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For the Colts, they had 2 examples that were bad, and one was just horrific.

1) ) The 1967 Colts were undefeated going into the final game of the season ...... UNDEFEATED !!! They lost the final game of the regular season, and DID NOT make the post-season because Pete Rozelle's set-up was absurd. There were 16 teams in the NFL, and instead of dividing them into 2 divisions with 2 Wildcards, Rozelle had 4 divisions with no Wildcard. So the Colts ...... with a record of 11-1-2 ...... did not qualify for the playoffs because they were in the same division as the Rams (who also had a record of 11-1-2, but won the tiebreaker.) So the team that was tied for the best record in the entire NFL was sitting home for the post-season that year.


https://www.jt-sw.com/football/pro/r...Teams/1967-bal



2) ) The 2008 Colts were also royally screwed. They had a record of 12-4 AND they also beat the Chargers on their homefield in San Diego ...... but because the 8-8 Chargers won their division, their playoff game was held in San Diego.

https://www.jt-sw.com/football/pro/r...Teams/2008-ind



I believe that they ought to make a clause in regard to division winners getting to play on their homefield with a significantly worse record than their opponent. They should make it so that you have to be at least within 2 full games of the team that you are playing in order to maintain the homefield advantage ...... so a team that won their division with a record of 10-7 would still be able to host a playoff game against a Wildcard team that had a record of 12-5. BUT, if a team won their division with a record of 9-8 (or 9-7-1) was playing a Wildcard team that finished with a record of 12-5, then the Wildcard team would then host the playoff game.

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As bad as it was for the Colts in '08 and Saint's in '10 that first case you describe was highway robbery!! Totally ridiculous.

I like your idea, but I'd like to see the league take it a step further and seed the playoffs by record w/ division winner being the 1st tie breaker (or better yet 2nd tie breaker after head to head).

I agree with the sentiment, but I'd rather keep the arbitrarity out of it. It gets messy. Like how overtime now gives both team a possession unless you score a TD. And people say, "Well, why don't they both get a possession regardless?" And next it'll be, "Well, why don't they both get two possessions?" and so on.

Normally I'd say to leave the qualification seeding as they've always been (4 division champs + 3 WC)... and once you've got your field, simply seed them according to record. Keeps the division really meaningful. Division winner could also be part of the tie-breaker.

But yours is an interesting take. It doesn't make being a division winner meaningless due to tie-breakers... But I suppose the issue would be that theoretically a division winner could miss the playoffs outright. The '08 Chargers and the '10 Seahawks we mentioned both would've missed the playoffs even with under the current 7-team field. And maybe that's what they deserved.

It becomes a matter of meritocracy vs. marketing, and marketing would never omit an entire division's audience from the playoffs.

I agree with you, and I didn't fully describe it well enough b/c I would keep each of the division winners making the playoffs along w/ the top 3 other teams then seed by record w/ division winner being the #1 or #2 tie breaker. So if a division winner has 10 wins and the 3 WC winners have 12, 11, and 10 wins then division winner would be seeded higher than the #3 WC but below the other 2 WC teams.

Ultimately the best and fairest product would be to have the teams with the top 7 records make the playoffs, but as you pointed out that will never happen.

Well there is that, and I agree Ballard has a lot of culpability in Wentz / team failing to make the playoffs.

But that's not what I am pointing to. We are just a bunch of fans, and of course we are going to rant about all his failures to get rid of the ball- but we didn't / don't have access to coaching film etc... so our view / understanding of calls, of routes, of play design, leaves out a critical part of the analysis that tells whether it was really Wentz sucking that bad or if there was such a void of playmakers that he was hamstrung and it made him look worse than he was.

But NOW the postmortem is complete- there has been plenty of study of what he was doing by real football analysts - AND IT IS UNIMAGINABLY EVEN WORSE than what all of us were saying.

I went ballistic after the game where we threw it 26 straight times and Reich talked about how he didn't realize it and that "usually" someone on his staff will say something to him but nobody did. Forget the incredulous stupidity of that statement, forget his smuggy comment about how we must have been doing something right because of the yards we amassed, it's way deeper than that.

I fully get we had no suitable replacement so replacing him was very difficult and largely not possible. That said, we did have a guy in charge who had the reins to DEMAND he stop, to DEMAND he quit checking out of the plays called, to DEMAND in film review that Wentz throw the damn ball to where the play was called for it to go, to simply take the level of RPO's available to him way down. Was it Nelson that was caught on camera at one point saying to Reich- "can't we just run the fucking play called"?

That's my point in that post. It was Frank's job to stand on him and make him quit doing the shit he was doing, but he didn't, he let it continue all the way to the end when Wentz was performing so badly it cost us a playoff spot. That is 100% on Frank, not Ballard. The Wentz gamble didn't work, and it's very likely to fail in DC as well. I don't blame Frank and Ballard for trying though- they were left with few options. I don't blame them for Wentz just not being very good, they don't control his talent. I DO HOWEVER squarely place the blame for him being renegade hero boy week after week after week entirely on Frank. Good / great coaches adjust, he didn't seem to adjust, he seemed to accept. I believe he didn't adjust because he was too personally invested in proving Wentz was the guy, that if Wentz did magical things his pushing to have him as our QB, would be justified. That's why I dislike him so much, to me he comes across as wanting to prove he is the smart guy and his decisions are why we win vs letting his team turn him into a winner.