{"id":666255,"date":"2026-05-13T08:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T08:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/666255\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T08:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T08:09:08","slug":"arizona-cardinals-have-one-of-nfls-toughest-scheduled-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/666255\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona Cardinals have one of NFL’s toughest scheduled in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Arizona Cardinals<\/a> are not expected to be very good in 2026. They play in a very competitive NFC West, where the three other teams in the division made the playoffs. And while they have a last-place schedule, they have one of the toughest schedules in the league.<\/p>\n

According to their opponents’ win-loss record in 2025, they have the third toughest schedule in the NFL in 2026. The .538 winning percentage of their opponents is topped only by the Miami Dolphins<\/a> at .542 and the Chicago Bears<\/a> at .550.<\/p>\n

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The Cardinals’ tough schedule is due to a couple of things.<\/p>\n

One is playing in the NFC West where their three division rivals won 11 or more games in 2025. Normally in a division, are a couple competitive teams, a mid team and a bad one. The Cardinals were the bad one last season, but the other three were very good. There was no mid team. And the Cardinals play those three teams twice.<\/p>\n

They also had a little bad luck. Their last-place games are against the Detroit Lions<\/a>, New Orleans Saints<\/a> and New York Jets<\/a>. The Jets were bad, but the Lions were a favorite to win the Super Bowl who had tons of injuries and played in a very competitive NFC North. They were a 9-win last-place team. The Saints went 6-11 and won 4 of their final 6 games.<\/p>\n

Plus, in playing the AFC West in 2026, they had two teams with double-digit wins.<\/p>\n

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All of that leads to a teams with low expections. They have a tough schedule. They were bad least year and didn’t make big changes, and they have a less than inspiring quarterback room.<\/p>\n

Get more Cardinals<\/a> and NFL coverage from Cards<\/a> Wire’s Jess Root and others by listening to the latest on the Rise Up, See Red podcast. Subscribe on Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0YouTube<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Apple podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Cards Wire: Arizona Cardinals have one of NFL’s toughest scheduled in 2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Arizona Cardinals are not expected to be very good in 2026. They play in a very competitive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[1745,49,48,1735,3163,1720,1734,1723,83259,514,82,81416],"class_list":["post-666255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-arizona-cardinals","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chicago-bears","tag-detroit-lions","tag-miami-dolphins","tag-new-orleans-saints","tag-new-york-jets","tag-nfc-west","tag-nfl","tag-sports","tag-the-cardinals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}