Ideally, every NFL team would face an identical schedule, creating an equal chance for postseason success. However, that’s not how the scheduling model operates. Consider the New England Patriots last year; they benefited from having the league’s weakest schedule, according to the Football Power Index (FPI), and unsurprisingly made a Super Bowl run.
While their case may be extreme, a bit of scheduling fortune can propel a talented team to reach its full potential and achieve success. Conversely, even the strongest teams can struggle if faced with a difficult path to the playoffs, sometimes failing to meet high expectations.
Which team might replicate the Patriots’ luck this season? Here are five playoff hopefuls poised for a favorable journey to the postseason.
Detroit Lions
The Detroit Lions will have opponents who posted the sixth-worst winning percentage in 2025. Although determining this year’s schedule strength based on last year’s performance doesn’t fully account for offseason changes, it still highlights the advantageous position the Lions are in.
This factor alone positions Detroit as a strong candidate to make a playoff comeback. Furthermore, their offense has the potential to be one of the most dynamic in the league.
While the NFC North remains competitive, Detroit’s schedule features many games against less formidable teams. In total, they will face 10 games against teams ranked in the lower half of Pete Prisco’s post-NFL Draft power rankings.
Lions opponents ranked in NFL’s bottom half
In addition to the sheer volume of subpar teams on the docket, the Lions also benefit from a couple of stretches against them in consecutive weeks. As shown in the table above, Detroit gets two separate three-week runs against teams the public expects to finish with losing records. Those come in Weeks 3-5 and Weeks 13-15, giving Dan Campbell opportunities to build momentum when it matters most: the beginning and end of the season.
New Orleans Saints
A fantastic back half of 2025 made the Saints a popular 2026 breakout pick. Tyler Shough won four of his final five starts as a rookie and could command an even better offense in Year 2 with Travis Etienne bolstering the backfield. With a comfortable schedule and a wide-open division also working in his favor, Shough might find himself quarterbacking in the playoffs.
While the Saints boast the NFL’s second-easiest schedule, again based on last year’s win totals, each of the three other NFC South teams faces an average slate strength of No. 20. Not only is New Orleans in a division where no team posted a winning record last year, but it also stands to benefit from those other squads facing more daunting roads. Those two factors working together set the stage for a climb to the top of the standings.
Granted, the picture might not look so pretty early in the year. Two of the Saints’ toughest games come in the first two weeks when they battle the Lions and Ravens in a pair of tricky road matchups.
Once that stretch closes, though, the home-versus-road trends shift dramatically in the other direction. New Orleans has only one true away game from Week 3 through Week 10, with a road date against the Giants and an international neutral-site contest against the Steelers marking the only trips away from the Big Easy. A bye week after that two-game set should mitigate any lingering travel effects.
Cincinnati Bengals
With the third-cushiest schedule by opponents’ 2025 win totals, a seemingly improved defense and the offensive star power of Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins and Chase Brown, the Bengals should expect this to be the year they get back into the Super Bowl hunt.
Keeping Burrow healthy and keeping opposing teams off the scoreboard remain of the utmost importance, and the items on their calendar should help in both regards.
As for the defense — which added Dexter Lawrence, Boye Mafe and Jonathan Allen up front and Bryan Cook at safety — the collection of offenses it will face gives it a chance to shine. Only one opponent (the Colts) finished last year in the top 10 of PFF’s offensive rankings, and the average ranking of all 17 opponents was 20.5. Cincinnati’s influx of talent, paired with a mediocre crop of opposing offenses, should help this unit improve from last year’s second-worst finish in yards allowed.
It also helps to play in a division that is up for grabs. The Ravens underwent a coaching change after inexplicably finishing last year under .500, the Browns are at the bottom of the ladder until proven otherwise and the Steelers’ ceiling is only as high as that of a 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers.
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John Breech
Philadelphia Eagles
Having become the first repeat NFC East champion in 21 years, the Eagles are the class of the division. Being the clear best team in an otherwise uninspiring division over the last two seasons gives the Eagles a simple formula for 2026: Maintain the status quo, and they are probably headed back to the playoffs. The schedule will help them do that even if A.J. Brown departs this summer via trade.
For a team that plays the entire NFC West — which again shapes up as the best division in football — the agenda actually lines up quite nicely. The Eagles get two of those squads at home in the Rams and Seahawks, and another game against a reigning postseason team, the Texans, will also take place at Lincoln Financial Field. Teams hoping to maximize wins want their toughest games at home and easier draws on the road, and that is precisely what Philadelphia received.
Taking that a step further, there is a distinct disparity in the Eagles’ favor between home stands and road swings. They will never play more than two consecutive games away from home, while they also have stretches of three and four weeks without true road games.
Here is the first one:
- Week 4 vs. Rams
- Week 5 vs. Jaguars (in London)
- Week 6 vs. Panthers
- Week 7 vs. Cowboys
And the second:
- Week 14 vs. Colts
- Week 15 vs. Seahawks
- Week 16 vs. Texans
Baltimore Ravens
Despite checking in at a modest No. 14 themselves, all but one of the Ravens’ first seven opponents — the Cowboys — sit below them in Prisco’s power rankings. First-year coach Jesse Minter could not ask for a much smoother on-ramp into his new job.
Additionally, none of those seven games — at Colts, vs. Saints, at Cowboys, vs. Titans, at Falcons, at Browns and vs. Bengals — come against teams that made the playoffs last year. A few project to be better in 2026, but none are bona fide Super Bowl contenders.
Furthermore, even though they reside on one coast, the Ravens will not have to travel much this year. They rank a modest 21st in miles traveled, and the Brazil game does the heavy lifting there. Even more telling is the fact they will play just two games outside the Eastern Time Zone all year, and neither comes with more than a one-hour time difference.
