Monday, January 3, 2011

GO AHEAD, ISAAC, DEFEND THIS ONE:  Would anyone have a problem with the NFL deciding starting next season that playoff seeding be based on record, conference record and points, independently from whether a team had won its division?  Are there folks who want to go the step further to bar teams with losing (or even 8-8) records from the playoffs altogether if superior wild cards are available?  Or is there someone here who believes that having the 7-9 Seattle Seahawks hosting the 11-5 New Orleans Saints is perfectly justified as a reflection of the importance of divisional titles -- or, at least, not a significant enough anomaly to merit changing the rules?

added:  Also, give Lovie Smith credit for playing his Bears starters against Green Bay in a game that was meaningless to them yet all-important to Green Bay and New York.  Not all teams would have done that.  (On the other hand, why was Tom Brady still playing in the second half against Miami?)

27 comments:

  1. ChinMusic9:31 AM

    If you are going to create a rule that bars teams with losing records from the playoffs in favor of superior wild cards, you might as well get rid of the divisions entirely and just allow the teams with the best 6 records into the playoffs each year.  But, seeding based on record is not a bad idea.  I'd prefer they consolidate the conferences and have two 8-team divisions in each conference. The winner of each division gets a bye, the next best four teams get wild card berths, seeded by record.  I think that would eliminate the chance of a losing record team making the playoffs and almost certainly would eliminate the chance that a team with a losing record would host a team with a better record.  It would still be a little unfair in a scenario where the two best teams are from the same division, but overall it leads to a more sensible playoff.  The only trouble would be with scheduling.  If you play the other seven teams in your division twice, that only leaves two non-division games on the schedule.  Maybe the monotony of playing the same seven teams over and over would be bad for football.  Or it could be great for creating rivalries.  Who knows?

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  2. Monotony would be bad, as well as its generally working against the desire to create national superstars if you're basically never playing half the league.  I would not be a fan of that -- I think the current divisional structure works fine; there's just an imbalance of talent right now.

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  3. Joseph J. Finn10:22 AM

    I'm going to have to go with , much as I don't like a 7-9 team in the playoffs, that this is probably just an anomaly that doesn't require playoff jiggering.  Now if it were to become a two-year, three-year trend than it would need serious discussion.  But for now, I'm happy to toss it off as a one-time thing that won't be repeated for quite awhile and leave it at that.

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  4. girard3110:25 AM

    Whoa! Is it really unfair? Given the West was weak, but New Orleans went 2-2 against that division. It's the first time a team won a division with a losing record in, what, 40 some odd years, if ever? It's an anomoly, just deal with it, and leave it alone.

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  5. isaac_spaceman11:06 AM

    As long as you have divisions, you have to do it this way.  Otherwise, you end up unduly rewarding teams just because they play in divisions with terrible teams.  There have been long stretches when Cleveland and Cincinnati were  simultaneously horrible and basically guaranteed four wins to Baltimore and Pittsburgh.  Would you re-seed if a wild card was a game better than a division winner, but had played two games against an 0-16 Detroit team? 

    Here's a different way to think about it.  Maybe some teams that won their divisions didn't deserve a home game.  Boo hoo.  If you didn't win your division, you also didn't deserve a home game.  So you have no right to complain about somebody else's windfall.  Now quit crying. 

    It's not like Seattle is going to beat New Orleans anyway, even if Seattle is one of the few NFL teams that still has a real home field advantage.

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  6. J. Bowman11:38 AM

    I get the idea here; by giving a home game to a team with a lesser record, you're making the regular season less meaningful. I just can't get worried enough about it to think a major fix is necessary. To echo and summarize the arguments of others:
    1) a truly terrible division winner is rare (although a WC team having a better record than a division winner is less so).
    2) Teams in divisions with epically bad teams gain an extra advantage. Even this year, Atlanta got two games against Carolina. New England got two games against Buffalo.
    3) You're essentially taking the home game from one "undeserving" team and handing it to another "undeserving" team.

    I'm in favor of a re-seeding for the conference championship -- Seattle potentially getting two home games is mind-boggling -- but beyond that, I just don't see this as an issue.

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  7. I think the simplest solution is not to reseed, but just to award home field in each playoff game to the team with the better record.  The NBA used to do this back in the days when there were 2 divisions in each conference (not sure if they still do).  There were times when the 2-seed (by virtue of being a division winner) would have a lesser record than the 3-seed.  In such cases, the 3-seed would have home field in that matchup (although in the previous round, the 2 would still have played the 7 and the 3 would have played the 6).

    Apply this to today's NFL, and this weekend's matchups would all be the same, but the location of each would change.  Seattle would play in New Orleans, Philly in Green Bay (remember, the Pack beat the Iggles Week 1), KC in Baltimore and the Colts in Jersey.  It requires no change in the divisional or seeding structure, but it rewards the better record in each matchup.

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  8. I guess I don't see how New Orleans or Baltimore are "less deserving" of a home game because they're in the same division as Atlanta and Pittsburgh instead of weaker foes, esp. in 12-4 Baltimore's case since they happened to only go 4-2 instead of 5-1 in-conference, splitting with Pittsburgh but losing early-season to Cincinnati.  Meanwhile, Baltimore beat New Orleans and the Jets; Pittsburgh lost to both.

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  9. isaac_spaceman1:46 PM

    They're less deserving because they didn't win their division.  They're also less deserving because they didn't go 4-0 against Cleveland and Cincinnati. 

    Anyway, we were talking about New Orleans and Seattle.  Let's see what New Orleans did to get its 11 wins:  Beat Carolina (terrible team) twice; beat Minnesota (bad team); beat San Francisco (bad team); beat Seattle (mediocre team); beat Dallas (bad team); beat Cincinnati (bad team); beat St. Louis (mediocre team).  And a lot of those wins against bad teams were pretty close (Minnesota, SF, Carolina the first time, Dallas, Cincinnati).  On the plus side of the ledger, split with Tampa (good team); beat Pittsburgh (good team); split with Atlanta (good team).  So six wins against bad teams, two against mediocre teams (if you want to just call Seattle and St. Louis bad, that's fine with me), and three against good teams. 

    Now, granted, all but one of Seattle's wins were against bad teams.  All I'm saying is that you can't say that the world, or the NFL, owes New Orleans a home game for the way it played this year. 

    And as for re-seeding Baltimore, the Jets, Indy, and KC:  Baltimore went 12-4 in a division that included two bad teams (Cleveland and Cincinnati).  The Jets went 11-5 in a division with a bad Buffalo team that improved after it switched to a Harvard quarterback; KC went 10-6 in a division that had one (Denver) bad team, and my own opinion was that Denver was better than Cleveland, Cincinnati, or Buffalo right up until the videotaping scandal broke.  There were no bad teams in Indy's division -- Houston and Tennessee both had bad records, but I wouldn't call them bad teams.  That's a mess.  Are you really sure you're accomplishing anything resembling fairness or accuracy by reseeding those teams purely by record?

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  10. Scott2:08 PM

    In many college conferences, each team does not play every other team every year, so there could be some flexibility in creating non-divisional schedules.

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  11. Let's do your exercise again:

    Ravens wins: 1 great (PIT), 3 good (NYJ, TB, NO), 4 decent (CLE in Sept, DEN, MIA, HOU), 4 bad teams (BUF, CAR, CLE lateseason, CIN).  Three losses to great teams -- @ NE, @ATL, v PIT.

    Jets wins: 2 great (NE, @PIT), 0 good, 4 decent (MIN, DEN, DET, HOU), five bad teams (MIA, BUF x2, CLE, CIN).  Four losses to great or good teams: BAL, NE, GB, @CHI.

    Chiefs wins:  0 great, 0 good teams, 7 decent (SD, CLE in Sept, JAC, SEA in SEA, DEN, STL, TEN) 3 bad (SF, BUF, ARI).  One lost to a great team (@Ind), plus Oakx2, Den, Hou, SD.

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  12. Adam C.2:33 PM

    Agree with Isaac.  That's just the National Football League for you.  Sometimes you have the bad luck to run into a poor team that manages to play a flawless game in week 11; sometimes you get to play the Steelers when they have to run out a makeshift offensive line or Polamalu is resting an injury.  There's just no easy way of accurately measuring whether a 11-5 team is "better" than a 9-7 team -- at least not in any way that would make sense for playoff re-seedings.  In hockey or basketball, you have a lot more games in the regular season, which means more games vs. common opponents -- intraconference re-seeding based on record would make more sense in that setting than it would in the NFL.

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  13. Let me turn the question around: what's a better metric of a team's merit: all 16 of its games weighted evenly, or a system which relies heavily on each team's performance in a six game, four team round-robin?

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  14. Benner2:41 PM

    In the words of Felecia Snoop Pearson, "Deserve ain't got nothing to do with it."

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  15. Adam C.2:48 PM

    How do you credit losses to an arguably inferior division rival, though?  Is it a "bad" loss no matter what?  Or is there some aspect of familiarity with your schemes, "rivalry," etc., that playing one another 2x per season creates, which therefore makes those games more competitive regardless?  

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  16. Adam C.2:57 PM

    See my point above -- it could just as easily be the latter (but it may vary from season to season).  Either way, the 16-game NFL season is going to be a quirky thing as currently structured, particularly when the extra-divisional matchups are on a rotating schedule designed years in advance.  I may have lucked out to play the NFC West this year, but another team may be dreading it two years hence.

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  17. Matt B3:01 PM

    What would the argument be against simply putting the beat 6 teams from each conference into the postseason?

    Does anyone really care if certain regions don't have any representation in the playoffs?

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  18. I like the idea that we have divisions, and that being the best of your four-team set (and playing each other 2x annually) guarantees you a playoff spot.    I like the idea that these rivalries matter and help determine playoff spots -- the second PHI-NYG game doesn't mean nearly as much if both teams are slotted for the playoffs regardless of who loses.

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  19. J. Bowman3:50 PM

    I think, if you change the location of every first-round game, that you are completely changing the seeding. And once you decide you're doing that, then you're back to the argument above: why have divisions at all?

    Incidentally, it is fairly common for at least one division winner to host a team with a better (or at least not-worse) record in the first round; it looks like it's happened all but one year since the NFL went to four divisions. This is, however, the first time that all four games are hosted by the team with the worse record. That, and not the fact that one team happens to be 7-9, is your argument for reworking the seeding system.

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  20. isaac_spaceman3:53 PM

    Adam -- the point is that neither is a very good metric.  I don't even know what we're supposed to be measuring.  What if instead of rewarding division winners with home games, the league just randomized home/away?  Why would there be anything wrong with that?  I don't think division winner/wild card is a better predictor of true talent than record -- I just don't think about that question at all.  I think it is no worse a way of assigning home field advantage. 

    Anyway, if it's a problem at all, it is a problem that cures itself.  If the team with the better record wins on the road, nobody was hurt.  If it loses, that just goes to show that the records exaggerated the talent difference. 

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  21. It's not self-curing because in certain cases (and Seattle historically is one of them) HFA can elevate a team against an otherwise-superior opponent.  So we want to give that advantage to the team that has otherwise earned it over the course of the season, and what we're measuring is merit.

    Apropos of what OtherAdam said, it could be argued that winning that divisional round-robin is a better metric than overall record because it's hard to beat a familiar team repeatedly.  But I think that's wrong.

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  22. isaac_spaceman4:05 PM

    The argument against pure record is that by creating divisional races with a real payoff, you maximize the number of TV markets in which you can sustain interest throughout the season.  I'm sure the NFL would not have wanted this to be a year where by the eighth game of the year, the only city west of the Mississippi River that cared about the standings was Kansas City.  That's exactly what would have happened this year with a six-best-records rule.  

    So the divisional setup gave the NFL playoff races in St. Louis, Houston (for a while, anyway), San Diego, Oakland (which, importantly, also means LA), San Francisco, and Seattle.     

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  23. Adam C.4:37 PM

    My more limited point was, well, can you necessarily call a divisional win against an opponent with a really inferior record a win over a "bad" team, when you factor in all that the divisional rivalry brings to the table -- the familiarity and the degree to which the teams despise one another (which might not be in balance:  what's the mutual-hatred-optimal matchup among NFC East teams?  Or the AFC North?  Depends on whose fans you ask.) -- might arguably raise the level of any "bad" team to at least competitive, and quite possibly ferociously so.  

    I think my ultimate point is more in line with what Isaac said @15:53 -- the variability from year to year (your own team's strength, inter-/extra-divisional strength, overall strength of schedule due to the rotation system for non-divisional games) just makes it impossible to evaluate either metric.  Some years, your divisional strength (and your ability to conquer it) will be a better measure of the merit of your team; other years, you may be the only good team in the division and it's your non-divisional record against tougher foes that proves your mettle.  In most cases, you can't really know until the season plays out.

    More importantly, it's 41 days until pitchers and catchers report. Just sayin'....

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  24. As a lifelong New York Football Giants fan, I am not upset that the 7-9 Seahwaks make it in while the 10-6 Giants don't.  The way the G-men played that last quarter against Philly, they so do not deserve a playoff spot.

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  25. isaac_spaceman6:13 PM

    "like" re pitchers and catchers, though I approach this season with extremely low expectations. 

    As to the main point, I don't think the better team (however it's decided) has a <span>right</span> to home field advantage.  Why would you give them that right?  We don't do it for the Superbowl, or for college football or basketball postseason games, or for the college world series.  We try to equalize home field as much as possible for postseason baseball and pro basketball -- the higher seeded team gets only one more game, not all of the games, in its home stadium.  If stadium revenue weren't a factor for the team owners themselves, my guess is that the NFL would sell playoff games to vacation-destination cities like the Superbowl or like bowl games. 

    The NFL gives division winners home field advantage in part because it makes everybody play harder for longer, and in part because somebody has to have home field advantage.  But the former point doesn't really matter for wild card teams, and the latter is just a way of saying "there should be some rules," which, in fact, there are. 

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  26. The Pathetic Earthling6:51 PM

    I hate tweaking the rules in the wake of a single bad result.  The NBA did this with their draft lottery after Orlando won it one year (having the most or second most balls in the hopper), and then won the lottery again the next year after being the best team to still be involved in the lottery and having only a ~1.5% chance.  These things happen and there's no fundamental injustice to it.

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