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Overall, the Giants might have the NFL's least enviable schedule, based on ESPN senior analytics specialist Brian Burke's analysis. They'll have an NFL-high four games against teams coming off their bye and a net total of minus-22 days of rest compared to their opponents. (The next-highest lack of rest days belongs to the Detroit Lions at minus-12.) Here is some analysis from Football Outsiders on how relative rest affects competitiveness. Suffice it to say, you want to avoid playing teams who are coming off their bye. Finally, the Giants have four trips into the Mountain or Pacific time zones, giving them more travel miles than any East Coast team with the exception of the Jaguars, who have a home game in London. |
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The most difficult stretch for any team belongs to the Raiders, who will play five teams between Weeks 11 and 15 that had a combined .738 winning percentage in 2016. |
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The Browns and Jaguars are the only teams this season that won't face a short week and who won't have to tweak their weekly schedules at all to accommodate alternate game days or times. |
But there's no way to gauge chemistry, nor is there any pre-season scale of how healthy (or not) a team will be.
Two things in the Giants' favor: An intact defense that played very well together in 2016; a very good reversal of trend (we hope) with a new trainer/training.
If the Giants stay healthy, if the adds on offense are as solid as we think they might be (Marshall is the obvious one, but also Ellison at TE/H-Back, and maybe even Fluker), and if it's a fruitful draft, then the schedule simply becomes a bump in the road.
When you play a given team/game, who they played the prior week, who they play the next week are all factors. The schedule is obviously not as important as the quality of your players, quality of coaching staff etc., but I think it is a non-trivial factor. Having a very early or very late bye is a factor.
If you're playing a home game against a team traveling across the country, a team coming off a Monday night game is an advantage.
If you're playing an away game against a team that had a bye or a home Thursday night game, you're at a disadvantage.
We all hear coaches say "One game at a time", but I'd be very surprised if coaches don't create strategies based on the timing of the games in their schedule.
It is somewhat painful if the Giants truly asked for scheduling that would allow back-to-back west coast games and were denied, especially if other teams have this granted to them.
The part about playing teams off their bye does seem unfair. I'm not sure why they've done this, but in theory everyone should have one game where they face an opponent coming off their bye, and one game where they are coming off their bye and face their opponent. This would give everyone a net of (almost) zero, with exceptions being Monday, Thursday, and Saturday games.
To have such a gap (negative 22) compared to the rest of the league seems wrong and should be taken into consideration going forward.
I'm sure Belichick deals with whatever schedule he's dealt with better than say a Rich Kotite.
Disagree. I wouldn't be upset one bit.
I'm not sure how you think so definitively that the Giants winning that game would be an upset. The Giants beat them twice last year and Dallas lost a TON of players on defense. Sure it may be an "upset" if you're going with the Vegas line but that's not really indicative of who the better team is. I expect the Vegas line to be around +3 anyways, so that's basically a draw given the 3 points given for home field. Of course, a lot can change between now and then, but as it stands, the Giants beating Dallas in week one would not be an upset at all, imo.