Power Ranking the Last 10 Years: The First 7.

Well, it’s been quite a week hasn’t it? Football is back in a big way. From a about 10 days ago, when we were staring into the labor abyss and wondering if there would in fact be any season beyond lawyers, meetings, and press conferences, we’ve seen free agency go nuts, camps open, and we’re less than 2 weeks from preseason games (there would’ve been one next Sunday had they not cancelled the Hall of Fame Game.

I was planning on writing about everything that’s been going on, but decided against it. First of all, I won’t be reporting anything new. Secondly, it’s still impossible to tell how any of these moves will shake out long term. The team that wins the Super Bowl in July very rarely wins it in February.

I got to thinking earlier today about which teams have had the worst last decade in the NFL. I was planning on writing a thing on the 5 teams with the worst last 10 seasons (from 2001-2010). But it occurs to me that list would be fairly obvious: Buffalo, Cleveland, Houston, and Detroit have made the playoffs a grand total of once (Cleveland in 2002). There really wouldn’t be anything fascinating in my putting those 4 and then say Cincinnati or Washington on the list.

So I’ve decided to go with all 32 teams in order. Of course this will be arbitrary. But I’m going to try and put myself in the shoes of a fan of each team and decide how I’d feel about the past decade. This would mean that the top of the list will be heavily weighted with Championship teams. After that though, it get a bit murky. Have the Cardinals, who’ve been bad most of the decade but have a Super Bowl appearance, really had a better decade than the Chargers? I don’t think so.

The things I’ll be counting are Championships, Playoff appearances, performance against rivals, heartbreaking losses, missed opportunities to win big, and other less identifiable things. I started by grouping the teams, and then ranking within those groups. My explanations appear after each entry. This was incredibly difficult and if I did it again, I’d probably come up with a different list. As a final note, I’m trying to weigh the last 10 years evenly, so if a team was good in the early part of the decade but stinks now, I won’t weight the last half more than the first half. I’m also giving no weight to the future (for example, many people think the Lions future is bright; that won’t factor in here.

Once again, the years in play here are 2001-2010. Tonight we'll tackle the top 2 categories: teams that have won a Super Bowl in the Decade.

The Multiple Championships Group:

1. New England – They objectively have to be number one. 3 titles, 4 Conference Championship games. Had a 16-0 season and have only missed the playoffs twice in this era; and one of those was year Tom Brady got hurt and still went 11-5. Have not had a losing record in the decade

2. Pittsburgh- Two Super Bowl titles with a third appearance. Have made the playoffs 7 times in the decade and have remarkably won at least 1 playoff game in 6 of those years. One of the few teams to ever win Super Bowls with different coaches. Below New England by ring count, but a dominating decade nonetheless.

The One Championship Group:

3. Indianapolis: A Super Bowl win and another appearance. The best regular season team in this past decade. Missed the playoffs in 2001 (the first year counting towards this list) and have made 9 straight postseason appearances since then, winning 7 division titles in the process. Have actually had their fair share of heartbreaking losses to end seasons, but 2006 title and regular season dominance place them at the top of this category.

4. Green Bay: Super Bowl win in 2010. 7 total playoff appearances. Managed to switch from a legendary QB to a guy who is now arguably the best player in the NFL. Have actually endured a few double-digit loss seasons in this decade as well, but a title, an NFC title game appearance in 2007, and so many winning seasons puts them comfortably in 4^th- they’re not close to the Colts, but well ahead of the next few as well.

5. New York Giants: Super Bowl win in 2007. 5 total playoff appearances in the decade. Only finished below .500 three times in the time frame. Have had a series of second half collapses, but made the playoffs 4 years in a row, winning 2 division titles in the process. Very close with the Saints on this ranking.

6. New Orleans: Super Bowl champions in 2009. The Giants narrowly edge them out because the Saints only have 3 total playoff appearances in the decade. They’ve been remarkably balanced, only losing more than 9 games in the post-Katrina season of 2005. If we’re weighing the early part of the decade though, the Jim Haslett/ Aaron Brooks teams are a huge strike against. Also made an NFC title game in the miracle season of 2006, but amount of mediocre seasons places them just below the Giants.

7. Tampa Bay: Super Bowl Champions in 2002. 4 total playoff appearances. Actually a distant 7^th on this list despite more playoff appearances than New Orleans. 2002 is the only year in this decade in which they’ve won a playoff games. Also managed only a 79-81 record for the decade. Some teams lower on this list would undoubtedly love the decade the Bucs had, but they are last among equals in this group.

THAT'LL DO IT FOR TONIGHT. THE NEXT 2 CATEGORIES WILL BE REVEALED NEXT.

Roger and De

Mommy and Daddy: Please stop fighting.





As promised, I'm back.

What a roller-coaster few days it's been as the NFL lockout inched dangerously close to August 1st, and things starting to get missed. The 2011 NFL lockout has been looming over football fans since the beginning of the 2010 season. All last year it was “This could be the last Super Bowl for a few years” “With the impending labor situation…..” and my personal favorite thing to tag at the end of any football sentence “…if there is football* next year.”

All along, I’ve been fairly unwavering in my prediction. I said that yes, there would be a lockout, and it would last awhile. But I always thought it would be settled at the last possible moment before games started getting cancelled. Now that we were at that time, last week seemed like the week it finally came to an end. The players would vote Wednesday, the owners Thursday, and the warm glow of football would be washing over us by next week. But then the players didn’t vote Wednesday. Or Thursday. After the owners ratified, the players screamed Shenanigans and said the owners were trying to screw them. But by Thursday night, we were told all had calmed down and they would vote Friday. Then they didn’t vote Friday and we were told they weren’t going to work over the weekend. Oh and by the way, no vote Monday either. Or Tuesday. Suddenly the players, the sympathetic ones in this whole thing, were acting like entitled pricks. They were the only guy in the frat house sober enough to drive. “Dude, we’ll go when I’m ready to go. Shut up.” After months of being confident, yesterday I switched my demeanor to “this isn’t getting done until at least September.”

Are you tired of seeing images like this yet? AP thinks they're clever every time.










But today, there’s been progress. The most unlikely scenario came true. Roger Goddell and DeMaurice Smith, who’ve basically spent the last 6 months calling each other Hitler-in-a-suit got together and hashed it out. The players committee votes to recommend passage Monday. The doors open Wednesday and by Friday, the whole union recertifies and ratifies.

The lockout is over.

We all should be pretty pissed. This thing could have been done in April. I’m sure if you took what both of their positions were at the start of this thing and met each one halfway, it would look remarkably similar to what the final CBA will end up looking like. Roger Goddell let Jerry Richardson, a guy who has owned a team for 15 years (an infancy in the NFL, where families like the Halas’s, Mara’s, and Brown’s have owned teams anywhere from 50-80 years) dictate a hard-line approach that forced the players to dig in. DeMaurice Smith played the part of hotshot new union head who wanted to stand up to the man and in the process make a name for himself outside of football (rumor has it Smith has his eyes on political office eventually). They played this incredibly ballsy game of chicken and were within days of killing the golden goose.

But when I finally saw from credible sources that this thing was done- not close, or progressing well, but done, all I felt was relief. I am just so glad there’s going to be football this year that I’m not even mad about the lockout. I’m like a wife who’s finally fed up with her husband, but when he comes back with a dozen roses, all is instantly forgiven. But it’s not just because football is my favorite sport, and the Giants are my favorite team. It’s that unlike any other sport or team, my life is tangibly better during football season. I spend all week looking forward to the games, making picks, participating in fantasy football, and talking about what to expect the next week. In New York, “Football Friday’s” on WFAN are basically 8 hours of getting you excited for Sunday’s action. From February through August, Sundays are just the day before Monday. It’s a day to run errands, do laundry, and wind down from the weekend. During football season, Sunday is actually part of the weekend. Often times the best part. The first 2 Sundays of March Madness are good, and if you’re a wrestling fan like me, Wrestlemania Sunday is as well. But other than that, nothing comes close to those 16 holidays in the fall and winter. On Sundays during football season, I get up early because I’m excited. I get to spend all day with my friends, eating and drinking either huge amounts of soda or huge amounts of beer, depending on the outcome. I come home, watch the NFL wrap-up shows (unless the Giants blow a 3 touchdown lead in the 4^th Quarter) and listen to the radio all day Monday. Then there’s a game on Monday night. And then it starts all over again.

I haven't had a Coke in 4 months. When the season finally comes I'm going to hammer like twice my usual output. And my usual amount is like twice what a normal human should drink.






In a lot of ways, this lockout has made me appreciate football more, as strange as that seems. My sports year has a pretty regular flow to it. February is slow, punctuated only by La Salle A-10 games and Knicks games- which are almost always maddeningly at the same time. Then in March is my annual trip to AC for the Atlantic 10 tournament. Right after that it’s 3 weeks of March Madness. The first week of April is Opening Day of the baseball season and Wrestlemania. After that it’s the basketball playoffs right up through June. During all of this, baseball ebbs and flows. I might watch every pitch of every inning for a week straight, and then barely catch any of the next 3 or 4 games. Once it’s just baseball in mid-June, we’re in a bit of a dead-zone.

By about August 1^st, I start feeling the itch. The heat starts getting annoying, baseball hits the dog days, and I start looking forward to the first Sunday after Labor Day. As we’ve been getting closer to August, and the lockout was still in place, the concern of my usual routine being interrupted started upsetting me. I wanted to believe all of the good news, because I was simply too scared of what the bad news might mean for me.

But now that we look pretty good for this thing to end, with only the Hall of Fame game being sacrificed, I’m too relieved to be pissed. NFL football is simply different then every other sport because every game is an occasion, every week a holiday. So now that the prospect of missing it was becoming very real, I’m going to be that much more grateful when it’s back.

Sunday at 1 on September 11^th can’t come soon enough.

*For the purposes of this article (and really this site) football means NFL football. If you think it means soccer or college football, I’d like to invite you to go back to Europe or Mississippi, respectively.