2025 NFL strength of schedule: Detroit Lions road slate historically hard

The Detroit Lions’ 2025 schedule is hard… their road schedule is grueling.

No matter how you slice it, the Detroit Lions ’ 2025 schedule looks pretty darn difficult. And while perception of schedule rarely meets reality—as Ty Schalter pointed out in last week’s Pride of Detroit Direct Newsletter —the fact remains that Detroit has a lot of teams who are perceived as very talented on their slate this fall.

There are several ways to measure NFL strength of schedule, and each metric points to Detroit having one of the toughest roads in the 2025 regular season.

By last year’s record

If you add up the 2024 record of all of the Lions’ 17 opponents for this upcoming season, it comes out to an overall winning percentage of .571, which is tied for the second-highest record—or the second-most difficult schedule. Only the New York Giants (.574) have a tougher schedule.

By Vegas win totals

With the year-to-year variance in team record, studies have shown that calculating strength of schedule by last year’s record turns out to be pretty inaccurate by the season’s end. So a more recently popular way to calculate strength of schedule is using the Vegas projected win totals for each team. Essentially, you’re using expectations for the 2025 season to create strength of schedule.

By Vegas win totals (per Sharp Football Analysis), the Lions have the third-toughest schedule in the NFL, only behind the Browns and Giants.

That road schedule, though…

Warren Sharp pointed out just how difficult the Lions’ road schedule is, particularly at the beginning of the season. Check out just how far below the rest of the league the Lions for Week 1-11 in strength of schedule (using projected win totals):

And the crazy thing is that this isn’t really cherry-picking a tough part of the Lions’ schedule. The only three games missing are the Rams (9.5 projected win total), Vikings (8.5), and Bears (8.5). Two of those teams made the playoffs last year, and one is expected to take at least a moderate jump in 2025. That said, the Lions did go 8-0 on the road last year…

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You may be wondering why the Lions have so much bad luck when it comes to this year’s schedule. The answer is simple: it’s not really bad luck, it’s the system playing out as planned. When you place first in your division, you have to play other division winners on the following year’s schedule—hence why the Lions are playing the Chiefs, Buccaneers , and Rams.

Perhaps it’s a bit unlucky to pull the NFC East and AFC North in this year’s schedule, but those divisions have just as many perceived bad teams (Giants, Browns, Steelers ) as good ones (Ravens, Eagles, Commanders). Every NFC North team has to play those two divisions, as well, so it’s no surprise that the Vikings, Bears, and Packers are all in the top-10 when it comes to toughest 2025 schedules.

So, chin up, Lions fans. It’s going to be one hell of a season.