2026 NFL Schedule Release: Toughest Schedules, Prime Time Games and Travel Trouble
The 2026 NFL Schedule has dropped, and it’s safe to say a few teams are probably happier about it than others. Every year, strength of schedule gets calculated and we immediately learn who supposedly has a brutal road ahead and who caught a break.
Is the SOS calculation actually accurate? Not really. It’s based entirely on how teams performed the previous season, and if you’ve read any of our offseason grades, you already know one spring can completely reshape a roster.
So instead of obsessing over one flawed metric, we will dig into some of the more interesting quirks of the release. Prime time clashes, holiday festivities, travel nightmares, weird advantages, and scheduling spots that could quietly impact betting markets all season long.
Earn Your Wins: Toughest Schedules
Bears - .550
Dolphins - .542
Cardinals - .538
Packers - .538
Chiefs - .536
Strength of schedule is determined by the cumulative winning percentage of opponents from the previous season. Every year, it creates a quick snapshot of who drew the short straw.
Heading into 2026, there’s one obvious trend among the teams with the roughest dockets: elite divisions.
The Bears and Packers have to deal with each other, the Lions, and the Vikings twice apiece. The NFC North has been an absolute war zone lately, so naturally those opponent win percentages are going to skyrocket.
Meanwhile, the Dolphins, Cardinals, and Chiefs all finished in the lower half of competitive divisions that produced multiple playoff teams in 2025. If those franchises want to climb the standings, they’ll have to survive inside divisions that already set an extremely high bar.
Better Not Blow It: Easiest Schedules
Browns - .429
Saints - .434
Bengals - .450
Colts - .450
Falcons - .465
This list is honestly more surprising than the “hardest” group.
The Falcons and Saints make perfect sense given how weak the NFC South still appears entering 2026.
Cleveland, though? That one seems strange.
You’d assume teams like Baltimore and Pittsburgh would benefit most from sharing a division with the Browns, not Cleveland itself ending up with the league’s easiest slate. One weird scheduling wrinkle is that top-tier contenders often get loaded into marquee out-of-division matchups. Baltimore drawing Buffalo in prime time, for example, quietly boosts the Ravens’ SOS number.
One other oddity: none of the teams receiving zero prime time games landed in the bottom five for easiest schedules. Even the league’s least marketable teams still have tougher projected roads than the squads listed above.
Pass the Neck Pillow: Who’s Traveling the Most?
49ers - 47,862 miles
Rams - 34,987 miles
Cowboys - 27,990 miles
Patriots - 27,586 miles
Dolphins - 27,575 miles
Playing a game in Australia will absolutely wreck your mileage total.
The 49ers and Rams are both going to Melbourne, instantly launching themselves to the top of the travel leaderboard. Crossing the globe tends to do that.
The Cowboys and Patriots also drew international assignments, with Dallas traveling to Brazil in Week 3 and New England heading to Munich in Week 10.
Miami’s situation is different. The Dolphins don’t have an international game at all, yet they still landed among the league leaders in travel. That mostly comes from drawing the AFC West along with a road trip to San Francisco.
From an East Coast base, Miami has to travel cross-country three separate times for games against the Raiders, Broncos, and 49ers, while also heading north for trips to Green Bay and Minnesota.
The international games are exhausting enough, but Miami may have gotten the most annoying overall travel setup in football.
No Place Like Home: Who’s Traveling the Least?
Panthers - 8,641 miles
Browns - 9,064 miles
Bears - 10,664 miles
Titans - 11,380 miles
Buccaneers - 11,949 miles
David Tepper is probably popping some expensive champagne after seeing Carolina’s travel plans, or lack thereof.
The Panthers are one of only two teams staying under 10,000 miles this season, and their longest regular season trip is a relatively manageable flight to Minnesota.
The other sub-10K team? Cleveland again.
The Browns somehow managed to land both the league’s easiest projected schedule and the second-lowest travel total. The NFL practically gift-wrapped comfort for Cleveland in 2026.
The Bears, Titans, and Buccaneers round out the bottom five.
No Such Thing as a Day Off: Teams Playing Multiple Holiday Games
Every year around Thanksgiving and Christmas, somebody inevitably writes an article about athletes wanting the holidays off.
It’s a fair argument. Many would rather spend those days at home with family instead of working. At the same time, football has become part of the holiday routine for millions of people sitting around overloaded dinner tables.
In 2026, five teams will play multiple holiday games:
Rams, Packers, Bears, Eagles, and Bills.
The Bears and Bills drew the worst deal of the bunch since both teams will play on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.
Expect at least a few complaints once those cold-weather holiday trips start piling up.
Under the Lights: Who’s Playing the Most Prime Time Games?
Rams, Packers, Bills, Chiefs, Seahawks, Cowboys
In fairly unsurprising news, there’s a pretty strong overlap between teams playing on holidays and teams dominating the prime time schedule.
The Rams, Packers, and Bills all landed multiple holiday appearances while also stacking up nationally televised matchups. Los Angeles alone will play in seven prime time contests, including Opening Night, Christmas, and two Monday Night Football appearances.
Get comfortable with Matt Stafford in standalone windows.
The Packers, Bills, Chiefs, Seahawks, and Cowboys will each play six prime time matchups. Green Bay, Buffalo, and Seattle earned those spots thanks to their 2025 success. The NFL is clearly betting on Kansas City bouncing back into dynasty form, while the Cowboys continue operating under completely different popularity rules than the rest of the league.
No matter what happens, Dallas always ends up under the lights.
No One Wants to See That: Teams with Zero Prime Time Games
Let’s not spend too much time kicking bad teams while they’re already face-down on the turf.
The Raiders, Jets, Cardinals, Titans, and Dolphins will all go without a single prime time invitation in 2026. The group includes four of the league’s worst teams from 2025, plus Miami, which seems headed toward one of the NFL’s bleakest rebuilds.
The league clearly isn’t expecting many must-watch moments from any of these teams.
Social Media Heroes: Best Schedule Release Videos
Quick shoutout to the AFC West social media teams, minus Denver, for some excellent schedule release hype videos.
The Chargers leaned fully into early-2000s video game nostalgia, the Raiders embraced the weird energy of their quarterback room, and the Chiefs basically created football-themed Anchorman chaos.
They’re all worth checking out if you haven’t seen them yet.
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