Heading into Week 4, there are five winless teams in the NFL. The Miami Dolphins are one of them. However, it's hard to blame the Dolphins for their 0-3 record, and that's mostly because they've had to face a nightmare schedule.
With the Dolphins in a total rebuild, no one really expected them to be any good this year, but it's still worth noting that their strength of schedule so far has been off the charts: It's 1.000. From a mathematical standpoint, that's the highest possible number that your strength of schedule can be, and it means that the Dolphins have only played teams that are currently undefeated. Heading into Week 4, there are only five unbeaten teams left in the NFL and the Dolphins will have faced four of them by Sunday.
Here's a look at what Miami's schedule has looked like through the first four weeks, along with each opponent's current record: Week 1: at Raiders (3-0) -- Dolphins lost 27-13Week 2: at 49ers (3-0) -- Dolphins lost 35-13Week 3: Chiefs (3-0) -- Dolphins lost 24-10Week 4: at Vikings (3-0)(NOTE: The fifth undefeated team is the Bills, and the Dolphins will play them twice this season) Now obviously, there's a cause-and-effect part to this. If you're a winless team this early in the season, the other teams got one of their three wins against you, so your strength of schedule is naturally going to be higher than most other teams. Even when you take that into consideration, though, this is still an unprecedented situation.
Like the Dolphins, the 1986 Eagles started the season 0-3 before pulling off a stunning 34-20 win as a six-point underdog over the 3-0 Rams in Week 4, so maybe we shouldn't write off the Dolphins this week. Through three weeks, here are the teams that have played the most difficult strength of schedule: 1. Dolphins (0-3): 1.000T-2.
Buccaneers (0-3): .778T-2. Saints (1-2): .778 As for the team that's played the easiest schedule so far, that honor belongs to the Raiders, who have a strength-of-schedule rating of just .111. Their three opponents so far have a combined record of 1-8, and they've taken advantage of that by going 3-0.
Although they've had the easiest strength of schedule so far, that number will shoot up this week after they face the undefeated Chiefs. On the Dolphins' end, their schedule will finally ease up in Week 5 and that's mostly because they'll finally get to face a team that's NOT undefeated in the Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals are facing the Jaguars on Sunday.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
