The NFL released the 2020 schedule Thursday evening, giving sports fans worldwide something to look forward to and fantasy gamers the opportunity to find an edge in best ball leagues. With some help from the RotoViz Strength of Schedule Streaming App, let’s make sense of the gauntlet that each team will face.

How Does the App Calculate Opponent Difficulty?

As a reminder, our SoS App employs a different approach than you might be used to.

Rankings are calculated on a positional basis and rather than use total points allowed to determine the difficulty of a team’s opponents, the tool works through the following process:

• The average points per game scored by each fantasy-relevant player are compared to their point totals when facing particular defenses. This results in a differential for each matchup.
• Players are grouped by position and the differentials are totaled and then divided by the number of contributing matchups.
• The more points that opposing offensive players score above their averages when facing a defense, the less difficult the defense is considered to be by the tool.
• Alternatively, the fewer points that opposing offensive players score above their averages when facing a DST, the more difficult the DST is considered.
• This process is performed at each position, and the differentials are ranked and used to calculate SOS.
• In the case of DSTs, the included matchups review the scores of DSTs when facing particular offenses.

In short, the tool determines how much better or worse, compared to personal averages, fantasy players fare when facing a defense. If players perform better than average when facing a defense, the defense is considered an easy matchup. Conversely, if players score fewer points than average against a defense, this defense is considered a difficult matchup.

2020 Rankings

To evaluate 2020 quarterback strength of schedule, I mapped each team’s upcoming schedule to 2019 defense vs. QB rankings. This is displayed in the chart below, which shows the 2019 ranking of the defenses that each team will face. For example, Miami opposes New England, 2019’s fourth most difficult matchup for QBs, in Week 1 and Buffalo, 2019’s seventh hardest QB opponent, in Week 2. Whether it’s Ryan Fitzpatrick or  Tua Tagovailoa leading Miami’s offense to start the season, they’ll be in for a challenge.

The average opponent difficulty for each team is included in the right-most column of the chart. Drew Lock will likely face one of the hardest schedules, from a fantasy perspective, in 2020, whereas Jared Goff figures to face one of the easiest.

Of course, each defense drafted rookies that could make an impact and acquired/released veterans. As a result, this isn’t a perfect science, but it is one of the best approximations that we have.