The New York Giants had the easiest schedule in the NFL a season ago and the result was their first playoff appearance since 2016.
This year, however, the football Gods were not so giving as Big Blue has the fourth-most difficult schedule in the league, with their opponents having a 2022 aggregate winning percentage of .549.
Combined with the difficult strength of schedule, the Giants open with three games in 11 days, four prime time games over six weeks, and seven road games over the first 11 weeks.
Giant fans are scratching their heads and the disservice has not gone unnoticed by the football universe.
And it’s actually even worse than that, says Conor Orr of Sports Illustrated.
This schedule is borderline criminal While the entire theme of this year’s ordering of games was “naked money grab,” forcing one of the NFL’s stalwart franchises — a team coming off a playoff berth with the reigning Coach of the Year on the sideline — to go on the road for seven of the first 10 games is ridiculous. New York is also tied for the most short-rest games out of any team in the NFL, with four according to ESPN analytics, which also noted that the Giants are tied for the most short-rest road games out of any team. I don’t count a single two-game stretch where I’d deem both games obviously winnable, and they are tied for fourth-toughest in strength of schedule.
While I can predict that coaches like Brian Daboll and DC Wink Martindale, who have been through the ringer, can use this as a collective battle cry, this is the kind of legitimate screw-job that alters the course of a promising season.
Closing the year with the Eagles twice in three weeks, including once on Christmas, is a middle finger at best. What on Earth did the Giants do to deserve this?
Truth be told, the Giants are on the road seven times in their first 11 games, not 10, but the rest is deadly accurate. The prime-time appearances, the short-rest games, and the brutal beginning of the season just seem like the schedule-makers would like to see the Giants fail in 2023.
