Trent Green challenges your statement!
Shadarr
5142
Despite all of that, I have to say I disagree. The NFC West does suck, and has for a long time. Yes, two teams inexplicably made the Super Bowl, but neither of them were considered elite teams those years and the Cardinals especially were a cinderella team. Add to that the year the Seahawks won the division with a losing record and the years the division was won with fewer than 10 wins, not to mention how bad the bottom of the division generally is, and I think the conventional wisdom is well-earned.
Shadarr
5143
I think it’s also because the NFL media loves to talk about quarterbacks, and they really can’t fathom a team winning without a star quarterback. It’s like they look at the record and go “Alex Smith must really be playing well!” and then they look at his stats and game film and go “No, he’s just average. DOES NOT COMPUTE!”
The Niners are winning games by dominating on defense and playing mistake-free on offense. The media don’t trust that, they want to be able to say “Aaron Rodgers is better than Drew Brees, therefor the Packers are better.” Drew Brees is clearly better than Alex Smith. Hell, Eli Manning is clearly better than Smith, and yet the Niners won that game. The idiots in the media can’t process that, no matter how much they say it’s a team game they want it to be about two guys. That’s why the headline says “Tebow leads Broncos to win” even though the real story is that the DB who was getting picked on all night came up with a huge turnover.
The Cardinals were really in the Super Bowl? Yeah, I forgot all about that.
Which I think is another thing about the modern NFL: There’s enough parity-driven flukiness from year to year that just being good one year, and maybe advancing far in the playoffs even, doesn’t really seem to mean anything. Even winning one doesn’t prove a whole lot – I have to forcibly remind myself that the Giants actually won one.
If you want to be viewed as a good team, you need to really be good year after year. Win your division repeatedly, be a regular fixture in the playoffs, have a winning record on a consistent basis. If you’re terrible last year and great this year, I still think you’re a terrible team, just one that’s getting lucky, because that’s the typical case. But if you’re also great next year, and the year after, then I believe.
Seriously, does it really matter how much media attention one team gets and another team doesn’t get? There are no rankings that matter beyond last team standing at the end of the season. Teams get to settle things on the football field.
It does if you’re all excited about your team and want to hear about them, and all you get is the little “and also, the Titans still exist, and reportedly have a game today” on NFL Countdown, while they devote a 40-minute segment to interviewing Tim Tebow’s fifth grade best friend or whatever.
But that’s why they invented team-specific blogs. (I actually really like Kevin Seifert’s NFC North blog on espn.com.)
Sarkus
5147
I’m not going to defend the 7-9 thing last year, but that’s an obvious outlier in NFL history. And if you go back to when the current divisional alignment was created, its hard to say the NFC West sucks when you look at it year to year.
2002: 49ers were 10-6 and won a playoff game.
2003: Rams were 12-4, Seahawks 10-6
2004: Seahawks were 9-7, Rams 8-8 made the playoffs as well.
2005: Seahawks were 13-3 (best record in the NFC that year) and lost in the Superbowl
2006: Seahawks were 9-7 and won a playoff game.
2007: Seahawks were 10-6 and won a playoff game.
2008: Cardinals were 9-7 and lost in the Superbowl.
2009: Cardinals were 10-6 and won a playoff game.
2010: Seahawks won the division at 7-9 and won a playoff game.
If the NFC West is so crappy, why is it that every year but one their playoff teams have won at least one playoff game? The NFC South and NFC North can’t say that for the same period.
jeffd
5148
Uhh, the Hawks were absolutely an elite team the year they made the Super Bowl.
mdowdle
5149
I read DF as being happy that the Saints weren’t getting media attention – implying that media attention is a negative. I think Tom Brady said something along these lines as well a couple of weeks (months?) ago, when he said in an interview that he intentionally keeps his interviews boring so as to avoid attracting media attention.
Sarkus
5150
So are the Patriots great for winning their division 3 of the 4 last years and a lot of regular season games recently but not winning in the playoffs since 2007?
Ok, I get that, but there’s tons of local coverage about every fan’s team and usually each local paper has an active message board. The Rams are one of the worst teams in the NFL this year but there’s still daily coverage I can read.
Lighten up, Francis.
It wasn’t really a complaint, just an observation: the Saints are going largely unnoticed. Although I am a little surprised at the relative quiet on possible records falling.
Now you’re just being insulting. I’ve never been a Cowboys homer. The only thing worse would be to call me an OU fan.
In the odd event you’re talking about other sports in the NFL thread: In case you haven’t noticed, New Orleans doesn’t have a baseball team, and the Hornets lack any real connection to the city. I’m not a massive Rangers or Mavs fan, but they were local and it was nice to see them do well.
Shadarr
5153
Because A) home field matters and B) the relative suckiness of an entire division is not solely determined by the division winner. In that same period you also have the Rams and Niners getting #1 overall picks and a lot of top 10 picks. When you have multiple teams in the bottom third of the league, it’s not the mark of a strong division.
It wasn’t even that – I just notice that you don’t hear about 'em that much when you watch football chatter on the teevee. But you’re at least partially right, media attention can be a good thing or a bad thing. I doubt Lions fans were reveling in all the talk about Suh over the last week.
But don’t focus on single year records, focus on team performance over time. What you have in the NFC West is the last bit of the Warner-era Rams, who were coming down off being great; the Holmgren/Hasselbeck Seahawks, who were a Pretty Good team on a consistent level, but only had one fluky year in which they got above themselves; and then the Warner-era Cardinals, where he had a brief resurgence that never quite seemed for real. And now, arguably, the Harbaugh-era 49ers, but we’ll see.
There’s teams there that were decent for protracted periods, and teams that got lucky breaks, but there’s no real dominant teams. The winners are a bunch of 10-6 wildcard-type teams, on average.
I think if you want to say a division is good, you need at least one team that was a genuine, year-after-year powerhouse (New England, Indy, New Orleans, Green Bay, Pittsburgh, etc.), and one or two teams that had consistent years in which they were a real threat to that powerhouse team and could make a borderline case for excellence themselves (Bears, Jets, Falcons, Ravens).
I’d put the Seahawks in that “contender” category, and nobody in that “powerhouse” category for the West, and that’s why they seem like a weak division overall.
“Great” is a loaded word, but yes. If the Patriots win the Super Bowl, would you be all like “wtf, who would have expected THAT”? No, you’d be all, “oh, it’s the Patriots.” If they rattle off a 13-3 record, it doesn’t seem fluky, it seems normal. Not every team is going to win every year, but the Patriots are one of those teams where if they do win, it doesn’t surprise you.
I mean, if you are making a preseason pick for the AFC Super Bowl representative, without knowing anything at all, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re going to say New England, Indy, or Pittsburgh. Maybe Baltimore or the Jets if you’re trying to be unconventional (which people usually are with such predictions). They’re just consistently a team that people think about in a potential championship context.
Sarkus
5157
The whole and complete point of the NFL is to win the title and teams that win playoff games are closer to that then teams that don’t. The rest is opinion and draft picks mean nothing in and of themselves, as the recent history of the Lions shows.
Which team do you think is better: 1) a team that goes 7-9 repeatedly, then has one breakout/fluke year where they go 10-6 and backdoor into the Super Bowl and win an upset; 2) a team that regularly goes 11-5 to 13-3, winning its division most years, and appearing in the playoffs every year, but only advancing to the conference championship twice, getting to the Super Bowl once, but losing?
Sure, the first team won the trophy, but I think it’s clear that the second team is much better.
I’m fine, you’re the one who only posts in here drunk to driveby some lame homer platitude when the Saints win.
It was a complaint. Jeez dude, just admit it.
I don’t really care. You were being a douche and got called on it, deal.
