Why did we play the Seahawks twice in 1993?

[TrueBeliever]

I was reading the preview of today's game in this week's Patriots Football Weekly this morning, and it mentioned that the Patriots and the Seahawks met twice in the 1993 season. Anyone know why? Even in the days before the rigid scheduling system we have now, I can't remember any other time we played the same team (outside of the division) twice in the regular season.

 

[Palm Beach Pats Fan]

In those days in was a 28 team league, when it was your turn to play one of the smaller 4 team divisions like the AFC Central, you had to play an extra conference opponent

 

[jmt57]

I was reading the preview of today's game in this week's Patriots Football Weekly this morning, and it mentioned that the Patriots and the Seahawks met twice in the 1993 season. Anyone know why? Even in the days before the rigid scheduling system we have now, I can't remember any other time we played the same team (outside of the division) twice in the regular season.

In '93 the NFL had 28 teams and six division; some divisions had five teams and some had four teams. Think how the schedule is now with only two games determined on what place each team finished the previous year. Back then there was more of a priority to do that, in part because of divisions had an unequal number of teams. It actually was not uncommon to play a team that was not in your division twice in the same year back in those years. That went away once the NFL expanded to 32 teams, allowing the league to have four divisions, with an equal number of teams in each division.

 

[TrueBeliever]

Oh yeah... that makes sense. I really didn't become a hardcore foot-balling fan until 1995, and that year there were 30 teams and all the divisions were equal. (Until 1996, anyway.) EDIT: Duh, I just remembered there were still only 30 teams until 1999 when the Browns were re-added to the league.

 

[PatsWSB47]

took the wrong flight