2022 Dallas Cowboys: Ranking the 14 teams who the Cowboys will play against this season

Nothing about any NFL roster is set at the moment. Next month will bring the 2022 NFL Draft and throughout that weekend every team will improve in the exact way that they are all yearning to. At least that is the objective.

But teams and rosters are certainly very different today than they were before the new league year began. Some groups appear to have improved while others are still looking for opportunities (like the draft) to fill a certain hole.

We discussed this entire idea on the latest episode of The Ocho on the Blogging The Boys podcast network. Make sure to subscribe to our network so you don’t miss any of our shows! Apple devices can subscribe here and Spotify users can subscribe here.

We will re-visit this exercise again after the draft, but before then we need to assess the teams who the Dallas Cowboys will be facing off against in 2022. They will obviously play 17 games and will do so against 14 teams, but which of them is the best right now? The worst?

Ranking the 14 teams who the Dallas Cowboys will play against next season

This coming season the Cowboys will obviously play against their NFC East rivals twice apiece, but they will also square off against the NFC North and AFC South.

As reigning division champions the Cowboys will face off against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the world champion Los Angeles Rams, and thanks to the added 17th game that began last season Dallas will also play the Cincinnati Bengals.

There are six playoff teams in that mix which means that seven Cowboys games will come against opponents who were in the postseason last year (thanks to the Philadelphia Eagles making it). That doesn’t necessarily mean that those will be the seven toughest games of the year for the Cowboys, but they are surely going to be more difficult than others.

Which opponents will actually be the most difficult, though? Again going off of how the teams have changed to this point we decided to rank this coming season’s Cowboys opponents from best to worst.

1. Green Bay Packers
2. Los Angeles Rams
3. Cincinnati Bengals
4. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
5. Tennessee Titans
6. Philadelphia Eagles (two games)
7. Minnesota Vikings
8. Indianapolis Colts
9. New York Giants (two games)
10. Chicago Bears
11. Washington Commanders (two games)
12. Jacksonville Jaguars
13. Detroit Lions
14. Houston Texans

There is an admitted ‘they always have our number’ fear to the Green Bay Packers game, and the Mike McCarthy factor is going to be a fascinating one there. While the Packers have lost Davante Adams this offseason and are certainly weaker in that sense, they have a quarterback in Aaron Rodgers who not only historically owns the Cowboys but historically turns grudges into elite performances and did not exactly have an amicable divorce with McCarthy.

After that it is difficult to not place the reigning Super Bowl Champions considering the Rams are atop the NFL’s mountain. L.A. did lose Von Miller and it remains to be seen whether or not Odell Beckham Jr. will return, but at the end of the day Matthew Stafford and Cooper Kupp form one of the most lethal connections throughout the entire league and Dallas will have to stop them.

We might be ranking a little high on the Tennessee Titans given that their formula for success over the last few seasons seems to be drying up a bit. At some point Derrick Henry can no longer completely carry them, right?

In terms of who we are the lowest on the Minnesota Vikings could take a leap under new head coach Kevin O’Connell, and as unfortunate as it is to say the New York Giants finally have a head coach and offensive coordinator that aren’t going to completely sink their operation.

The draft will certainly change this list, but all told it doesn’t appear too intimidating. But we will see.