The NFL’s 2026 schedule is out for all to see — 272 games spread out over 18 weeks, four continents and every day of the week from Wednesday to Monday. It’s a careful and complicated calculation of home and away that will eventually yield one Super Bowl champion.
Here are my takeaways on the 2026 NFL schedule.
It’s easy to pick on the Miami Dolphins.
The Los Angeles Chargers, perhaps the best of all NFL teams at creating viral schedule-release videos that sneak in subtle and not-so-subtle jabs at the teams they’ll be facing, got in an easy shot this year. The Dolphins were shown as an actual tank, trudging along toward a white flag, noting the wave of departures from their roster in the past year.
Miami’s schedule is even meaner. The Dolphins have a new coach, new general manager, new quarterback and a depleted roster that is projected to win 4.5 games, as low as any team in the league. Before you accuse the Dolphins of tanking — losing on purpose to secure a high draft pick in 2027 — take a close look at the final six weeks of their 2026 schedule.
Their final six opponents are the Denver Broncos, Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, Chargers, Buffalo Bills and New England Patriots. All six teams made the playoffs last year, four of them won playoff games and New England made it to the Super Bowl. Five of those six won at least 11 games in 2025, including the Broncos and Patriots each going 14-3.
It’s just a cruel turn by the NFL’s scheduling rotation: Each AFC East team faces the entire NFC North and AFC West, two of the best divisions in the league, and Miami’s third-place schedule did the Dolphins no favors, lining them up against the San Francisco 49ers, Cincinnati Bengals and Indianapolis Colts.
We knew the opponents would be tough for the Dolphins, but to see the concentration of tough teams down the stretch, it will make a long season that much tougher for them to find a single win in the final six weeks of the season. That might help Miami land the No. 1 overall pick and a potential franchise quarterback, but it won’t be fun for the team or its fans getting there.
[2026 NFL Win-Loss Predictions, Analysis For Every Team]
All 32 teams have a bye week. So ideally, each team would have one game where it has that extra week to prepare for an opponent, and one week when an opponent is coming off a bye for the same advantage.
But that’s not the case at all.
The Philadelphia Eagles and the Chargers each play four games against teams coming off their bye week. The Eagles have that three times in four weeks between Weeks 6 and 9, and the Chargers have it three times in five weeks between Weeks 9 and 13. The Las Vegas Raiders and Los Angeles Rams each have three games against opponents coming off their bye week, while there are 14 NFL teams that never have to face an opponent coming off a bye week.
Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni may not look so favorably upon his team’s 2026 schedule, which features four games against teams coming off their bye week. (Photo by G Fiume/Getty Images)
We can’t expect a total balance in terms of uneven prep time before games — inevitably, one team played on a Thursday the week before, another might be coming off a Monday night on the road. But if you’re using fairness as one of the main criteria in putting together a 272-game schedule, you shouldn’t tolerate some teams having four games where the opponent has an extra week of rest and preparations, and other teams (44% of the league) never have to deal with that once.
Two Shots At Super Bowl Teams
The first game of the 2026 season — Wednesday, Sept. 9 — features a Super Bowl rematch, as the Seattle Seahawks host the Patriots.
There are five NFL teams unfortunate enough to play both Super Bowl teams this season. The entire AFC West plays both teams, and the Bears not only play both but in consecutive weeks, hosting the Patriots on a Thursday night in Week 7, then going to Seattle 11 days later for a Monday night game in Week 8.
Which NFL teams have the most games against 2025 playoff teams this season? That would be the Seahawks and Broncos, with 10 each, followed closely by the Kansas City Chiefs, Raiders, Rams, Arizona Cardinals, Patriots and Dolphins with six playoff teams each. At the other extreme, the New Orleans Saints, Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals each only have to play five games against 2025 playoff teams.
It’s especially cruel for the Raiders and Cardinals, who finished last in their divisions last year with two of the worst records in the NFL, but still have more than half their 2026 schedule against teams that made the playoffs in 2025. Meanwhile, the Carolina Panthers and Pittsburgh Steelers won their divisions and yet have only six games each against playoff opponents.
The league tries to avoid too many long runs of home or away games, but three in a row is almost unavoidable. Three teams have road games in three consecutive weeks — the Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars and Chiefs — and another 10 teams have three consecutive home games, including the Browns.
The NFL has nine international games scheduled this season, and it used to be the norm for teams to offset the long travel back and forth by scheduling their bye week immediately after the international game. That’s hardly the case at all in 2026. Of 18 opportunities, only three times are teams taking bye weeks directly after their global travel: The Jaguars have their bye weeks after back-to-back games in London, the Patriots have theirs after their game in Munich, and the Saints have theirs after their game in Paris.
Another quirk is when division opponents face each other twice in close proximity, but there isn’t much of that in 2026. The Jaguars and Tennessee Titans play in Weeks 10 and 12, and the Rams and Seahawks (perhaps one of the best rivalries in the league) play in Weeks 16 and 18, putting potentially a division title if not home-field advantage in the NFC playoffs on the line in the final three weeks of the season. Those are the only two twice-in-three-weeks instances, and there are two twice-in-four-weeks quirks, with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Saints playing in Weeks 15 and 18, and the same for the Ravens and Steelers.
