Miami Dolphins Schedule Ranked Among NFL's Easiest

The Miami Dolphins’ 2025 schedule includes five prime-time games, but by some metrics Miami’s schedule is one of the easiest in the league. 

NFL Media’s Eric Edholm ranked the teams with the easiest schedules for this coming season, and the Dolphins came in sixth. Miami’s strength of schedule is .474, which is tied for the 21st highest among all teams. 

Let's break down each part of the Dolphins’ schedule to see whether it is as easy as it might look on paper. 

Miami’s 'Easy' Start

Edholm frames the start of the Dolphins’ season as a positive for a few reasons, the primary one being how the team will benefit from weather conditions. 

Miami’s Week 2 matchup against the Patriots is at Hard Rock Stadium, forcing New England to play in the September heat. Perhaps more importantly, the Dolphins travel to Buffalo in Week 3, meaning they’ll avoid playing there in the cold later in the season. 

Besides some weather advantages, only two of Miami’s first six opponents made the playoffs last season: Buffalo and the Los Angeles Chargers, who must travel across the country to South Florida. 

The Dolphins’ Week 1 game against Indianapolis is on the road, but the Colts have major quarterback questions. 

That leaves the Jets and Panthers, two teams that finished toward the bottom of the league in 2024. The Panthers have gotten better, and the Jets have gotten younger at key positions, but neither team is expected to be overly competitive this season. 

We’ll have to agree with Edholm, the schedule does start out pretty favorably for the Dolphins. 

The Dolphins' Biggest Test 

Miami’s next six games should feature a much more significant challenge. The team’s Week 7 game against the Browns feels like a game the Dolphins should be favored in, but everything else will be more questionable. 

The Dolphins face Lamar Jackson and the Ravens on TNF in Week 9, play the Bills in Week 10, and then travel to Madrid, Spain, to play the upstart Commanders. That’s a run of three straight 2024 playoff teams with elite quarterbacks. 

One of the more interesting parts is that those three quarterbacks are great runners, which has plagued Miami’s defense for the past couple of years. 

The Dolphins also play the Falcons in Week 8, which might not seem like an overly challenging matchup, but Atlanta’s offense has a lot of firepower. Plus, it has added a lot of names to its defense. 

This stretch of the season will define whether Miami is a legitimate contender. 

Battling Cold Down The Stretch 

The final six games are another area where Eldholm feels the Dolphins have an advantage. One of the prevailing narratives about the Dolphins is whether they can perform well in cold weather. 

Well, most of Miami’s most challenging games during the final six weeks won’t be in the cold. They play the Bengals and Buccaneers in South Florida, and will play the Saints in a dome. 

The three chances for cold-weather games come against the Patriots (Week 18), Jets (Week 14), and Steelers (Week 15). Pittsburgh made the playoffs last season, but its quarterback situation is unresolved, and the defense is only getting older. 

This final stretch of games probably shouldn’t be considered “easy,” as Miami faces two divisional opponents and three road games. That said, it’s pretty manageable for a team with the Dolphins’ expectations. 

Final Word on Dolphins Schedule Difficulty

So, does Miami have one of the NFL’s easiest schedules? On paper, it’s hard to argue with Edholm’s conclusion. 

The Dolphins’ schedule looks incredibly manageable, and they seem to have caught several breaks with potential cold-weather games, like not going to Buffalo or Cincinnati late in the year. 

When it comes to travel, the Dolphins have just one game outside of the Eastern time zone, which is Week 11 in Madrid, Spain. Miami is even second in the league in rest differential.

There’s a lot going for Miami on the schedule, but there are a few potential speed bumps. The primary ones are just how much the Patriots and Jets have improved this offseason. 

The Dolphins have beaten up on them in recent seasons, going 6-1 against New England and 5-2 against the Jets in the team’s last seven matchups. We’ve looked at the schedule and largely discounted those games as ones where Miami should win. 

However, New England upgraded its head coach, spent a lot of money on free agents on both sides of the ball, and had a strong draft. The Patriots won’t be a pushover this coming season, especially if Drake Maye continues his development. 

The Jets’ roster isn’t bad on paper. They have playmakers on both sides of the ball and should have an improved offensive line. Their success will likely boil down to how well quarterback Justin Fields plays, but there’s no denying his natural talent. 

The Dolphins should be better than both teams, but it’s hard not to look at each team’s offseason and feel like the gap wasn’t closed at least a little bit. 

Overall, Miami’s schedule does it a lot of favors. However, that doesn’t guarantee success. Last year, the Dolphins’ schedule ended up being the easiest in the league by season’s end, but the team missed the playoffs amid a 2-6 start. 

While it’s easy to evaluate the other teams on Miami’s schedule this time of year, the far more critical question is whether the Dolphins got better themselves. It won’t matter how little Miami travels or how many rest days it gets if it hasn’t improved from 2024.

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