I consider those two cases basically equivalent, maybe with a small preference for the team with the bye, since they played well over the entire season. From my perspective the Tebow Broncos and Peyton’s first Broncos team did about equally well - they both lost in the quarter-final game.
Eli would go to 14-8, if I’m counting correctly.
The main thing this tries to capture is that making the playoffs and losing is better than not making them at all. Just like losing the Super Bowl four times is better than never playing in one.
In other NFL injury news, Jadaveon Clowney’s knee woes have progressed to where he just had microfracture surgery. As a rookie. The linked article title is a little optimistic; the Texans will be counting their blessings if all he misses is the beginning of next season.
Microfracture…sigh. Well, I’m beginning to see how the Bengals felt after Ki-Jana Carter.
So whoever won the NFC South this year then gets curbstomped at home would have the same record as a Dallas that loses a close game on the road in the WC round?
Sure. They both made the playoffs and lost in the first round. But this isn’t specific to what I’m describing - they’re both 1-1 under my count, and they’re both 0-1 under the usual count.
I see where you’re going with it, but it kind of misses the point about playoffs vs regular season. Discussing playoff performance is about the playoffs, not the regular season, so counting regular season performance (ie: making the playoffs) as equal to success in the playoffs seems a bit off the mark.
Imagine comparing a four year span where one gets to the playoffs once and wins the Superbowl, while the other makes it to the playoffs all four years but loses in horrible fashion (think Peyton’s Colts curb-stomping the Chiefs, or Peyton himself getting annihilated by the Jets) in their first game every year. The former is clearly and undeniably better, but your analysis puts them at 4-3 vs 4-4. That’s hardly representative, I think; a Superbowl win is worth much more than four wildcard losses, IMO.
To drive that point home, would you see much of a difference between a team that loses in the wildcard round every single year and a team that wins the Superbowl every 4 years? I would see a massive difference between them, but your rating puts them as roughly equivalent.
EDIT: For completeness, Eli ends up at 14-18 and Peyton ends up at 15-9 by your measure, both through their first 10 years.
Yes, if you’re wanting to specifically talk about playoffs vs. regular season, then just doing a playoffs record makes sense. There are some cases where this gives a false impression (IMO) though. You can have a good QB drag a poor team into the playoffs and lose, getting a playoff loss where an average QB would have just missed the playoffs altogether.
A similar thing used to come up with Federer and Nadal in tennis. Federer was great on grass courts; Nadal was great on clay. Nadal had a positive head-to-head score vs. Federer, but part of that was because Federer was good enough on clay to reach finals and lose to Nadal, but Nadal wasn’t good enough on grass to get to finals and lose to Federer. So Fed would have a better head-to-head record if he were worse on clay.
I agree about your 4-year example; maybe if we wanted to continue with this, we could award extra points for later playoff wins, so a SB win is worth 4 or something like that. However, take your SB team and have them lose the wild card in the other years, rather than missing the playoffs. Their record would be 4-3, which is worse than 4-0.
Federer was great on every surface except clay, where he was just very good. Nadal was great on clay. My position is that Federer is the GOAT despite having a losing record against Nadal. Until Federer, I would have argued for Sampras. The big difference between the two is that Sampras wasn’t particularly good on clay, having never made the finals at the French, and only ever advancing to the semis once. If he had, I’m sure some clay court player would have had his number much like Nadal did for Federer. Is there any top clay court player of his era who didn’t own Sampras on clay? In fairness, even if we remove clay matchups altogether, Nadal still has Federer beat 10-8, but hell, Lleyton Hewitt has am overall winning record against Sampras.
Well, first, I did the math wrong. It’s every 5 years, not 4, because a winning Superbowl year is worth 5-0, not 4-0: four points for winning the four games (including credit for a bye week), plus a fifth point for making the playoffs in the first place.
Which it is, when talking about playoff performance.
I’m not a fan of either of the teams I’m about to mention so I can’t say for sure, but I would think that longtime Bears fans have more to appreciate than longtime Eagles fans. This despite the fact that the Bears have been to the playoffs a mere 10 times since their Superbowl win in '85, compared to the Eagles making the playoffs 10 times since 2000. (Plus another six times between '86 and '99.) They both have one Superbowl loss in that time, but Bears fans can hang their hats on 1985. Superbowl wins mean a lot, and the appreciation for them lingers for decades. (I still get wistful for the 1990 season and Superbowl.) By contrast, consistent “one and done-ing” in the playoffs is in some ways worse than missing the playoffs entirely.
I guess what I’m saying is that playoff wins are big. Appearances, not so much. For example, I don’t think of the 2005 post-season with ANY kind of positive feeling, as the entire team stunk up the joint as the Panthers shut them out 23-0. I’d much rather not have made the playoffs that year at all.