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There are always some crazy quirks when it comes to the NFL schedule and this year is no different. The only strange thing about oddities is that not all of them are created equal. Some teams will be pleased with the quirks in their schedule, while many other teams will not be so excited by the quirks provided by the league office.
So who has the craziest quirks? This is a great question, so let’s find out.
Here are 11 of the strangest oddities in the NFL chart for 2022.
- The bears will spend December at home. The Bears have a particularly unique planning oddity: They don’t play a SINGLE road game in December, which is the first time this has happened to Bears since 1964. The Bears will play a home game against the Packers in week 13 (December 4). They have a goodbye in week 14 (December 11) and then follow with a home game in weeks 15 (December 18) and 16 (December 24). Although they play a road game in week 17, this game falls on January 1, which means they have ZERO road games in December.
- The bosses get a killer starting schedule. With their 2022 schedule, the Chiefs will become the first team in NFL history to open a season with eight consecutive games against teams that finished over .500 the previous season (Via Elias Sports Bureau). The cut begins in week 1 when they travel to Arizona and then continues until week 9. Here’s a look at their brutal starting glove of eight games: At Cardinals, Chargers, at Colts, at Buccaneers, Raiders, Bills, 49ers, bye, Titans.
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- Jets and crows with a strange start on schedule. The Jets will start the season by playing with each team at AFC North for the first four weeks, the first since the merger in 1970, when the Jets played four consecutive games against the same division at any time during the season. At the end of the Ravens, they will start the season with four consecutive games against AFC East, which is the first time they have opened the season against four teams from the same division.
- Commanders go back to back. Commanders have a particularly unique oddity in their schedule: they will play consecutive games against the Giants, starting in week 13. After playing on the road in New York that week, commanders will have a goodbye in week 14 before hosting the Giants in week 15. This is only the second time since 1991 that an NFL team has played consecutive regular season games against the same opponent. With that in mind, the NFL obviously feels more comfortable with the idea, because the only other time this has happened in the last 30 years was last season when the Browns faced the Ravens in consecutive games.
- A difficult time to start the season. There are only three teams in the NFL that will have to play their first TWO games on the road this year and those teams are: The Buccaneers, Colts and Patriots.
- Hard time until the end of the season. At the opposite end of the spectrum are seven teams that will close the season with two consecutive games on the road, but only two of these teams will crash, playing two consecutive DIVISIONAL road games to close the season: The Vikings and Panthers.
- Bye Bye Bye. The Texans are facing three teams that will split this year, the most in the NFL. This is not ideal, as the teams will get extra rest and preparation time before playing with Houston. At the other end of the spectrum are seven teams that will face a total of zero opponents to say goodbye: Bills, Lions, Broncos, Buccaneers, Chiefs, Bears, Commanders.
- AFC West is the best. The four AFC West teams are currently scheduled to play a total of 19 games in prime time in 2022, which equals the second largest team in the Super Bowl era, according to an NFL study. The only division scheduled for more prime time games was NFC East in 2015.
- Week 14 bye. Falcons, Bears, Packers, Colts, Saints and Commanders received a goodbye in week 14, which is remarkable for two reasons. First, it has to do with the last goodbye scheduled for a team since the NFL expanded to 32 teams in 2002. It seems teams prefer to have a later goodbye, and last season proved why: 2021 was the only time since 2002 when the teams had said goodbye for week 14 and all four teams that said goodbye this week ended the year with a winning record.
- Three teams have canceled Amazon’s debut season for Thursday Night’s Football. This season will be the first time that Amazon will have an exclusive package for Thursday night, and for the first year, 29 of the 32 teams in the league will appear on Amazon Prime. The three that will not? Giants, Vikings and lions. With that in mind, all three will be able to play a game on Thursday this year, and that’s because all three will play on Thanksgiving.
- Extremely long journey. The Packers, Dolphins, Eagles and Chiefs have one thing in common this year: They are the only teams in the league to play three consecutive games on the road. While that’s not ideal, the NFL teams that are hitting a three-game schedule are 22-11 on those 2018 trips.
We hope you can impress all your friends this weekend with your strange knowledge of NFL graphics.
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