Could easy schedule really make a difference for the Colts in 2023?

The Indianapolis Colts have one of the league’s easiest 2023 schedules. Will that make a difference for an Indy team that’s hoping to bounce back?

You’ve probably heard by now that the Indianapolis Colts have one of the easiest schedules for the 2023 season. Indy’s 17-game regular season schedule is considered the fourth-easiest in the NFL next season. That’s calculated based on opponents’ win percentage from the 2022 season.

So, will this easy schedule make things easier for the Colts and lead to them winning more games? There are a few factors to look at before we can answer that question.

Can Colts dominate easy 2023 schedule?

The biggest factor is Indianapolis itself. While the team’s schedule is considered easy, the Colts are also being viewed as an easy opponent because they were 4-12-1 last season. So an easy schedule doesn’t really mean anything if you’re a bad team, and last time we watched Indianapolis play football, it was a bad team.

The only way the Colts can dominate this easy schedule is if they are significantly improved from last season. If they are anything close to the squad that everyone watched in 2022, it won’t matter how easy the schedule is because the Colts will find a way to lose games.

However, if Indianapolis can improve in one offseason, so can every other team, and that highlights the problem with using a past season to determine strength of schedule. The reality is each season is it’s own entity and no one knows the caliber of any team until they take the field. Everyone can analyze and predict how teams will perform, but at the end of the day, the game has to be played on the field.

The truth is, we won’t be able to accurately measure the 2023 strength of schedule until the end of the 2023 regular season. So it doesn’t matter how easy Indy’s scheduled is considered to be; the Colts must improve and be prepared to defeat whatever version of a team shows up in a given week.

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