2007 NFL Schedule Released

Cafe Society
1

We’ve known who’ll be playing whom for awhile now, but it’s not a schedule until you know where and when. Here you go.

My thoughts:

First off, someone in the schedule department likes me. I’m a Giants fan living the scum-sucking dirt-eating Eagles market, meaning I don’t get to see the Giants play when there is a broadcast conflict with Eagles games. That happens exactly once this season, in Week 16. I think I can go to my in-laws for one game. Thanks, schedule guys!

Also, about time the Giants get a decent bye week. They always seem to draw very early byes, but they season it’s a nice, midseason Week 9 bye.

More good Giants news – after three west coast road trips last season, this year they travel no further than Dallas. Well, except for that little Week 8 jaunt to London, but I think we can call “special circumstances” on that one.

Season opener: Saints @ Colts – I approve…should be a good’un.

MNF Opening Double-Header: Ravens @ Bengals and Cardinals @ Niners – pppffttthh. Double-snoozer (at least the earlier game is at least somewhat interesting).

Ok, enough of this…gotta study the schedule more and see if any other interesting things pop out at me. So, how do things look for your team this year? (team-by-team schedules available here)

2

[Artie]
Waaaaaa! I don’t get to see the Giants play when there is a broadcast conflict with Eagles games. Waaaaaaa!
[/Artie]

Eagles fan here, and I can’t say i like the Week 5 Bye, although they should be at least 3-1 (GB, WASH, DET, NYG) by then. December is not going to be that bad, though: SEA, NYG, @DAL, @NO, BUF.

Football is a long way off, though… one month of NBA and NHL playoffs and then 5 months of nothing but Baseball plays in the SportsCenter top-10… sigh…

3

I need to respectfully disagree with your assessment of the Monday night opener, specifically the Cardinal / Niner matchup. This should be an interesting game, with both clubs fielding teams that may surprise many. Yes, the Cardinals may actually do something this year and reach the playoffs! I fully expect San Fran to topple Seattle and take the NFC West title, with Arizona lurking close behind.

4

What a surprise. Lions snubbed by MNF again.

5

Excellent, there are five night games for New England (two Sunday, two Monday, one Saturday). Since I live in another AFC city, I rarely get to see the Pats on TV. The Titans also play on MNF twice, but I don’t know if the local station will be interested in carrying the NE/Buffalo game that will be available for each of those Sunday afternoons.

Are the Thursday night games late in the season on the NFL Network again? Man, that would seriously piss me off if my team had to play one of those (we can’t get the NFL Network without upgrading our cable package).

6

Saints with at least 4 primetimers = happiness in my peepee.
Loss @Indy
loss @Carolina
One more random loss (like our Washington game last year) = 13-3. Thanks for the 8th easiest schedule.

And my poor, poor Jamarcus Russell is gonna get stuck with the hardest schedule in the NFL in his first year.

7

Bears have the second easiest schedule!

8

Cowboys fan checking in here. Glad to see that they finally got a bye week later on in the season as opposed to the week 3 and week 2 byes we have been getting lately. It also looks as though we have a fair number of night games, but keep in mind that any night games between weeks 11 and 17 are open to be changed based on how the teams do over the course of the season.

9

Ok, my breakdown. First off, things I like to see, in order:[ol]
[li]Giants wins[/li][li]Eagles losses[/li][li]Cowboys losses[/li][li]Redskins losses[/li][li]Dolphins wins (unless that would conflict with #1) – my wife is a Dolphins fan, making me a Dolphins fan-by-proxy[/li][li]Jets losses[/li][/ol]
Week 1: Giants head down to Dallas for the Football Night In America season premier. Miami takes on Washington – go Miami, make my wife and I both happy!

Week 2: The Packers stumble into Giants Stadium as Favre takes his Ruining The Legacy tour on the road. Dallas goes down to Miami, hopefully making it two great weeks in a row for the Briston household. Washington goes to Philly for a “root-for-a-tie” Monday Nighter.

Week 3: Giants @ Redskins, nothing much else interesting.

Week 4: Another Football Night In America week for the Giants, this time hosting the scum-sucking Eagles. If memory serves, the Giants tend to blow it against Philly in prime time. Hopefully that doesn’t continue here.

Week 5: New York @ New York as the Giants host the Jets. Boo Gang Green.

Week 6: Giants @ Falcons on Monday Night. YES! Nothing I like better than the Giants playing an away game in Atlanta. These two teams have an unbelievable streak going: The away team has won the last 11 meetings. Also, Philly visits the Jets. Yay Gang Green!

Week 7: The Niners come in to Giants stadium – I still haven’t forgiven or forgotten the 2003 Wild Card game debacle where the refs completely and utterly handed the game to San Fran. Payback time.

Week 8: It’s House Divided weekend as the Giants take on the Dolphins. On top of that, the game is being played in London. Wonder if I can convince the wife we should go?

Week 9: Terrible week. Giants are off, Dolphins are off, Dallas plays Philly and Washington plays the Jets. My rooting teams are off, and my booing teams play each other. Ppfftthh. Hopefully the Pats/Colts game will be broadcast locally. And MNF has the Ravens at the Steelers, which always makes for an interesting week in Doors’ annual thread.

Week 10: Dallas comes to Jersey for a visit, and hopefully a nice beating. Perhaps Philly and Washington will kill each other and make my afternoon. The Sunday night game should be nice – Indy at the Chargers. Hopefully the Colts will put a nice smack on the San-D Crybabies.

Week 11: Uh oh. The Giants have a cakewalk this week, taking on the Lions. That’s a recipe for disaster. Nothing gives Big Blue more trouble than “easy wins”. The 'Fins take on Philly, so I’m sure my wife will be wearing her Ricky Williams jersey to work that Friday and talking smack with all the local Eagles fans. Hopefully she doesn’t wind up having to eat any crow.

Week 12: Thanksgiving Weekend – Kind of a ho-hum Turkey Day lineup for me, although Indy @ Atlanta might be worthwhile. The Giants continue their pwnage of the Vikes. MNF bring the Dolphins to Pittsburgh. I’m sure they’ll have a warm welcome for Joey Porter.

Week 13: Giants @ Bears. Dear Chicago: Please let Bad Rex start.

Week 14: Giants/Eagles Part II – playoff implications abound, unless my prayers are answered and the Scumbirds are 0-12 at this point.

Week 15: It’s NFC East day – WAS @ NYG and PHI @ DAL. Man, I hate Philly/Dallas games. I never get the earthquake I root for.

Week 16: Giants go to Buffalo and ahh, damnit, I gotta run. Time to just hit submit. More later.

10

So what? You got the Rams finishing last in this division? I don’t think so. Rams first,hawks second,9ers third,Cards fourth.

11

As a fellow Giants fan, that game should never have gotten to a point where the refs could screw up the way they did.

12

The worst team in the league for the last six seasons isn’t gonna be a big ratings draw.

13

Are you kidding? That was the biggest choke ever televised! Jim Fassell’s legs are still twitchin.

That out the way, I have to go with what TwoTrouts said, the Niners came within a game of a wild card berth, and the Cards were widely expected to be a playoff team last year.

14

My Falcons get two MNF games? After going 8-8 and then 7-9 the past two seasons?

OK by me. If people still want to watch Vick on MNF, it means I get to watch my team (which is rarely televised here).

15

We…we can’t keep up this high level of suck…can we?

I mean, it’s just not possible…we’ve…we’ve…arg…

16

The Niner’s beat the hawks both games last year.

17

If I had a dollar for every time I heard this several months before the season started…

As for the schedule, the Pats have a brutal one, but that was sort of expected because we knew coming in who we had to play: our intra-conference division matchup this year is the AFC North and inter-conference is the NFC East, two divisions with two softies between them. Throw in the matchups with the other two AFC first place teams and always-competitive divisional games against three teams expected to be on the rise… well… there was almost no way that this could be anything BUT brutal. As much as possible, though, things worked out fairly well, with 3 of the last 4 games at home, no west coast trips, and no long road trips. I’m not the biggest fan in the world of all those night games, but that’s what you get when you win, I s’pose.

I don’t think we’re getting a top seed with that schedule, but I have faith that we’ll be the best team in the AFC East yet again.

18

Week 2 against San Diego should be interesting.

Go Pats!

19

I can already see exactly how this season is going to go for the Giants. More of the same. Maybe this year they’ll win a game in the Wildcard round, but anything beyond that is a long shot.

For the past four seasons, the Giants have started off strong and sputtered down the stretch:

2003: 4-4, 0-8 (4-12)
2004: 5-2, 1-8 (6-10)
2005: 6-2, 5-3 (11-5)
2006: 6-2, 2-6 (8-8)

It is worth nothing that in 2005, the Giants posted a winning record in the second half of the season, a remarkable feat considering the previous two seasons (and the one after.) All four of the seasons listed involved huge numbers of critical season-ending injuries, which was pretty much solely responsible for the implosions. But even in 2005 when the team was holding it together, the only thing you heard out of the NY area was the deafening roar of the lynch mob out for Eli’s head. Not one word about injuries, other than to gripe that Ernie Accorsi hadn’t brought in good enough depth. Fucking New Yorkers are a bunch of dumbasses.

This season I see another strong start followed by a sputtering, injury-prone finish. Analyzing it as the pros do, by quarters:

at Cowboys
vs Packers
at Redskins
vs Eagles

A complete round robin of the division, getting two of the away games out of the way up front. The schedulers were kind to make the Cowboys a night game. Anyone remember back to 2005, the week 6 game in Dallas that went to overtime? It was almost 100 degrees in the sun, and of course the Cowboys put their bench on the shaded side, leaving the visitors to cook in the sun. (Which is very smart; kudos to them. I love natural weather home field advantages.) That won’t be an issue in a night game. I see a worst case 2-2, but quite possible 3-1.

vs Jets
at Falcons
vs 49ers
neutral site at Dolphins

The schedule makers almost look like they’re Giants fans in this quarter. Dodging a west coast trip by hosting the 49ers is great, somebody already mentioned the away record (11-0) in the Giants-Falcons series dating back to the early 80s, and the Dolphins lose their home field advantage in the London game. Nice.

The only way it could be better would be to play as the away team against the Jets, because that would in effect give the Giants nine home games. The stadium has three locker rooms: the Giants, the Jets, and the Visitors. This means that for the Jets, they’ll get to a) not travel and b) use their own locker room. The only difference between that game and a home game is that the fans will be cheering against them (which often serves to just pump the away team up anyway) and they’ll have to use the visitor parking. That’s a de facto 9th home game for the Jets. It’d be nice for the Giants to get that edge, but it’s hard to complain about getting a home game, especially considering that the Giants have flat-out owned the Jets in recent years.

This is a tremendous quarter for the Giants. 4-0 is most likely, though 3-1 wouldn’t be surprising. Going into the bye week, the Giants could easily be 6-2.

vs Cowboys
at Lions
vs Vikings
at Bears
(oh my!)

This section is dicey, to put it mildly. The Giants are 0-2 in their last two games against the Vikings and Lions. In the latter, Joey Harrington passed up a storm, racking up somewhere near a 135 passer rating. The Cowboys may lose a bit of their Meadowland Magic now that Parcells is gone, but they’re still dangerous whenever they come to town. Chicago is plenty capable of beating the Giants straight up. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Big Blue post 1-3 in this quarter; 2-2 would be a resounding success.

at Eagles
vs Redskins
at Bills
vs Patriots

Crap. I expect the Jets to be good enough to make that last game meaningful for the Patriots. The Bills game could be painful if Losman outperforms Eli. At Philly is never a gimme. Who the fuck knows what a late season matchup with the Redskins will bring. No matter what, I expect at least 6 starters to be on IR by this final quarter of the season, so going 2-2 would be great. 1-3 is quite possible too, though.

Adding those up, I predict the 2007 Giants will start of 6-2 and finish off either 3-5 or 4-4 for a final record of either 9-7 or 10-6.

Same as it ever was.

20

I got sick of missing the games I wanted to watch. NFL Sunday Ticket is the best!

I hope there will be a SDMB Fantasy League when the time comes.