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When does the 2018 NFL schedule come out?

By Brad Berreman

HOUSTON, TX - FEBRUARY 01: The NFL Shield on display during NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's press Conference on Feburary 01, 2017, at the George R Brown Convention Center in Houston, TX. (Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
HOUSTON, TX - FEBRUARY 01: The NFL Shield on display during NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's press Conference on Feburary 01, 2017, at the George R Brown Convention Center in Houston, TX. (Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) /
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We know who each team will play next season, but when will the 2018 NFL schedule be coming out?

Super Bowl LII will mark the end of the 2017 NFL season, and then focus will shift quickly to free agency and the draft with an eye on next season. So when will the 2018 NFL schedule be coming out?

Based on 2017 regular season results, all 32 NFL teams already know who they’ll play next year. Playing each division opponent twice is obvious, once at home and once on the road, along with the annual crossover of playing an entire division from the opposite conference. In 2018, those conference crossovers will be the AFC East and the NFC North, the AFC North and the NFC South, the AFC South and the NFC East and the AFC and NFC West.

The only question is when those games will occur, outside of a division opponent to be scheduled Week 17, and when a bye week will come for each team. The tentative schedule for London games lends some insight for when a team will have a bye, but some teams have taken the option to not have a week off after going overseas.

Generally speaking, the regular season schedule is released sometime just before the NFL Draft,  during a relative lull on the league calendar, with ESPN and NFL Network making a show out of it. Last year the schedule was released on April 20, a Thursday exactly a week before the first day of the draft.

Next: Top 25 NFL free agents for 2018

Day 1 of the 2018 NFL Draft is April 26. So that would put schedule release day on April 19, if the 2017 template is followed, and sometime that week seems like a virtual certainty. A formal announcement will come, but fans can bet on mid-to-late April to find out the when to go along with the who on their favorite team’s 2018 schedule.

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