:-j Ha! I rest my case. Do you suppose the NFL will institute a coach’s challenge for penalty review in the off season? I have certainly heard that discussed this week.
How did I miss this greased football fiasco? I now see why xiggi and I disagree on Romo. I am willing to accept that he just choked. lolz 
ETA: I am truly surprised by the number of people who seem to sincerely believe Jerry bought the refs. If he was going to do that, he should have started 10 years ago! What a cheapskate.
You might come around by looking at the 2014 season of all QBs this year. No QB is ever perfect but I doubt that you will find one that performed better than Romo this year, and especially given the baggage he carries. The problem is that we will never know as we cannot move QBs around and will never know if Wilson or Rodgers or Manning would have done better. This said, the conversation might be different if we include Andrew Luck, but I am showing my huge bias when it comes to the Stanford QB I have known since his HS days. By the way, do you remember CC used to have a member whose kid(s) played HS Football in Houston during the Luck years and went on to UT BHP?
Anyhow, I am happy to have been a staunch supporter of Romo through the fat and the skinny times. I do not think the Cowboys need a SB win to vindicate Romo’s career anymore that Dirk N needed to beat Wade and his bunch. But that’s me!
There are a lot of Cowboy fans in NJ. They really bought into the “America’s team” branding that the Cowboys did years ago.
As for electoral votes, I think they have zero impact on Christie’s trips to Texas - unless you seriously think Texas’ vote might go to a Democrat? The Browns have a higher chance of winning the Super Bowl this year than the Dems have of winning Texas’ electoral votes in 2016!
Now, if you want to talk Jerry Jones and political donation$ to Christie’s presidential campaign, you’re getting warmer.
Can we start a pool on how many minutes into the game we are before Cam Newton sits on the bench with that towel draped over his head?
Well, it looks like the other shoe has dropped . . .
http://www.ibtimes.com/chris-christie-pushed-port-authority-give-contract-jerry-jones-firm-1774154
note: I didn’t vet the source and can’t vouch for it, I just saw it and thought it was kind of funny
I saw a report that the league may consider a change to the wild card rules, so that the team with the better record gets home field, even if their opponent won their division. That would have prevented the 11-5 Cardinals from having to visit the 7-8-1 Panthers.
I would change it so that a team has to have more wins than losses in order to make the playoffs. If no team from a division meets this meager goal, the highest-ranked wild card team gets the spot, and another wildcard team is chosen.
If there aren’t 6 teams in each conference with winning records, then teams with .500 records can be added, and then teams with losing records can be added. Or you just have fewer teams in the playoffs, but that balloon won’t float.
I don’t mind division winners always getting a home game under these conditions.
The problem with tinkering like that with the assigned crossover non-division games the division that faces the year’s patsy division will have better records. At least this way there is only one skewed team. The Panthers did lose to the lowly Vikings but they had a gauntlet where they lost to Green Bay, Seattle, Philly, Baltimore, etc. They also finished strong. Do you take wins away from the Patriots for having a few gimmes on their schedule?
Three teams from the AFC North made the playoff this year. Guess which NFC division they played? So this problem already exists.
There is no way to avoid this no matter what system you use, unless every team plays every other team.
In 2008 the Patriots went 11-5 and missed the playoffs while the 8-8 Chargers won their division. It happens. But I feel like a division winner should have to earn it with a winning record. It’s relatively rare that a division winner doesn’t have a winning record - only 4 in times in the 13 years since the NFL went to the 4-division setup.
Exactly - AFC South is crappy and some other division benefits. How would you engineer a perfectly fair system though? Do you take away wins from another team. How about the divisions with one good team and a bunch of crappy teams? How hard is it really for the Patriots to win their division every year?
Before you know it you’ve turned it into the BCS
I don’t think the league would say that the Panthers shouldn’t have made the playoffs, just that they shouldn’t have had home field against AZ.
Except Arizona had the chance to earn home field and didn’t. They were, what, 3 games up with 3 to go or something crazy like that?
They lost to Seattle twice, SF who was on the skids and Atlanta who was beat by Carolina for the league title down the stretch. Carolina dug deep (against some marginal competition) and won out their last 4 games. It isn’t unfair - it is what it is.
“It is what it is” - thank you saintfanichick.
“How hard is it really for the Patriots to win their division every year?” Every division is going to have a range of quality from good to bad, on average. If you are the best team in your division and can’t beat any other teams (even the bad ones) outside your division, I don’t necessarily think you should be entitled to a playoff spot. Earn it - beat some quality teams. And it’s not usually a problem - 4/52 division winners is less than 10%.
The Patriots have won 3 super bowls, been to 2 more, and lost in the conference championship 3 times, in the last 15 years. This doesn’t happen because they play in a crappy division.
They are already disadvantaged by having to play the other first place teams every fricken’ year, and never getting to draft higher than the mid- to low 20’s. (Of course they have an advantage in having a qb who will take less than full market because he wants to win so bad, and has a wife that makes more than any player in any sport ever so he doesn’t care about money.)
The only way to make it truly fair would be to have no inter-conference play, and a 15 game season where every team plays every other team in their conference exactly once. And then just take the top 6 from each conference.
Exactly! So again, while it may seem unfair to some people that in this one instance a team that won their division yet doesn’t have a winning record got to host a playoff game, the outcome will never be exactly fair and perfect all the time so tinkering to “solve” a temporary problem like Carolina is unwarranted and would just throw off the system in some new way. Also, it is totally unfair that Gisella makes the money in the family and until Tannehill gets an equally hot wife . . . wait . . . he does? . . . oh, never mind B-)
To me it’s not a matter of “fair”, it’s a matter of rewarding mediocrity. If you aren’t good enough to win more than half your games, you don’t deserve to be in the playoffs, regardless of whether the vaguarities of an unbalanced schedule means that you had a little tougher row to hoe. Regardless of the sport.
Tannehill’s wife is smokin’, he definitely outkicked his coverage there. Too bad for him she doesn’t make $50mil a year.
LOL on “outkicked his coverage” :))
I had to look her up. Too skinny for me, but, yeah, he married up in the looks department. Not that he’s a troll or anything.