Ever since the 2012 NFL schedule came out, we have known that the defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants face a difficult schedule in their effort to defend their title.
By traditional methods (combined 2011 winning percentage of opponents), the Giants face the most difficult schedule in the NFL. The combined winning percentage of their 2012 foes was .547 last season.
Like Sabermetricians in baseball, however, some folks are never satisfied with traditional methods. They have to dig deeper, find more complicated -- and possibly better -- ways of measuring things. The folks at Beyond The Bets have done just that when it comes to rating schedule difficulty.
'Bets' combined last season's winning percentage with a couple of other factors and came up with a ranking of its own. Guess what? They figured out that the Giants schedule is incredibly difficult, though in their rankings the Cleveland Browns face a slightly tougher road.
The point of all of this? I guess it's that no matter how you slice it, the Giants have a tough schedule in 2012.