10 Things You Need To Know About 2024 NFL Schedule

The 2024 NFL regular season schedule has officially been released in full for the league’s 17-game, 18-week regular season.

Get an early sports betting edge with our analysis across strength of schedule, rest disparity, short weeks, road games on short rest, prep & rest ranking, team schedule notes, and much more.

Top 10 Things to Know About the 2024 NFL Schedule:

1. Strength of schedule matters!

Last year:

Of the 15 teams that actually had the easiest 2023 schedules, 10 went to the playoffs (Cowboys, Packers, Texans, Bills, Dolphins, Buccaneers, Eagles, Lions, 49ers, and Chiefs) with 9-of-15 going over their win total
Of the 17 teams that actually had the hardest 2023 schedules, only 4 went to the playoffs (Steelers, Browns, Ravens, and Rams) with 4-of-17 going over their win total

Although it makes perfect sense, far too often it's not incorporated by analysts enough.

Trying to overachieve against a brutal schedule rarely happens (4 out of 17 in 2023).

Likewise, winning against an easy schedule and overachieving compared to expectations happens often (9 out of 15 in 2023).

2. The 10 easiest schedules, the 10 hardest schedules, and every team in between are detailed on our updated NFL Strength of Schedule breakdown.

It's VITAL to calculate these schedule strengths properly AND it's vital to use updated data.

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3. Rest Disparity matters:

The 2023 Chiefs had a net rest edge of -13, the third-worst in the NFL.

But for the Chiefs, it wasn’t just that they had less rest in general. They had less rest than their opponent for six straight weeks, from Week 12 through Week 17.

The Chiefs are uniquely built to overcome rest disadvantages. After all, they are back-to-back Super Bowl Champions and have Patrick Mahomes. But even they struggled with these games.

When the Chiefs played with at least two days less rest than their opponents (as they did in 5 games last year), they were 2-3 and covered the spread in just one of those five games.

In all their other games, they were 13-2 and covered the spread in 12 of those 15 games.

To recap how rest impacted the best team in the NFL last year:

Chiefs games with rest deficit of 2+ days: 2-3 (40%) outright and 1-4 (20%) ATS
All other games played: 13-2 (87%) outright and 12-3 (80%) ATS

4. Which teams were helped and hurt the most by rest disparity?

The teams with the biggest edge in net rest advantage:

Baltimore Ravens
New England Patriots
Minnesota Vikings
Philadelphia Eagles

The teams with the biggest disadvantage:

San Francisco 49ers
Denver Broncos
Indianapolis Colts

5. The full rest disparity rankings for the 2024 NFL season:

6. There is a big difference between strength of schedule and difficulty of scheduled timing of games.

Strength of schedule is calculated by WHO you play. Difficulty of scheduled timing is calculated by WHEN you play your opponents. And the NFL has complete control over it.

There are two ways to measure edges from the timing of games:

The first is the net rest edges which we previously discussed.
The second is looking at Prep & Rest Rankings, which we calculate using the following factors: opponent days to prepare (over or under a week), games with more rest than opponent, games with less rest than opponent, short week road games, games off road SNF or MNF and negated by weeks.

The teams with the best edges in Prep & Rest Rankings: