The strange scheduling pattern that gives NFL last-place teams a big advantage

What does Ricky Bobby say in Talledega Nights? “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” That might be the case, but in the NFL, sometimes it pays off to actually be last if you aren’t going to finish at the top of your division.

Bounce back in the Bay?

To get a sense of that, all you have to do is look at the NFC West which everyone is expecting to be one of the most open divisions in football. The San Francisco 49ers finished last season 6-11, which was last in the division, but they are the favorites to win the NFC West this year.

That could be for a couple reasons. The first is obviously because they should be getting a healthy Christian McCaffrey back after he missed most of the season with a handful of injuries. The second reason is the generous schedule the Niners have been handed after finishing fourth in a division of four.

The way the NFL schedule is formulated, each team plays the three other teams in their division twice, once at home and once on the road. Teams then play eight against teams that make up two different divisions. In the NFC West’s case, they will play their six division games, then play the entire AFC South and NFC South this season for a total of 14 games.

Softer schedule for Niners, rest of division bottom feeders

For the remaining three games, the league matches teams from a division against other teams from other divisions, but who you play depends on where you finish in your division. The Niners finished last, which means they will play the last place teams in the NFC North, NFC East and AFC North from last year. As a result, San Fran will play the Bears, Giants and the Browns this season where the Rams will play the winners of those divisions, which just so happen to be the Lions, Eagles and Ravens.

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This isn’t just the case with the Niners and the NFC West. This is the way things work all around the league. The top teams from play top teams outside of the division, but that’s not to say that those teams from last year are going to stay the best teams in teams in the division this year.

Obviously things change on a year to year basis, and teams can go from bad to good or good to bad in no time. It happened to the Niners who were plagued with injuries last season, but now they will try to bounce back and maybe just maybe the difference in strength of schedule makes the difference for them next year.