Every NFL team's 2026 strength of schedule, from Bears' brutal run to Browns' lazy river
Let's say it's a good year for a Lions revival and a terrible one if you're hoping for anything other than a high Cardinals draft pick.
Every NFL team's 2026 strength of schedule from Bears' brutal run to Browns' lazy river The 2026 NFL schedule is nearly complete. While we don't know when each team will play, we do know who'll they'll face across the 17 games that carve a path to Super Bowl 61. The league's scheduling process leaves six games against division opponents, four against opponents from a division in the opposite conference, four against opponents from a division within the same conference, two against teams in the same conference that finished in the same place in their respective divisions and one from the opposite conference who finished in the same place in their division (a weird rotation made possible by an unbalanced 17-game schedule).
That leaves us with a dense list of matchups and where they'll take place, even if the when is a mystery. Using that, we can calculate which teams will likely have the easiest paths to the postseason and who'll have to overcome a few more hurdles to get there. If you're ranking teams based on how their opponents did in 2025, you get a strength of schedule that shakes out like this: Chicago Bears : 0.
55 Miami Dolphins : 0. 542 Arizona Cardinals: 0. 538 Green Bay Packers : 0.
538 Kansas City Chiefs: 0. 536 New England Patriots: 0. 531 Las Vegas Raiders: 0.