Schedule Musings

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April 24, 2018

by Steve Thomas

The NFL released its 2018 season schedule last week, including the Redskins slate of games.  We’ll have plenty of time over the coming months to talk about the schedule in more detail, including our annual game predictions, but I wanted to take this opportunity to give my initial impressions of the how the Redskins’ draw turned out.  Is it possible that, for the first time in a long time, Lady Luck favored the franchise?  It’s safe to say that that didn’t happen, but it’s not necessarily awful, either.  Let’s take a detailed look at what the Redskins will face next season.

The first thing that jumps off the page at me is the imbalance between home and road games in each half of the season.  Five of the first eight games are home games, including three of four between October 14 (Panthers) and November 4 (Falcons).  Conversely, five of the final eight games are road games, including a whopping four of five contests between Thanksgiving Day in Dallas on November 22 through the Titans game on week 16 (which doesn’t have a firm date because it may be played on either Saturday, December 22, or Sunday, December 23 due to the TV network flex scheduling rules).  The good news is that the Redskins get some of their tougher non-division games at home – Packers, Panthers, Falcons.  The difficult out of division away games are the Saints in week 5 and the Jaguars in week 15.

The second thing that jumped off the page for me is that Washington does not have many prime time games.  They have two Monday night games (week 5 at the Saints and week 13 at Philadelphia) and the Thanksgiving Day game against Dallas in week 12 – that’s it.  No nationally televised games at Fed Ex Field this year.  There are currently 10 games scheduled for the 1:00 p.m. start time, and that may increase depending on what happens with the week 16 flex game against Tennessee.  Three games are 4:30 p.m. Sunday games.  It could be worse – I haven’t yet taken the time to research the data on this (maybe someday; not today), but to me the team historically seems to play better in regular Sunday afternoon time slots than they do in prime time.

The first quarter of the season features a fairly balanced schedule, with two lesser teams, two tougher teams, two home games, and two away games.  Opening on the road with a trip to the west coast swing isn’t ideal, but if you have to have a trip like that, the Cardinals (8 – 8 in 2017) are a good team to have to go visit.  The Redskins have consistently started slow under Jay Gruden, so the Cardinals, who are a team in flux, are a decent first option even if it is in Phoenix.  The Colts at home, with Andrew Luck’s status still up in the air as of now, should be one the most favorable matchups of the season – if they lose this game, it might be time to throw in the towel already.  The Packers are always a tough game, even at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, despite being just 7 – 9 last year, mostly due to Aaron Rodgers’ injury.  The Saints in New Orleans on Monday Night Football is one of the toughest games of the year.  So, as a way too early preliminary wag, 2 – 2 seems realistic, and 3 – 1 possible but overly optimistic.

The second quarter features the aforementioned Carolina Panthers game at home, two division games, Dallas at home and the Giants in New York, then the Falcons at home.  This is a tough set, regardless of where the games are played.  Dallas has, sadly, owned the Redskins in recent years, winning 4 in a row and 8 of the last 10.  Even the Giants, who were terrible last season, have managed to split the last 4 games with Washington.  Throw in the Falcons and Panthers, and this could be a make or break stretch.  With 3 of 4 games at home and 2 division rivals, though, the Redskins need to do well here in order to have a successful season.  The odds of this happening don’t seem high.  I think this quarter is realistically 1 – 3 on the low side and 2 – 2 on the high side. If the team comes out of this brutal stretch with a winning record for the quarter, things will truly be looking up.

The third quarter starts the long trek through the principal away game schedule: Tampa Bay (5 – 11) in Tampa, followed by the Texans in Raljon, Dallas at Jerryworld, then the Eagles in the dirtiest, ugliest, most classless city in America (cheap shot, I know, but the truth hurts). This is a quarter in which Washington will need to do well in order to have a successful season.  Tampa is a winnable game, even on the road, and although the Texans will be much improved from last year thanks to the return of Deshaun Watson and the seemingly always hurt J.J. Watt, that’s a must-win event.  It sadly just isn’t realistic to expect the Redskins to beat both the Cowboys and the Eagles in successive weeks, particularly when both are away.  Therefore, for this quarter, 3 – 1 appears realistic, with 2 – 2 being a low-end guess.

The fourth quarter features 2 home games and 2 away games, but comes with an AFC Championship game participant, Jacksonville in Florida, plus the Super Bowl-winning Eagles, another division rival game against the Giants, plus the Titans in the Nashville in the TV-flex game.  Assuming that both the Jaguars and the Eagles have another good season, it’s tough for me to see more than 2 – 2 at best against these four teams, particularly with the easiest game against the Titans coming on the road and possibly on Saturday.  In a worst-case scenario, 0 – 4 isn’t beyond the realm of possible.  If the team ended up maximizing its potential, and the Eagles and Jaguars end up being not quite what we expect them to be, perhaps it will go better.  It’s obviously tough to predict with any sort of reasonable accuracy at this juncture.

If you add up my high and low predictions for each quarter, my thumbnail walk through the 2018 calendar makes me think the Redskins may end up with a record somewhere between 10 – 6 and 5 – 11, depending on how things go.  This isn’t exactly groundbreaking, since only 3 seasons out of the last 20 have been out of this range, all bad (4 – 12 in 2014, 3 – 13 in 2013, 4 – 12 in 2009).  Truthfully, it’s too early to predict for a team in flux like the Redskins.  What’s certain is that the scheduling gods declined to do the team any favors.

What do you think?  Leave me a comment with your thoughts below.

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