For the games on the NFL schedule that are determined by the previous season's standings, how is home and away determined?
It's pretty well documented how the NFL schedule is made but I haven't been able to find out how home and away are determined for the three games per team that are based off of the previous year's division standings.
I tried to figure this out myself for a few minutes but couldn't figure out a pattern. Let's use the Cardinals as an example...because nobody ever talks about the poor baseball team except to occasionally take a dig at their insane ineptitude over the decades (centuries!).
Six of the Cardinals' games in 2026 are obviously against the Seahawks, Rams, and 49ers. Four more are against the NFC East (@ NYG, @ DAL, vs WAS, vs PHI), where home and away are the opposite of what they were three seasons prior (when the NFC East was last chosen to face the NFC West) in 2023. Similar story for the AFC West (in 2026, the Cards play @ LAC, vs DEN, @ KC, vs LV), except the cycle is four years long instead of three so they played vs LAC, @ DEN, vs KC, @ LV in 2022.
Now their final three games in 2026 are against the fourth placed team in the NFC North, the fourth placed team in the NFC South, and the fourth placed team in the AFC East (so vs DET, @ NO, and vs NYJ). But how are home and away determined? I theorized that maybe it would always be the opposite of the last time they happened to play one of these extra three games against the same opponent, but the last time the Cardinals played the Lions in years where the NFC West was not scheduled to play the NFC North was in 2020 in Glendale...which is the same location as the 2026 matchup, so this theory was clearly false. Then I thought maybe it's just the 4th place matchup itself that switches which division hosts every year, so I checked to see what the 4th place matchup between the NFC North and NFC West was in 2025...it was 49ers vs Bears in Santa Clara...so the NFC West hosted this matchup too, which debunks this theory.
So the question remains, how are the hosts determined for the three games on a team's schedule that are based on last year's standings? Is it just random? I doubt this, since the NFL schedule is determined well in advance and is all rotation based and formulaic. Do the people (or rather, people and computers) making the NFL schedule themselves decide who hosts these games (why would they have teams constantly face off in the same location as the previous time then)? Or (most likely) is there an obvious pattern in the hosts of these games that I didn't notice during my 10ish minutes of looking at schedules?