Dec 20, 2010 |
YES, I SAID IT FIRST.
Weekly Article and Sports Magazine
www.yesisaiditfirst.com
Monday, December 20, 2010
Volume 9; Article Number 23
Issue #230
THE SEATTLE PLAGUE
By Patrick Morand, Senior Editor, “YES, I SAID IT FIRST”
It might not be fair to a judge a man or a team until you have walked in their shoes. How about a whole division of football teams.
Yet every year at this time as the football playoffs draw near someone brings up how unfair the divisions are, and that some team with a really good record will not make the playoffs.
They also vent that sometimes teams that do make the playoffs with nice records but do not win their own divisions (wild card teams) unfairly have to travel on the road to play teams with worse won-lost records because they were fortunate to win weaker divisions.
This argument has been emphasized greater here in 2010 than in any year because in the small division universe of the NFL, where no two divisions play exactly the same slate of opponents the NFC West might have a division winner that loses more games than it wins. It would be the first time in nine seasons under the current division playoff alignment that could be the case.
Both St. Louis and Seattle are 6-8 with two weeks left, and they play each other on the final Sunday of the season, while San Francisco is still in it and trails at 5-9.
ATLANTA PRESIDENT PREFERS RESEEDING
Some will not be happy about this; one of these teams will host a first round playoff game because they will be division champs.
I am fine with it, but others like Atlanta Falcons President Rich McKay who also is the co-chair of the NFL Competition Committee thinks that it is wrong that any division winner would host a playoff game if their first round opponent, a wild card team that finished second in a tougher division has a better season record.
McKay suggests the league should reseed their twelve playoff teams so that the team with the better record always has the home field.
If anyone can speak to the argument of McKay from the position of a victim it would be me, an admitted Jacksonville Jaguar follower who twice in the last five seasons watched my team with a better record than a division winner still have to go on the road to play the wild card game.
Yeah, that’s right remember us, in 2005 with a 12-4 record and second in our division having to travel up to frozen Boston to play the Patriots who won their division with a meagre 10-6 record.
Or, how about in 2007 when our 11-5 record rounded off with a week 15 snow win in Pittsburgh was not enough to avoid a first round playoff trip back to Pittsburgh again three weeks later to eke out another victory over the 10-6 AFC North champion.
Yet, in those seasons regardless of how well we played there was always one team better than us in our division, and they deserved all the luxury of home field that any division champion should collect.
You see I know as a fan, and coaches and players know that the real race that a team prepares for all season and all through offseason is to win the division.
Records of 12 or 11 wins usually earn playoff berths, but there is no guaranteed playoff berth without a division title.
PUNISHMENT FOR NOT WINNING DIVISION
They call them “wild card playoff spots” for a reason. They are very wild and they often do not seem fair. To put it in laymen’s terms they are truly just “bonus” playoff spots.
The fact is that from year to year we are never quite sure what the magic number of wins to get in to the playoffs might be. A win in week 3 tends to pan out just as valuable as one in week 14, but by week 14 we may know just how hard a team needs to press to get in.
Jon Gruden, a former NFL coach and outspoken on this same issue recently suggested that because the NFC West is going to have a weak division winner (on paper) with a record somewhere close to 7-9 that the commissioner of football should step in and change the playoff seeding. He thinks they should have to start the playoffs as a road team or be banished from the playoffs, effectively to punish them for being so bad.
Actually, Gruden, there is already a punishment in place and it is where it should be.
Football punishes teams that do not win their divisions.
Division winners start the playoffs at home, and second place wild card finishers start on the road. I am OK with that because we all know who are our main opponents entering the season, and know that the most guaranteed route to winning the division is by beating teams in the division.
The NFC West teams all play the same schedule of opponents with a minor variance.
They all play each other twice for six division games – about 40% of the schedule. They control more the fate of each other than they control if any the ultimate balance of wins that teams like New York or Chicago get.
In 2010 they all play the four AFC West teams, and the four NFC South teams.
Each NFC West team also play two more games against conference opponents that placed in the same divisional position the prior season. For example Arizona had a first place schedule and has to face Dallas and Minnesota with their extra games; despite that draw of two teams that did not live up to preseason expectations it has not helped Arizona.
St. Louis meanwhile had a fourth place schedule and won an extra game against Washington but lost to Detroit.
Throughout the NFL it is important to note that this changes every year. The whole system is designed to balance the outcomes. Division champions tend to start with a tougher schedule the next year while last place teams play more opponents who finished last.
WORST TO FIRST HAPPENS MORE OFTEN
In the NFL it is not uncommon for teams to go from bottom to top or from on top to last place in short order.
One team did recently stumble to a 9-7 division championship and made it all the way to the Superbowl where they lost – the 2008 Arizona Cardinals.
Another team recently got hot at the end of the season, won out the playoffs from the lowest wild card seed and won the Superbowl – the 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers.
There is no magic elixir, but in a one game elimination things turn quickly. The playoffs are unforgiving for higher seeds no matter how low rated the team is they play.
So it probably doesn’t matter as much as what we make it out to be. By the playoffs the real bottom teams are gone. Only teams that can compete well are left.
If the NFC West champions from this year run the table and upset the wild card opponent and then beat the top seed on their way to win the Superbowl just maybe this issue gets finally put to rest.
Yes a 7-9 record is not that stellar, but regardless football seasons have injuries, tough stretches with back to back road weeks and tough opponents and it’s different for everyone.
The best team rarely looks like the best team every week from one thru seventeen. In as much on some days the mediocre teams look super.
The thing is with 50% of a team’s games against its own division plus teams comparable in the standings how do we know a division full of 7-9 teams is not actually that balanced. Perhaps they have a tougher road to win it than the team that feasts on three other mild opponents all season and runs up a “dominant” record.
Or as the Oakland Raiders are finding out this year as they look to be about to sweep all six division games, that alone does not even guarantee winning a division. Apparently the Raiders struggle immeasurably away from the AFC West. They could be the first team since the early 1970s to win all their division games and not make the playoffs.
Does that mean the Raiders were opportunistic against weak division opponents?
Or that they were not road tested for the travel to play tough “in-your-face” AFC South opponents, and the umm, NFC West?
Oh well the NFC West had to beat someone (Oakland) for their wins after beating up each other.
Go figure Oakland beats San Diego twice, but loses to San Francisco who gets shellacked by San Diego – sounds like parity to me.
You see sometimes that is the problem. Beating up on each other can balance things out sometimes so that no one team looks particularly flashy.
TOLERANCE TO UGLY WINNING
The world wants to ban any NFC West team from the playoffs because it suits their purposes to do so. The argument is that all those teams are losers and would be surely one and done in the playoffs.
Yet by changing the rules to take away a playoff home game from an NFC West champion because they finish 8-8 or worse it also makes precedent to take away the home playoff game the next time the four NFC East teams all finish 9-7 while actually beating each other’s brains out.
If this were the Pittsburgh Steelers leading a division at 9-7 and all their bruising cousins like Baltimore and Cleveland were just a game behind nobody would suggest the Steelers give up their home playoff game to a wild card team from Jacksonville.
Since it’s the west coast, the brand of football is more open, not as defensive and it has become a turtle race to crown 7-9 champions, in the east it is judged as not acceptable. But I think there would be more tolerance if the New York Giants or Chicago Bears were winning ugly.
The viewpoint is hilarious because on their worst days, the Giants and the Bears have looked awful too.
In my mind a champion is a champion because he met what was dished at him and came out ahead.
While I doubt that St. Louis asked to add New England to their schedule they weren’t offered either.
For all the arguments that one can fault a tight close race in a division for being created by general weakness we can fairly suggest with evidence that two teams running away with good records in the same division is a benefit of weak division competition at the bottom.
WILD CARDS TRUMPED UP
I looked at three seasons other than this one to draw some conclusions about the wild card spots because the wild card can be trumped up sometimes because their competition is just not as good as some of these tight races without win totals.
In 2008 when Arizona finished 9-7 and won the west two other 9-7 teams (Dallas and Tampa Bay) did not get in the playoffs. New Orleans also missed at 8-8.
What is interesting in that year is that the NFC South was perhaps the best division in football. Carolina (12-4) and Atlanta (11-5) easily qualified for the playoffs.
The reason New Orleans, and Tampa Bay missed the playoffs in 2008 was not the fault of Arizona doing just enough to win their western division, instead it was because New Orleans and Tampa Bay lost the most important games all season. The ones that could have brought Carolina and Atlanta back to them. The head to head ones they played twice.
Imagine if Carolina had lost only two more?
One of them might have qualified.
Over in the AFC it was the season that New England missed the playoffs with an 11-5 record while San Diego hosted a playoff game with an 8-8 record and beat Indianapolis (12-4) the problem was that two divisions were very competitive and two were not.
Why did New England not get in?
The AFC had six teams with 11+ wins. Two of them earned them at the expense of really weak sisters in their own division.
Pittsburgh (12-4) and Baltimore (11-5) cleaned up in the AFC North with two games each against Cincinnati (4-11-1) and Cleveland (4-12). However that was also the year that the AFC South also played the AFC North division teams and Tennessee (13-3) and Indianapolis (12-4) took advantage of the Browns and the Bengals on their own dockets.
The worst team in New England’s division was 7-9.
The pretenders that season were Indianapolis and Baltimore, the two wild cards.
They fully took advantage of weak opponents and ran up their records to edge out New England. The Patriots 7-5 conference record was torn up by divisional scars. The other wild card teams had no such attrition and dominated conference play.
Knowing that, and understanding that San Diego battled with another 8-8 team (Denver) to barely finish the AFC West do you really feel as sorry that (a) Indianapolis was forced to go all the way west to play the Chargers, or (b) that Baltimore had to start the playoffs in Miami?
I don’t.
If Tennessee won the division with Kerry Collins as quarterback (of all people when their first string starter went down early with an injury) and 13 wins doesn’t that make Indianapolis’ 12 wins a little vanilla for a wild card.
BEST PREPARED BY COMPETITION
One season earlier the Patriots went 16-0 and won their division.
The other three teams in the AFC East combined for 12 total wins.
San Diego went 11-5 in the west and the other three teams in their division won a combined 15 games.
So the Patriots and Chargers won as many games as six teams combined that season.
In the NFC Green Bay won 13 games and won their division by five games over second place Minnesota.
Tampa Bay won 9 games to capture the NFC South and the eventual Superbowl champion New York Giants got the Wild Card with 10 wins. In a division where the worst team Philadelphia won 8.
It appears that the four way race for the Giants of heated division competition prepared them best for the playoffs as they won four road games including winning over an unbeaten team in the Superbowl.
Which team won the weaker division?
Oh and the last time it all lined up tickety-boo with division champs all seeded by record with the lesser teams all in wild cards there was really no excitement to finish the season except for in one division – the NFC West.
Back in 2004, the AFC had the most dominant slate of division winners ever. Pittsburgh was 15-1, New England 14-2, and both San Diego and Indianapolis finished 12-4. The two wild cards were 10-6 teams (Jets and Broncos)
Philadelphia won the NFC that year and on the way routed their division going 13-3 while all three other teams in the NFC East went 6-10.
No race there.
Green Bay was 10-6, Atlanta 11-5, and Seattle 9-7.
Three teams tied at 8-8 that season – Minnesota, New Orleans and St. Louis. Everything was in perfect order, but New Orleans was left out.
There was no interest in who would win the divisions that year and only the wild card was of any excitement on the final week.
In that year it just worked out, but I shudder to think what teams might do if they had to try and get in that order.
THREE ENIGMAS OF FOUR TEAM DIVISIONS
Look at this from year to year and see that there could be three enigmas of imbalance at play and one is usually in play.
Is it one dominant team with an inflated record playing in weak division?
Is it three or four equally strong teams diminishing the records of all four, and in turn diminishing the possibility that any will get that bonus playoff spot?
Or could it be what we see this year, an average division producing an average division winner.
There is no way we can tell in the NFL from before the season which division might be that mediocre set.
It still is unfair to assume that every strong record is a product of something greater than different opponents on the schedule and lucky breaks.
Different divisions produce different styles, and cater to different types of players.
If we get away from the current format like we have where division winners qualify and get home field for one game regardless of their record then what is the purpose of having divisions in the first place?
I enjoy the division rivalries, and find that the best rivalries like Patriots/Jets, Steelers/Ravens, Rams/Seahawks, Giants/Eagles, Falcons/Saints and Bears/Packers produce mostly split results. The team that is fortunate enough to sweep the two game series wins something.
So do we really want to diminish from that by taking away the prize at the end, or reduce its value because the competition was “more entertaining”?
Do you want to see more 22-20 or watch more 45-3?
Wouldn’t teams just begin to rest players after hitting 11 wins if trying to win the division made no greater difference?
When Pittsburgh and Baltimore fought to finish the AFC North the year that Cleveland and Cincinnati couldn’t even roll out of bed it was a good thing.
Both could have just accepted that they would seed above San Diego or Miami and be satisfied, but the division meant something, and some will argue that it helped build intensity enough to vault the Steelers to a World Championship.
NEW ORLEANS NO EXCUSES
It is probably the same this year for New Orleans.
So many naysayers like Gruden can’t stomach that the New Orleans Saints will probably have to go on the road and face a team four wins lower than them in the first round of the playoffs.
However the Saints have accepted the challenge, and as their fullback Heath Evans recently said if they finish as a wild card and have to fly to Seattle they can think on the plane ride how they should have beat Atlanta head to head and put the Falcons on that jet...or just not lost to Cleveland – every team has a goat in its past.
They knew that their division would be tough, but what if Tampa Bay wouldn’t have had a renaissance in the division?
Most of us expected Atlanta and New Orleans to make the playoffs because Tampa and Carolina were supposed to be abysmal.
Well surprise! Tampa was much better than expected and since they played so well against suspect NFC West teams this year (4 games) handing losses to all those teams made that division look even worse.
One could expect that Tampa will fall back to earth in 2011 with fewer NFC West teams on the radar?
The team most affected will be the Saints though, and they are not complaining. Their whole season goal has been to once again win the Superbowl, but this year they have likely failed in their bid to be playing any playoff games at home.
They think that because their division is better than most that the fire has been kept on and they will be better prepared to defend their title in the playoffs. It may bring the best out of them.
Not unlike the Giants in 2007 – the only competitive division with the best teams and the toughest road to win, and they won.
Divisions serve a purpose. The league has decided on four team divisions and that is a very small sampling of teams really engaged in any one bracket out of 32 teams.
There will be days like these – with St. Louis or Seattle punching unlikely tickets to the playoffs.
Live with it.
It is just as likely to produce great four team races every few years as it is to produce this year’s snafu. Don’t make any crazy rules to circumvent it.
This is the ninth year of the current format.
With eight division champions determined each year only on three occasions has an 8-8 or lower team qualified to win a division so this incidence is just a hiccup and not a plague.
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