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Over the years I've put little stock into "Strength of Schedule" posts. Annually, there's always a team like the Lions that are labeled "easy" and they turn out to be anything but. In 2010, Detroit was a 6-10 team. Last year? 10-6 and they made the playoffs. The Greatest Show on Turf was 4-12 the year before they won the Super Bowl.
Betting website, Beyond The Bets, decided to calculate the strength of schedule based on more than just the 2011 wins. The result? No matter how we look at it, the Redskins have a ridiculous schedule. Of course, Michael Vick could get banged up and we see the second coming of Kolb, aka Kafka two times, but who knows. I digress. Beyond the Bets explains:
First, we added up the LVH SuperBook's 2012 NFL win totals on every team's schedule. That gave us the combined wins that each team is expected to face in 2012.
Redskins face 8th most: 130.5
Second, we took Phil Steele's power ratings in his 2012 NFL preview magazine. Steele rated every team 1 through 32. By calculating the average power rating of the 16 opponents for every team in 2012, we arrived at a new set of strength of schedule ratings. (Lower average power rating indicates a more difficult schedule.)
Redskins (4th lowest): 14.44
The best ranking for strength of schedule is probably a combination of those two. (We can't base it entirely off anyone's power ratings because those are still, at their core, subjective.)
So, we gave every team a 1-through-32 ranking for each of the above ratings, averaged them together, and that gave us our final 2012 NFL strength of schedule:
1. Browns
1. Giants
3. Ravens
4. Broncos
4. Redskins
....
7. Cowboys
.....
20. Eagles
....
30. Packers
.....
32. Patriots
Here's the full list again. And if you want to see something really nauseating, check out the Cleveland Browns schedule. R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S. It's like they're playing 16 weeks of Wild Card games (except for the Redskins....insert frown face).