Debunking myth the Miami Dolphins have the NFL’s third-toughest schedule in 2020
I was studying the conventional strength of schedule chart that everyone was using last week after the NFL released its 2020 schedule and felt now is the right time to take a huge, um, amount of time on the chart.
Because it needs debunking.
That conventional chart merely takes the previous season’s won-loss records of a team’s opponents and adds them up. And the team whose opponents had the most success last year, is said to have the toughest schedule this year.
Using this flawed approach determined the New England Patriots have the NFL’s hardest schedule in 2020.
The top 5 toughest schedules in the NFL based on 2019 opponent records:
1. New England Patriots (.537 opponent win percentage).
2. New York Jets (.533 opponent win percentage).
3. Miami Dolphins (.529 opponent win percentage).
4. San Francisco 49ers (.527 opponent win percentage).
5. Buffalo Bills, Detroit Lions and Atlanta Falcons (.525 opponent win percentage).
But cough, bunk, cough.
This is a 1980s way of looking at the situation while living in a 2020 NFL with free agency and a draft so scrutinized there are as many social media draft analysts than actual professional scouts.
So now I’m searching for data that might more accurately measure the strength of schedule for NFL teams and I see Las Vegas bookies run all sorts of spreadsheet numbers and actual roster studies into their calculations for figuring over-under totals on the year.
And I assume these people invest a good amount of time and energy coming up with these numbers because their livelihoods depend on it. They have to set numbers that ultimately will cause a significant number of people to spend good money on either side of the number -- thus giving the house a good chance of making a profit.
The Dolphins over-under win total for 2020 is anywhere from 6 to 6.5.
That’s right, Las Vegas believes the Dolphins will win fewer than seven games in 2020 -- or approximately one more victory than the team had in 2019. Amazing, but true.
Anyway, based on over-under totals for their opponents, the Dolphins have the 12th most difficult schedule in the NFL. Not the third most difficult.
SportsBettingDime.com takes a step further, updating their over-under totals with some sort of mathy formula I don’t quite get. And using that formula, the Dolphins have the 21st most difficult schedule.
That formula has the Dolphins opponents with an over-under win total of 128.2. The Atlanta Falcons, meanwhile, have the highest opponents over-under win total at 136.
And obviously all this takes what teams did this offseason into account. It looks at free agency moves (both gains and losses) and the draft.
The admission here obviously has to be no one knows how free agents will actually play on their new teams. And we don’t know how quickly rookies will contribute, if at all. It is all a projection.
But that projection makes more sense to me than believing the Dolphins schedule has to be really, really hard because they’re playing the Patriots twice this year, and the Patriots won 12 games a year ago, so they’ll do similar this year.
I mean, if you’ve been paying attention, the Patriots lost quarterback Tom Brady and perhaps six other important players in free agency. And for salary cap reasons, they were not major players in free agency. So what does 12 wins a year ago have to do with this situation? Nothing.
The point?
The Dolphins do indeed have some tough games in 2020. Look, they play both defending conference champions. But they also play the Jaguars, Cardinals, Bengals and Jets twice. None of those teams will be competing for not much other than a .500 season. So the NFL’s third toughest schedule?
Not likely.
This story was originally published May 12, 2020 at 12:49 AM.
