Welcome to the 2024-25 Gross Football Lunch NFL Playoffs MegaColumn! The MegaColumn is Gross Football Lunch tradition, a celebration of both the excitement of the football to come and the polite boredom and vague sadness of reflecting on the regular season at its conclusion. There’s a lot to get to in this column and precious little time to write and edit any of it, which means it’s time to dive right in!
Playoff Confidence Pool
We made it! It’s finally time for the playoffs! Now is the time for increased excitement and increased terror, and what better way to amplify both of those emotions in equal measure than with the gauntlet of poor decisions and protracted suffering that is the Playoff Confidence Pool!
The Playoff Confidence Pool rules are as follows:
- Each playoff team is assigned a point value from 1-14, with 14 indicating highest confidence, and 1 indicating lowest confidence.
- You only assign your point values once! All 14 assignments must be made prior to the start of the first Wild Card Game, and cannot be altered after that time!
- After each playoff game, you receive points equal to the value you assigned to the winning team.
- Most total points after the conclusion of the Super Bowl wins. For the purposes of this column, I will note the points earned from winning teams, the points lost on losing teams, and the difference between the two in this space, both for the previous week and the duration of the playoffs.
The practical upshots of this system are reasonably obvious, but because I am nothing if not a generous man/irredeemable sap, I’m going to point them out for everyone, anyway. First and foremost, you want to assign 14 points to the team you believe will win the Super Bowl, 13 points to the team you believe will lose the Super Bowl, 12 and 11 points to your presumed Conference runners-up, and so on. You’re not betting the money lines, here; the goal is not to find the best value propositions, or to exploit market inefficiencies (with some exceptions, which I’ll get to in a bit). Your only goal is to assign higher values to teams that you believe will go farther, and lower values to teams that you believe will be eliminated earlier.
Note that when making your picks, it is unspeakably helpful to consider the actual playoff bracket, and which teams are likely to play each other. For example, if you believe that the Bears would beat the Eagles as they did in the regular season should they meet again in the playoffs, don’t put more points on the Bears than the Eagles! In light of this, I urge you on the strongest possible terms to make a playoff bracket and fill it in according to your picks for each game to organize your thoughts, as doing so will prevent these and other cognitive dissonance-based errors.
Now, about those inefficiencies that are worth paying attention to. Since the final pool standings are determined by total points earned, and since the teams with byes are going to be playing fewer games than the teams playing Wild Card weekend, do give a very serious look to teams playing in the Wild Card Round that stand to make a deep run, and consider giving them big points. With only one bye in each conference, this is a much easier task than it used to be, since at least one team in each conference is mathematically guaranteed to make it from the Wild Card Round to the Conference Championship.
The second inefficiency is very closely tied to the first. Lots of people in your pool are going to go chalk on their point values. There’s going to be a lots of sheets with 14 on the Chiefs and 13 on the Lions (or vice versa); I anticipate that the Eagles, Ravens, and Bills are going to be popular high picks, as well. If you think any of these teams are frauds, or if you think some of the other teams in the field are being slept on, go with your gut and pick against the grain. Playoff pool standings are going to be tight. If you do find a sleeper team or two, you stand to get big points while the chalk-pickers weep.
But again, keep in mind that once the Lombardi Trophy is hoisted, the only thing that matters is your total points. Successfully exploited inefficiencies are great and all, but don’t make any decisions solely because you find those inefficiencies tempting. Exercise extreme caution, and make sure you’re making all of your assignments for a real reason. If being thorough and deliberate about your assignments leads you to put high points on a team others are sleeping on, great, but don’t force yourself to make those assignments if you don’t believe in them.
Finally, note that every Playoff Pool sheet will involve some sort of tiebreaker. Common tiebreakers include Super Bowl final score predictions, total points scored in the Super Bowl, margin of victory in the Super Bowl, etc. Please consult with your pool’s organizer for tiebreaker procedures. With all of that in mind, here are my picks for the Playoff Confidence Pool:
14 Points: Houston Texans
Let’s get this out of the way, right away: I am ignoring almost all of the above advice for this year’s playoffs. Chaos, unpredictability, and offensive dysfunction have defined this season of professional football, and I don’t believe I’m alone in viewing the top two seeds in both conferences with a certain degree of skepticism. As much as I would like to tell my readers and my own self that this is a healthy amount of skepticism, I can’t be certain it is.
All of this is to say that if you can’t be confident in your confidence pool, you can at least have some fun, and you can’t have fun filling out your sheet if filling out your sheet becomes a protracted exercise in doubting your own senses. Every time I have seen Houston’s defense in action this year, my senses have told me, “Sweet Merciful Metroids, this defense is an unholy terror and a championship-caliber team all by itself.” If you feel similarly about the Seahawks’ or Broncos’ defenses, I understand and am receptive to your arguments, but for my money, this is the scariest unit in the playoffs. You can’t win if you can’t score, and man oh man is it tough to score when you’re facing both the best edge rushing duo and the best cornerback duo at the same time.
Houston also has the best quarterback of these three teams, and by no small margin. Yes, C.J. Stroud is forced to run for his life at all times and receives no support from the run game, but you can’t tell me Stroud is incapable of playing four good games, or, failing that, four games good enough to surpass whatever miserable point total the opposition manages to muster.
13 Points: Philadelphia Eagles
I do my best to avoid long-winded sermonizing on the concept of analytics in football, but the fact of the matter is that I only have so much to say about this year’s playoff field and I have a take on analytics I think I’m ready to share with the world, so fuck it, here we go. My take is this: the project of analytics is an unambiguous good. Our understanding of the sport can and has improved thanks to the introduction of advanced statistics that explain the game better than conventional stats, as well as the constant audit of what constitutes good, process-based decision making in the sport of football.
There is no problem with either of these things that the people who work hard on this stuff can’t interrogate and fix. My problem, therefore, is not with analytics in and of themselves, rather, it is a complaint with how they are used as their tenets become more and more foundational in football discourse. It seems to me a lot of people are all too eager to use the scalpels of football analytics as sledgehammers. To name but one example, “A top-tier workhorse running back is not as important as a typical fan, coach, or GM might assume circa 2004-5” was repeatedly pounded into cutlets by ham-fisted internet stupidity, until this seemingly broad but actually quite specific idea was flattened into “all running backs are interchangeable, and will succeed or fail solely as a function of their run blocking”, which is absurd on its face.
Lest I get bogged down in further examples, allow me to turn to the subject of sustainability in football. One of the ideas advanced statistics points to is the idea that some aspects of success in football are more repeatable than others. Offensive success is more sustainable than defensive success, statistically speaking, and the Eagles’ fan base appears to have internalized this fact in order to use it as an ever-thornier whip they can use for their routine self-flagellations.
I do not deny that the Eagles offense has looked rough throughout the season. They can’t run, can’t tush push, and can’t seem to get the ball to one of their two elite wide receivers with any consistency. If you were to listen to any piece of Eagles discourse from any source, you may be tempted to conclude that the Eagles were forced to rescind last year’s Lombardi as a result. But, if you have the sense to realize that the fan base that complains about everything all the time is merely doing what they’d be doing anyway, you’ll notice that their nigh-unblockable defensive front is as healthy as can be at this point in the season, and just about any uptick in offensive efficacy will make the Eagles all but unstoppable. They are, despite their faults, the most trustworthy team in the NFC, and no amount of agonized calls in to WIP can change that.
12 Points: Los Angeles Rams
What am I to make of the Rams, who appeared for all the world to be the best team in football until they weren’t? If I take as given that the distribution of roster talent across the league is the closest to true parity has ever been, it follows that the level of competition will be the highest it has ever been. Final scores will be closer, every roster will include excellent football players, and upsets will be practically routine. And yet, even if I do believe these things, I cannot believe that the best football team in the entire NFL is capable of losing to the Atlanta Falcons. Ask yourself, if the best team in football can lose to the Falcons, can being the best team in football carry any possible meaning?
Yet the Rams remain this high in my pool because when they’re good, they are really goddamn good. Davante Adams is expected to play after a few weeks on the shelf, which is a big deal. Their loss to the Panthers earlier in the season is concerning in advance of this weekend’s rematch, but not frightening. Good teams lose to other, lesser playoff teams in the regular season all the time, only to reassert their dominance when it matters most. That said, winning four games on the road, outside, in January, is an exceptionally tall order. I would rank them tops in NFC had they managed to hang on to the #1 seed, but they didn’t, so I can’t.
11 Points: Buffalo Bills
Allow me to return once again to the concept of sense data. You simply can’t tell me Josh Allen can’t get hot for four games, nor can you tell me the Bills are so much worse than the upstarts at the top of the AFC bracket that their playoff push is doomed. The run defense is an abomination, of course, and their penchant for taking the first half off is even more concerning. It’s hard to win if you can’t stop the run, and it’s hard to mount a comeback when your opponent can use the run game to squat on their lead. All of this would be disqualifying for teams with lesser quarterbacks, so good on Buffalo for not having that problem, at least.
10 Points: Jacksonville Jaguars
Consider this your annual reminder that new offenses take time. Trevor Lawrence was struggling and struggling mightily in the early stretches of the season, only to go nuclear in the back half. Growing pains of the sort Lawrence experienced are among the most normal phenomena in professional football, but they are also among the most likely to inspire sky-is-falling panic attacks among fans and pundits alike. What a difference two to three months can make in this sport, eh? This team is scary, and has everything they need for a deep playoff run. They have a very good quarterback throwing to a very good receiving corps, supported by a good enough ground game and a pretty good pass rush. All of this would merit more points for a franchise with more prestige and a head coach with a longer resume. But these are the Jags, and I have no idea what manner of game management blunders Coen is capable of.
9 Points: Seattle Seahawks
Part of me feels this is deeply disrespectful, and perhaps I will pay the price for it. The Seahawks are an excellent football team with an outstanding defense and home field advantage. And say what you will about Sam Darnold, but it’s clear to me that he has, at the very least, grown into a starting quarterback a team can Win With, even if he will never be a quarterback a team Wins Because Of. And yet, think of it this way. Let us assume, for the moment, that the Rams handle business on Saturday and go to Seattle in the second round. How confident are you that the Seahawks will prevail? From where I’m sitting, they sure could beat the Rams again, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. That means I am compelled to give them some real points, but not so many that my pool gets blown to smithereens if they end up a one-and-done.
8 Points: Chicago Bears
I hate the Bears, of course, but I also kind of love this Bears team. They’re fun! The Bears are perennial garbage merchants, even in those seasons where their specific brand of slopball proved effective. Caleb Williams is sort of coming along, but even if he remains an unfinished product, some of those throws are real pretty. Luther Burden and Colston Loveland are two of the best and most exciting rookies in recent memory. The ground game is awesome, and few things in football are more aesthetically pleasing than a well-executed run play. But! There’s always a but, isn’t there? Their defense is too dependent on turnovers and Williams is still too prone to Young QB Panic. A win (or even two!) is possible, but I can’t see them getting past Seattle or L.A. if it comes to that.
7 Points: Los Angeles Chargers
As you, my loyal readers, are well aware, I have no earthy idea how a team without a single functional tackle made it this far, and the time and bandwidth I have for researching these things is minimal. This is both the gift and the curse of amateur punditry. On the one hand, since I make no secret of the fact that no one is paying me to do this, I am under no real compulsion to hide the fact that I haven’t watched every game at all, let alone in any detail, let alone in enough detail to have informed opinions about every team. On the other hand, I’m getting a little sick of making it to yet another playoffs where I know for a fact that I have no fucking clue what’s going on. Anyway, why am I giving the Chargers 7 points if I don’t even know how they win games? Because fuck the Patriots, that’s why.
6 Points: Denver Broncos
This is another one of those situations where it helps to think concretely about actual playoff scenarios. The Broncos’ potential opponents in the Divisional Round are the Steelers, Texans, Bills, and Chargers. The Texans will see the Broncos’ puny attempts at winning a rock fight and come equipped with rocks of equal size wielded with functionally equal (if not superior) proficiency, plus a quarterback who is actually pretty good instead of good enough to do what’s asked of him (which is not nothing, but is historically not good enough in the playoffs). Josh Allen’s mere presence means the Bills can never be discounted, especially in a tight contest. The Chargers are division rivals, and while the Broncos are assuredly better in the absolute sense (whatever that means) rivalry chaos is real and precludes the possibility of easy victory, and these Broncos aren’t capable of easy victory in the first place.
5 Points: New England Patriots
Too soon man, too fucking soon. Couldn’t you assholes have found a way to spend a decade or three floundering? I guess I’ll have to settle for the next best thing, which is betting that the gaudy win total on display is a function of their pathetically easy schedule, and that Jim Harbaugh’s depth of experience at being an ornery rat bastard surpasses Mike Vrabel’s raw talent at said.
4 Points: San Francisco 49ers
Goddamn, this is taking forever, which means this is taking forever and a half relative to the amount of actual football wisdom I have to impart, here. Let’s speed this up. To think that there was a time when my main criticism of Kyle Shanahan was that his teams seemed to fold and pack the tent as soon as the injury reports got too long. He deserves all the credit in the world for dragging this entire hospital ward this far, and even more credit for restoring the spark of life to Robert Saleh’s eyes, but the only way this defense can get a stop these days is if their opponent stops themselves. Fortunately, I’m sure there are plenty of places in the Bay area that will give out free ice cream for moral victories.
3 Points: Green Bay Packers
The Packers were an actual Super Bowl contender with Micah Parsons on the field, and they are jack shit plus interest without him. Any talk of how any team is meant to make a playoff run must necessarily start with what units or players said team can rely on when the chips are down, and who in the hell could that possibly be for the Packers? Jordan Love is only so good, none of the receivers are world-beaters, the offensive line is a mess, Josh Jacobs is only one guy, and the defense is a drink without a spoon to stir it.
2 Points: Pittsburgh Steelers
Ask not if the Steelers are headed straight towards another dispiriting first round playoff exit, ask if this dispiriting first round playoff exit costs Mike Tomlin his job.
1 Point: Carolina Panthers
Alas, the poor Carolina Panthers can’t catch a break. Two years ago, the Panthers were an absolute laughingstock, and now, having won the NFC South and secured a playoff game to be played in the friendly confines of their home field, the Panthers…remain an absolute laughingstock. This lesson, as always, is that life sucks and so does football.
Wild Card Round Picks
I’m sure I’ve said as much before, but in the days prior to the legalization of sports betting, I was in favor of it. I figured, people are going to bet on sports whether it’s legal or not, so why not legalize it so it can be openly regulated and taxed and all that? Now, of course, legalized betting has become a blight on civilization generally, and has made every aspect of the sports watching experience worse, specifically. I’m absolutely fucking sick of it, and I know I’m not alone.
Therefore, I have decided to stop making picks against the spread for this year’s playoffs. Back when spread betting was more clandestine, making spread picks in the playoffs was cheeky and fun. Now that any spread betting material may encourage some poor bastard to hop on their phones and make some terrible life choices, making these picks has become cruel and tragic. Also, making spread picks is work, and doing it right requires that I know what I’m talking about, and as I said above, that ship has already sailed.
Instead, I will be picking games straight up. My picks may or may not directly contradict a team’s assignment in the confidence pool, because life’s too short to hold oneself to internal consistency at all times, and I reserve the right to change my viewpoints based on whatever new information comes to light in the coming weeks. As always, for the Wild Card Round and the Wild Card Round only, I will let you know if I think this game is worth your time or not. Six games in three days is too damn many.
My picks for each game are given in bold.
Los Angeles Rams at Carolina Panthers
Should You Watch This Game: You certainly shouldn’t feel like you have to watch this one, I’ll put it that way. The Rams’ self-destructive trip to Charlotte in late November can only loom as large as you want it to. The fact of the matter is that regular season upsets that turn into playoff rematches often go the other way, and the more baffling the original upset was, the more vengeful the superior team often is. Put it this way, I’m not going to watch this game from start to finish, but I will keep a tab on the score and hop in during the second half if the score catches my attention. Given how poorly the Panthers played last week, I can’t say I expect it to.
Green Bay Packers at Chicago Bears
Should You Watch This Game: This is where they get ya. My longstanding policy is that you should always skip any playoff game that is hiding behind a subscription service paywall, because the playoffs are for the people, goddammit! And yet, both Bears/Packers games this season were absolute bangers, and even with Parsons gone for the whole game this one should be, too. If you have already sworn fealty as one of Bezos’ loyal cattle vassals and don’t have anything cooler to do on a Saturday, then I cannot and will not discourage you from watching, what with the sunk cost fallacy being as compelling as it is and all. If you are not, it may be worth seeing if you can catch the game at your local watering hole instead of prostrating yourself directly.
Buffalo Bills at Jacksonville Jaguars
Should You Watch This Game: Yes, this is the game of the weekend, without a doubt. The Jags are fun as all hell, and have a swagger that approaches Team of Destiny (that gets knocked in the second round, but that’s a later problem) levels. This could easily become a shootout and even if it doesn’t, I expect lots of big plays in one way or another. You’ll notice that I have more points on the Bills, and yet I am picking the Jaguars. This is my half-assed way of hedging my pick, as I truly don’t know what is going to happen in this one. I just know it’s going to be fun for everyone, except Bills fans, whose complete psychological disintegration is assured, win or lose.
San Francisco 49ers at Philadelphia Eagles
Should You Watch This Game: It is unethical to recommend that anyone watch the 2025 Philadelphia Eagles. Even when they’re winning, it is not aesthetically pleasing in any conventional sense, and I don’t think it’s pleasing in any unconventional senses, either. Listen, I spend way too much time online these days, and I haven’t seen anyone even try to defend their offense, even as a joke. That the 49ers really don’t stand much chance of moving the ball themselves lessens the odds of an upset, which in turn lessens the chances that anything noteworthy will occur, save injuries.
Los Angeles Chargers at New England Patriots
Should You Watch This Game: Yes, because even though the Patriots suck and I’m mad they stopped actually sucking already, the fact of the matter is that Drake Maye can throw some heat and Justin Herbert can do likewise. I for one do not require that a deep pass be completed in order to get some cheap thrills from watching such a pass. Look at that thing! It’s up so high! It’s spinning so fast! It’s going so far! I wonder what’s gonna happen when it comes down! Aw nuts, that safety was right there, huh? Maybe next time. Also, if the Pats lose the broadcast is sure to feature some high-quality sad fan faces.
Houston Texans at Pittsburgh Steelers
Should You Watch This Game: Whether you should watch this game or not depends entirely on how much fun you will have watching Aaron Rodgers make disappointed gremlin bitch faces, for what might be the final time. Personally, I think I’ve seen enough of those for one lifetime, and now that he doesn’t play for the Packers it’s not quite as fun to watch Rodgers eat it. He’s done that enough already, and while it’s always welcome it never feels special anymore, y’know?
Pre-season Predictions, Revisited
Finally, in the interest of accountability and transparency, here are eight tables comparing my predictions for each division – as put forth in the Pessimist’s Guide to the 2025-26 NFL season – to the actual final results of each division. I will also highlight my best and worst prediction for each division, as curated by me, with additional commentary on selected predictions. Expect less commentary than in previous years; last year, I was so shocked at how accurate some of my predictions turned out that I decided to show my receipts to the world. This year, my under-researched, under-thought, and frequently dismissive predictions turned out to be under-researched, under-thought, and dismissive, and the results are shameful. There is nothing to brag about. ‘
Also, before I forget, here are my final totals for the regular season confidence pool:
Week 18 Correct Picks: 9/16 (0.563)
Season Total Correct Picks: 174/268 (0.649)
Week 18 Points: 86/136 (0.632)
Season Total Points: 1,498/2,184 (0.686)
Like I said last week, that may be short of my yearly goal of 0.700+ in both categories, but after this bizarre season I’ll take it, especially since I kept my double-digit whiffs low. Good enough! Now time for some tables:
AFC East
| Team | Actual Finish | Predicted Finish | Playoffs? (Actual) | Playoffs? (Predicted) |
| Patriots | 1st | 2nd | Y | N |
| Bills | 2nd | 1st | Y | Y |
| Dolphins | 3rd | 4th | N | N |
| Jets | 4th | 3rd | N | N |
Placement Prediction Accuracy: 0.000
Playoff Prediction Accuracy: 0.250
Best Prediction: “…a team that is built to win nine games each year cannot transcend those expectations; it can only meet them briefly before inevitably falling short of them.” This was written in reference to the Dolphins, who only won 7 games. But really, I should recuse myself from declaring any of my predictions here to be the ‘Best’, even in relative terms, as the above table demonstrates.
Worst Prediction: “Give [Mike Vrabel] an untalented roster and he’ll squeeze six hideous wins out of them come hell or high water, but to no long-term benefit. This is not a talented roster.” This could be a lot worse, as the Patriots still aren’t all that impressive, roster-talent wise, but 14 wins is a hell of a lot more than 6.
AFC South
| Team | Actual Finish | Predicted Finish | Playoffs? (Actual) | Playoffs? (Predicted) |
| Jaguars | 1st | 1st | Y | Y |
| Texans | 2nd | 2nd | Y | N |
| Colts | 3rd | 4th | N | N |
| Titans | 4th | 3rd | N | N |
Placement Prediction Accuracy: 0.500
Playoff Prediction Accuracy: 0.750
Best Prediction: “I should really take the Texans here, but their god-awful, self sabotaging offensive line from last year only got worse(!) in the offseason, to a degree that can and will sink their whole campaign.” It didn’t sink their campaign entirely, but it sure looked like it was going to for the first couple of months there. Also, you’ll note that this was the only actual, substantial prediction in this section. Props to me for piercing the veil and picking the Jags, even if I certainly didn’t think they’d win 13(!) games.
Worst Prediction: Predicting a third place dead cat bounce for the Titans, who were so dreadful that they fired Brian Callahan after Week 2. They remain awful and are likely to remain so, even though I’m told Cam Ward looked good. This is unverified hearsay however, because I have too much self respect to watch the Titans.
AFC West
| Team | Actual Finish | Predicted Finish | Playoffs? (Actual) | Playoffs? (Predicted) |
| Broncos | 1st | 2nd | Y | Y |
| Chargers | 2nd | 3rd | Y | Y |
| Chiefs | 3rd | 1st | N | Y |
| Raiders | 4th | 4th | N | N |
Placement Prediction Accuracy: 0.250
Playoff Prediction Accuracy: 0.750
Best Prediction: “I am also skeptical of the Culture Change coaching hire; if changing the culture could fix the Raiders, they would have been fixed decades ago.”
Worst Prediction: “I have too much lingering respect for Pete Carroll to dismiss the Raiders out of hand, but I can find no rational basis for believing they will be anything more than a mediocre tough out.” Al Davis would rise from his grave and drain every drop of blood from Mark’s body in an infernal and blasphemous worship ceremony unto Orcus if it could bring the Raiders even that much.
AFC North
| Team | Actual Finish | Predicted Finish | Playoffs? (Actual) | Playoffs? (Predicted) |
| Steelers | 1st | 3rd | N | Y |
| Ravens | 2nd | 1st | Y | N |
| Bengals | 3rd | 2nd | Y | N |
| Browns | 4th | 4th | N | N |
Placement Prediction Accuracy: 0.250
Playoff Prediction Accuracy: 0.250
Best Prediction: “…the Ravens are the most historically vulnerable of the AFC’s Big Three.” Maybe they weren’t as vulnerable as the Chiefs, but it was far less shocking when the Ravens endured a season where everything went wrong.
Worst Prediction: “If the Bengals got their act together on defense (and didn’t take September off for a change), they could make a real push.” No, they couldn’t. The first rule of sports prognostication is Don’t Pick the Outlier, and last season’s Bengals hot streak was the outlier. Relatedly, if Joe Burrow does in fact want to force his way out of town, I can think of another team that could use a new quarterback that also happens to have one of his college receivers on the roster. Just sayin’.
NFC East
| Team | Actual Finish | Predicted Finish | Playoffs? (Actual) | Playoffs? (Predicted) |
| Eagles | 1st | 1st | Y | Y |
| Cowboys | 2nd | 3rd | N | N |
| Commanders | 3rd | 2nd | Y | N |
| Giants | 4th | 4th | N | N |
Placement Prediction Accuracy: 0.500
Playoff Prediction Accuracy: 0.750
Best Prediction: “The Giants…have one good receiver and a theoretically decent pass rush, but you can’t win if you can’t score. And don’t come at me with Jaxson Dart optimism; just two years ago, fucking Kenny Pickett was generating the same kind of hype for putting together nice tape in meaningless games. My point is the bottom of this division in completely locked in before the season even starts.” Sometimes I do have the sense not to pick the outlier, although smelling the hype around Dart and realizing there must be a gas leak is an easy a prediction as you’ll find.
Worst Prediction: “ That leaves the division up for grabs between the Eagles and the Commies.” The Commanders playoff hopes didn’t survive the month of October. That said, much of the NFC East portion of the preview was an examination of how the Commanders’ season could go sideways, and in a year where my predictions turned out to be largely wrong, I find this worth celebrating. I didn’t completely misread a division, Mission Accomplished!
NFC South
| Team | Actual Finish | Predicted Finish | Playoffs? (Actual) | Playoffs? (Predicted) |
| Panthers | 1st | 2nd | Y | N |
| Buccaneers | 2nd | 1st | N | Y |
| Falcons | 3rd | 3rd | N | N |
| Saints | 4th | 4th | N | N |
Placement Prediction Accuracy: 0.500
Playoff Prediction Accuracy: 0.500
Best Prediction: “…you are not take the Falcons seriously.” To be frank, I felt like I heard less of the baseless Falcons hype that plagued recent preseasons this time around, but there’s never a wrong time to write of the Falcons. And, now that the team has fired Raheem Morris for the unforgivable sin of going 8-9 – just like the division-winning Panthers, mind you – I foresee 2-20 years of the franchise stumbling blindly through the wilderness. Terry Fontenot actually needed to go, though.
Worst Prediction: “The Buccaneers seem content just doing their thing at this point, and you can join the rest of us in penciling them in for a fifth consecutive division title as long as you don’t even think of calling them contenders.”
NFC West
| Team | Actual Finish | Predicted Finish | Playoffs? (Actual) | Playoffs? (Predicted) |
| Seahawks | 1st | 3rd | Y | N |
| Rams | 2nd | 2nd | Y | N |
| 49ers | 3rd | 1st | Y | Y |
| Cardinals | 4th | 4th | N | N |
Placement Prediction Accuracy: 0.250
Playoff Prediction Accuracy: 0.500
Best Prediction: “ I’m sick to death of fooling myself into picking the Cardinals to win anything; if the Cardinals were capable of winning, they wouldn’t be the Cardinals, would they?” Right on cue, the Cardinals fell back into the toilet after spending a portion of a stretch of last season briefly flirting with respectability. Now Jonathan Gannon is gone, Kyler is going to be shipped off this offseason, and all that the couple dozen Cardinals fans have to show for their suffering is a longing for the days of Kliff Kingsbury. Yeesh.
Worst Prediction: “…the NFC West might be a complete trainwreck. None of the teams inspire a lick of confidence.” All they did was send three teams to the playoffs, including the top seed in the NFC and the most dangerous Wild Card in either conference. What a shithole of a division, amirite?
NFC North
| Team | Actual Finish | Predicted Finish | Playoffs? (Actual) | Playoffs? (Predicted) |
| Bears | 1st | 4th | Y | N |
| Packers | 2nd | 1st | Y | Y |
| Vikings | 3rd | 2nd | N | Y |
| Lions | 4th | 3rd | N | Y |
Placement Prediction Accuracy: 0.000
Playoff Prediction Accuracy: 0.250
Best Prediction: “The Lions’ superb offensive line has been the engine of their new-found fortune, and while it’s not reasonable to expect that line to collapse entirely because of two departures, it’s more than fair to expect a drop-off. And if the line drops off, the run game will be less efficient and Jared Goff’s erratic play under pressure will be on more prominent display…Even a small fall off – a missed stunt here, a defensive stonewalling on fourth and inches there – could end up making a huge difference in the final standings.” To be fair, Goff remained his usual high-floor, low ceiling self, but all of the Lions’ issues that weren’t due to yet another rash of defensive injuries were due to the drop-off in interior line play.
Worst Prediction: “Right off the bat, let’s all take a moment to write off the Bears, shall we? Just like the rest of the league’s bottom quartile, the Bears have been so bad for so long that I can’t predict any success for them until they’ve won a few division titles and/or playoff games. Ben Johnson’s arrival at head coach does not and cannot move me from this position. If being a good offensive playcaller were the only prerequisite for being a good head coach, the open mass grave of failed young schemelords wouldn’t be so overstuffed that it putrefies every source of fresh water within a 50-mile radius.” Lo and behold, while the work of fixing the Bears is far from complete, they made a massive leap and were rewarded with the 2-seed. Perhaps more importantly, they’re fun to watch for the first time since that one Erik Kramer season.
Total Placement Prediction Accuracy: 0.281 (Pathetic! Disgraceful! Atrocious! Putrid!)
Total Playoff Prediction Accuracy: 0.594
Enjoy the games, everybody!
Rob Writes About Whatever 