The 2 still alive are certainly the hottest.

Take at look at the early part of the Giants' schedule;

Washington
@STL
Cincy
Bye Week
Seattle
@Cleveland

Talk about 5 cream puffs to start your season off. I firmly believe the Giants are nowhere near as good as thier record indicated- with or without Plaxico

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It's understandable. They lost so much on defense over the off season, I was shocked when they started the year so well. I had them in third behind the Eaglos and Cowboys.

Coughlin deserved much more recognition for coach of the year this year. He lost 20-30 sacks and still had a tough D that pressured the QB.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

The only disagreement I have with the Cardinals being in that 'upper echelon' is that they came out of the west with two bad teams in the Seahawks and Rams and ended the season miserably. Over the last two weeks, they have looked great though.

The Cardinals are in no way, shape or form one of the top two teams in the NFC. Period. End of story. They just aren't. And if they beat the Eagles, it'll be a joke and an embarassment.

Why even bother with a regular season then? Why not just play a big 32 team tournament, and whatever team wins 5 games in a row wins the championship? We can even do that four times each year, and it'll be the same number of weeks as the current NFL schedule plus playoffs. Why not? Apparantly the best teams always win in the playoffs and it doesn't matter how it's set up, so why bother with a regular season? We can have four playoffs a year!

But I guess this isn't the shitty Arizona team that got absolutely hammered a month ago by Minnesota and New England, but this is the new and improved Arizona team, one of the best teams in the NFL. Never mind that thouse blowouts just happened, and that Arizona didn't look that good against Seattle in the final week. Never mind that the bulk of their wins came in the least division in the NFL. Nope, if they win a game or two, they deserve to be there, regular season be damned. I don't know why we even have the charade of a regular season then.

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Fire Phil Emery

Yes, because the Cubs have a long history of outstanding regular season play.

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Fire Phil Emery

Or here, think of it this way. Lets say that the Cardinals had a 40% of beating the Falcons and a 25% chance of beating the Panthers. In other words, if they played 100 times, the Cardinals would win 40 of the matchups against the Falcoons and 25 of the matchups against the Panthers. If that were true, that would mean that the Cardinals would advance to the NFC championship one out of every ten times, despite not being the better team. Can this not happen? We're the chances that the Cardinals beat the Falcons and the Panthers 100% all along? Are these games predetermined? By sheer luck of the draw, we expect the Cardinals to luck into the NFL championship game one time out of ten.

I'm not saying you make it a tournament of two (even I've said I'd add a +1 to the BCS system). But stop making it a tournament of 12 when there are only 32 teams. And stop pretending that the team with the 11th or 12th best record in the playoffs might actually be the best team in the NFL because they strung together two good games after a quarter season of horrendous ones.

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Fire Phil Emery

That's what I love about it. 12 out of 32 is the perfect number.

That's the key to being a champion. Play the best when you need to play the best. When it's win or go home. That's how you should determine a champion. The teams with the best records have the advantage in the playoffs. They get a bye and/or home field advantage.

Otherwise, just pick the team/teams with the best record after 16 games and call them champs. It sounds like you want it that way, Irish Boy.

Play the best when you need to play the best? So I guess Philadelphia didn't need to play their best when they lost to Washington Week 16. They didn't need to, after all, so what does it matter? Pittsburgh lost to Tennessee in the game that decided home field advantage for the playoffs, but I guess they didn't need it.

It's all bullshit we tell ourselves to pretend that what is, must be. It's fundamentalism for the sports fan.

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Fire Phil Emery

No. Clearly the Eagles didn't need to play their best in week 16 cuz they weren't eliminated with that loss. Bears needed to play their best in week 17 and didn't. So they were eliminated.

What difference does it make? The Eagles probably thought they were eliminated by that loss. After all, they needed Tampa Bay to lose to Oakland at home as well.

So let's go to an alternate universe where everything happens exactly the same except that Tampa Bay beats Oakland. Philadelphia is the same exact team in every way. But they don't even make the playoffs. Are they still one of the best teams? If not, why not- they'd be the exact same team in every way. Do we need to expand the number of teams even further to make sure teams like Philadelphia have a shot as well? What about New England? After all, they wen't 11-5 and absolutely destroyed Arizona, the other "best" team in the NFC. Maybe Dallas could have gone on a run too. Maybe Houston was getting hot at just the right time.

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Fire Phil Emery

Damn Cards were playing better Cover-2 than the Beloved do! 4 playoffs a year? Won't help the Bears none..

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

I hear what you're saying, Irish Boy. It makes sense.

Here is one for you. What about teams that had injuries early in the season, hung on, got people healthy, squeezed into the playoffs and went on a run? That can happen. That has happened.

We can play this game all day. I like the way the NFL does it. Like I said, they give advantages to the teams with the better records. Bye and home field. Giants, Panthers and Titans didn't take advantage of their advantage. It's on them.

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Let's go to that alternate universe where Tampa beats Oakland and Philly misses the playoffs. There's two strains of argument you can follow from your perspective, and neither one makes sense within the current system.

Philadelphia isn't one of the two best teams in the NFC because they didn't make the playoffs: This is predicated upon that fact that Tampa Bay made the playoffs. But so what? How does Tampa winning a game have any bearing on how good of a team Philadelphia is. It has none whatsoever. Is Philadelphia a worse team because those two teams faced each other? No, the Eagles have to be just as good as they were anyway. That argument wouldn't make any sense.

Philadelphia is one of the two best teams, but they didn't make the playoffs: Still doesn't fly. If they were one of the two best teams, why didn't they win "when they had to" against Washington? Good teams always rise to the top when they have to, so why didn't they then? After all, if they win that game, they make the playoffs. Do we have to expand the playoffs further so that teams like Philadelphia get in as well, just in case we leave the "best" team out. Maybe 14 teams should make the playoffs. Maybe 16. Maybe more. Where do we stop it?

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Fire Phil Emery

I stand corrected. A division winner gets home field over a wild card with a better record. I wouldn't mind if the NFL changed that rule and gave home field to the wild card in those cases.

If it's a tie it should go to the division winner.

If Romo doesn't miss 4 games the Bears and the Eagles would have been eliminated before week 17.

Irish Boy, why don't we stop playing sports since there is no fair way to do it?

IB just give the cards the credit they deserve already. who gives a shit how bad they were? they're playing the best football right now and that's all that matters. they won their division and they have every right to be where they are.

if they didn't deserve it they would have lost to atlanta, or the panthers. they beat both of those teams, who cares if those two teams were "better"? they weren't on that day, and that's what the playoffs are about. it's not arizona's fault the panthers decided to mail in a game and lose it. they just took advantage of it. guess what? that's what good teams do.

the eagles and cardinals *won* their way to the NFC championship.

it's been a dramatic post season, one of the more compelling ones i've ever seen. i *hated* the dynasty eras. what the hell was the point of watching the cowboys or niners run all over everybody if you weren't a fan of either team?

Injuries happen and fundamentally change the team. That's why you can't just have a tournament of two, because if one of those two teams loses a key player, they won't really be the "same" team anymore. But that's a fairly rare occurance; it only really happened to one of the playoff teams this year (the Giants).

Also, keep in mind that in your scenario, the question of who is the best team is entirely time dependant. It's not "who is the best team in general" it is "who is the best team in January", which may be an altogether different question because of injuries. How do you get around that? I don't know that you can, but it's important you see the limitations of the inquiry.

I don't want a 16 week season followed by the Super Bowl. I think- I'm not sure- but I think I want to do away with automatic division entries, and just admit the four best records from each conference into the playoffs. One bye week for each team, then three weeks ending with the Super Bowl. The teams this year would have been:

NFC: Giants, Panthers, Falcons, Vikings
AFC: Titans, Steelers, Colts, Ravens (based on beating the Dolphins)

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Fire Phil Emery

Regular season records be dammed. The teams that are "better" still get to play at least one more football game. Case closed.

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Then why have a regular season at all?

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Fire Phil Emery

You know the old sayings: "That's why they play the games" or "Games aren't determined on paper"

After the season Irish Boy doesn't want games to be played. He wants it determined on paper.

Why have a playoff at all? Play 17 weeks, crown 'em, and move on to pitchers and catchers reporting.

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This is what I don't understand; what I'm saying is that we should put more stock in the larger sample size. We should place more importance in the large reular season, rather than the small number of playoff games. It's important that we use the large mass of regular season games to separate the wheat from the chaff, rather than just admit the chaff into it and hope for the best.

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Fire Phil Emery

duh...

go ahead and live in your crazy alternate dimensions, IB...

Because it gets you 12 out of 32. 20 teams don't make it. The regular season does matter. Don't you get that?

Legitimacy: Because without a final game or set of games, there'll be absolutely no consensus or focal point around who did the best. When you confine the playoff teams to only the best teams, the playoffs become more important.

Excitement: Because it's fun watching good teams play football.

These playoffs lack both of these two components.

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Fire Phil Emery

No it doesn't, because the "better team wins". So why not just skip the season, have a big tournament, and watch the "better team win". Then we'll know who the best team is, everything will be "on the field", not "on paper".

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Fire Phil Emery

I think you totally dismiss my point about teams with better records having an advantage in the NFL playoffs. Home field means a lot. Teams lost this year despite having it. It's the way it goes. It's sports.

Thank you, Beardown! I don't know why this is such a hard concept for IB to understand.

Good teams? I've seen "good teams" play games that were a hellava lot more fucking boring than the games the past 2 weekends.

In fact, lets not even have a regular season. Lets just plug in all the players, stats, and figures into a computer and let it determine who the best team is. Now thats entertainment!

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