Saints fortunate to have majority of tough matchups at home

Each NFL team’s schedule for a given year is based off their record from the previous year and a rotation of interdivisional matchups. For the New Orleans Saints, there are a ton of high-profile games in what could be Drew Brees’s final year in the NFL.

Highlights include:

• a week one matchup in New Orleans to open the Dome against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
• playing in the regular season opener in the Las Vegas Raiders’ new stadium
• hosting “the great” Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers
• playing the team that drafted him, the San Diego Las Angeles Chargers, in what could be Drew Brees’s final Monday Night Football game
• hosting the defending NFC Champion and former division rival San Francisco 49ers
• hosting the defending Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs
• the first Saints Christmas Day game in the Dome, in a rematch of last year’s wild card round against the Minnesota Vikings

There are plenty of difficult games listed above (the Chiefs will obviously be no cakewalk), but there are others where the Saints should be favored (the Chargers game, for instance). When DraftKings created odds for last year’s division winners to go undefeated in 2020, the schedule for each was ultimately divided into “easy” games, “winnable” games, and “tough” matchups.

For the Saints, they were given six “easy” games: matchups against the Raiders, Lions, Chargers, Broncos, and two against the Panthers. There were four “winnable but close” games: both games against the Falcons, the game against the Bears, and the Week 1 matchup against the Bucs. That left six “tough” games on the schedule: the games against the Packers, 49ers, Eagles, Chiefs, Vikings, and the road game against the Buccaneers.

Of those six games, the Saints are fortunate to where four are played in the friendly confines of the Super Dome. Only two of the “tough” games for the Saints are played on the road: the Week 14 game against the Philadelphia Eagles and the Week 9 contest against Tom Brady’s Buccaneers.

If the Saints are forced to face last year’s Super Bowl participants plus the team that knocked them out of the playoffs last year, at least those three games are played in New Orleans.

We’ll see if it matters.

What do you think of the Saints schedule? Let us know in the comments. Make sure you follow Canal Street Chronicles on Twitter at @SaintsCSC, “Like” us on Facebook at Canal Street Chronicles, and make sure you’re subscribed to our new YouTube channel. As always, you can follow me on Twitter @ChrisDunnells.