Madden 25 Data Reveals NFL Teams with the Toughest Schedules This Season

Football fans have been breaking down and analyzing the 2025-26 NFL schedule since its release earlier in May, and some have looked the the Madden franchise for support. While the newest iteration has not yet been released, there can still be information to gather from the 2025 addition. Players have been using the series for years to analyze player talent, based on team and player ratings that translate to on-field expectations. Simulating the season has become a yearly occurrence that is referenced not just by fans but even by media networks. So, based on what is available so far, who has the toughest schedule?

Fans Use Madden 25 Data To Predict Season Difficulty

Without access to the exact ratings that EA Sports plans to implement in Madden 26, it is hard to come up with an exact season replication. Nevertheless, a fan writing for Operation Sports came up with a rough estimation of what fans and players can expect to see when the game comes out in July, with a systematic prediction based on new updates. The author used the final ratings from 2025 as a base, and then applied free agency changes and draft additions to look at where team ratings would currently stand.

Doing so placed the expected teams at the top of the Madden 26 rating predictions: Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Buffalo, and Kansas City are grouped above the rest, with Miami, Cleveland, Las Vegas, New York (Giants), and Jacksonville at the bottom of the barrel. From those numbers, the author plugged in each team’s schedule to determine the strength of schedule and who was facing to highest average team ratings. In doing so, the calculations showed that Detroit, New York (Giants), Green Bay, Chicago, and Minnesota (the entire NFC North) have the toughest strength of schedule.

The author did not stop there, though. They took the results of his Madden ratings and applied them directly into a formula that altered the difficulty based on actual schedule results. Using the predicted standings, we can then look at the differential between the team ratings versus their actual record of success. That table, as created directly by Kyler Wolf of Operation Sports, can be found below.

Fans of Dallas, Chicago, Washington, and Green Bay may want to look away. Ironically, all four teams are found in the NFC and are in challenging divisions overall. On the flip side, New England, New York (Jets), Atlanta, and San Francisco fans should all rejoice. To be clear, these Madden 26 predictions do not mean these will be the best or worst teams, or that they will or won’t make the playoffs. The chart is simply there to look at who may over- or underperform based on the strength of their schedule. The game still needs to play out on the field and in the game, and any number of factors could change the analysis.

Final Thoughts

Fans should take the actual predicted results with some grain of salt, given that Madden simulations do not perfectly depict a real NFL season. Still, it is interesting to look at who has difficult schedules, not just based on the strength of schedule, but also based on comparison of their skill versus their competitors. The more the NFL season gears up to begin, the more fans will be itching for predictions on their favorite teams’ fate. This analysis was a nice look into the early stages of what could come in the 2025 season.