Los Angeles Chargers Will Have One of the NFL’s Easiest Schedules in 2018

The number-crunchers over at Bet The Board are getting a leg-up on the upcoming NFL season by tabulating each team’s anticipated strength of schedule. The traditional method of determining a team’s strength is to simply take the previous year’s W/L record. Makes sense, right?

Well, yes, yes it does make sense. But it’s far from the complete picture. Any given roster can see a 25% average change in personnel from one season to the next (even 33% is not unheard of), and the NFL thrives or dies based on each team’s adjustments. To give you a quick example of what they tabulate, the numbers alone indicate that Green Bay was not very good in 2017. Missing Aaron Rodgers makes a difference, and there’s no reason to realistically expect the Packers to only gather 7 wins in 2018.

It is also unreasonable to expect the NY Giants or Cleveland Browns to suffer quite as much as they did last year.

Factoring in known and anticipated personnel impacts, the betting gurus came up with the following win-list for 2018:

From the outset, it looks like Washington might miss their former signal-caller. Pennsylvania teams look like they’ll thrive, much like in 2017. In the AFC West, Denver, Oakland, and Kansas City will struggle to get to .500.

The early estimates have the Chargers leading the West pack— but the news gets even better!

Using these same calculations, they devised anticipated schedule difficulties. Keep in mind—these challenges certainly would factor into an anticipated Win/Loss record—the Chargers rank as the 3rd easiest schedule in the NFL.

There is every reason to expect that the AFC West will be a tight race, and one or two games will likely separate the division winner from the pack. To that end- CHEERS! to a relatively light schedule!

-Jason “Paycheck to Paycheck” Michaels