Don’t be fooled, Cowboys Nation. Any talk you’ve seen recently about Dallas having one of the easiest schedules in 2022 is based on the faultiest of logic. Let’s just quickly debunk this nonsense.
Articles like this one have popped up throughout major sports media over the last 24 hours. They claim that the Cowboys and the Washington Commanders are tied for the lowest “strength of schedule” scores among all NFL teams in the upcoming season.
What are they basing this on? Why, teams’ winning percentages from 2021 of course!
In a league designed to promote parity and that has seen many new faces annually in the playoffs, results from one year have very little bearing on the next one. This is quickly evident when you consider some of Dallas’ upcoming opponents.
In the NFC East alone the Cowboys could face stiffer competition across the board. Depending on how Carson Wentz performs in Washington and the development of Jalen Hurts and Daniel Jones, the division rivals could all present more resistance to Dallas than last season.
Who knows what a middling team from 2021 like the Bears, Colts, or Vikings could do this year? And even from the depths of the NFL’s basement last season, who’s to say that the Jaguars, Lions, or Texans couldn’t have a surprising surge?
Imagine teams that saw the Cowboys on their schedule last year after Dallas’ awful 2020. You think they were taking them lightly with Dak Prescott back and with Micah Parsons and Trevon Diggs terrorizing opposing offenses?
The surprise factor goes both ways, too. Again think about the Cowboys in 2020; all it takes is a major injury to any team’s starting QB for a contender to be reduced to barely competitive.
When the NFL looks at “strength of schedule” as a tiebreaker for playoff seeding it’s based on the current season’s results, not anything from the past. Those stop being relevant with the draft and waiver wire ordering.
The Cowboys’ 2022 schedule will only be as strong or easy as it proves to be, not because of anything we know today. The NFL has created the landscape for yesterday’s chumps to become tomorrow’s champs and we’ve seen too many surprises going one way or the other to put stock in previous performance or offseason moves.
Don’t take the bait.
