Browns gifted a holiday treat with their 2026 NFL schedule

Photo via Imagn Images

(Could end up being a lump of coal with poor start)

The Cleveland Browns have something in their upcoming  NFL schedule that has only happened nine times over the past 35 seasons to other NFL teams. Is that a good or bad thing for our beloved Browns?

We’ll get that part of the schedule momentarily, but Cleveland’s upcoming games this season are filled with lots of ups and downs. If you think of a schedule as a roller coaster, this one has so many twists and turns that it’ll keep every Browns fan’s stomach churning.

The NFL scheduling Gods did Cleveland no favors with this 17-game slate. For starters, the team is sent on the road to hot Florida in the middle of September for two games in a row. It starts in Week 1 against the Jacksonville Jaguars and then proceeds to Week 2 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and our friend quarterback Baker Mayfield.

The fact that Cleveland has a brand-new head coach in Todd Monken, who’s had no previous head coaching experience in the NFL, seems like an uphill battle to begin the season with.

Cleveland is sent on the road six times or the first nine weeks. That also includes three straight away games.

If the Browns can manage to stay above water by Week 10, the NFL gifts Cleveland four straight home games over the holiday season, with the Week 11 bye mixed in.

I guess that’s the thanks Browns get from the league for participating and such a bizarre schedule.

The odd four game homestand has only happened nine times to teams in the NFL over the past 35 seasons. Most of these teams, which have included the Baltimore Ravens and the Green Bay Packers, have had good success previously with this set up going 4-0 or 3-1. The outliner to this group is the Tennessee Titans who went 0-4 in both 2005 and 2025. So, the odds would be in Cleveland’s favor but not a guarantee as the Titans proved.

Cleveland has a very young team and hopefully this mixed bag of games won’t have as much effect on the outcomes as we older Browns writers might think.

Cleveland struggled to find that winning formula over the past three decades. Some have pointed out that the teams Cleveland is playing this season have a losing winning percentage of only 43% against the competition from the season ago.

But one still has to play the games and a reliance on a team’s strength of schedule should just be thrown out the window once the new season starts.

We have four months to debate the Browns schedule, the team’s talents, and what to expect from Coach Monken. At this point., everything’s just a big guess! So, buckle up on that thrilling roller coaster (AKA “A Browns season”) and be ready for the ride of a lifetime!