While the reduced schedule for the second season of the Overwatch League is supposed to make things easier on players, it will also have the side effect of making stage playoffs – or at least the teams that qualify for the playoffs – more unpredictable.

Last season, there were 12 teams, meaning each team had 11 potential opponents, facing 10 during each stage. That meant that teams had nearly the same schedule every stage, so the stratification of teams was more apparent. In other words, the top team with the best record (and differential) probably was the actual best team, the #2 team was second-best, and so on.

Season two is going to be very different. Each team has potentially 19 opponents and will only play seven of them per stage. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where two teams have four common opponents and then the first team plays Florida, Shanghai, and something akin to first-half San Francisco, while the second team plays New York, London, and the L.A. Valiant. Even if both those teams are equally talented, the first team would have a much better chance of coming out ahead. Even if I knew that the second team was objectively better, I might put my money on the first, with its easier schedule.

This will make SRS ratings all that more informative. As a reminder, SRS takes strength of schedule (SOS) into consideration, meaning that a team with an easier schedule, like the first team in the example above, might not seem as strong as one with a harder schedule, like the second team, even if it has a better record.

Last season, teams played a mostly equal schedule and so their SOSes didn’t vary too much. This season, that should be very different, not only on a per-stage basis, but also for the whole season. Given the size and structure of the league, I’d guess that each team will play two games against the other nine teams in its division and one against the 10 teams in the other division. That’s 18 games plus 10 games, for a total of 28.

Last season, teams played seven other teams four times each and four other teams three times each (7 * 4 + 4 * 3 = 40). Or, another way to look at it is that teams played all 11 other teams three times each and then had seven extra games. So 33/40 = 82.5% of the schedule was effectively the same for each team.

If the 28-game schedule plays out like I just described it, then teams will play one game against the other 19 teams and nine more against their division, so 19/28 = 67.9% of the schedule will be identical for each team. That’s a pretty notable difference.

I’m going to be reworking the standings page – a necessity, given that there are eight more teams – and I’m debating if I want to try to include some kind of “Stage SRS” to go with the season-based SRS. If I can do that without things being too cluttered, I’ll include it, but even if I can’t, I’ll probably track Stage SRS and at least make a quarterly blog post about it.

Another reason I’m hesitant to promote Stage SRS is the small sample size it will entail. Like nearly any statistic, SRS works better the more information it has, and having a sample size of just seven games might make the results seem a little too noisy. Then again, NFL SRSes usually start to get interesting around the mid-season mark – eight games or so – so maybe it’ll still provide some valuable insights. We’ll see how it goes.