In theory the Seattle Seahawks should have the hardest schedule in the NFC West next year because they won the division, but the L.A. Rams might have it harder than anybody.<\/p>\n
The Rams are the team giving up a home game in 2026, hosting the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, Australia. Yes the 49ers always have a large showing at SoFi Stadium but in Melbourne the Rams literally have no advantage.<\/p>\n
As the second place team, the Rams have the following opponents different than the rest of the NFC West:<\/p>\n
The Bills definitely seem like they will be the best team in the AFC East next season. The Packers have a really good shot to upend the Bears in the NFC North\u2014although in my opinion the team to beat in the NFC North, by far, is the Detroit Lions.<\/p>\n
The Bucs are probably the favorites to win the NFC South.<\/p>\n
Despite a second place schedule, the Rams might play three division winners.<\/p>\n
That means that the other teams play:<\/p>\n
You could definitely make the argument that the Rams have the hardest three-game slate out of the NFC West.<\/p>\n
Outside of the NFC West, the Rams play these away games:<\/p>\n
The Seahawks play almost the exact same away schedule, except the Panthers instead of the Bucs.<\/p>\n
The 49ers away games include the Giants, Falcons, Chargers, Chiefs, and Cowboys. Assuming the Chiefs bounce back, there\u2019s one tough game on that schedule. If they don\u2019t, that\u2019s a pretty doable away schedule for the Niners.<\/p>\n
Do the Rams have the hardest NFC West schedule?<\/p>\n
By these measures, absolutely.<\/p>\n
We have to wait and see how good\/bad these teams actually are in 2026 and we can\u2019t make too many assumptions about that this early in the offseason. But with a \u201chome\u201d game in Melbourne against a division rival and a second place schedule that sort of looks like a first place schedule and road games against two tough division winners, the Rams will have their work cut out for them next season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In theory the Seattle Seahawks should have the hardest schedule in the NFC West next year because they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2079],"tags":[7,1014,58,9406,2444,2611,6,424],"class_list":{"0":"post-768668","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-rams","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-los-angeles","10":"tag-los-angeles-rams","11":"tag-los-angeles-rams-schedule","12":"tag-losangeles","13":"tag-losangelesrams","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-rams"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116113763508471592","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}