Rams over 9ers
The Giants and Eagles seem to meet each othert in the playoffs a lot. Come to think of it, the Giants seem to meet all the NFC East teams in the playoffs a lot. What’s up with that?
I just remembered one of the longtime classic rivalries the OP forgot: Giants-49ers. Cooled in recent years, but it was a doozy from the early 80s to the early 2000s.
Redskins are winning!!! Yippee.
I think we need a poll on which is THE NFL’s biggest rivalry.
Vikings over Packers. Bears over Packers. Al Qaeda over the Packers.
Since when are Browns/Bengals a major rivalry? Back when I was growing up in Cleveland, the Big Game was always against Pittsburgh. The Bengals were just another team, and if the game was at all bigger than others, it was just because it’s a little easier for the away fans to travel to the game.
None of the choices in this poll were all that difficult. I grew up in Cleveland, my family’s from western PA, and I went to college in Philadelphia, so those are always my top three sports teams. After them, I like the Packers, because of the whole community-owned thing, and the bottom of my list is always Atlanta (no matter what the sport) and the Broncos (because there were just too many years they stopped the Browns from making it to the Superb Owl). For the rest, I mostly go geographically: If neither of the teams is on the top or bottom of my list, then I root for the Midwest or New England above other teams, and everyone above Texas.
Because the NFC East has just been really good for a long time, so is frequently sending two or more teams to the playoffs? For example:
For those unfamiliar with the stat, a division w/ an average DVOA over +10% is quite strong (or has one exceptionally good team without any really bad ones to cancel it out, but that tends not to be the case with the NFC-E). For context, last year’s average DVOAs by division were: +13.6% (NFC-E), 10.7%, 6.4%, 3.9%, 2.9%, -5.8%, -9.1%, and -16.0% (NFC-W).
Or, more directly on point, since realignment in 2002, on average a division should expect to have 1.5 playoff teams per year (or 12 total from '02-'09). The NFC East has sent: 2, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2 – 17 in total. I’m not going to bother checking, but I’d be very surprised if that wasn’t the highest number for that time span.
Right, but whenever there are two NFC East teams in the same round of the playoffs, it seems like they always play each other. It’s just random chance, but for example, in the last five years there have been two NFC East teams in the same round of the playoffs six times (05 WC, 06 WC, 07 WC, 07 DV, 08 DV, 09 WC) and only twice have they played someone other than each other.
In fairness, one of those times there were actually three NFC East teams in that round so two of them had to play each other, and that’s probably what makes it seem skewed. Remove that and there are five cases, three where they played each other and two where they didn’t, which is about as evenly distributed as it gets. It’s more of a perception thing.
EDIT: The NFC East is the highest, but the AFC South is right there and will almost certainly end up tieing or taking the lead this year. It may just be a bad memory, but I don’t think of the AFC South playing each other in the playoffs. It’s more Colts-Patriots and Titans-Chargers/Steelers.
There are a lot of NFC teams that fit that bill. The 80’s had like 4 NFC teams that met in the playoffs every season. The 49ers, Bears, Giants and Redskins pretty much took turns beating on each other for the entire decade. In the 90s the 49ers, Cowboys and Packers had a nice little round robin thing going.
In the '00s it sorta shifted to the AFC where the Pats, Chargers, Broncos and Steelers took turns meeting in the playoffs every season but those weren’t nearly as contentious and the Pats and Steelers pretty much dominated it without ever going head to head like those old NFC dominated days.
In recent decades the Browns and Bengals were rarely good at the same time and both always circled the Steelers on the calendar because of the big brother little brother syndrome, kinda like everyone in the Big Ten felt like Michigan was their biggest rival for the entire 80s and 90s even if it was really just a communal hatred for the team that always won the league. However going back to the 80s in the Bernie/Boomer days the battle of Ohio was a more true rivalry and looking back to the Paul Brown era they are natural rivals. The recent dominance of the Steelers and the betrayal of Modell have sorta made them more hated but it’s certainly not much of a rivalry.
In recent decades, you could make the same statement about the Browns and any other team in the NFL. For the Browns and someone else to be good at the same time requires that the Browns be good.
Yeah, good call. Cowboys-Packers in particular was a good one.
I’m not so sure about Bears-Giants. My impression is that every time they met in the playoffs, one or the other (it kept switching) got their shit pushed in. Gotta have competitive games to make a good rivalry.
What **Oldeb **said.
Yeah, I thought they played more than they did. I see 2 meetings in the playoffs in the Ditka era and they traded blowouts. They played the Redskins and 49ers more often though and there were a ton of big time regular season games between all 4 teams.
As a Packer fan, I see the team as having three rivals:
- Bears
- Vikings
- Cowboys
While the Cowboys aren’t divisional rivals, they seem to frequently be a playoff rival (at least, during those eras when the Packers are good). When the Packers were on the rise in the early 1990s, it seemed like, every season, we had to play in Dallas twice – once during the regular season, and once during the playoffs. And, we always lost (this was when the Cowboys were winning Super Bowls). It seemed like the schedule-maker had it in for the Packers, as the Cowboys never had to head up to Wisconsin.
Most Packer fans I know really despise the Cowboys – I’m not sure if it’s due to the “America’s Team” thing, or if it’s just that everybody hates the Cowboys. 
When I was growing up, the Bears were the Packers’ biggest rival (and it’s obviously the oldest rivalry in the league). But, it seems like, in recent years, while Packer fans certainly will never like the Bears, a lot of the venom now gets directed towards the Vikings. Favre heading over there certainly didn’t help matters.
And, despite the fact that we’ve played the Lions twice a year for the past 40 years, at least, it’s not really a rivalry. Most Packer fans can’t be arsed to care.
The Packers and Bears have had a nasty habit of never being good at the same time. They basically take turns dominating the division for 5-10 years at a time and when the bottom falls out for the other team it tends to really fall out. I’m curious how often the Pack and Bears have finished 1-2 in the standings in our lifetimes.
Very true…during the core of the Ditka era, the Packers were wallowing through the Forrest Gregg era, and I was actually embarrassed to be a Packer fan (because Gregg, seeking “tough” players, brought in a bunch of thugs and morons). And, through the past 20 years, the Packers have been good for most of the time, while the Bears have usually been average-to-poor.
OTOH, during the 1970s, both teams sucked.