what a phenomenal season DeMeco Ryans and his coaching staff actually had, given the circumstances).
The 2012 Eagles had one of the worst net differentials in modern schedule history and finished the season 4–12. The 2005 Chargers, coming off a 12–4 season the year before, posted another historically bad net rest differential and finished the season 9–7, out of the playoffs (with Drew Brees, LaDainian Tomlinson and a rookie Shawne Merriman on the roster).
Here are some other teams with memorably awful net rest differentials:
- 2024 49ers: 6–11, missed the playoffs
- 2017 Giants: 3–13, missed the playoffs
- 2015 Seahawks: 10–6, coming off a 12–4 season and a Super Bowl appearance
We surface all of this admittedly circumstantial evidence ahead of Thursday’s 2026 schedule release to say that, while a team’s slate of opponents is prefixed, the order in which those opponents are stacked seems to have an incredible impact on how an NFL season unfolds. It’s a bit like one team playing the first basement level in Super Mario Bros. straight through, with plenty of complicated jumps and hordes of koopas and goombas. Another team figures out the hack that allows them to simply run across the top of the screen and jump straight into a warp zone. This is not a good thing, given that the NFL seems to be paying less attention to that particular minutiae than ever.
As thirsty broadcasting partners clamor for more exclusive content, which now features three Christmas games, a Christmas Eve game, a Thanksgiving night game, a Thanksgiving Eve game and a Black Friday game, a game in Australia, a game in Madrid, three games in London, a game in Brazil and a four-night stand at the Greenland municipality of Ittoqqortoormiit, which is only accessible via helicopter at specific times during the year, we’re going to care less about the incredibly critical order of games and more about simply slamming enough popular teams onto the plates of the loudest, deepest-pocketed and most desperate television executives.
The origin of this problem is multifaceted, though I want to quickly mention an underrated aspect: how terrible some teams are at promoting themselves. Coaches and PR professionals who believe in a closed-off locker room, cut off from stories and specials that can highlight a player’s unique personality or a coach’s key contribution, are simply adding to the problem of teams being labeled as uninteresting and wiped out of the landscape of desirable properties. Of course, much of this has to do with the likes of Amazon, NBC, CBS and Fox thirsting for established star players and guaranteed audiences of perpetually successful teams like roving small-town vampires.
The question, like all of this, is how much we will care. But also, why do we seem to be ignoring the other end of the schedule paradox altogether? With gambling, the questionable application of game-altering penalties and other seemingly omnipresent complaints from fans about the league’s trajectory, the NFL is operating under the assumption that its product is bulletproof and we will watch no matter what. Why, then, is that same assumption not applied to the creation of the schedule itself?
If people will watch anyway, why not put the Raiders and Panthers on Monday Night Football? If people will watch anyway, why do we need to grasp the throat of last year’s ascending young quarterback and apply pressure until a loss of consciousness is achieved? If people are going to watch anyway, why bind Jim Nantz, Tony Romo and Patrick Mahomes together with a rope like a troika of kidnap victims in the trunk of an old Nissan Pathfinder? The NFL preserving so many seemingly “broken” ways to maintain a thumb on the scale is, admittedly, weird. And, it’s creating a landscape where we can, with increasing accuracy, write off certain teams altogether. Or infer that the NFL has a vested interest in their success.
Let’s imagine, for example, that Thursday’s schedule reveals a gentle runway for the Chiefs as Patrick Mahomes returns from a torn ACL (acknowledging that we already know they’ll face the Broncos on Monday night in Week 1). Is that considered acceptable insofar as the NFL is a business whose success is determined by viewership, or would padding the Chiefs’ schedule to rectify hammering them last year be an irresponsible use of power? I’d venture to say the latter.
Transparency is key. While strength of schedule coming into a season using the previous season’s records is faulty, even having the NFL ensure that the easiest schedule gets the worst net rest differential feels like a step toward fairness. There is no perfect solution, but nakedly pandering to the sport’s entertainment value clearly isn’t working.
The NFL is still unpredictable enough to be enjoyable. However, the schedule release provides enough of a clue to make the path to enjoyment feel a bit gross and, at the very least, complicated. No matter what, people will come. Maybe even more so when they don’t feel the odds are already against their team from May 14 onward.
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CONOR ORR
Conor Orr is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, where he covers the NFL and cohosts the MMQB Podcast. Orr has been covering the NFL for more than a decade and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America. His work has been published in The Best American Sports Writing book series and he previously worked for The Newark Star-Ledger and NFL Media. Orr is an avid runner and youth sports coach who lives in New Jersey with his wife, two children and a loving terrier named Ernie.
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