A few years ago, the Seattle Seahawks won the NFC West with a 7-9 record, and went on to host and win the first round playoff game before elimination.
Now, the NFC South threatens to make that Seahawks team look like the '72 Dolphins, as the division is presently led by the Atlanta Falcons, who at 4-7 have not even beaten a single team outside its division.
This NFC South is 1-10-1 against the AFC North which is strong, but has no dominant team like the Broncos or Patriots. In fact, if you eliminate the games against the NFC South, the AFC North drops from 28-15-1 to a much more pedestrian 18-14-0.
The division leading Falcons' remaining non-divisional games has them facing the Steelers, Packers and Palmerless Cardinals. I cannot imagine them winning any of those games, though they might well beat Carolina and New Orleans, making them 6-10, and still winning all tie-breakers for the division title.
The 4-7 Saints play Pittsburgh and Chicago, where at least one upset is possible, and even in the unlikely event that they sweep the three remaining divisional games, can still do no better than 8-8, and are far more likely to wind up at 6-10, like the Falcons.
The remaining teams are heavy with divisional contests, so if they win, it will be at the expense of the division leaders.
So, we are looking at another 7-9 team or more likely, a 6-10 team win the division and hosting a playoff game.
This never happened in the days before "parity", and has nothing to do with wildcards, as they are division winners. I don't have an answer for it, since NFL contraction is unthinkable, and expanding the divisions doesn't work with the scheduling algorhithms, which are actually pretty good. In the older days, it was the 9-7 Rams who made it to the Super Bowl, and not the 10-3-1 Rams, the 12-2 or the 12-4 Rams of earlier seasons. So maybe that's the way it is supposed to be.
At one point, the 2007 New England Patriots were on track to be the most dominant team of all time. It turns out they weren't even the best team that year.
-11-28-2014, 08:33 AM
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