04-22-2021, 11:38 PM
(04-22-2021, 11:12 AM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: I don't really buy into strength of schedules, at least not this early.
There's entirely way too much time between now and the season to be able to determine this. Obviously we still have the draft to consider, we still have time for more signings and/or trades, and we have plenty of time for injuries to occur. At lot can happen over these next 4 months in building a roster.
And even once we get to the start of the season I still don't put a lot of stock in them. Why? Because they're based on last years results. Some players improve. Some players regress. Some teams improve. Some teams regress. Some teams have new coaches on their staff, some have new playbooks, some have new trainers and training regiments. Some staffs make adjustments. The list goes on and on.
The only time I think you can really assign any real value to a strength of a schedule is after those games have been played, when you have all of the information available. And even then it's not foolproof.
Personally, I think strength of schedule is really just something for the talking heads (and us) to talk about. I'm not sure it matters all that much. A good team will win more games than they lose, a bad team will lose more games than they win. Most scheduling is not going to change these facts.
I've seen far too many times for a team to open the season with what's considered an easy schedule to then finish with a very hard schedule. I've seen the reverse as well. And usually, more often than not, the schedule difficulty is forgotten and isn't enough to offset the overall strength of a team (good or bad).
Just my 2 cents...
So true that many NFL teams go from good to bad or vice versa in one year, but overall there is a strong correlation between good teams one season and good teams the next.
So I agree that SOS is not an exact science, but it is far from random. I don't see us ending up with one of the easier schedules by the end of next season.
