Via ESPN: Home opponents (*playoff team): New England Patriots*, New York Jets, Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers*, San Francisco 49ers, Arizona Cardinals*, Tennessee Titans. Away opponents (*playoff team): New England Patriots*, New York Jets, Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals*, Baltimore Ravens, St. Louis Rams, Seattle Seahawks*, San Diego Chargers. San Diego and Tennessee are the "easy" games (b/c of their bad records) but, at San Diego again is far from easy with the trip out west - where Miami does not fair well.
Had a thread on it last week. http://www.thephins.com/forums/showthread.php?88165-Dolphins-Opponents-Set-For-2016
Note to James Walker; Last place has very little to do with scheduling in the new scheduling style, it's a rotating division schedule, we play the AFC north and the NFC west, I could have told you that the day they changed the scheduling because its the same rotation, only 2 games are based on standings position; Six games vs div, four games vs three rotating AFC div, 4 games vs 4 rotating NFC div = 14, two games based on standings.
I always bring this up when people talk about "hard" and "easy" schedules. We went from 1-15 to 11-5 in one season. Fans between those seasons circled us in red ink as a "W" when the schedule came out. However, this is the NFL things change weekly. Putting too much thought into any of this is ridiculous.
Everything people are saying about the SoS next season they were saying about this season. When in fact, this season Miami actually had a weak SoS. Too many things happen in the NFL. For all we know Wilson is going to get hurt in training camp and the Seahawks will have a slew of injuries that cause their season to tank.
Does any site track beginning of season SoS% as compared to end of season SoS%? I know we ended with 3rd easiest SoS% @ .469 (opponents winning 120 out of 256 games) but dont recall what our schedule on paper was going into the season. If such a tracking exists, does it reveal a pattern or is it as random as we suspect?
This year we were supposed to win the first 7, you certainly cannot say that about next years where 10 loses look realistic.
Had some free time so I took this data for pre vs. post season SoS from 2014: http://i.imgur.com/t9fPLlF.png and graphed the difference in SoS (post - pre) as a function of preseason SoS ranking: http://postimg.org/image/y2pbc2abj/ Basically what you see is that the higher preseason SoS ranking you have the easier your schedule is than expected, and the lower preseason SoS ranking you have the tougher your schedule is than expected. It basically suggests it's really hard to use preseason SoS to make predictions about actual SoS.
Are the Ravens in the AFC East? It sure feels like it. I don't know how we get them every year vs a traditionally garbage team like Jackosnville, Oakland or Detroit.
Its coincidence on one hand, but pretty simple NFL math on other....we rotate 1 full AFC conf each year aside from our traditional EAST conf play, then we match up with the same Div Finish team in the other two AFC conferences every year. So we have been coincidentally finishing in the same spot within our div as BAL has in theirs, and this year we happen to play AFC North per rotation. Of course we also play one full NFC conf on rotation every year too. Thats how our 16 opponents are always known ahead of time once final records are known.
Like I saud earlier....hopefully we can beat Cleveland. I'll chock that one up as a win. The rest are questionable.
Uh, except for the fact that there are only 13 opponents per year? 6 division games=3 teams. In that sense, 6/13 teams had losing records in 2015 doesn't sound so bad, that's almost half of them.
I think 6 of 16 is more correct here because you have to play those teams twice. We play 13 teams yes, but for SoS calculations you have to look at 16 opponents (which they do).
Based on these numbers about 15 teams stayed around the same, including us, and 17 teams had big differences, but what does it look like over a 10 year span, not asking you to do that, lol, just wondering if this is the norm.
True. The wording made it a little confusing though. Instead of saying 16 opponents it should have said games or matchups or whatever.