Simon Hunter

To me, just across the board, strength of schedule of your opponents is going to drive more than rest edges.

So rest edges are smaller.

They're a little bit more abstract, sometimes harder to calculate, which is part of the reason why the NFL just has this opinion in general.

And they're leaning even more into it right now that rest doesn't matter.

At all.

And so if you say that rest doesn't matter, then you can have carte blanche to do whatever you want with the schedule.

You could stick a team, have seven games where they're at a rest deficit and another team in the league who has zero games where they're at a rest deficit.

You could do whatever you want if you say rest doesn't matter.

And so that's what the league is pivoted into.

I definitely don't agree with that theory.

But at the same time, who you play, which the league has no control over, is definitely more important.

impactful in terms of your ability to win games than when you play those teams.

Right, so the strength of schedule of your opponents is completely obviously dictated by where you finish week 18, where your standing was.

That assigns your three opponents in the other divisions within your conference.

You rotate playing two other divisions every year, and the league does not pick your schedule.

It's determined by your standing.

So third-place finishes get third-place opponents in the other divisions within your conference, and that's why we know –

In January, the day after week 18 ends, who you're going to be playing this upcoming year.

And that's where all the networks start pummeling us with strength of schedule based on last year's win-loss record, which is not the best way to calculate strength of schedule.

But be that as it may, that's what they like to share with us.