Playoff Possibilities
Posted: December 26th, 2008 | Filed under: Other Sports | 25 Comments »
When I was a kid — and, no, I cannot explain this at all — I used to love reading explainer agate in the local newspapers. It wasn’t officially called “explainer agate,†of course, but I don’t have a better phrase for it. Agate, as I’m sure you know, is the small type that you see in the newspaper on the various scoreboard pages. Box scores, for instance, fall under the agate umbrella. Standings are agate. League leaders, bowling scores, golf leaderboards, high school results, all-star game voting, horse racing results and all that are agate as well.
But — and this doesn’t happen so much anymore — newspapers used to put all sorts of other things on the agate page in small type. They might put in a “This day in history,†or trivia questions or a list of every perfect game or number of 300 games bowled on live TV or something equally surprising. It was quirky and unpredictable and probably pointless, but for me the agate page was like Christmas morning — you never knew what might be in there.
As an avid agate reader, I had three things that I loved most of all.
1. Transactions. Of course. Many newspapers still run transactions, but most run an abridged version. I can remember when you would open up the paper, and the transactions would take up a half column and would have bizarre entries like:
MIAMI (OHIO): Hired I.M. Knotforeal to be the new assistant sports information director in charge of volleyball.
Or:
SEATTLE MARINERS: Named Nobo Dyhast Hisname to manage the Class E affiliate in Gallipolis.
This was information that nobody — even the people involved — cared about, but I loved it.
2. How they scored. I must have wasted half my childhood reading and re-reading the Cleveland Indians “How they scored†sections.
Bottom of the 4th: Jim Norris struck out. Andre Thornton homered. Buddy Bell struck out. Larvelle Blanks homered. Fred Kendall struck out. INDIANS 2, TIGERS 0.
I have no idea whatsoever why I found these little round-ups to be so thrilling. But even now I find the “How They Scored†to be the most perfect little way to sum up events. I’ve always thought that this is the best way to describe a first date.
8 p.m. hour: Ordered food. Boy mentioned menu’s high prices. Girl ordered lighter than she wanted. Boy checked rotisserie team stats on phone. Girl ordered wrong thing. Boy did not offer to share. Girl looked around the room. Boy broke awkward silence by mentioning previous girlfriend. Girl excused herself to go bathroom. CHANCE OF SECOND DATE: 0.002%.
3. NFL Playoff Possibilities.
Here again, these are dry and boring — If Team A wins, they’re in. If Team A loses and Team B and C lose, they’re in. And so on. — but I never could get enough of these playoff possibilities. I would read them again and again, trying to figure out how they worked. I still love them. And so, even though you can find them in about 205,000 other places on the Internet, here are this year’s NFL Playoff possibilities as I understand them (I do not include ties because I’m not smart enough to do that):
AFC
In
Tennessee — Plays meaningless game against Indianapolis.
Pittsburgh — Plays meaningless game against Cleveland.
Indianapolis — Plays meaningless game against Tennessee.
Control their own fate
Miami: Needs to beat the New York Jets to win the AFC East.
Denver: Needs to beat the San Diego Chargers to win the AFC West*.
San Diego: Needs to beat the Denver Broncos to win the AFC West.
Baltimore: Needs to beat Jacksonville to make it as a wildcard. The Ravens can still make it with a loss if New England loses to Buffalo.
*I would contend that the AFC West is the worst division in NFL history. Yes, there have been bad divisions before — hey, the NFC West is plenty bad this year. But look: If the Chargers win this weekend (and if there is football karma, they will win), then they will become only the second team in NFL history to win a division with a .500 record. (This week’s AFLAC Trivia question is an easy one — who was the other team?).* But what makes this division even more pitiful is that it also has two of the very worst teams in football in Oakland and Kansas City. The only reason the Chargers even have a shot at .500 is because they have four wins against the miserable Raiders and Chiefs (and the Chiefs could easily have won BOTH those games). The division is a remarkable 10-29 against the rest of the NFL. Only the Chargers have outscored their opponents this year, and the four teams have been outscored by 257 points this year. These are four bad football teams.
**The answer — and I’m sure you got it — was the 1985 Cleveland Browns. The Browns went 8-8 and then scared the heck out of the Dan Marino Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins then got destroyed by the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, and the Patriots then got utterly destroyed by the Bears Shuffling Crew. So those Browns might have lost to the Bears 384-23. AFLAC. Ask about it at work.
Need help
New England: Needs to beat the Bills and have either the Dolphins lose to the Jets OR the Ravens lost to the Jaguars.*
New York Jets: Need to beat the Dolphins and have either the Pats lose to the Bills OR the Ravens lose to the Jags.
*If the Patriots beat the Bills and do not make the playoffs, they would be the first team since that crazy 1985 season to win 11 games and not make the playoffs. The victim that year was the Denver Broncos, who went 11-5 but got left at home. I remember thinking how unfair it was, even as a Browns fan, that the 8-8 Browns made the playoffs that year while the 11-5 Broncos did not … but you know, the Browns paid the Broncos back again and again and again over the next few years.
NFC
In
New York Giants: Play meaningless game against Minnesota.
Carolina: Plays the New Orleans Saints. A win gets them a first-round bye. The Panthers can still get the first-round bye if they lose AND Atlanta loses.
Arizona: Plays meaningless game against Seattle; Only meaning at all is that with a loss they become first NFC team ever to win division with 8-8 record.
Atlanta: Plays the St. Louis Rams; can win division and get first-round bye with win and Carolina loss.
Control their own fate
Dallas: Needs to beat Philadelphia.
Minnesota: Needs to beat the New York Giants OR have Chicago loss at Houston.
Need help
Tampa Bay: Needs to beat Oakland AND have Cowboys lose to Philadelphia.
Philadelphia: Needs to beat Dallas AND have Tampa Bay lose to Oakland AND have either a) Vikings lose to Giants or b) Chicago lose to Houston.*
Chicago: Needs to beat Houston AND have either a) Minnesota lose to the Giants OR b) have Tampa Bay lose to Oakland AND have Dallas lose to Philadelphia.
*I no longer scoff at these bizarre playoff possibilities. In 2006, the Chiefs needed to beat Jacksonville and then have Tennessee, Cincinnati and Denver all lose — Denver had to lose to the retched San Francisco 49ers at home — in order to make the playoffs. It was such an improbability that I did not even go to the Chiefs game; I got on a plane and headed for California and the Rose Bowl. When I landed in Los Angeles, I had 18 messages on my cell phone. All four things happened and the Chiefs made the playoffs. They should not have, of course, and they proved it by playing one of the worst games in NFL playoff history against Indianapolis — they didn’t even make a first down until late in the third quarter — but that’s not the point. The point is that the ridiculous happens sometimes. And you should not get on a plane for the Rose Bowl before the final results are in.
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Total wins by the bottom 3 teams in the AFC West – 13.
Total wins by the bottom 3 teams in the NFC West – 12.
A case could be made for the NFC West as the worst division ever as well.
The key difference is strength of schedule. By far, the AFC west has had the easiest schedules of any team in the league, and that is even though their opponents’ records are inflated by kicking the asses of the AFC west teams. All four of those teams have records in the bottom eight of difficulty, and yet here we are.
And you should not get on a plane for the Rose Bowl before the final results are in.
Uh, I don’t know. Hang out in Pasadena or watch a football game involving a wretched team and an unmeritorious one in KC…seems like a simple choice to me.
Mckingford, let’s not forget the most important part: It wasn’t just the Rose Bowl; it was both the title game AND the most entertaining football game I’ve ever seen.
That said, I suppose the rules differ slightly when you’re employed primarily to write about the hometown squads.
The NFC West is the worst, but both sides played really strong teams this year. The AFC and NFC West played the AFC East this year which is fairly strong. The AFC West played NFC South which is strong, and the NFC West played the NFC East which is stacked (The Rams beat the Cowboys though!). And how’s this, the worst team in football ever, doesn’t play in either of these divisions. We are of course speaking about Detroit.
Since these are harder to find, I present you with Draft scenarios, as that is all Chiefs fans care about at this point in the year.
1. Detroit – locked up
2. St. Louis or Kansas City – SOS is dead even going into the last week. KC needs a St. Louis win to take the 2 spot, or StLouis gets it if KC wins. If both teams win, or both teams lose, the key games for SOS are (teams helped by win are in parentheses behind team): New England (KC) at Buffalo (StL), Titans (StL) at Indy, NYG (KC) @ Min, Chicago (KC) @ Houston. There are 2 games where a division foe’s win could count twice for SOS, they are Oak vs. TB, where an Oakland win counts twice against the Chiefs to help StL, and only against the Chiefs as 1 if TB wins. Same goes for Washington at SF, if SF wins it counts against StL twice, and if Washington wins only once against StL. The Chiefs hold the inside track on this tiebreaker I think.
3. StL or KC
Scenarios get murkier at this point, but here is SOS and current placing of each team:
4. Cincinatti 3-11-1 (134) – lose to KC and get 4th pick, win and likely move back a little, as bad as 7th.
5. Seattle 4-11 (119) – best they can do is 4th if CIN wins, worst is 8th I think due to the weakest SOS.
6. Oakland 4-11 (125)
7. Clevelnd 4-11 (136)
8. GB (?) 5-10 – wins tie w/ JAX from head to head loss
9. Jaxville 5-10 (128)
10. SF (?) 6-9 – Worst they can do is win and tie with the Bills (if they lose to NE), so pick 10 or 11 depending on SOS.
I never bothered to figure out the SOS for GB or SF. Quick note, the weaker schedule with the same record gets a higher draft pick since they did same against inferior opponents. I think I followed the ways they broke the ties last year. We’ll see how it works out. So Chiefs fans, remember to cheer for NE, NYG, Chicago, and SF. And most of all, a St. Louis win!
Hey Joe, you forgot a funky little agate item:
Holes in One:
Paradise Pointe (Posse Course) Hole #5 125 yards – Sally Peters (6-iron)
Similar fascination, particularly with the playoff possibilities. My first exposure was with the 1967 AL race, where four teams came down to the final weekend with a chance to win. I can still remember the lengthy summaries of the various tie situations; still the best I’ve ever seen.
Love the Larvell “Sugar Bear” Blanks reference on a winter day. Awesome. He was no Tom “Daddy Rags” Ragland, though.
Can anybody imagine the Armageddon that would result if the “Coin Toss” were ever to be required?
One use for the equivalent of Agate explainer in my part of the world many years ago was a Saturday night sports paper giving the running of every horse race at the local meeting — who was slow away and who got a good jump, then the order at the half mile, the home turn, who challenged and who faded in the home straight sort of thing. Two semi-retired newspaper old-timers, whose lives revolved around horse racing, had the job.
On one famous occasion the rundown ended with the statement: “During the running of this race, the grandstand burned down.”
God, how I miss FJM right now…
I don’t know much about football, but couldn’t one make the case that the AFC East is actually a pretty weak division, but that the teams have the records they do because they get to play the absolutely putrid western divisions?
“Can anybody imagine the Armageddon that would result if the “Coin Toss†were ever to be required?”
It almost happened in 1970, before they had a bunch of levels to the thing. The Cowboys and Lions looked like they were going to tie for the wild card, and they didn’t play each other that year and had the same conference record, so coin flip was the next step. But the Giants got the NFL off the hook by losing to the Rams at home and falling out of the NFC East lead, giving the division to Dallas and the wild card to Detroit. They put in about six more steps after that near disaster.
Blackadder,
One could make that case, but I don’t know if it would be correct. The Jets’ record has not been bolstered by playing the AFC West. The Jets somehow went 1-3 against the AFC West, the lone win being against the Chiefs, and they could have easily lost that game (Favre had to lead a game-winning drive but the drive was only necessitated by the drive right before it, when Favre threw a horrendous INT that got returned for 6 to put KC on top).
Joe, I’ve been behind on my required reading. In an earlier comment replying to your citation of Hunter S. Thompson and Sports Illustrated, I cited Dr. Hook’s Shel Silverstein song, “On the Cover of the Rolling Stone.” But I don’t know if you read old comments, so I’m reposting it here. I’ve done enough professional writing (game design requires lots of writing) to feel it’s good enough to justify the double placement. And let me say, once again, how grateful I am to be able to read your writing.
Okay, Joe, this filk’s for you:
I’m a big sports writer
And I try to inspire
The folks that read my stuff.
I write about Royals and I write about Chiefs
And sometimes Cocoa Puffs.
I’ve had all the thrills that writing can bring.
‘Cept the thrill you cannot buy.
It’s the thrill that you’ll capture when you get your caption
On the cover of the old S. I.
refrain
(Old S.I.) Wanna get my caption on the cover.
(SI) Wanna send five copies to my mother.
(SI) Wanna see it spelled correctly
On the cover of the old S.I.
On the cover of the old S.I.
Oh I write about Ruth and I write about Bruce
And it all got into my blogs.
I write about Feller and I write about Stan
I’ve been known to mention Boggs.
I’ve met my boyhood heroes and yes, some were zeroes
But I looked ‘em all in the eye.
And it’s sure been great but yet I still wait
To see my caption on the old SI
(refrain)
Oh I write about all the bad teams I’ve seen.
The next good one will be my first.
Did I mention I’ve got a Reds book coming out
For which I’m sure you all will thirst.
I saw the big Olympics and the gold medal swimmers
But it only made me sigh.
But now I can smile after all this while
I’m on the cover of the old SI.
(Old S.I.) There’s a Joe! It makes me feel so whacko!
(SI) Yes a Joe! And I’m not talking about Flacco!
(SI) I see Joe Posnanski there, on the cover of the old SI.
On the cover of the old SI (man, it’s beautiful, baby).
this is one of the problems with the four division system. it’s not that hard for four teams to be bad in the same year. although, the old afc west would have included seattle as well. that would certainly have been an historical division.
Has the aversion to draws in American sports been considered as a contributor to the deadlocks that appear at playoff time? Maybe a half-win here and there would serve as a useful tie-breaker.
Please explain why Atlanta is in with a loss. If Dallas, Tampa Bay and Chicago all win, they all have 10-6 records. Dallas and Tampa Bay would have 8-4 NFC records, and Chicago and Atlanta would have 7-5 NFC records. No head to head between Dallas & Atlanta or Dallas & Chicago. Why are Dallas and Atlanta in if this four-way tie?
Witt:
Because if their is a multiteam tie for a Wild Card, and two or more of the teams come from the same division, the tiebreaker within the division is broken first. (Each division can only send only Wild Card team, unless both qualifiers within the division have a better W-L record than all other teams that are not division winners.)
So, first, if Tampa wins and Atlanta loses, Atlanta beats out Tampa on the basis of the 3rd divisional tiebreaker, which is record against common opponents. Falcons would be 9-3, and Tampa would be 8-4. This eliminates the Bucs under this scenario.
Second, If Dallas and Chicago, win, and the Vikings win, so that Minnesota wins its division, and Chicago must try for a Wild Card, the Cowboys get the 1st Wild Card (#5 seed) by virtue of superior conference record. (They’d be 8-4, the Bears and Falcons would be 7-5).
Finally, under that scenario, the Falcons get the 2nd tiebreaker because they beat the Bears head-to-head.
Essentially, the Falcons have clinched a wild card because they beat the Chargers and the Bucs didn’t. That one game is the difference in their records vs. common opponents.
How ’bout them Cowboys …
It’s true that the San Diego and Denver got to play Oakland and KC twice this season, but that really doesn’t add up to an easy schedule for those teams.
The AFC West had to play the AFC East and the NFC South, which are 2 of the 3 best divisions in football. Eight games against those teams more than compensates for the 6 within the division.
Not that I am saying the AFC West isn’t terrible, because it is, but I don’t buy the “soft” schedule argument.
Is anyone else ready to have four, 8-team divisions in the NFL? Seems like a no-brainer to me. I can’t stand only FOUR teams in each division. It reminds me of “pool play” in the Olympics (pick your sports) or World Cup. Arizona and San Diego hosting NFL playoff games this season makes sense for only one reason. The weather will be (probably) reasonably nice.
And against all odds, the Eagles have everyone in line for a playoff spot in front of them lose and they make it.
You know what is more pathetic than a division winner finishing 8-8 and making the playoffs? What the Saints did in 1990, finishing 8-8 and making it as a wildcard team. That tells you something about an entire conference (at least top to bottom it does), rather than just one division.
My favorite agate topics to read were the College Basketball tournaments. From today’s LA Times:
The Battle at the Border Championship – Troy 54 Texas Pan-American 39
The Outrigger Hotels Rainbow Classic
The Dayton Flyer Classic
The Zimmerman Memorial Classic
I love the tournament names (apparently there are few regular tournaments – each and every one is a “classic”), and I’d always search to see who was playing in them, hoping to find a team I recognized or an unusual result.
I also learned today that the Canadiens assigned goalie Loic Lacasse from Cincinnati (East Coast Hockey League) to Hamilton (American Hockey League). Good to know.
Actually, Joe, the AFC west was not even the worst division this YEAR! That would be the NFC west.
AFC West: 11-29, -260 points, tougher schedule.
NFC West: 10-30, -357 points, weaker schedule