When will the regular season schedule for 2022 be out? I’m eager to look it over as soon as I can do so.
Who plays who where is decided by a formula. What's to be announced is when.
Exactly. The next year's schedule is complete once the last regular season games take place. Everyone knows what place everyone finished in their division by then.
The formula is actually quite simple once you break it down this way:
You are Team A in Division Z in the NFC and you finished 2021 in 1st place. There are 4 teams in each division, you being one. You play everyone in your division twice (once at home and once on the road).
So you play Team B twice, Team C twice and Team D twice: that's 6 games. So what about the remaining 11?
The formula goes on a rotating basis. The NFC has Division W, X, Y and Z and the AFC also has W, X, Y and Z. The formula has each division playing another division within it's conference and one outside of it's conference purely on a rotating basis. So for 2022, your division (Division Z) is slated to play the NFC Division Y and AFC Division X. You play everyone in those divisions, two at home and two on the road. That's 8 games added to the previous 6, so now we are up to 14 games. The old remaining two were filled by teams in your Conference that finished the previous season in the same place you did from the other two divisions (since you are in Division Z, finished 1st place and you are playing everyone in Division Y already, the other two division are W and X), so you play the 1st place team of Division W and the 1st place team of Division X. SO that's the old 16 game schedule. Now, that 17th game is played against a team from another division of the opposite conference that you aren't already playing. So you would play the 1st place team of AFC Division W, Y or Z. For simplistic reasons we will pretend the formula said Division Z. So there is your 17 game schedule. The formula is understood years in advance, like you would already know you are playing all of the NFC W and all of the AFC Y and the one game against the AFC W in 2023. The only thing you need to wait on is to see who places where at the end of the season. Then wait a few months for them to determine is what dat you will be playing those games. Heck, even which games are home games and which are road games is already determined. As a Cowboys fan married to a Packer fan, I already know the Cowboys are making the trip to Lambeau this year. I just don't know when yet.