The NFL schedule was just released this week, and while the NFL and the media often overhype it, it is a fun tradition that many fans wait for as they determine which games they want to go see live (if you are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to go to a game, that is). It’s also a fun time for the betting markets as they officially kick off the new season with “way too early” odds, over/under, and spreads for the season’s premiere matchups. We also see a lot of pick ‘em challenges start popping up as avid fans try to guess how the season will play out months before training camp even starts!
One under-discussed element, though, is Madden. Right now, the Madden 26 EA developers are working on adding the newly released schedule into the game. While doing that, they’ve likely begun work (if not basically done) tweaking ratings and updating rosters after the first half of the offseason has drawn to a close.
As weird as it sounds (because fans often rail against their ratings), the Madden franchise is actually a critical element in predicting seasons and gauging players’ talent. There’s no more accessible and thorough ranking and rating of position players than Madden. While it’s often clunky, its simulation is the cleanest and most popular simulation of an NFL season. So when the game comes out, simulating through a season in Franchise mode will give people insight into how the league might shape.
Even though the game is not out yet and the ratings are not publicly available, information can still be gathered from Madden using this season’s brand-new schedule.
Let’s first take a look at the team ratings after the last Madden 25 update. We know a lot of players moved around in free agency, and a ton of new prospects were added in the draft, so the team ratings will be different from last year’s game to this year’s game. I took the liberty of creating a rough estimate of what the team ratings are likely going to look like in Madden 26 based on what additions and losses teams had in free agency and what they added in the draft. Here’s how that shook out:
| Team | Madden 25 OVR | Madden 26 prediction |
| Bills | 88 | 88 |
| Patriots | 75 | 79 |
| Jets | 81 | 79 |
| Dolphins | 82 | 74 |
| Ravens | 93 | 93 |
| Bengals | 82 | 82 |
| Steelers | 85 | 81 |
| Browns | 78 | 77 |
| Chiefs | 93 | 92 |
| Broncos | 84 | 84 |
| Raiders | 74 | 77 |
| Chargers | 83 | 82 |
| Titans | 76 | 78 |
| Colts | 80 | 81 |
| Jaguars | 77 | 77 |
| Texans | 84 | 83 |
| Giants | 73 | 76 |
| Eagles | 92 | 90 |
| Commanders | 85 | 86 |
| Cowboys | 81 | 81 |
| Packers | 83 | 83 |
| Vikings | 86 | 87 |
| Bears | 80 | 82 |
| Lions | 91 | 91 |
| Rams | 84 | 84 |
| Seahawks | 81 | 80 |
| 49ers | 87 | 83 |
| Cardinals | 79 | 80 |
| Saints | 79 | 78 |
| Falcons | 82 | 81 |
| Panthers | 78 | 79 |
| Buccaneers | 86 | 86 |
Now that we have the roster ratings, we can plug those ratings into the new schedule. With the ratings acting as a true assessment of every NFL team’s talent and ability, we can average out the ratings of each team’s schedule to create a Madden-accurate version of strength of schedule, and we can do it for both home games and away games. These numbers are the average rating of each of the team’s opponents.
| TEAM | Home strength of schedule | Away strength of Schedule | Total strength of schedule |
| Detroit | 81.6 | 86.6 | 84.2 |
| NY Giants | 85.5 | 83.1 | 84.2 |
| Green Bay | 86.3 | 82.1 | 84.1 |
| Chicago | 81.8 | 85.8 | 83.9 |
| Minnesota | 86.0 | 81.4 | 83.6 |
| Philadelphia | 82.6 | 84.6 | 83.6 |
| Dallas | 84.5 | 82.7 | 83.5 |
| Cleveland | 83.2 | 83.0 | 83.1 |
| Kansas City | 85.2 | 80.4 | 82.9 |
| Pittsburgh | 82.8 | 83.1 | 82.9 |
| Cincinnati | 82.1 | 83.4 | 82.8 |
| LA Chargers | 81.0 | 84.6 | 82.8 |
| Washington | 82.6 | 82.9 | 82.8 |
| Baltimore | 82.0 | 83.1 | 82.5 |
| LA Rams | 82.8 | 82.3 | 82.5 |
| Houston | 81.6 | 83.4 | 82.4 |
| Las Vegas | 84.6 | 79.9 | 82.4 |
| Denver | 80.9 | 83.8 | 82.2 |
| Miami | 83.7 | 80.6 | 82.2 |
| Seattle | 82.8 | 81.0 | 81.8 |
| Atlanta | 81.9 | 81.3 | 81.6 |
| Tampa Bay | 81.1 | 82.0 | 81.6 |
| Buffalo | 83.7 | 79.1 | 81.5 |
| Jacksonville | 82.0 | 81.0 | 81.5 |
| Arizona | 80.6 | 82.0 | 81.4 |
| NY Jets | 80.4 | 82.1 | 81.2 |
| Carolina | 81.5 | 80.7 | 81.1 |
| Tennessee | 81.8 | 80.3 | 81.1 |
| New Orleans | 80.4 | 81.3 | 80.9 |
| Indianapolis | 79.7 | 82.1 | 80.8 |
| New England | 79.1 | 82.3 | 80.6 |
| San Francisco | 80.1 | 80.6 | 80.4 |
As you can see, the Giants, Lions, and Packers have the toughest schedules overall, with the Packers having the most challenging home schedule and the Lions having the hardest road schedule in the league. But how will these schedules affect their records? At the end of the day, that’s what people want to know about, and I’ve got you covered.
Using the Madden 26 projected team ratings as the benchmark, here is the Madden-accurate standings prediction and how teams progress through the season.
| TEAM | W4 record | W8 record | W12 record | Record |
| Baltimore (AFC 1) | 4-0 | 7-0 | 11-0 | 17-0 |
| Kansas City (AFC 2) | 3-1 | 7-1 | 10-1 | 16-1 |
| Detroit (NFC 1) | 3-1 | 5-2 | 9-2 | 15-2 |
| Philadelphia (NFC 2) | 3-1 | 7-1 | 9-2 | 15-2 |
| Buffalo (AFC 3) | 3-1 | 6-1 | 9-2 | 14-3 |
| Tampa Bay (NFC 3) | 3-1 | 6-2 | 8-3 | 14-3 |
| San Francisco (NFC 4) | 4-0 | 5-2-1* | 8-3-1* | 13-3-1* |
| Denver (AFC 5) | 4-0 | 7-1 | 9-2 | 13-4 |
| LA Rams (NFC 5) | 3-1 | 5-2 | 8-3 | 13-4 |
| Minnesota (NFC 6) | 4-0 | 6-1 | 8-3 | 13-4 |
| Washington (NFC 7) | 4-0 | 7-1 | 9-2 | 12-5 |
| Houston (AFC 4) | 2-2 | 3-3-1* | 5-5-1* | 10-6-1* |
| Cincinnati (AFC 6) | 2-2 | 4-4 | 6-4-1* | 9-7-1* |
| Atlanta | 1-3 | 2-5 | 5-5-1* | 9-7-1* |
| Indianapolis (AFC 7) | 2-2 | 5-3 | 5-4-2* | 8-7-2* |
| Green Bay | 2-2 | 5-2 | 7-4 | 9-8 |
| LA Chargers | 1-1-2* | 3-2-2* | 6-3-2* | 7-7-3* |
| New England | 2-1-1* | 5-2-1* | 5-5-2* | 7-7-3* |
| Chicago | 2-2 | 3-4 | 5-5-1* | 6-10-1* |
| NY Jets | 1-3 | 1-6-1* | 2-7-2* | 5-9-3* |
| Pittsburgh | 3-1 | 4-3 | 4-6-1* | 6-10-1* |
| Dallas | 1-3 | 3-5 | 5-6 | 6-11 |
| Arizona | 2-1-1* | 3-3-1* | 4-5-2* | 4-11-2* |
| Carolina | 1-2-1* | 2-4-2* | 3-7-2* | 4-11-2* |
| Seattle | 1-2-1* | 2-4-1* | 3-6-2* | 4-11-2* |
| Tennessee | 0-4 | 1-7 | 1-10 | 4-12-1* |
| Las Vegas | 1-2-1* | 2-5-1* | 2-7-2* | 2-12-3* |
| New Orleans | 0-4 | 1-7 | 1-10 | 2-14-1* |
| Cleveland | 0-4 | 1-7 | 1-9-1* | 1-15-1* |
| Jacksonville | 0-4 | 0-7 | 0-10-1* | 0-16-1 |
| Miami | 0-4 | 0-8 | 0-11 | 0-17 |
| NY Giants | 0-4 | 0-8 | 0-12 | 0-17 |
Okay, so does that mean the Dolphins and Giants have the hardest schedules in Madden 26? Not necessarily, these teams would have likely been in the same position regardless of how tough their schedule is. What we are interested in is the teams that are projected to lose more games than their team rating suggests. Here is the table we used to calculate that data.
| TEAM | Madden 26 overall rank | Record rank | Differential |
| Chicago | 14 | 19 | -5 |
| Dallas | 17 | 22 | -5 |
| Washington | 7 | 11 | -4 |
| Green Bay | 11 | 15 | -4 |
| LA Chargers | 14 | 17 | -3 |
| Minnesota | 6 | 8 | -2 |
| Pittsburgh | 17 | 19 | -2 |
| Arizona | 21 | 23 | -2 |
| Seattle | 21 | 23 | -2 |
| Jacksonville | 28 | 30 | -2 |
| Houston | 11 | 12 | -1 |
| Cleveland | 28 | 29 | -1 |
| Baltimore | 1 | 1 | – |
| Kansas City | 2 | 2 | – |
| Detroit | 3 | 3 | – |
| Buffalo | 5 | 5 | – |
| Carolina | 23 | 23 | – |
| Tennessee | 26 | 26 | – |
| New Orleans | 26 | 28 | – |
| NY Giants | 31 | 31 | – |
| Philadelphia | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Denver | 9 | 8 | 1 |
| LA Rams | 9 | 8 | 1 |
| Cincinnati | 14 | 13 | 1 |
| Las Vegas | 28 | 27 | 1 |
| Miami | 32 | 31 | 1 |
| Tampa Bay | 7 | 5 | 2 |
| Indianapolis | 17 | 15 | 2 |
| San Francisco | 11 | 7 | 4 |
| Atlanta | 17 | 13 | 4 |
| NY Jets | 23 | 19 | 4 |
| New England | 23 | 17 | 5 |
In looking at this data, we see that even though the Bears and Cowboys are right around the middle of the league at 14th and 17th, respectively, they both fall way short of expectations in a straight simulation, each mustering just six wins (with the Bears having one tie*). The Packers and Commanders also struggled to meet expectations, with the Packers actually falling out of the playoffs and finishing the season with a worse record than the Falcons, who improved their rank by four positions.
What all this data tells us is that teams that are average or below average in great divisions are essentially screwed, but you probably didn’t need me to tell you that.
