Peter King's Wild-Card Weekend predictions - Peter King - SI.com
i guess our loss to SD and miami beating them made a huge diffIn the NFL, what passes for major debate today is how the wrong teams are in the playoffs. We seem to either want New England to get some sort of hall pass because they're home for the holidays and San Diego is in, or we want to just eliminate the division structure altogether and get the six teams with the best records in each conference in the playoffs.
No, and no. But what the NFL should do is not automatically award division winners a home playoff game. I'll get to the reasons for that in a moment, and I'll pick this weekend's game, but first, let's put away the violins for the Patriots, and for the death of divisions.
The fact New England lost out this year is an unfortunate anomaly. The Patriots are certainly one of the best seven or eight teams in football today, and 12 make the playoffs. In the last three weeks of the season, they played in the driving rain (Oakland), blowing snow (Arizona) and 40-mph gale-force winds (Buffalo) and outscored foes 109-33. Good team. Very good team. But let's compare the Patriots and Chargers in a few relevant categories.
• Record: New England 11-5, San Diego 8-8. Huge advantage Pats.
• Head-to-head: San Diego 30, New England 10 on Oct. 12. Advantage Chargers.
• Division record: New England 4-2, San Diego 5-1. Advantage Chargers.
• Last month: New England 4-0, San Diego 4-0. Even.
• Last Half-Season: New England 5-3, San Diego 5-3. Even.
New England lost by 25 at home to Miami and by 23 at home to Pittsburgh, and allowed Brett Favre to convert a third-and-15 pass in overtime Nov. 13, leading to an overtime win by the Jets in Foxboro. So while there's little doubt they're one of the best teams ever to not make the playoffs, they're hardly the '85 Bears. Or even the '07 Patriots.