Blue Wire.

Welcome back.

It's the big blue banter.

New York Giants football podcast.

I'm Dan Schneier.

Join, as always my co-st Nick Falado.

Still recording here from plenty of West Coast of the United States.

The West Coast really is.

And I shouldn't say the West Coast because I said to the other night and somebody got, was like, well, California is really going to share in Washington. I was like, I don't want to get involved in any of these conversations. I'm just talking about Arizona, Colorado, Nevada. It's really nice out here. And it's sunny, literally pure sun every single day, which affects the mood. So I'm happy. Happy talking about the Giants schedule, though. You know, it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for with the schedule.

I wanted the Giants Jets week one on Monday night. I thought it was a good time to get Aaron Rogers. There were a few other teams and games that I didn't like scheduling-wise. I do like that. We have one team earlier, which we'll talk about, which I think will benefit the Giants. But overall, I was definitely not thrilled to see the schedule, Nick.

What was your first reaction?

My first reaction was it, it's a bit difficult. We knew it was going to be that way. The strength of schedule, I think the Giants were the third hardest strength of schedule in the NFL. Now, that doesn't always carry over. That doesn't always mean that the Giants are going to have the hardest schedule. There's a lot of turnover year after year. But if you look at the strength of schedule too, Dan, number one hardest team is the Philadelphia Eagles. Then it's the Miami Dolphins. Then it's the New York Giants. Then the Patriots, the Cowboys, the Jets, the Bills, and the commanders. What do all of those teams have in common? They're playing each other. Yes, they're all playing each other because I don't know exactly who the AFC East played last year, but the Giants played in the Cowboys and the Eagles and Washington. The NFC East played the AFC South. That was a crap division that they just beat the crap out of. The Giants swept that division. So in order for the Giants to really have a successful year this year, they're going to need to win divisional games. It's something we've been saying since the season ended, they won one last year, and they still went to the playoffs and ended up winning a playoff game. So you can defeat Dallas once, you know, you can defeat maybe Washington twice, and that can increase your odds of going back to the playoffs, but it's not going to be as easy of the road as they had last year. But they did have a bunch of improvements and upgrades on both the offense and defense. So hopefully that will allow the Giants to have some

success this season. Yeah, they'll have to be also, Nick, but to be like those 2011,

2007 teams, road warriors because first seven of their 11 games are all on the road. They also

have, of course, the home game against the Jets, which is like a fake home game, basically. I mean, it's not a fake home game, but it's not really a road game much for the Jets. So it's a really interesting schedule from that standpoint. They're going to have to prove it on the road early. We're going to go game by game in a second and just look at those. but a couple other things that just talk about from just the overall thoughts on the on the schedule.

This is from Doug Analytics, who provided some stats for us. And so for me, Nick, when you mentioned Strength of Schedule a little bit earlier, I think there's two ways to look at Strength the Schedule. There's the Dumb Way, as I call it, which is looking at last year's records, which is kind of the most popular way. You'll see on a lot of sites. And now there's the much smarter way that's come to the surface maybe over the last three or four years. And Warren Sharp is a big proponent of this. And a lot of people have kind of looked at it. It's look at the strength of schedule based on implied total wins by Las Vegas. That's that's the good way to do it. Vegas knows what's going to come.

Looking back at last year's wins lost, schedule based on implied total wins by Las Vegas. That's the good way to do it. Vegas knows

what's going to come. Looking back at last year's wins losses is a very stupid way to look at it.

So implied win total, though, the Giants do have a really tough schedule. This is according to Doug

analytics who says draft Kings has posted the betting lines for every giant game. Here's some of the

trends. The Giants are favorites in seven total games out of 17, not great. In two of the five

standalone games, their favorites versus Seattle at home versus Green Bay at home. In five of the eight

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