Strength of Schedule

July 14, 2006 @ 16:00:00

By Bryce McRae
Edited by Cory J. Bonini

Each year when the NFL releases its teams' schedules many people promptly think that looking at the strength of schedule (SOS) of various teams will provide some kind of inside edge for fantasy drafting. SOS, however, is only a red herring often times giving us information that does not directly relate to a team and doesn’t give any useful help when drafting.

One reason why it does not provide accurate fantasy advice is the schedules are calculated off of the teams' previous year's record. It fails to take into account various additions and departures on any team. Would you judge a team based on how they looked in February? Neither would we. Especially in a league that has as much parity as this does, last year's last place team could easily be next year's first place team (for example, the 2004 to 2005 Atlanta Falcons or San Diego Chargers).

In addition, schedule does not account for when teams play or where they play. This could factor into your decision as well. If you have a team like Indianapolis that will play New England, there is a big difference between them meeting in September when the weather is nice and more suited for Indianapolis than for New England in December when the conditions would more likely favor the Patriots.

If you look at some of the players who performed well last year, there is no direct correlation with their fantasy numbers. For example, last year the San Diego Chargers had the hardest schedule and yet their starting running back LaDainian Tomlinson was third in the league in rushing touchdowns. SOS is a measure of the team compared to various other teams, not single players. The only area it might factor in a bit would be if you are picking team defenses.

If you look at the opponent's win percentage, there is very little fluctuation from the hardest to the easiest SOS. The Chargers had the hardest SOS for the 2005 season with their opponents having a .559 winning percentage. This translates roughly into seven wins for the season. The team with the easiest SOS was the Seattle Seahawks with a percentage of .430, giving them approximately nine wins for the season. From hardest to easiest there is only a difference of two wins. If anything, this proves the SOS should be discarded as there is so little variation in it from top to bottom.

Following the upcoming seasons SOS, one would expect that the Chicago Bears or Green Bay Packers would have the top fantasy players, or at least some stronger fantasy players. However, neither team should have many players that are a lock for fantasy stardom.

With the amount of parity in the league, SOS does not give much useful information for fantasy drafting purposes. It gives you an indication of how the team could do next year but there are too many variables for it to be taken seriously; and how the team does is not really much of a help for fantasy purposes. As for what we as fantasy owners are concerned, individual players, it offers little, if any, help with them and should not be used when preparing for your upcoming draft.

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Bryce McRae
Bryce McRae is a Managing Editor with KFFL and has been involved in fantasy sports since 1999. He joined KFFL as a volunteer writer in March 2005 before becoming a Hot off the Wire Analyst in March 2006. He began working in his current capacity in September 2008. His work has appeared on fantasy sports sites such as Yahoo! and CBS Sportsline as well as in print. He graduated from the University of British Columbia in 2008 with a B.A. in History and U.S. Studies.

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