With the schedule coming out in a few weeks, its always an exciting time. We know that the Fins will be playing at London vs New Orleans on October 1st, and now know that the game will be at 9:30am EST. We also know that the Fins have asked to NOT have the bye after that game, but rather closer to the middle of the season, and would like to open at home.

Here's what I would like to see, given the choice:

Week 1, Thursday Sep 7th: At New England. Get the away game at New England early, and on a national stage. We're going to have a hard time with that game no matter when its played, so why not give Gase more time to plan, go into the game as healthy as we're likely to be all season, and have more time to rest before Week 2.

Week 2: Home vs New Jersey Jets. Start off the home schedule vs a bad Jets team. Regardless of the outcome of the Week 1 game, a blowout in Week 2 at home will have the team and the fans feeling good about the rest of the season.

Week 3: AT Buffalo. Similar to the New England game, get the potential cold weather trip to Buffalo out of the way early. I also don't want to "waste" too many of our seven home games early in the year.

Week 4: AT London, vs New Orleans. This one is written in stone. Hopefully, this will be the last time that we get screwed over this way for a while.

Week 5: Home vs Oakland. Its only fair that after traveling across the sea to play a home game the previous week, that we make the Raiders fly across the county to face us in Miami the next week.

Week 6: AT Baltimore. Nice to get another potential cold weather game out of the way in October. Baltimore is always a tough venue, and giving them one fewer advantage would be nice.

Week 7: AT LA Chargers. The Chargers should be a fairly poor team this season, and have next to no home field advantage, playing in a 30k soccer stadium. Get this trip out of the way.

Week 8: BYE

Week 9: Home vs Buffalo. Good to come out of the BYE having two weeks to plan for a divisional opponent, and start momentum for the second half of the season. So far, this leaves us with 4 home and 4 road games the rest of the way.

Week 10: Home vs Denver. Matchup with old buddy Vance Joseph and his Broncos.

Week 11: AT New Jersey Jets. Get the last trip to the Northeast out of the way before Thanksgiving.

Week 12: AT Kansas City. Final potential cold weather game out of the way before December.

Week 13: Home, vs Tampa Bay. Back to back home games vs teams that look to be weaker on paper than Miami to start December.

Week 14: Home vs Tennessee. See above.

Week 15: AT Carolina. Weather shouldn't be too much of a factor in Charlotte.

Week 16: AT Atlanta. Final road trip of the regular season a short one to the defending NFC champs. Dome game means nice weather.

Week 17. Home, vs New England. Finish the year at home vs the Pats. Potentially for the division title.

There you have my ideas. What are yours?

 

I don't disagree that our best (only, really) home field advantage is the early season 1pm home games. I have long lamented the fact that the league pushed back the start of the regular season, robbing us of more of that advantage. This is especially true if we can face a team from the North who's from outside of the AFC East. However, with us only having seven home games this year, I think that jamming them into the early part of the season is short sighted.

Plus, we all know that we struggle in cold weather games, so having more late season road trips, especially within the division, is asking for trouble.

 

Oakland is at home this year.

I probably will not go to a game this season. I haven't been to one since I became a dad in 2011. However, if I did, Carolina would be the most likely.

 

For the most part, I try to just ignore that New England exists. We need to do the best that we can with the other 14 games on the schedule. Putting them on the ends makes that easier.

 

I'm not sure what you mean there, unless you suggest that a loss could keep us from a WC spot. If so, then a loss in week 5 would have the exact same effect. I don't think that a loss to anyone, including New England, should have an effect on how the team would potentially play in a playoff game, if you're thinking that it would have a negative psychological reaction on the team.

The benefit of playing them at the very end is that they either have a playoff spot locked up, and may rest guys vs us, or they don't have one locked up, which means that we're still in play for the division. Either way, thats good news to us.

 

OK. We'll agree to disagree about the importance of that.

 

We've done about as well vs them as anyone else in the league, and generally with inferior personell and coaching. Under Gase, I think that we'll generally have a good shot. Defense is going to be the key the next two years.

 

I guess i should have specified using our real 2017 opponents and game locations ....