The Los Angeles Rams are considered one of the most dominant teams in the NFC, but Sean McVay will get a heavy dose of AFC competition at the beginning of the 2025 season and that starts on Sunday against the Houston Texans. The Rams will go through their entire AFC schedule within the first seven weeks of the season and then after a bye week it’s all NFC the rest of the way.
Good for McVay that he has had a strong record against the AFC and the Rams have a golden opportunity to win at least four of these games, if not all five.
The Rams are 12-8 vs AFC since the NFL added a 17th game (that being an extra team against the other conference) in 2021:
- 2021: 4-1 (AFC South + win over Ravens)
- 2022: 2-3 (AFC West + loss to Bills)
- 2023: 2-3 (AFC North + win over Colts)
- 2024: 4-1 (AFC East + win over Raiders)
The schedule now loops back to the AFC South and once again the 17th game is against the Baltimore Ravens.
- Week 1: Texans
- Week 2: at Titans
- Week 4: Colts
- Week 6: at Ravens
- Week 7: at Jaguars
The Rams will have only played two conference games when they face the Saints on November 2nd. Even if the Rams collapsed in the first two months of the season and were 2-5 or something, they would have a lot of wiggle room to climb back into the NFC race because L.A. wouldn’t have played the majority of their conference schedule. No, that’s not ideal and it’s not likely that the Rams would recover — nor does anyone think that the Rams will be 2-5 — but there is room for error.
Conversely, a 7-0 record would be the best case scenario of course, and also leave a lot of room for anything to happen with only a 2-0 record in the NFC and just one game against an NFC West team (Week 5 49ers) prior to facing the Niners again in Week 10.
It’s a very odd schedule quirk and it all starts on Sunday afternoon against the Houston Texans.
