Little Eli Manning, fresh off a Superbowl victory against the Patriots, has been promised a seat at the adult table this upcoming Thanksgiving in what promises to be the most heartwarming, gratifying, and uplifting story of 2008.
It’s been a few months since we updated our rankings as we allowed the NFL Draft and some last-minute free agent moves to settle into each of the league’s cities. As workouts continue and the summer heats up, these rankings will likely shuffle often.
Last season was “The Year of the Upset” in college football. Oklahoma, Florida, Ohio State, Georgia, and USC will be in the hunt to play in Dolphin Stadium on January 8th, 2009.
While everyone focuses on the marquee players that will be drafted on day one this Saturday, the key to building a winning team is by acquiring 5-7 impact makers. It was Marques Colston last year, who will it be this year?
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By Matthew Gordon
Whenever realignment occurs in any pro sport, some fans are bound to get upset about the playoff implications. Some are quick and do so right away; others do so when the playoff seeding disaster actually becomes a reality; and others do both.
Consider me part of the final group.
When the NFL expanded to four divisions per conference, there was a significant problem. The league had always granted the top however many seeds to the division winners, a concept that seemed fair. Only a few years ago, there would be three division winners and three wildcard entries, and so the first round of the playoffs would look like this:
This system worked extremely well. It gave a tangible reward to the best two teams in the conference; it ensured that a division winner would see a home playoff game; and unless one entire division was pathetic beyond belief, it ensured that no road team would have a better record than the home team in any game. With wildcards sorted by record, the fifth seed would automatically have a worse record than the fourth seed, and the odds were vastly in favor of the sixth seed having a worse record than the third seed.
The new system is far less effective. With four divisions all of the home playoff games, wildcard or later, are reserved for division winners. That leaves us with the following:
What this does is ensure that no matter how good a wildcard team is, that team will never see a playoff home game unless the unthinkable happens and the two wildcards meet in the conference final. The NFL has a long and storied tradition of two great teams being in the same division; it isn’t uncommon for two division rivals to both reach the 12-win mark or close to it.
This obviously doesn’t create a problem that often, though – or does it? Since the realignment, we’ve seen an AFC wildcard with a superior record go into the house of a division winner with a worse record almost every year. It’s had results too; any wildcard team facing such an affliction has either lost in the division winner’s stadium or has been subjected to a much tougher first-round game that a team of its record arguably should face, then being exhausted while having to play a team that received a first-round bye. Here’s a look at all such cases since realignment occurred in 2002…
2002: Indianapolis Colts (10-6) @ New York Jets (9-7)
2003: Tennessee Titans (12-4) @ Baltimore Ravens (10-6)
2005: Jacksonville Jaguars (12-4) @ New England Patriots (10-6)
While the Patriots were favored against the Jaguars in 2005, none of these results are indicative of the type of football those teams were playing that season. In the case of the Titans, the only one of those three wildcard teams to come away with a victory, they lost the following week in New England, 17-14. One can’t help but wonder if the Titans could have squeaked it out against the 14-2 Patriots were it not for their grueling battle on the road only a week earlier despite being a gaudy 12-4.
Now consider this season’s Jacksonville Jaguars. At 10-4, good for the third-best record in the AFC, they’re looking dominant. Their defense is playing aggressively, and quarterback David Garrard has stepped up his game. Star running back Fred Taylor is having one of his best seasons. Possibly more indicatively of the team’s prowess, they’re 10-2 against teams not named the Colts, who present matchup problems.
In statistical terms, the Jaguars have scored the seventh most points in the NFL (23.9 points per game) and allowed the seventh least (17.9) giving them a win differential of almost a touchdown per game. Garrard has been the smart, collected quarterback of a coach’s dream by putting up an impressive 101.6 quarterback rating while only throwing two interceptions to his sixteen touchdown passes. Maurice Jones-Drew has returned thirty-one kicks for an average of 26.2 yards per game, giving the team great field position. Taylor has over a thousand yards with two games to go. Winners of five or their last six, this Jaguars' team is looking like a legitimate Superbowl contender.
This Jaguars' team, on the brink of winning its eleventh game of the season against a struggling Raiders' team, will most likely never play a home playoff game.
The Jaguars’ victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers (10-5) puts them ahead in the standings possibly for good; something that will be realized if the Jaguars do indeed win this weekend. The San Diego Chargers, impressive as they’ve been of late, are still only 9-5, and the Jaguars have beaten them this season, as well. The Jaguars have a better record than each of the Steelers and Chargers, both of whom are division leaders, yet will be opening the playoffs in one of their stadiums. (Or in Cleveland but that’s a longshot. Even so, the Jaguars have a better record than the Browns, too.) Regardless, what could very well be a 12-4 season won’t be much consolation to a team that won’t be able to see its home turf.
If history says much, these Jaguars are doomed. If they win their first-round game, they’ll head to either New England (14-0 and angling to become the league’s first-ever 16-0 team) or Indianapolis (12-2, with two of those wins coming against the Jaguars). The Jaguars will have to go on the road just to see if they can acquire the right to play one of those two. At that point, of course, they’ll be so tired that they might just curl up on the field for a catnap and lose in a blowout.
Every team in the NFL is tough, and that’s magnified when it comes to the playoffs. Home-field advantage is utterly crucial; in the five seasons since realignment, the home team has won 64% of playoff games. In the 2005 playoffs when six of the ten playoff games were geographical upsets (no more than four were in any other season since realignment), two of those wins came from the 11-5 Carolina Panthers against teams with the same record they had. It’s certainly possible to win a few on the road, but time has shown that it is quite difficult, and only one team (the 2006 Pittsburgh Steelers) has won a Superbowl that way. The other wildcard to win the Superbowl, the 2000 Baltimore Ravens, finished 12-4, like the Jaguars hope to do but had the advantage of a first-round game at home.
(The argument against the Jaguars is that if they had beaten the Colts at least once and preferably twice, they’d be in position to win the division and secure a first-round bye. In that event, the Colts would face this problem instead. It would be nice for the Jaguars but an equally frustrating situation for the league as a whole.)
There are really only two solutions to this constantly recurring issue. One would be to turn back the clock, contract a couple teams and once again have three divisions in each conference. However, that is completely unreasonable to ask since it would raise the question of which teams should suddenly fold as well as where certain transplanted teams like the Seattle Seahawks should go.
The best possible course of action would probably be to do what the NBA has done. Guarantee a division winner a top-four seed but not the advantage of playing at home. In that event, the Jaguars would be able to get their home game without the league having to alter its seeding. The Steelers and Chargers play in far weaker divisions that the Jaguars do; if they want that home game so badly, they can play for it. (Or maybe they could have beaten the Jaguars when they had the chance.)
Such a change can’t be implemented this season as it would be unfair to the division winner anticipating a home game, but it could easily come into effect next season. It wouldn’t compromise any part of the game, and it would reward teams that have the misfortune of a stellar season in a cutthroat division. All we can do now is hope that this Jaguars' team, one that is capable of doing some serious damage in the playoffs, doesn’t feel the pain of a road loss that came too early.
