A few days ago, a longtime community member posed a question about whether a team's strength of schedule (SoS) should impact how we value players. For example, could a team's "hard" SoS make their QB riskier? Could an "easy" SoS raise a starting RB's ceiling? While sometimes SoS is interpreted differently, for these purposes the 2026 SoS equates to the combined 2025 winning percentages of a team's 2026 opponents.
So I carved out a few hours to initiate research on this topic, which began with this question: to what extent is there a relationship between teams' SoS and fantasy performances?
But to be actionable, this research needs to at least begin answering a question, and I couldn't figure out a simple way to quantify "fantasy performances." That might sound bizarre, because quantifying fantasy stats is like brushing our teeth. And yet, how can we answer the question when there's so much variance among fantasy players?
For example, a bell cow might finish as the RB4 while playing a hard SoS, largely because they don't have a strong backup who can serve as a 1B. Or the best running back on a team with an easy SoS might be fantasy's RB18 because the #2 earned 150 touches and finished as the RB30. Measuring fantasy production against SoS would be easy to tear down.
So I removed the fantasy elements and focused instead on pure team stats -- specifically offensive yards and points scored. The theory (which is grounded in evidence, albeit with outliers) is that teams with elite offensives generally have at least some high-performing fantasy players, while teams with bottom-tier offensives generally have fewer high-performing fantasy players and/or lower-ceiling fantasy players.
The data set consists of the SoS for all 32 teams the past four seasons. Here's an example of a few connected data points:
The 49ers had the easiest SoS entering last season; their opponents had a combined 2024 winning percentage of .415. They finished last season #10 in points scored #7 in offensive yards. The rank "gap" between their SoS ("1" for "easiest") and points was 9 (10 minus 1). Their rank gap between SoS and yards was 6 (7 minus 1). Keep that in your pocket for now.
The Giants had the toughest SoS (.574 combined 2024 winning percentage for 2025 opponents). They finished #17 in points and #13 in offensive yards. Their rank gap between SoS ("32" for "hardest") and points was 15 (32 minus 17). Their rank gap between SoS and yards was 19 (32 minus 13).
In this first example, if the easiest SoS assured the Niners of massive fantasy success (of course that's essentially impossible, but for this hypothetical, let's play the extremes), they could have finished #1 in points and yards. Their "gap" for each would have been 0, where 0 suggests their offensive prowess aligned with their supposedly "easiest" SoS.
Similarly, if the hardest SoS assured the Giants of poor fantasy production, they could have finished #32 in points and yards. Their gaps also would have been 0.
So if a gap of 0 reflects one potential outcome (a strong relationship between SoS difficulty and offensive production difficulty), then the higher the gap, the weaker that relationship.
Across all 32 teams across all four seasons -- factoring in SoS for each team entering each season, and incorporating all points and yards -- the average gap between SoS rank and points rank was 10.1. The range of outcomes for all four seasons was between 9.6 and 11.1, which is incredibly consistent (in other words, no year-to-year outliers). Similarly, the average gap between SoS rank and yards rank was 10.3. The range of outcomes for all four seasons was between 9.6 and 10.5 -- even more consistent.
Before jumping to conclusions about what this might mean, I set up a "control" group of sorts that aimed to put perspective on whatever those initial results were. The stat I chose has almost nothing to do with offensive prowess or, by extension, fantasy production. Maybe there's a faint relationship, but as you'll see, it's largely inconsequential.
This stat was each team's average yards per punt return, rank-ordered similar to the other stats. The Niners averaged the 9th-most yards per punt return last year, while the Giants averaged the 10th-most. Here's what it revealed: the average gap between SoS rank and punt return yardage rank across all four seasons was 10.5 . . . barely more than the gaps for points and offensive yards. The range of outcomes for all four seasons was between 8.5 and 11.3.
Altogether, what do the numbers tell us? If you wanted to accurately predict the impact of a team's SoS on their points or offensive yards for that season, (a) it would be nearly impossible, and (b) you'd have about the same chance as predicting the impact of that team's SoS on their average punt return yards.
In other words, making fantasy decisions based on a team's SoS is probably more harmful than helpful, because it's applying logic to randomness.
On today's podcast, I spend a few minutes digging even deeper on these numbers, isolating for the easiest and hardest SoS teams these past four years. The results are even more shocking, and if you're still not convinced about the risks of using SoS to value fantasy players, this podcast will change your mind.
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