Anatomy of an NFL schedule

NFL fans already know who their favorite teams will be suiting up against the following year once the previous regular season ends. There is pre-determined logic that identifies the 17 opponents an NFL team will face in future seasons. While the league determines what order those games are played in, we’ll take a look at how opponents are selected for an NFL schedule.

There are eight divisions in the NFL, each consisting of four teams. Generally speaking, the teams in each division are close to one another geographically. Each team will play two games against a division foe each season, one on the road, and one at home. This automatically populates six games for a team’s schedule.

Additionally, the league arranges for an entire division in one conference to play an entire division in the other conference. For example, all four teams in the AFC East will play each of the four teams in the NFC East in 2023. Each AFC division will play a certain NFC division once every four years. This accounts for four more games of the schedule.

Similar to what the league does for interconference matchups, the NFL will also have one division play an entire other division in the same conference. For example, each team in the NFC North will play every team in the NFC West. This also rotates so that each division plays an entire other division in their conference once every three years. This makes up four games on the schedule.

To make up the final three games of the schedule, the NFL looks to pair teams together that had similar seasons the year before. For example, the Miami Dolphins finished second in the AFC East in 2022, so they will play two teams that also finished second in their respective AFC divisions in 2022. This brings us to a total of 16 games, but we still need to account for one more contest.

For several decades, the NFL played a 16-game regular season, but that changed in 2021, when the league added another tilt. The logic to determine that 17^th opponent mirrors the “identical finish” reasoning that was present for intraconference games, but is applied for interconference. For example, the Dolphins would play the Carolina Panthers in 2023 because they finished second in the NFC South.

Understanding who a team will play can be helpful to gauge an overall strength of schedule, but it’s ultimately up to the NFL to decide the timing of each matchup from Week 1 through Week 18. NFL fans know that sometimes when you a play a team can be just as important as who the opponent is.