Dan GrazianoMay 14, 2026, 08:15 PM ETCloseDan Graziano is a senior NFL national reporter for ESPN, covering the entire league and breaking news. Dan also contributes to Get Up, NFL Live, SportsCenter, ESPN Radio, Sunday NFL Countdown and Fantasy Football Now. He is a New Jersey native who joined ESPN in 2011, and he is also the author of two published novels.Follow on XMultiple Authors
play0:53Schrager: Bengals’ game in Spain shows NFL’s belief in CincinnatiPeter Schrager reacts to the Bengals getting a matchup vs. the Falcons in Spain.
play0:39What Troy Aikman expects from Broncos-Chiefs looking ahead to Week 1Mike Greenberg and Troy Aikman weigh in on Broncos-Chiefs kicking of Monday Night Football for Week 1.
Are Cowboys or Giants in a better position to make a statement in Week 1? (1:51)Damien Woody and Dan Graziano discuss the Giants’ matchup vs. the Cowboys on the first Sunday night game of the season. (1:51)
Schrager: Bengals’ game in Spain shows NFL’s belief in CincinnatiPeter Schrager reacts to the Bengals getting a matchup vs. the Falcons in Spain.
What Troy Aikman expects from Broncos-Chiefs looking ahead to Week 1Mike Greenberg and Troy Aikman weigh in on Broncos-Chiefs kicking of Monday Night Football for Week 1.
Mike Greenberg and Troy Aikman weigh in on Broncos-Chiefs kicking of Monday Night Football for Week 1.
The Bengals will return to the AFC Championship Game
A team that missed last season’s playoffs will play in this season’s Super Bowl
Each year around this time, the league releases its full schedule for the upcoming season, so teams and their fans begin to examine it game-by-game. They look at where they got bad breaks and where they got advantages. Why does my favorite team have a bye week so early? What’s with these back-to-back-to-back road games? Looking at that first-half schedule, what’s stopping us from starting 9-0?
It’s one of the easiest times of the offseason to trot out an overreactions column, as the football-loving world tries to predict games four, five, six and seven months away without knowing who’s going to be good, who’s going to get hurt or, in some cases, who’s going to be on all of these teams.
Chicago was one of the great stories of the 2025 season, reaching the NFC divisional round in Ben Johnson’s first year as head coach. Second-year quarterback Caleb Williams made brilliant fourth-quarter play after brilliant fourth-quarter play right up until the end, taking the Rams to overtime before finally bowing out.
In the long term, the arrow is definitely pointing up for the Johnson/Williams pairing — and there’s room for Williams to get even better. He finished 32nd out of 33 qualifying QBs in completion percentage (58.1%) last season and just 16th in QBR (58.2) even as he led the Bears to their first division title in seven years.
But … the Bears have the hardest schedule in the NFL, based on the 2025 win/loss records of the teams they’ll play in 2026. And while that is certainly not the only indicator of schedule strength, history says it’s definitely not nothing.
The last team to win a playoff game after entering the season with the hardest schedule by that metric was the 2016 Falcons. Over the past 10 seasons, seven of those teams missed the playoffs entirely.
Plus, the Bears won an NFC North division in which literally every other team had a winning record last season. The Lions and Vikings should bounce back to contender status, and the Packers were a playoff team last season along with the Bears. Chicago plays all three of those teams — plus the Bills — over the final month of the season.
After reaching the Super Bowl in Joe Burrow’s second season and getting back to the AFC Championship Game the following year, Cincinnati has missed the playoffs three years in a row. Last season’s 6-11 finish was the Bengals’ first losing record since Burrow’s rookie year of 2020.
They are, however, the only team in their division that didn’t change head coaches this offseason. And they spent the bulk of it beefing up their defense, which has been their Achilles heel since that Super Bowl season. Cincinnati capped things off last month by trading the 10th overall pick to the Giants for defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence II a few days before the draft. The offense returns all 11 starters from 2025, and when Burrow has been healthy it has been an elite unit.
Furthermore, the Bengals — based again on the 2025 win-loss records of their 2026 opponents — have the league’s third-easiest schedule. All they need is for the defense to not be detrimental, and one assumes they can be a playoff team again without too much trouble.
There is a major opportunity here for the Bengals, as they’ve fielded a championship-caliber offense every year Burrow has stayed healthy. They just need the other side of the ball to start chipping in again.
Schrager: Bengals’ game in Spain shows NFL’s belief in Cincinnati
Peter Schrager reacts to the Bengals getting a matchup vs. the Falcons in Spain.
Miami moved on from GM Chris Grier during the season and from head coach Mike McDaniel after the season. It slashed the roster, cutting big names like Tyreek Hill and Tua Tagovailoa and eating big dead-cap charges in the process. It signed free agent quarterback Malik Willis, who showed flashes as Green Bay’s backup the past two seasons but remains unproven as a full-time starter. And it traded its best remaining receiver, Jaylen Waddle, to the Broncos for a first-round pick.
This looks like a team in full rebuild mode, and the Dolphins have the second-toughest schedule based on the 2025 records of their 2026 opponents. They play nine games against teams that made last season’s playoffs and 11 against teams that had winning records.
I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m saying they’re going to have competition. The Cardinals, who also cleaned house on the coaching staff and don’t feature an obvious solution at quarterback, have the third-toughest strength of schedule, as the other three teams in their division each won at least 12 games (two went to the NFC Championship Game and one won the Super Bowl last season).
Things are going to be at least as tough for first-year Cardinals head coach Mike LaFleur as they are for first-year Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley. The Raiders also have the sixth-hardest schedule and appear to be at the beginning of their own rebuild.
Could the Dolphins end up as the league’s worst team? Sure. But right now, it’s an overreaction to assume they will.
Hey, both Super Bowl teams last season missed the playoffs the season before, right? Seattle might not have come completely out of nowhere, but New England sure did. And neither was among the obvious favorites when the schedule came out last May.
The Lions, who were in the NFC Championship Game three seasons ago and the NFC’s No. 1 seed two seasons ago, finished 9-8 last season and missed the playoffs. They have the seventh-easiest schedule based on teams’ 2025 records, making them an easy candidate for this.
What Troy Aikman expects from Broncos-Chiefs looking ahead to Week 1
New England fans hate hearing it, but last year’s schedule was a huge reason for its division title and playoff seeding. Again, margins in this league are thin and the schedule can make a huge difference. If nothing else, it’s one more reason for teams that just missed out in 2025 to think they can get into this season’s dance and make some noise.
Only four of their games are against teams that had winning records last season — the Texans, the Jaguars and two against the Steelers. The defense should be better, given all of the moves the Bengals have made there, and each of the other three teams in their division is in a transition phase with a new head coach. The defending division-champion Steelers don’t even know yet if 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers is coming back or if they have to go with some combination of Mason Rudolph, Will Howard and Drew Allar at quarterback.
Are Cowboys or Giants in a better position to make a statement in Week 1? (1:51)Damien Woody and Dan Graziano discuss the Giants’ matchup vs. the Cowboys on the first Sunday night game of the season. (1:51)
Damien Woody and Dan Graziano discuss the Giants’ matchup vs. the Cowboys on the first Sunday night game of the season. (1:51)
Dan GrazianoMay 14, 2026, 08:15 PM ETCloseDan Graziano is a senior NFL national reporter for ESPN, covering the entire league and breaking news. Dan also contributes to Get Up, NFL Live, SportsCenter, ESPN Radio, Sunday NFL Countdown and Fantasy Football Now. He is a New Jersey native who joined ESPN in 2011, and he is also the author of two published novels.Follow on XMultiple Authors
CloseDan Graziano is a senior NFL national reporter for ESPN, covering the entire league and breaking news. Dan also contributes to Get Up, NFL Live, SportsCenter, ESPN Radio, Sunday NFL Countdown and Fantasy Football Now. He is a New Jersey native who joined ESPN in 2011, and he is also the author of two published novels.Follow on X
Ah, the NFL schedule release. A time of hope, excitement, social media fun and, yes, overreactions.
So no, we aren’t above it. Let’s judge five possible overreactions to the 2026 schedule.
Jump to a potential overreaction for: Bears | Bengals | Chiefs | Dolphins Super Bowl teams