Atlanta Falcons: Five Things We Learned From the Falcons Schedule
By Deke Lloyd
4. Falcons Have One Of Toughest Schedules In NFL
According to Sporting News, the Falcons have the 8th toughest schedule in the NFL. The winning percentage of their opponents last season was .518. With games against Minnesota, Philadelphia, Houston, Tennessee, Los Angeles Rams, Seattle, New Orleans, and Carolina twice, the Falcons have a lot of tough games in front of them. And if Tampa, Arizona, Jacksonville, or San Francisco are any better, that just makes the schedule even more difficult.
Preseason schedule ranking can be fickle. It’s easy to look at the records from last season and try to predict who will be good this year. What is hard to predict is all the intangibles. Injuries, teams not being as good as last season, or the media over-hyping a team can all change how the schedule looks in December. Today, the Falcons have one of the more difficult schedules but at the end of the year, it can look like a who’s who of cupcakes. As of now, the Falcons are going to be pushed all season. But a lot of what the strength of schedule is looking at is within the NFC South. Having to play the Saints and Panthers twice a year is going to make any team’s schedule look more difficult than a team in the AFC East or NFC West. The Falcons won’t care about the numbers, just the games that are in front of them.