Unbreakable Record: 8 Consecutive CC Title Games?

[Kip Smithers]

9 hours ago, SkippyX said:

So not facing Flacco(1-4 vs Brady), Dalton(1-2), and the Dumpster fire in Cleveland(1-6) is why the Patriots are dominant?

Not facing Rivers (0-6 vs Brady regular season), Luck (0-4), or Manning (3-9) twice a year is easy for Brady?

ITS EASY FOR THE OTHER GUYS TO NOT FACE BRADY TWICE A YEAR!

The league removed Manning from Brady's division in 2002 to give him a chance.

• The put him with Cap Hell Jacksonville 2 years in to a 4 year suck
• They put him with expansion Houston
• They put him with 7-9 Tennessee who recovered in 2002-03 before sucking the next 2 years.

Your point would actually hold water if you meant Manning, or Roethlisberger, or Rodgers.

 

There is an AFC Division that all teams are welcome to join.

• Its called the playoffs.
• Brady is 23-7 in that AFC division

 

Next Up: We learn how Wayne Gretzky was just a product of the Smythe Division!

A straw man if I ever saw one. My initial post stated that the Patriots are great and theyd still be great in any other division. But I said if they were any other division they wouldn’t make it 8 straight which is not a shocking statement or one to find so objectionable. If you believe that they’d still make it 8 straight your essentially saying that divisions don’t matter essentially. Playing a team once in a season compared to two in a season is markedly different than playing them once. Furthermore, comparing his record against the NFC is futile because you play them every 4 years. And teams can change a lot during that time. And you play most AFC teams every 3 years. It’s not a hot take to say that if the patriots had to play Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Cinch twice a year (one home, one road) that they wouldn’t make it to 8 straight

[CP3MVP]

14 hours ago, Kip Smithers said:

Well when you have an opinion and you talk in hypotheticals, you don’t really evidence...

There’s nothing special about those divisions you’ve named. 

AFC north

Steelers- Good team who NE has owned for 20 years 

bengals-haven’t won a playoff game since 1991

browns-laughing stock of the league. All time bad from 2016-2017

 

AFC West

broncos-great team from 2012-2015. 2016-2018 mediocrity 

raiders-sucked this entire decade aside from a fluke 2016 season. Pats have owned them 

chargers- up and down team who has won 2 playoff games this whole decade. Hasn’t reached a conference title game since 2007.

chiefs- 2 playoff wins this decade. Overall strong teams but not title contenders till this year 

There is NOTHING special about those two divisions to suggest NE wouldn’t dominate 

[CP3MVP]

18 hours ago, FrantikRam said:

 

Mediocrity year in and year out, sure. But the Dolphins have only made the playoffs three times since the Pats dynasty began, and have 0 playoff wins.

The Bills have made the playoffs one time (last year) since the dynasty began.

Let's stop there for a minute - while the Dolphins have rarely been a truly awful team, 0 playoff wins in 18 years is bad. Them and the Bills both. There are only three other teams to have 0 playoff wins in the same span: Browns, Lions and Bengals - but the Bengals have at least made the playoffs on several occasions and have been better than the Dolphins and Bills over that time.

 

The Jets are where you're hanging your hat for the AFC East not being terrible - they've made the playoffs six times, and actually won six playoff games. But in this time period, their best QBs were Pennington and Sanchez. Despite the Jets actually making the AFCCG twice, did anyone actually see them winning a super bowl? With Sanchez? Coming into every season, the Patriots never once faced a threat to the division crown except for the year Brady went down. Now consider that, since 2004, the Patriots have rarely had the best team in the NFL going into the playoffs. So it's not like the Jets/Bills/Dolphins had some insane juggernaut to overcome (save for 2007).

You claimed that they were historically bad. There’s no evidence to suggest the bills dolphins or jets have been historically bad over the last 20 years. They haven’t even fielded the worst team in the league since 2007(1-15 dolphins)

 

[Malik]

25 minutes ago, CP3MVP said:

You claimed that they were historically bad. There’s no evidence to suggest the bills dolphins or jets have been historically bad over the last 20 years. They haven’t even fielded the worst team in the league since 2007(1-15 dolphins)

 

Is going 17 straight seasons without a playoff appearance historically bad?

[Jotun_Fan]

I'm still trying to understand the argument:  Are people saying that if the Pats were in a tougher division that they would have lost more games?  This doesn't seem to hold water since they win more vs. other divisions (playing a first place schedule every year!)

Or are they trying to say that they always get a first round bye because their division never challenges them for a division title?  This doesn't really seem to make much sense either, because if the patriots often have the best record in the league, it wouldn't matter which other teams were in their division since they'd still have the best record.

An argument I could understand is if you said that the other division winners in the AFC aren't consistent enough year after year, so that a first place team one year is usually mediocre the next year when the Patriots play them.  Colts after Manning haven't been consistent year after year, and for the last ten years the Ravens and Steelers seem to be inconsistent from year to year.  I think that's probably a bigger factor.

[MWil23]

Reasons for this unbelievable streak:

1. The Patriots are really freaking good with BB and TB12

2. Half of the last 8 years they've had a 1st round bye

3. ZERO Road games until the conference championship round

4. The AFC East is a joke and I don't care what anyone else from the AFC East says, especially over the last 8 years. They are a joke AND the Patriots are really freaking good. It's not like the NFC South, NFC West, or AFC North where you have multiple good teams that consistently have made the Super Bowl and/or won (Carolina/New Orleans/Atlanta) (Seattle and San Francisco) (Pittsburgh and Baltimore). 

[Mossburg]

14 minutes ago, MWil23 said:

Reasons for this unbelievable streak:

1. The Patriots are really freaking good with BB and TB12

2. Half of the last 8 years they've had a 1st round bye

3. ZERO Road games until the conference championship round

4. The AFC East is a joke and I don't care what anyone else from the AFC East says, especially over the last 8 years. They are a joke AND the Patriots are really freaking good. It's not like the NFL South, NFL West, or AFC North where you have multiple good teams that consistently have made the Super Bowl and/or won (Carolina/New Orleans/Atlanta) (Seattle and San Francisco) (Pittsburgh and Baltimore). 

They've also gotten what is basically a 2nd round bye a few times in recent years with teams like Tebow's Broncos, last year's Titans, 2nd string QB Texans, maybe some others I forget, that pull off upsets or something and they get an ez pz game.

But yea, it's a combination of many things, mostly them being the best team franchise in modern sports, maybe they didn't need any luck to do this, but they still got it.

[FrantikRam]

Whatever else Patriots fans say, hopefully we can all agree that the Bills/Jets/Dolphins going a combined 57 seasons (which happens to coincide with the Patriots dynasty) without a single franchise QB between them - mind you, I'm not even saying all pro - is astoundingly bad. It's mind boggling.

[ChazStandard]

15 minutes ago, FrantikRam said:

Whatever else Patriots fans say, hopefully we can all agree that the Bills/Jets/Dolphins going a combined 57 seasons (which happens to coincide with the Patriots dynasty) without a single franchise QB between them - mind you, I'm not even saying all pro - is astoundingly bad. It's mind boggling.

And yet, despite all that, they're the strongest division even not counting the Patriots. Funny that.

Unless someone can refute, statistically, the fact the AFCE has won the most games (again, not including the Patriots) over the past 20 years, then the "soft AFCE" myth is debunked.

Saying "I don't care what the numbers say, the AFC East was always terrible" is not a refutation, it's just an emotional response born of frustration.

[Kip Smithers]

10 hours ago, CP3MVP said:

There’s nothing special about those divisions you’ve named. 

AFC north

Steelers- Good team who NE has owned for 20 years 

bengals-haven’t won a playoff game since 1991

browns-laughing stock of the league. All time bad from 2016-2017

 

AFC West

broncos-great team from 2012-2015. 2016-2018 mediocrity 

raiders-sucked this entire decade aside from a fluke 2016 season. Pats have owned them 

chargers- up and down team who has won 2 playoff games this whole decade. Hasn’t reached a conference title game since 2007.

chiefs- 2 playoff wins this decade. Overall strong teams but not title contenders till this year 

There is NOTHING special about those two divisions to suggest NE wouldn’t dominate 

Bringing up playoff records is irrelevant in this discussion as the talk is about getting homefield advantage and how the division they reside in.

And those teams you mentioned have at the very least had good stretches. Aside from a two year stretch by the Jets, what good stretch has that division had?

[Kip Smithers]

Apparently for the Patriots +111 point differential this season, 110 of 111 is from the AFC East. 

If that’s true then that’s ridiculous 

[CP3MVP]

On 1/18/2019 at 8:25 AM, Malik said:

Is going 17 straight seasons without a playoff appearance historically bad?

If I go 7-9 or 8-8 17 years in a row but never make the playoffs that’s historically bad. That’s mediocre. 

 

Youre a acting like these afc east teams are going 2-14 every year 

[MacReady]

All that record needs is a great head coach and a selfless HOF QB with a supermodel wife who has billions of dollars, enabling that HOF QB to take less money and cap space than he deserves, enabling the team to pay the rest of the roster (especially defense) and a great defensive mind that allows said coach and QB to only have to score like 23 points a playoff game in order to win frequently in a poor conference where the competition is extremely lacking in both quarterbacks, defense and coaches. 

That's all. 

[CP3MVP]

16 hours ago, Kip Smithers said:

Bringing up playoff records is irrelevant in this discussion as the talk is about getting homefield advantage and how the division they reside in.

And those teams you mentioned have at the very least had good stretches. Aside from a two year stretch by the Jets, what good stretch has that division had?

But you haven’t provided any evidence to suggest there is anything special about those teams which would cause NE not to beat them in the regular season and gain homefield in the playoffs. The one “Great” team in the afc north NE has owned for 20 years. 

 

What “good” stretches have the Browns or raiders have had? The raiders have literally sucked since 2003 with the exception of 2016. 

[Malik]

44 minutes ago, CP3MVP said:

If I go 7-9 or 8-8 17 years in a row but never make the playoffs that’s historically bad. That’s mediocre. 

 

Youre a acting like these afc east teams are going 2-14 every year 

They had 8 seasons where they won between 3-6 games. Let's not act like they were barely missing the post season the majority of those years in a position to win the wildcard but lose out tight contested matches in weeks 16 and 17.