Hogs Haven
It’s 5 o’clock somewhere…
The 5 o’clock club is published from time to time during the season, and aims to provide a forum for reader-driven discussion at a time of day when there isn’t much NFL news being published. Feel free to introduce topics that interest you in the comments below.
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I’m generally near the front of the line in offering push-back about the difference between playing a “first place” or a “fourth place” schedule. There simply isn’t a lot of difference between the schedules of the four teams in an NFL division.
I do, think, though, that the schedule for any given team can vary greatly in difficulty from one season to the next, and that those fluctuations are more prominent with the current 17-game season than they were when the season lasted for 16 games.
I think the 17-game schedule and the increasing number of international games in each NFL season is beginning to introduce some meaningful elements to the schedule discussion.
The Commanders played a 4th-place schedule in 2024; they will play a 2nd-place schedule in 2025. I’ll discuss what that means, but I think there are a number of other factors are likely to have much more impact on the increased difficulty of Washington’s schedule in the upcoming season.
One inequity of the 17-game schedule is that half the teams in the NFL will play nine home games each season while the other half play only eight. The NFL partially resolved this dilemma by setting up a scheduling system where NFC teams all play at home 9 times in even years (2022, 2024, 2026) while AFC teams play 9 home games in odd years (2023, 2025, 2027).
In the season we just finished, Washington played at home 9 times, earning a 7-2 record (.777 win percentage). A little quick math tells us that the Commanders’ 5-3 record on the road (.625 win percentage) was good, but not nearly as good.
Playing one more road game/one less home game in 2025 will make it that much harder to repeat the 12-win season.
Each season, all four teams in the NFC East have to play all four teams from one NFC division and one AFC division.
In 2024, those two divisions were the NFC South and the AFC North.
In 2025, those two divisions will be the AFC West and the NFC North.
Last season, the NFC South had a combined W-L record of 28-40 (.412) while the AFC North had a combined record of 34-34 (.500). The two divisions had an overall combined record of 62-74 (.456).
Next season’s opponents had the following results in 2024:
No two divisions in the NFL had more total wins than the AFC West and the NFC North in the 2024 regular season. As...
