Tuesday, January 4, 2011

NFC West Championship? Next Joke


This is disgusting. Absolutely nauseating. I’m almost embarrassed to be a football fan. The Seattle Seahawks, at 7-9, 7-and-friggin-9, are in the playoffs. Oh, no, excuse me, not only are they in, they are hosting a Wild Card game. They get to host the New Orleans Saints, the defending champs who finished four games better than them and buried them in their own stadium six weeks ago.

This Seahawks team becomes the first team to win their division and advance to the playoffs with a losing record in NFL history. And honestly, that’s a stat that should never be put in the record books, but unfortunately will. I can only hope that some football purist that doesn’t want to see the game disgraced will someday break into Canton and possibly rip out that page (do they keep the football record books in Canton?) Who would be that guy though? John Madden if he wasn’t borderline senile maybe, but then again if he still loves Brett Favre he clearly doesn’t care as much about football as I thought.

But let’s dig deeper to find out exactly how terrible this team is. Seattle finished the season on 3-7 spiral, beating only the Panthers and Cardinals (arguably the two worst teams in the NFL) before taking out the Rams on Sunday. They got outscored by a ridiculous 97 points this season (worst margin for a playoff team ever, by over 20 points), and lost all nine of their games by 15 points or more. Chicago is the only playoff team they beat, and aside from the Chargers, the other four teams they beat finished a combined 25-55 (they beat Arizona twice). They finished 28th in total offense and 27th in total defense. They are by far the worst playoff team of all time.

I shouldn’t be writing this blog, because the Stinkhawks should not be a playoff team. I don’t care if they are division champs; when the division is the 2010 NFC West, exceptions need to be made. The ESPN guys keep saying things like “they are division champs, they earned their playoff spot” and “the rules are the rules.” Well guess what, it’s time to change them. Parity exists and talent fluctuates in the NFL; there’s always going to be reasonably the same amount of crap teams as there are studs. That’s why a realignment of the divisions would be an absurd overreaction. Plus, you never really know what direction teams are heading in, and changing the divisions up wouldn’t necessarily prevent something like this from happening again in the future. I think the answer is simple: if you don’t finish above .500, if you don’t finish with a winning record, you don’t make the playoffs. You forfeit your team’s spot to the next best wild card team. (Giants fans could appreciate that. Sidenote: I also think seeding should be based upon record solely. Scrap the division titles). I’ve had two years to think about this. When the 2008 Pats finished 11-5 behind Matt Cassel but still missed the playoffs because the 8-8 Chargers won the west, I knew a better solution needed to be found.

But alas, I am just a tiny voice with no power, and instead the Stinkhawks will get a home playoff game against the 11-5 Saints. If you were watching that game on Sunday night, and you are a football fan, you had to have been rooting for the Rams. I would’ve excepted even them at 8-8 because that’s happened before. But 7-9? I don’t care if I was from Seattle, I would not have been pulling for the Seahawks. I hope the Saints go into Qwest Field and pummel them by 50. I want the game called at halftime due to Mercy Rule. I want the Stinkhawks disbanded after the season because of this game. Why am I so passionate about this? Because watching Sunday night’s game, as it became obvious Seattle was going to win, they made me start to hate the game of football. I started noticing all the little inaccuracies and flaws in the game (like the spotting of the football and chain measurements), and the game of football started to diminish in my mind. I had to snap myself out of afterwards and give myself a pep talk. This is the NFL. You love this. You live for this. It’s playoff time. Your team is looking good. Stay positive.

America loves an underdog. This is completely true for me as well. Come March, I’m pulling for every single 16-seed to make the Final Four. I can’t get enough upsets. But this weekend, you can be sure that I am going to root against Seattle with every fiber of my being. And once they become the first team to get blasted out of the playoffs on Saturday afternoon, I’ll spend some time trying to erase this debacle from my memory. No team with a losing record ever made the NFL playoffs.

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