Bronco fans are now claiming it was unfair that the league office created more home games for Brady.
http://www.orangemane.com/BB/showthread.php?t=117129
I posted this below in response. Hope it gets through to them that the league is not doing this on purpose.
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The ratio of home games between the two players has not been engineered by some sinister plot by the NFL to ensure that Brady had the advantage.
As you are aware, if you are not in the same division, you will only play each other if you are a. part of the AFC division rotation (e.g., this year, all AFCE will play all AFCW) OR b. had the same finishing position in the division. (this year, NE will play Indy and the Bengals, who also finished 1st in their divisions last year).
Regardless of whether you are meeting a team for reason a or b, the allocation of home games for non-divisional teams within the same conference follows a strict rotation. It used to be rotated every year. However, with the re-alignment of the NFL divisions (4 per conference instead of 3), the schedule makers moved the formula to each team hosting the other in 3 year stretches.
What mainly contributed to Payton playing more in NE was that he caught 2 cycles of home games in NE but only 1 cycle in Indy. Before he could get the next cycle of 3 home games in Indy, he moved in Den and smack into Den's own cycle of being hosted in NE. Note that the 3 year cycle applies even if the teams did not play in a year due to having different divisional records (e.g., Pats are 1st in AFCE and Broncos are 4th in AFCW).
The following table which lists the home games in each year will explain more.
NE's Opponents in the Regular Season:
Ind-------Den
2001 - NE---------DNP (NE)
2001 - Ind--------Den
2002 - DNP(Ind)--NE
2003 - Ind--------Den
2004 - NE---------DNP (Den)
2005 - NE---------Den
2006 - NE---------NE
2007 - Ind--------DNP (NE)
2008 - Ind--------NE----------- Brady DNP
2009 - Ind--------Den
2010 - NE---------DNP (Den)
2011 - NE---------Den---------- Manning DNP
2012 - NE---------NE------------ Manning moves to Denver
2013 - DNP(Ind)--NE
2014 - Ind---------NE
*DNP - Did not play. The location they would have played, if they had the same record the previous season, is shown in parenthesis.
*2001 - NE and Ind played twice in 2001 in the regular season as they were in the same division.
As you can see, since 2002/2003, the league has put teams on 3 year rotations. Thus, Manning ended up playing more games in NE. Assuming the teams all end up on the same positions again for the next few years, the list of hosts will look like this:
2015 - Ind Den
2016 - NE Den
2017 - NE Den
2018 - NE NE
2019 - Ind NE
2020 - Ind NE
