Dolphins Face Toughest Early Schedule in 40 Seasons, Undefeated Week 4 Foe Awaits

Heading into Week 4, there are five winless teams in the NFL . The Miami Dolphins are one of them. However, it's hard to blame the Dolphins for their 0-3 record, and that's mostly because they've had to face a nightmare schedule.

With the Dolphins in a total rebuild, no one really expected them to be any good this year, but it's still worth noting that their strength of schedule so far has been off the charts: It's 1.000.

From a mathematical standpoint, that's the highest possible number that your strength of schedule can be, and it means that the Dolphins have only played teams that are currently undefeated. Heading into Week 4, there are only five unbeaten teams left in the NFL and the Dolphins will have faced four of them by Sunday.

Here's a look at what Miami's schedule has looked like through the first four weeks, along with each opponent's current record:

Week 1: at Raiders (3-0) -- Dolphins lost 27-13 Week 2: at 49ers (3-0) -- Dolphins lost 35-13 Week 3: Chiefs (3-0) -- Dolphins lost 24-10 Week 4: at Vikings (3-0) (NOTE: The fifth undefeated team is the Bills , and the Dolphins will play them twice this season)

Now obviously, there's a cause-and-effect part to this. If you're a winless team this early in the season, the other teams got one of their three wins against you, so your strength of schedule is naturally going to be higher than most other teams. Even when you take that into consideration, though, this is still an unprecedented situation.

- Over the course of NFL history, the Dolphins are one of just 10 teams to play three games through three weeks and have a strength-of-schedule rating of 1.000, according to CBS Sports Research. That means there are only nine other instances where a team's first three opponents all went into Week 4 with a 3-0 record. - And now, this is where we get into unprecedented territory. Out of those 10 teams, only TWO of them have had to face another undefeated team in Week 4: The 2026 Dolphins and the 1986 Eagles . This means that over the first four weeks, the Dolphins have been hit with a nightmare schedule that only ONE other team in NFL history has faced, and the last time it happened was 40 years ago.

Like the Dolphins, the 1986 Eagles started the season 0-3 before pulling off a stunning 34-20 win as a six-point underdog over the 3-0 Rams in Week 4, so maybe we shouldn't write off the Dolphins this week.

Through three weeks, here are the teams that have played the most difficult strength of schedule:

1. Dolphins (0-3): 1.000 T-2. Buccaneers (0-3): .778 T-2. Chargers (0-3): .778 T-2. Rams (1-2): .778 T-2. Saints (1-2): .778

As for the team that's played the easiest schedule so far, that honor belongs to the Raiders, who have a strength-of-schedule rating of just .111. Their three opponents so far have a combined record of 1-8, and they've taken advantage of that by going 3-0. Although they've had the easiest strength of schedule so far, that number will shoot up this week after they face the undefeated Chiefs.

On the Dolphins' end, their schedule will finally ease up in Week 5 and that's mostly because they'll finally get to face a team that's NOT undefeated in the Cincinnati Bengals . The Bengals are facing the Jaguars on Sunday. If they win, they'll head to Miami with a 3-1 record; if they lose, they'll drop to 2-2.

Due to their schedule, this could be an ugly year for the Dolphins. Not only are they 0-3, but they have also just lost their best offensive player for the season,  De'Von Achane (ACL). We actually went through and tried to predict whether an 0-17 record might be possible for the Dolphins and you can check out our full prediction here .

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_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/miami-dolphins-schedule-2026-nfl-history/)._