Ah, the NFL schedule release . A time of hope, excitement, social media fun and, yes, overreactions.
Each year around this time, the league releases its full schedule for the upcoming season, so teams and their fans begin to examine it game-by-game. They look at where they got bad breaks and where they got advantages.
Why does my favorite team have a bye week so early? What's with these back-to-back-to-back road games?
Looking at that first-half schedule, what's stopping us from starting 9-0? It's one of the easiest times of the offseason to trot out an overreactions column, as the football-loving world tries to predict games four, five, six and seven months away without knowing who's going to be good, who's going to get hurt or, in some cases, who's going to be on all of these teams.
So no, we aren't above it. Let's judge five possible overreactions to the 2026 schedule.
Jump to a potential overreaction for: Bears | Bengals | Chiefs | Dolphins Super Bowl teams The Bears will miss the postseason Chicago was one of the great stories of the 2025 season, reaching the NFC divisional round in Ben Johnson's first year as head coach. Second-year quarterback Caleb Williams made brilliant fourth-quarter play after brilliant fourth-quarter play right up until the end, taking the Rams to overtime before finally bowing out.
In the long term, the arrow is definitely pointing up for the Johnson/Williams pairing -- and there's room for Williams to get even better. He finished 32nd out of 33 qualifying QBs in completion percentage (58.1%) last season and just 16th in QBR (58.2) even as he led the Bears to their first division title in seven years.
But ... the Bears have the hardest schedule in the NFL, based on the 2025 win/loss records of the teams they'll play in 2026.
And while that is certainly not the only indicator of schedule strength, history says it's definitely not nothing. Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION The last team to win a playoff game after entering the season with the hardest schedule by that metric was the 2016 Falcons.
Over the past 10 seasons, seven of those teams missed the playoffs entirely. Plus, the Bears won an NFC North division in which literally every other team had a winning record last season.
The Lions and Vikings should bounce back to contender status, and the Packers were a playoff team last season along with the Bears. Chicago plays all three of those teams -- plus the Bills -- over the final month of the season.
The division and the schedule look tough enough that it wouldn't be a surprise if the Bears take a step back -- albeit a temporary one -- in 2026. Remember how we all felt about the Commanders this time last year?
Progress is not always linear, and the 5-12 Commanders of 2025 are a testament to that after they reached the NFC Championship Game in quarterback Jayden Daniels ' 2024 rookie season. The Bengals will return to the AFC Championship Game After reaching the Super Bowl in Joe Burrow 's second season and getting back to the AFC Championship Game the following year, Cincinnati has missed the playoffs three years in a row.
Last season's 6-11 finish was the Bengals' first losing record since Burrow's rookie year of 2020. They are, however, the only team in their division that didn't change head coaches this offseason.
And they spent the bulk of it beefing up their defense, which has been their Achilles heel since that Super Bowl season. Cincinnati capped things off last month by trading the 10th overall pick to the Giants for defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence II a few days before the draft.
The offense returns all 11 starters from 2025, and when Burrow has been healthy it has been an elite unit. Furthermore, the Bengals -- based again on the 2025 win-loss records of their 2026 opponents -- have the league's third-easiest schedule.
All they need is for the defense to not be detrimental, and one assumes they can be a playoff team again without too much trouble. Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION Only four of their games are against teams that had winning records last season -- the Texans, the Jaguars and two against the Steelers.
The defense should be better, given all of the moves the Bengals have made there, and each of the other three teams in their division is in a transition phase with a new head coach. The defending division-champion Steelers don't even know yet if 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers is coming back or if they have to go with some combination of Mason Rudolph , Will Howard and Drew Allar