Quote:
Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501
More than anything, the biggest problem is that there are too many teams out there who are flat out terrible. Jacksonville, Atlanta, Oakland, Jets, Tennessee. Flat out terrible.
One division where it's most obvious is the NFC East. Dallas and Philly are both above .500. Would you believe those teams are a combined 10-2 against sub-.500 teams? So we know the problem there.
The AFC North is the heart of the next problem. I would argue you have 4 average teams fighting against each other. None of them are good. With the AFC West's schedule, would bet every one of those teams is a sub .500 team. But on paper, it looks like they're racking up quality wins because they're basically beating each other up. Why does that matter? Here's a fun fact. Would you believe there are only 4 AFC North games left? So basically, the AFC North are just playing each other and when they're not playing each other, they have a pattycake schedule where they're all playing 4 or 5 games against teams you would consider to be the 5 worst in the league.
Basically, we're going to see a situation where the AFC North and NFC East are probably going to have playoff representation for really, really bad reasons. Because of their strength of schedule. In the AFC North's case, the strength of schedule on paper is going to look a hell of a lot better than it actually is.
|
If those teams were really flat out terrible, the Jets wouldn't have beaten the Steelers and the Titans wouldn't have whipped the Chiefs. Hell, Atlanta should have beaten the Lions and they beat the Bucs by six touchdowns.
And if the AFC North were really a joke, Pittsburgh wouldn't have demolished Indianapolis.
People are expecting these results to be ordered into definable tiers. The truth is, there are a few bad teams and almost every other team is somewhere from mediocre to good, and even that spread is about as wide as a gnat's dick.
The Rams went on the road against San Fran, got 100 yards passing from their QB, and won. San Fran then went into a house of horrors in New Orleans and won.
Prognostication is totally meaningless this year. Most of these games are like baseball: 60-40 at best, probably 55-45 in most cases.