Another Look at the Schedule

Not a whole lot of news this week other than the big bombshell, so I thought I'd take another look at next season's schedule to see if there's anything else interesting we can discover about it.

First of all, the full schedule is available on NFL.com.  We've talked about it before.  Typical division winner schedule, with a couple of nice prove-it games sprinkled throughout.  But how tough is it compared to the rest of the division's? 

Using last year's results to measure next year's schedule strength is a nearly useless exercise, particularly in the NFL where teams can fly up and down the standings every year.  Instead, I pulled the projected over/under win totals that have already been set by Vegas (google your own gambling website).  What I found is that the teams the Eagles will play have a cumulative projected win total of 129. 

Which ... doesn't really mean anything, at least to me.  So I ran the same exercise for the rest of the division, as well as for New Orleans and Chicago (for obvious reasons) and found this:

Team	Opponents
Eagles	129
Saints	129
Redskins	128
Giants	127.5
Cowboys	127.5
Bears	125

So once again, the Bears are projected to have a weak schedule, mostly because they play in the terrible NFC North.  But what's interesting is how little impact the unbalanced schedule has on team's schedule strength.  The Eagles, fittingly, have the hardest schedule in the division, but it's only one game harder than the Redskins, who should supposedly have the easiest schedule in the NFC East.

The difference, of course, is that we get to play the Redskins twice, while they have to play the Eagles.

I also took a look at home/away splits for the Eagles, because there are some teams you would really much rather play at home.  For this research, I used this truly amazing NFL statistics site that I just found.  Their statistical engine allows you to run full queries against their database.  For this bit, I chose the home/road splits for the past four years, figuring that would give me a good sense of the home-field advantage teams have.

Here's what I found:

Team	Differential	Team	Differential
Ravens	14	Cowboys	4
Chiefs	11	Redskins	4
Seahawks	11	Steelers	4
Cardinals	10	Texans	4
Fortyniners	8	Bengals	3
Jaguars	8	Browns	3
Rams	8	Chargers	3
Vikings	8	Dolphins	3
Bills	7	Titans	3
Lions	7	Patriots	2
Raiders	7	Eagles	1
Bears	6	Falcons	1
Broncos	6	Giants	1
Jets	6	Panthers	-1
Buccaneers	5	Packers	-2
Colts	4	Saints	-3

The higher the number, the greater the presumed home field advantage (or just away game weakness).  The only real surprises on that list are the Saints and Packers.  Lambeau Field sure has lost its luster.  And how is it that the Saints don't play better at home when they clearly seemed to have a significant advantage last year when the Eagles came to town?

My first thought was that the 2005 (Katrina) season must have screwed up the numbers, but nope, the Saints were equally putrid both places that year.  They finished 2-7 on the road and 1-6 at home.  It turns out the Saints just really aren't that good at home.  Last year, even with all the hoopla, they only finished 4-4 at home and 6-2 on the road.  Some of that is clearly related to opponent strength, but shouldn't a team that has the whole city rooting for it be a little better at home?

Anyway, so I did the same exercise as above, looking at where the Eagles play their games to see if they're getting any break.  And wow, they are.  Here's the next table:

Team	Home	Away
Eagles	42	21
Saints	35	38
Redskins	31	30
Giants	33	39
Cowboys	28	28
Bears	38	25

So the second column, the "Home" column, shows the cumulative home-field advantage from the table above of the teams the Eagles get to play at home.  Which means that if those tables were flipped, the Eagles would have by far the hardest road schedule in terms of difficult stadiums.  Since they're not, you can see the cumulative bullet we're dodging by getting those guys at home.

The third column labeled "Away" shows the cumulative home-field advantage of the teams we play on the road.  Since high numbers mean those teams play better at home (relatively), we're actually getting quite a break with our road schedule.  In fact, of those teams above, we get a 21-point differential on our home/road games.  Only the Bears get close, and their differential is only 13. 

That is excellent news. 

Last bit of schedule-mongering.  Everyone knows how hard it is to beat a team coming out of its bye week.  The Eagles are especially good under Andy Reid on that stat, having never lost the week after their bye.  The good news this year is that the Eagles only play one team coming out of a bye...

...week nine, Dallas at Philly.  I think our boys will be able to get up for that one.

Comments

[BleedingGreenNation]

ESPN did a piece on strength of schedule for this year and had the Eagles in the bottom half of the league. Apparently the combined 06 records of our opponents is .500 which is the same as the Redskins' opponent's and slightly more than the Giants and Cowboys(both of whose opponents' winning percentage was .496)

Like you said though, I think relying on last year's results is a flawed exercise.