The Saints also go to LA to play the Rams so they're in the same boat as Miami (though they do play LA later in the season than Miami does).
Actually, I disagree. IMHO, we're in a worse situation than the Saints. It's not just the London game. Look at all of the Cross-Continental or Trans-Atlantic stuff we have in our schedule:
1. Week 2, we fly from the East to West - Miami to Los Angeles
2. Week 3, we fly from the West to East - Los Angeles to New York
3. Week 4, we fly Trans-Atlantic - New York to London
4. Week 5, we fly Trans-Atlantic - London to Miami
5. Week 16, we fly East to West - Buffalo to Kansas City
6. Week 17, we fly West to East - Kansas City to Buffalo
That's a lot of long flights. IMHO, it's not just the flight to London, or even the flights to and from London, its the fact that we play 16 games and have extremely long flights before 6 of them. Now in a typical season, we'd have 8 away games, but 3 of those would be East Coast teams in our division (New York City, Buffalo and Boston). Considering that this year our matchup games are Tennessee and Baltimore, two relatively close cities, it's very strange that the NFL managed to give us 6 extremely long flights.
Add that to the fact that we're probably the team with the most extreme advantage at home during the first month of the season, and they only scheduled one game in Miami among the first four games ... and that is against a local team just up the road in the center of FLORIDA! That blows. So the fact that from November 26th onward we're made to play @New England, @Buffalo and @Kansas City is ... well ... not at all balanced.
I get it. We were awarded the Super Bowl. Grats to Ross for the money and prestige that brings. And thanks to Ross for throwing so much of his own money into making our stadium better. But on the field, we're paying a high price for having that bone thrown our way. Fortunately, this is happening during the season we lost Tannehill ... so our expectations are not really as high.
From a scheduling standpoint, we play probably 3 long flight games more than most teams. We also play 2 more seasonally disadvantaged games more than we receive. Those are games where the odds are stacked against us, and we probably have 5 more of those than most teams. IMHO, that's a big deal schedule-wise. Can we win those games? Sure, we have a shot at each one. But even before Tannehill's injury those are games we're probably going to be expected to lose.
