Want to look forward to more football for the Dallas Cowboys? Well, look far ahead, like to September of 2011 and you can see it. Yup, with the end of the regular season, the opponents for next year's season have been determined. The NFL uses a system that rotates around with a few wild-cards thrown in.
The Cowboys face the NFC West and the AFC East next year. The NFC West was a disaster this year, and the Patriots and Jets were the only good teams in the AFC East. But, as we all know, some teams get better and some teams get worse every offseason. We were a good example of getting worse this year.
Here are the opponents and the home/away games for 2011.
Home: New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins, St. Louis Rams, Seattle Seahawks, Detroit Lions, Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins
Away: New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins, Arizona Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, New England Patriots, New York Jets
The 2011 regular season begins (we hope!) on September 8th, 2011. Super Bowl XLVI at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana will be played on Sunday, February 5, 2012.
Just for completeness sake, here are the rules about scheduling.
Home and away against its three division opponents (6 games). ·
The four teams from another division within its conference on a rotating three-year cycle (4 games). ·
The four teams from a division in the other conference on a rotating four-year cycle (4 games). ·
Two intraconference games based on the prior year’s standings (2 games). These games match a first-place team against the first-place teams in the two same-conference divisions the team is not scheduled to play that season. The second-place, third-place, and fourth-place teams in a conference are matched in the same way each year.