They beat an Eagles team that – up to that point – had beaten every other team in the playoffs on the road to get there.

It just doesn’t matter to me about homefield advantage/ vs road. When it comes to the playoffs, a good team wins on the road. A bad team goes home.

That’s what makes football so great: We don’t have BS “fairness rules” like other sports who have to play best-of-7 to see who the “REAL” good team is. You play ONE game, and you better show up, or go home. And the team that wants it the most wins…always.

So, how about instead of complaining that you have to go on the road to play a team that had a worse regular-season record than you, you show how great a team you are by handling adverse situations out of your control? That’s where the great teams come from. Not from a rule change you find to be more “fair.”

Another (completely crazy) idea they may want to think about is having the teams themselves determine what their non-division games are. That’s right. Each team submits a list of teams they’d like to play and ranks them. The algorithm finds the best fit. That way the teams themselves will make choices that tend towards parity. Because why would a team want to pick a schedule that would give them a losing record? Eh?? So anyhoo, you’d end up with the teams creating their own real rivalries (by constantly trying to pick on some, supposedly weaker teams) AND competition induced schedule parity. Tada! That’s a spicy meatball.

2) if you don’t grant division winner with what they’ve earned according to “your rules,” then there would be no point in having divisions. There would be two conferences and a team would play everyone in they’re conferences one time. That means no division rivalary games and the sport would be less exciting.

3) I don’t remember everyone bitching two years ago when the chargers won they’re division at 8-8 and the patriots didn’t even make the playoffs at 11-5 cuz of the dolphins winning that division. I really hope these morons do they’re research before making this decision. And I hope my Niners wins this weak division and makes noise in the playoffs so everyone will shut they’re f’n moiyhs

The constant bashing of the NFC West division itself though is just moronic. The recent history of success is there (see: NFC West teams Superbowl appearances in last 10 years…MORE than any other division).

The Rams are also clearly on the rise. If they don’t clinch the spot this year, they will next year.

What if the Falcons are one and done in the playoffs? How will the new “solution” help that?!

“Just win, baby!”

I would not eliminate divisions. They make football compelling because of the rivalries eg. Ravens – Steelers. But you could make the argument that the send place team in the AFCN is more deserving of a playoff game than the winner of the AFCW based on strength of schedule and record.

Either way, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. But I think it would make the system a little bit more equitable.

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Let’s say the Rams lose Sam Bradford to injury. Will they score again this season with whoever-the-hell the backup QB at St. Louis is???? Jeez…….

Case in point. The fact that so many folks here mention that a division winner should get a home playoff game because winning the division should “mean something”.

It does mean something you nitwits – they actually make the playoffs. A 7 – 9 team from the NFC West would make the playoffs while a team in the NFC with a BETTER record will not. That is the definition of why winning a division means something. It’s too much to reward that mediocre team with a home game.

The argument of a home game holds no water. A team in a tougher division, with a better record, should have to play on the road because of their geographically influenced division? MORONIC!

Frankly, as long as they don’t try to move seeds across conferences, I’m all for it.

The STL Rams are going to win the Super Bowl. Also look at it this way, say Brady gets hurt in the last game of the season, are the Pats as good as the Rams with a healthy QB?”

No, the Pats would still be better……

NFC WEST sucks a** … it is a horrible division and I hope the sorry 9ers make it and somehow face the GMEN so we can beat them down and pay them back for last time they met in the playoffs >>>>>

G-Men for Life !!!

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G-Men aren’t going anywhere, Eli Manning has regressed and is the new Favre, he won one and now he’s done. INT time baby.

During that 17 year stretch, only the 1985 Cleveland Browns won their division with a non-winning record and it was 8-8: 4-2 in the division, 1-3 against the NFC East, leaving them at 3-5 against the rest of the AFC. That year, the NFC East had three teams finishing at 10-6.

Also recall that conference non-division games were schedule based through the 2001 season. With the 2002 realignment came rotating through divisions in both conferences, leaving only two games as schedule based. The reason was to avoid scheduling anomalies that, for example, kept Green Bay from playing in DC for a 25-year stretch; Tampa Bay never playing in Buffalo (which could have happened in 2005 but the league waited until 2009, and scheduled a September game there); Marino and Elway going head to head in the regular season only twice in the 16 seasons they played in the league together.

This year, the NFC West is playing the NFC South this year and third-place Tampa has an 8-5 record and holds the tiebreaker over NFC North second place team Green Bay. The South is 10-3 against the West with three games to go: Arizona at Carolina (15), Atlanta at Seattle (15), and Seattle at Tampa Bay (16). I see, at worst, the South winning the season series 12-4.

We need to go back to where 50 percent of a team’s schedule is division games. Out of the 162 games in Major League Baseball, a National League club’s schedule is 50 percent in the division. That’s 81 games that, for example, the National League East teams play against each other.

If the league goes 18 games, they need to make them within the division which would at least get the schedule to 45 percent within the division. Otherwise, the number of games within the division would drop to one third at which point you might as well take the top six from each conference since winning a division won’t mean much.

my few cents …

The NFC West winner will lose in the first rd, and everyone will forget about it after that.

And wildcards should not get a home game, PERIOD! Win your division

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Kind of like the Cardinals did huh?

I think it’s ok for division winners to make the playoffs no matter what, and if the NFL enacts a rule that you re-seed from seeds 3-6, you could end up with a situation where a 10-6 winner of a strong division has to travel to an 11-5 wildcard team from a weak division. There’s always more to the story….

That being said, the Rams or Seahawks will be cannon fodder for the Saints if that’s a potential first round matchup.

Thats why there are divisions, get rid of the divisions if u r going to cry about the records…..

the competition committee should be worried about everyone crying about a certain division and be worried that whole division will be eliminated from competing because of people crying.

4 divisions. 4 division winners. the top 3 get byes. then have 9 wildcards. let seeds 4-13 play in the 1st round. then reseed and they play the bye teams in round 2. continue till only one team standing.

no losing records in the playoffs. no schitty record division winners.

play an 18 game season. play 10 games in your division, each team at least once, 3 of them twice in a given year. rotate the home and home around. play half the teams from another division and 2 teams from each of the other 2 divisions. rotate this each year.

in a 3 year period each team would play each team from another division once. in another 3 years, they would have played at the other team’s venue too.

in a 7 year period all in-division rivals would have played each other 10 times (5 each home and home).

Take, for example, the 2008 playoff standings. The San Diego Chargers (4 seed, 8-8 overall, with a 7-5 conference record) hosted the Indianapolis Colts (5 seed, 12-4 overall, with a 10-2 conference record) because the Chargers were champs of the then weak AFC West division. From a fairness standpoint, a more compelling argument can be made that the Colts should have hosted the “super” Chargers. Even though San Diego went on to defeat Indy in overtime at Qualcomm Stadium, the fact remains that Indy won four more games during the regular season, and three more games within the conference. In my mind, that trumps—for purposes of wild card playoff seeding—San Diego’s first-place finish in a weak division. Had that game been played in Indy, the result may very well have been different. And I’m not a Colts fan!

P.S. Recall that 2008 also saw the 11-5 “Brady-less” Patriots NOT make the playoffs.

2000 Super Bowl – Rams
2002 Super Bowl – Rams
2006 Super Bowl – Seahawks
2009 Super Bowl – Cardinals
2010 Super Bowl – 49ers