I've been beating this drum for awhile. Teams in the same division play an almost identical schedule. And with how teams rise and fall year to year, your first place opponent from last year could easily be middle of the pack this year and vice versa.

Mentioned this during the offseason a few times, but we went 1-1 in those games last year (loss to the jets and victory over the chargers). So at worst, our first place schedule this year would only impact us by one game. Currently we are 0-1 with the Chiefs loss. If we beat the Steelers, we'll finish 1-1 in these games. Which means the first place schedule will have had zero impact on us this year.

The divisions you get aligned with and how you match up against those teams is far more important in determining the difficulty of your schedule.

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