Now that the NFL season is five weeks old, it's becoming a lot easier to tell which teams are good this year and which teams are bad. For instance, if you're a Jets fan, no one would blame you if you've already given up on the season. On the other hand, if you're a Bills fan, you have legitimate hopes of getting to the Super Bowl for the first time in more than 25 years.
Since we now have an idea of how good each team is, we can now try to gauge the remaining strength of schedule for all 32 teams.
For the most part, when you hear about an NFL team's strength of schedule, it's during the offseason. For instance, back in February, we had a piece on what the strength of schedule was going to look like for each team in 2020 based the final record that each team's opponents had in 2019. The problem with measuring strength of schedule that early is that between injuries, free agency and the draft, a lot can change before the season actually starts. However, now that we're five weeks into things, it makes more sense to check back in on where each teams stands.
With 12 weeks still left on the NFL calendar, the biggest winners right now are the Las Vegas Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys, who have the two easiest remaining schedules based on the current records of each NFL team.
The Raiders, who actually have the easiest remaining schedule of any team, earned that ranking because they still have games against the 0-5 Falcons and 0-5 Jets. Besides that, the Raiders also get to face the 1-4 Chargers and 1-3 Broncos twice each. The Raiders' 11 remaining opponents have combined record of 20-33, which puts their strength of schedule at .377.
As for the Cowboys, a big reason why their schedule cracked the top-two on the easiest list is because they play in the NFC East. Besides Dallas, no team in the division has more than one win and the Cowboys still have five divisional games left. Overall, the Cowboys 11 remaining opponents have combined record of 19-32-3, which puts their strength of schedule at .380. Besides their NFC East opponents, the Cowboys also still have games left against the Vikings and Bengals, which is a game that suddenly got a lot more intriguing now that Andy Dalton is the starter in Dallas.
Basically, even with Dak Prescott out, the Cowboys could still sneak into the playoffs thanks to their schedule.
The only other team with that has a remaining strength of schedule under .400 is the Kansas City Chiefs, who are sitting at .396.
And since you're probably wondering, the team with the most difficult remaining strength of schedule would be the San Francisco 49ers, which isn't great news for a team that's already off to a 2-3 start. The 49ers remaining opponents have a winning percentage of .698, which is brutal, especially when you consider that the team with the next most difficult remaining schedule (the Texans) is dealing with an opponents' winning percentage of .630.
On the 49ers' end, they have an absurdly difficult schedule coming as their next seven games will be against the Rams, Patriots, Seahawks, Packers, Saints, Rams and Bills.
The third-most difficult remaining strength of schedule belongs to the Jets (.623), which means that 0-16 is starting to feel like a real possibility. Over their final 11 games, the Jets have to play five teams that currently have one loss or less (Seahawks, Rams, Bills, Browns, Chiefs).
Here's a look at the remaining strength of schedule for each team heading into Week 6 (From easiest to hardest)
1. Raiders (Opponents have a .377 combined winning percentage)
2. Cowboys (.380)
3. Chiefs (.396)
4. Chargers (.404)
5. Washington (.415)
6. Saints (.417)
7. Buccaneers (.434)
8. Patriots (.441)
9. Dolphins (.443)
10. Seahawks (.445)
11. Lions (.448)
12. Browns (.462)
13. Panthers (.481)
T-14. Falcons (.491)
T-14. Packers (.491)
T-16. Vikings (.500)
T-16. Giants (.500)
18. Broncos (.508)
19. Bills (.510)
20. Eagles (.519)
21. Bears (.529)
22. Ravens (.529)
23. Titans (.553)
24. Bengals (.558)
25. Colts (.570)
26. Rams (.574)
27. Steelers (.576)
28. Cardinals (.583)
29. Jaguars (.608)
30. Jets (.623)
31. Texans (.630)
32. 49ers (.698)
