I don’t pay much attention to them but gee, the best team (the Eagles) is only 3-5-1. It’s not looking too good.
And the the Eagles next five games are:
Cleveland
Seattle
Green Bay
New Orleans
Arizona
It’s definitely conceivable that they lose all of those.
As a Cowboys fan, I want to see a 6-10 or 5-11 division champion.
The good ol days of the NFC Least.
Should have a rule that if you don’t get to at least the .500 mark as a division “champion”, you get replaced by an extra wild card team from another division (>.500).
Ironically, every division champion is guaranteed a home playoff game! A 6-win NFC East champion could host a 10-win wildcard winner!
In 2010, the Seahawks won the NFC West with a 7-9 record. They then hosted the 11-5 Saints in the wild-card round. Of course, Seattle beat the Saints 41-36.
The Giants and the Bucs were both 10-6 that season but didn’t make the playoffs. However, a 10-6 Packers team won the Super Bowl.
Any of these layered playoff systems in any sport have plenty of opportunity for silliness like that.
What’s novel is paying attention to them in 2020. And to a certain degree the shortened seasons reduce the “long run” so the results are statistically noisier than is typical for the given sport. Baseball going from 162 games to just 60 really shows the effect of random noise = “luck”.
In what way. The team that ended last season with the best world series odds won the championship and were the favorite at every stage of the playoffs except for one or maybe 2 games. Not that I disagree that the playoffs in baseball are random I just don’t think 2020 was a great example
Division is now Eagles 3-6-1 and everyone else 3-7.
But the Eagles aren’t likely to hold the lead for long. They face a brutal upcoming 4-game slate: Seahawks, Packers, Saints and Cards. They may very well lose all four.
I’m OK with keeping the division champion in the playoffs no matter what their record, but the home team should be determined by record.