Arizona Cardinals' Toughest Stretch of 2024 NFL Season

Fact Checked by Thomas Leary

Now that we know who the Arizona Cardinals will square off against in Year Two of the Jonathan Gannon era in Glendale, it’s worth pondering which of the team’s games this fall will be the most difficult.  

Beginning with the Cards’ Week 1 showdown with the Buffalo Bills in New York and moving through their Week 18 showdown with the San Francisco 49ers in Glendale, Arizona’s path to the franchise’s first postseason berth in two years is anything but smooth.  

That rocky road is exemplified by the odds that the team at Bet365 Arizona have placed on the Cardinals this fall, with a win total over/under of 6.5.  

Utilizing a point system, BetArizona.com found the hardest 3-game stretch of the Arizona Cardinals’ schedule for 2024-25 NFL regular season. 

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How We Did The Math

Points were given for the following:
1 pt – Divisional Opponent
1 pt – Road Game
1 pt – Primetime Game (TNF, SNF, MNF)
2 pt – Short Week
2 pt – Team #11-20 on ESPN’s NFL Power Rankings
3 pt – Team #1-10 on ESPN’s NFL Power Rankings

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Hardest Stretch of Cardinals Regular Season

Week

Opponent

Points

5

at San Francisco 49ers

5

6

at Green Bay Packers

4

7

vs. Los Angeles Chargers

1

Which Three-Game Stretch is Arizona’s Toughest in 2024?

It looks like Arizona’s biggest test across Arizona sports betting this year will come in October, when the Cardinals play two playoff teams away from home in the San Francisco 49ers on Oct. 6 and the Green Bay Packers the following Sunday.  

Throw in the fact that Gannon’s team will play on Monday Night Football against the upstart Los Angeles Chargers in Jim Harbaugh’s first season with the franchise and you have the full recipe for brutality that awaits the Cardinals midseason.  

Despite that three-game gauntlet, Arizona’s strength of schedule is ranked as in a tie with the Miami Dolphins and Seattle Seahawks for the eighth weakest in the 32-team NFL, with an opponents’ win percentage (based off 2023 records) of .488, ranking behind the Philadelphia Eagles, Indianapolis Colts and Tennessee Titans (.491 each).  

Gannon and the Cardinals will look to show the country that they’ve turned a collective corner from the two-year disaster that is consecutive 4-13 campaigns in the Valley in early September before encountering what should be a good test of the team’s abilities when they head to Santa Clara to square off against the defending NFC champs in Week 5 of the NFL regular season.  

USA Today photo by Michael Chow.

Author

Christopher Boan

Christopher Boan is the lead writer at BetArizona.com after covering sports and sports betting in Arizona for more than seven years, including stops at ArizonaSports.com, the Tucson Weekly and the Green Valley News.

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