Heading into Week 4, there are five winless teams in the NFL. The Miami Dolphins are one of them. However, it’s hard to blame the Dolphins for their 0-3 record, and it’s mostly because they’ve had to deal with a nightmare schedule.
With the Dolphins in the midst of a rebuild, no one really expected them to be good this year, but it’s still worth noting that their roster so far has been off the charts: it’s at 1,000.
From a mathematical standpoint, that’s the highest number possible for your schedule, and it means the Dolphins have only faced currently undefeated teams. Heading into Week 4, there are only five undefeated teams left in the NFL and the Dolphins will have faced four of them by Sunday.
Here’s a look at Miami’s schedule through the first four weeks, along with each opponent’s current record:
Week 1: at Raiders (3-0) – The Dolphins lost 27-13
Week 2: at 49ers (3-0) – The Dolphins lost 35-13
Week 3: Chiefs (3-0) – The Dolphins lost 24-10
Week 4: among the Vikings (3-0)
(NOTE: The fifth undefeated team is the Bills, and the Dolphins will face them twice this season)
Obviously, there is some cause and effect to all of this. If you’re a winless team this early in the season, the other teams have one of their three wins against you, so your strength of schedule will naturally be greater than most other teams. Even taking this into consideration, this is still an unprecedented situation.
- In NFL history, the Dolphins are one of 10 teams to play three games in three weeks and have a 1.000 rating for strength of schedule, according to CBS Sports Research. That means there are only nine other instances where a team’s first three opponents all entered Week 4 with a 3-0 record.
- And now this is where we enter unprecedented territory. Of those 10 teams, only TWO of them had to face another undefeated team in Week 4: the 2026 Dolphins and the 1986 Eagles. That means that through the first four weeks, the Dolphins faced a nightmare schedule that only ONE other team in NFL history has faced, and the last time that happened was 40 years ago.
Like the Dolphins, the 1986 Eagles started the season 0-3 before posting a stunning 34-20 victory as a six-point underdog over the 3-0 Rams in Week 4, so maybe we shouldn’t write off the Dolphins this week.
Over three weeks, here are the teams who played the most difficult squad on the calendar:
1. Dolphins (0-3): 1,000
T-2. Buccaneers (0-3): .778
T-2. Chargers (0-3): 0.778
T-2. Rams (1-2): 0.778
T-2. Saints (1-2): 0.778
As for the team that has played the easiest schedule thus far, that honor belongs to the Raiders, who have a schedule strength rating of just 0.111. So far, their three opponents have a combined record of 1-8, and they have taken advantage of it by going 3-0. Although they have had the easiest schedule so far, that number will increase this week after facing the undefeated Chiefs.
As for the Dolphins, their schedule will finally lighten up in Week 5 and it’s mainly because they will finally be able to face a team that is NOT undefeated in the Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals face the Jaguars on Sunday. If they win, they’ll head to Miami with a 3-1 record; if they lose, they will drop to 2-2.
Because of their schedule, this could be a bad year for the Dolphins. Not only are they 0-3, but they also just lost their best offensive player of the season, De’Von Achane (ACL). We actually tried to predict whether an 0-17 record would be possible for the Dolphins and you can check out our full prediction here.
Gn sports
