Two things for this weekend. First, the spreads, since they weren’t out yet at the time of the OP:
Washington +2.5 at Tampa Bay, O/U 37
Jacksonville +7.5 at New England, O/U 37
Carolina +2.5 at New York Giants, O/U 43.5
Pittsburgh -2.5 at Cincinatti, O/U 46
Second, from the Boston Globe website (may require registration), the strength of schedule (opponent’s W/L pct) of all playoff teams is here. For the most part, what you’d expect: Pats/Denver/Pitt/NYG (in that order, descending) are in one tier, CIN/JAX/IND/CHI/CAR/TAM (again, in descending order) are a tier below with somewhat weaker schedules. What stands out are the two teams that are alone at the top and the bottom: the Redskins had the most difficult schedule, by a significant amount, among all of the playoff teams, while the Seahawks had the weakest schedule, also by a decent bit. Something to keep in mind if we see WAS at SEA on the second weekend.
No opinion on the Seahawks, but I take the Redskins hardest schedule with a grain of salt.
They played the Giants, whereas the Giants played them, so give the Redskins the slight edge in tougher schedule there. (Net 2 games tougher for the Redskins.)
In the North, the Giants faced the Vikings while the Redskins faced the Bears. But, the 'Skins faced the Bears in Week 1. How good were the Bears in week 1? As I recall, Grossman went down in preseason, so Orton was getting his very first start, and he’s a rookie. As it was opening day, I can’t imagine the Bears having any confidence in that game, so I think the strength of schedule differential between the Bears and Vikings might be a bit overblown. (Net 2 games tougher for the Redskins.)
In the South, the Redskins got an actual team in the Bucs, (which they lost, I might add), whereas the Giants got the pathetic and sad Saints. (Net 8 games tougher for the Redskins.)
Basically, their schedule ended up being significantly tougher than the Giants because of one game: playing the Bucs instead of playing the Saints. (A notable difference to be sure, but still only one game out of sixteen.)
I would point to the games against the AFC West. The Giants went 3-1 against that good division. How’d the Redskins do? Oh yeah, they posted a donut. (0-4)
Oh the abuse my beloved Seahawks are enduring on this board!!!
My biggest fear on the NFC side as a Seahawks fan is the Redskins. I don’t think we’ll have too much trouble with NY or the Bears… but the Redskins will give us a run for it. I just hope we win at least one game in in the playoffs to get rid of that “longest-playoff-win-drought-in-the-NFL” title we have going. We did have a pretty easy schedule this year, and some of the those wins probably should have been loses if not for blind luck… but I think they have hit their stride at the moment and are playing really good football.
And just from a football lover’s perspective how awesome would a Seahawks vs. Colts Super Bowl be? Both teams are extremely well balanced, as of this point are almost completely healthy, and seem to be running on all cylinders (if the Colts have truely worked through the Dungy problem). Could prove to be a very good game.
Lets see:
Oct 2 @Was LOST 17-20
Oct 23 Dal Won 13-10
Nov 27 NYG Won 24-21
Dec 5 @Phi 42-0
So the lost to SKins and barely beat both Giants and the Boys at home.
Seahawks are by no means a favorite, it is up for grabs.
I think and hope the Giants would take them in a rematch.
I think the Bears could take them and the Skins could.
“The Pats should be thankful that they played in such a poor division this year and a weak schedule” From the OP
Very unbiased Pats fan, but this is only partially true. Weak division but the toughest strength of schedule of any team in the playoffs. Still believe they are the team to beat & have been playing very well of late after a rocky start.
Not totally true. As you can see in Kiros’s link here you see that Washington had the toughest statistically.
Personally, I think it’s a bit unrealistic to just look at the percentages when discussing this. Ellis Dee made a similar argument regarding the Giants & Redskins a couple posts up.
I may have overstated things by calling the Pats’ schedule weak, but I do think it was a help. Notice their toughest games were early in the season before the worst of the injuries took place. When they were the most depleted, in weeks 8-16, they played 5 games against awful teams. And it’s not like Miami is a powerhouse either, which accounted for 2 more games in that stretch. They got a good roll of the dice there considering their playing a first place schedule.
I wouldn’t say the Giants are superior. And it took a missed field goal by the Seahawks for the Redskins to beat them in Washington. They were that close to going 4-and-0 against the NFC East.
Oh, the straight statistics misses a number of things. Which divisions you were matched up with in your interdivisional games is crucial, as is who you end up getting at home vs. away. Even Ellis’s divisional rankings are a little deceptive because of this. Teams like Buffalo, Philly, Cleveland, and even the Jets look like pushovers when you look at the schedules; all of these teams, though, won half of their games at home, and generally played anyone who came into their place tough (42-0 blowouts at Philly and 35-7 blowouts at Buffalo notwithstanding) - ask the Chiefs how much they could have used a win at Buffalo for the final standings, and the Jets and Browns both pulled off some home wins over playoff teams. On the other side of it, the basement teams in the AFC South and NFC West (which were, incidentally, matched up with each other) pretty much laid down when any quality competition came to play. Not all crappy divisional doormats are created equal. On top of that, there are variations within the year: playing Buffalo at any point hurts your strength of schedule, but depending on if you saw the Holcomb Bills or the Losman Bills, that game may have had a much different level of difficulty. The Ravens played a bunch of playoff teams extremely tough, and were actually 4-4 after Boller came back from injury; whether you played the Philly team with McNabb and Owens or the one with McMahon and god-knows-who looks the same in the final numbers. Divisional games against 4-12 teams are usually harder than interdivisional ones, though not always. Week 17 throws a lot of stuff off, since a bunch of teams aren’t really trying. Judging schedules is very much a week by week thing.
On the other hand, that chart is a nice little summary, and the general trends it reveals are at least somewhat helpful. It would probably be more the SDMB Way if we looked at things more specifically - if I have the time, I will do a game-by-game writeup of the Pats schedule this year later tonight.
Quite the superior team you got there, what with a kicker who can’t make a field goal given three tries. Not to mention two very controversial touchdown calls, one of which came on third down (Backup free safety Marquand Manuel ringing Jeremey Shockey’s bell, causing him to cough up what should have been ruled an incomplete pass.) I feel like the only way you can say your team was superior after a loss is if the referee’s calls went unfairly in the favor of the other team, which they most assuredly did not. I admit that I’m biased, but I was at that game. The Giants did not look good, with a lot of incomplete passes and a LOT of penalties (11 false starts anyone?). Sure, our offense sputtered at a very inopportune moment, but it was our defense that stepped up and prevented those field goals from being chip shots.
Let’s not forget that two touchdowns given to the Giants in that game were later said by NFL officials to have been bad callls by the refs. So take away 14 points from the Giants and where does that leave them? No where near even getting into an overtime kicking battle.
I’ll pick the obvious teams for the straight -up wins this weekend: Washington, NY GIANTS, Pittsburgh, and NEW ENGLAND.
That’s not quite right. The Patriots were most depleted, especially defensively, in Games 4-6, where they played three very tough teams, San Diego, ATLANTA, and DENVER. They were missing Harrison, Bruschi, and Seymour (one of the best defensive players in the league). In Game 8, versus Indianapolis, they still hadn’t straightened out their defensive backfield, Bruschi was only playing his second game since un-retirement, Seymour was still injured, and the Patriots were down to their 4th string running back (Dillon, Faulk, and Pass were injured).
The Patrioys defense has been meshing very well the past half dozen games, they just haven’t had many tough teams to test it against.
It’s easy to look back now and say “They had to play the Chargers!” But that was when San Diego was probably the sketchiest, most inconsistent team in the league.
The Chargers first 5 games were against Dallas, DENVER, NY Giants, NEW ENGLAND, and Pittsburgh. I would expect any team to look sketchy against those opponents. San Diego probably had the toughest schedule in the NFL.
San Diego, along with Carolina, was pretty much the most inconsistent team in the league the entire year, and they both played extremely strong games against the Patriots. See my earlier comment about having to look at schedules on a game by game basis. If you want to get really picky, something ridiculous like six teams had two weeks to prepare for the Patriots because of how bye weeks lined up.
Less than a day from now we’ll have some games to be talking about - and in two days, we’ll be started on the second week of this, which should be even better than the first
