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Saturday open thread: How difficult is the Lions’ 2017 schedule?

On a scale from 1-10, how hard is the Lions’ 2017 schedule?

By Jeremy Reisman
NFL: Green Bay Packers at Detroit Lions Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports

Now that we’ve all had a good day and a half to digest the Detroit Lions’ 2017 schedule, let’s take a deeper look into it.

We’ve already known the Lions’ strength of schedule for a while now, since opponents and locations were determined at the conclusion of the 2016 season. Going based on purely on 2016 records, the Lions schedule is just the 21st-hardest in the league. However, Football Outsiders’ 2017 early predictions listed the Lions’ schedule as the ninth-hardest according to their DVOA projections.

There are a bunch of new factors to consider now that the full schedule is out. The Lions have “Monday Night Football” games, but both are on the road. However, the Lions avoided a late winter on the road against both the Bears (Nov. 19) and the Packers (Nov. 6).

So today’s Question of the Day is:

On a scale of 1-10, how difficult do you think the Lions’ schedule is?

My answer: 7. As pointed out by our own Ryan Mathews, the beginning of Detroit’s schedule is brutally hard:

However, things ease up considerably after the bye, with games against the Browns, Bears and Bengals, all teams that finished well below .500 last year.

Still, if the Lions are going to make the playoffs in back-to-back years for the first time since 1995, they’re going to have to beat some impressive teams. That may include getting revenge on the Packers in the season finale at home.

Of course, things are never quite as they seem in April. The Lions could end up having one of the easiest schedules in the league by the season’s end.

Your turn.

Poll

On a scale from 1-10, how difficult is the Lions 2017 schedule?

This poll is closed

  • 0%
    1
    (5 votes)
  • 0%
    2
    (3 votes)
  • 1%
    3
    (12 votes)
  • 2%
    4
    (27 votes)
  • 10%
    5
    (105 votes)
  • 20%
    6
    (213 votes)
  • 26%
    7
    (273 votes)
  • 30%
    8
    (323 votes)
  • 5%
    9
    (55 votes)
  • 2%
    10
    (31 votes)
1047 votes total Vote Now

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