This season, the Dallas Cowboys have the fifth toughest schedule in the NFL. In recent discussions about the Cowboys’ strength of schedule, opinions have been divided about whether a soft or a tough schedule is more conducive to playoff success.
Proponents of a soft schedule usually argue that being well rested and healthy as a result of a softer schedule is an advantage going into the playoffs. And then there’s a school of thought arguing it’s better playing tougher opponents, because your team will
be battle tested entering the playoffs – you’ve beaten good teams and as a result, your team and individual players have improved and your overall confidence has increased.
Today, we move beyond strength of schedule and look at quality opponents, and whether they have any bearing on playoff success.
The myth of “winning” divisions
Before moving to quality opponents, we need to address a pre-salary cap narrative that still pops up from time to time: The idea that it’s tougher to make the playoffs in a highly competitive division than in a cupcake division, and once you do make the playoffs, you’re more likely to go far.
But in the 20 seasons from 2006 to 2025, only nine of the 20 Super Bowl winners (45%) hailed from one of the top three divisions based on win percentage. That means 55% came from the bottom three divisions by win percentage. And this trend stretches beyond Super Bowl winners, as only 22 of the 40 conference champions (55%) since 2006 came from the top three divisions by win percentage.
There’s no merit to the idea that playing a tougher division makes your own team tougher – and vice versa.
Quality Opponents
Another way to look at how tough a given schedule really is, is to look at the number of quality opponents a team has had to face. Quality opponents are teams that had a winning record at the end of the season.
ColdHardFootballFacts.com compile ‘Quality Standings’, a ranking which shows the record of every team in the league against quality opponents. Here’s why they do that:
“Strip away the dead-weight detritus of games played against poor and mediocre opponents, and you get a much clearer picture of the true nature of a team.”
Looking at quality opponents tells you which teams had cakewalk schedules and which teams are truly battle-tested. And looking at just the results from 2025 is quite instructive.
Leading the standings are the Super Bowl-winning Seahawks with a 6-2 record against quality teams. The Patriots on the other hand, who played the easiest regular season schedule since the 1999 Rams – and went through several injury-plagued teams to reach the Super Bowl – were 1-2 against quality opponents.
Of the nine teams with a .500 or better record against quality teams, eight made the playoffs, with only the Falcons missing out.
The Dallas Cowboys were 1-6-1 against quality opponents last year, with their sole win coming against the Eagles in Week 2. Even if they had somehow backed into a playoff spot, they would have been beaten up in the playoffs, and beaten up badly.
The Cowboys made the playoffs nine times over the last 20 years, and only twice in those playoff years did they have a losing record against winning teams.
body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table { border: 1px solid #000 !important; border-collapse: collapse !important; } body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th { padding: 4px 6px !important; }| Cowboys records vs Quality Opponents, Playoff years, 2006-2025 | |||||||||
| Year | 2006 | 2007 | 2009 | 2014 | 2016 | 2018 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
| W/L | 1-3 | 4-2 | 4-2 | 4-2 | 6-2 | 3-4 | 5-4 | 6-2 | 4-4 |
| W/L% | .250 | .666 | .666 | .666 | .750 | .428 | .555 | .750 | .500 |
Making the playoffs
CHF.com only publish quality wins data back to 2018, but ProFootballReference.com allows us to dig a little deeper. And expanding the scope to the past 20 seasons of quality opponents reveals some interesting stuff about the correlation between making the playoffs and quality opponents faced.
For example, did you know that over the last 20 years, the best record against quality opponents is 7-0? That team made it all the way to the Super Bowl, where it met a team that had a 1-5 record against quality opponents in the regular season. So, who won? The 1-5 Giants beat the 7-0 Patriots in the 2007 Super Bowl.
More recently, the Eagles backed into the playoffs in 2021 with a 1-7 record against quality opponents, and promptly exited in the wildcard round. The following year, they posted a 7-1 record against quality teams and took that all the way to the Super Bowl where they were bested by the 5-2 Chiefs.
But being battle-hardened against quality teams is no recipe for success either. The 2023 Ravens faced a record 14 quality opponents in the regular season and compiled an incredible 10-4 record against those teams, but lost in the conference championship against a 3-4 Chiefs team that won the turnover battle 3-0 in that game.
In many ways, quality opponents are a playoff gatekeeper: the more of them you face, the less likely you are to make the playoffs. Or phrased differently, the lower the number of quality teams you have to face in a season, the higher your chances of making the playoffs.
body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table { border: 1px solid #000 !important; border-collapse: collapse !important; } body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th { padding: 4px 6px !important; }| Playoff success rate by No. of Quality Opponents faced, 2006-2025 | ||||||||
| Quality Opponents faced | <4 | 4-5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11+ |
| Total no. of teams | 9 | 80 | 98 | 145 | 115 | 107 | 52 | 34 |
| No. of teams making the playoffs | 9 | 46 | 44 | 71 | 42 | 24 | 8 | 8 |
| Playoff success rate | 100% | 58% | 45% | 49% | 37% | 22% | 15% | 24% |
The table mostly confirms the role of quality opponents as playoff gatekeepers, but the bump at the end looks odd, as it suggests you have better playoff chances if you face more than 11+ quality opponents than if you were to face just nine or 10. Well, you’ve got the 17-game schedule to blame for that, and specifically the year 2023.
From 2006-2020 (16-game schedule), the league averaged 14.1 quality teams per year. From 2021-2025 (17-game schedule) that number jumped to 16.6, and peaked at 19 teams with a winning record in 2023. If we exclude just that one year from the table above, most of the opponents-faced brackets (from <4 to 10) don’t change by more than a percentage point or two, but the 11+ bracket changes dramatically, dropping to just 21 teams and three playoff participants for a success rate of 14%. And with that, order is restored to the quality opponents world.
Playoff success
It’s all well and good to make the playoffs with a losing record against quality opponents, or only having played a few of them. But once you’re in the playoffs, there usually are no cupcake opponents anymore. The logic for advancing in the playoffs is fairly simple: If you’ve beaten a lot of quality opponents in the regular season you are most likely a pretty good team yourself, and are likely to advance further in the playoffs than a not so good team.
The table below shows the winning percentages against quality opponents by playoff status.
body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table { border: 1px solid #000 !important; border-collapse: collapse !important; } body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th { padding: 4px 6px !important; }| Records vs Quality Opponents, 2006-2025 regular seasons | |||||||||
| Teams | Number | Avg. No. of Quality Opponents | Avg. Wins | Avg. Losses | Avg. Winning Percentage | ||||
| Non-Playoff teams | 388 | 7.9 | 1.7 | 6.1 | .221 | ||||
| Wildcard Teams | 92 | 7.2 | 3.1 | 4.1 | .432 | ||||
| Division Winners | 160 | 6.7 | 3.9 | 2.8 | .578 | ||||
| Conf. Champ. Teams | 80 | 6.7 | 4.0 | 2.7 | .598 | ||||
| Super Bowl Teams | 40 | 6.7 | 4.2 | 2.6 | .621 | ||||
No surprise, the 40 teams that made it to the Super Bowl in the last twenty years have the highest winning percentage against quality opponents in the regular season.
Teams making it to the Conference Championships have a slightly lower percentage but also have a proven ability to beat quality opponents more often than not.
Going into the playoffs, division winners on average have a higher winning percentage than teams that get into the playoffs on a wildcard. And teams that don’t make the playoffs have a hard time winning against quality opponents at all.
Looking only at quality opponents, a softer schedule appears to be better to get you into the playoffs. However, your chances of making it far in the playoffs are better in general if you’re ‘battle-hardened’ against quality teams.
2026
The Cowboys, Commanders, and Giants all face eight teams that had a winning record last year, the Eagles face seven. You’ve been inundated with how the Cowboys have such a tough schedule in 2026, boo-hoo-hoo, but at the end of the day, games against quality opponents are all that matter. With eight quality opponents, the Cowboys, Commanders, and Giants are tied for the 14th “toughest” schedule, the Eagles are tied for 21st.
Three teams (BUF, DET, NYJ) face 11 quality opponents, four teams (NE, MIA, GB, ARI) face 10, so the Patriots get the tables turned against them, going from an historically easy season in 2025 to a much tougher challenge in 2026.
Of course, all of these are 2025 numbers, and we don’t yet know how the 2026 season will play out and who the quality teams will be in 2026. But how the Cowboys perform against the 2025 quality teams early in the season will give us a good idea of where the season could be heading.
The Cowboys face their first quality opponent in Week 4 against Houston (12-5), then face Green Bay (9-7-1) and Philly (11-6) in Weeks 6 and 7. Come out of those three games with a 2-1 or 3-0 record, and they’ll be ready for some of the big boys slotted for the second half of the schedule. Exit those three games with a 1-2 or 0-3 record, and you can likely start booking your January holidays.
