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Originally Posted by Colts And Orioles
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And there have been many 8-8 teams and even some 7-9 teams that have made the playoffs, due to being in a shitty division.
Since 1978, the only two 11-5 teams ever to not to make the playoffs have been the 1985 Denver Broncos and the 2008 Patriots. If you're arguing that the luck of the draw which will often allow an 8-8 team to make the playoffs is more impressive than an extremely unlucky 11-5 team not making the playoffs, that's rather absurd. Going 11-5 with Matt Cassel as your starting quarterback is a hell of a lot more impressive than an 8-8 team or a 7-9 team sneaking into the playoffs. If that 2008 Patriots team had gone 8-8 and won their division, it would have been viewed much more as the Patriots desperately missing Brady than the fact that they went 11-5 without him. The 2020 Colts would have been the 3rd team ever to miss the playoffs with their 11-5 record, but there was an additional/7th seed added this year. I don't know anybody who would argue that the 7-9 Redskins deserved a playoff berth more and/or were a more accomplished team than the 11-5 Colts were, regardless of whether or not that 7th seed had been added.
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I say that primarily because winning 6 Super Bowls will always be a greater coaching accomplishment than an 11-5 season that didn't make the playoffs.
That, plus fuck the Patriots and Belichick.
But looking even more closely at that season, let's see who those 11 wins came against.
Four of those wins came against the teams in a division where a 9-7 team ran away with it. The NFC West was easily the worst division if the league that year.
Unless you want to count the AFC West, who' division champ was the 8-8 Chargers, who actually beat the Patriots that year. By 20 points. Of course three other NE wins came against the other three in that division.
That makes seven wins against the teams from the embarrassingly inept divisions in the league. The other four came against the 7-9 Bills (two of the wins), the 9-7 Jets, and the eventual division champion Dolphins who ended up 11-5.
That means they won three games against teams with winning records, and two of those teams had 9-7 records. The cumulative record of their opponents was 96 - 112. Hardly Murderer's Row. And yeah, no Brady, but as many have brought up over the years, the Patriots of that era were a complete team, not a top-heavy, unbalanced mix whose HoF QB had to drag to victory week after week.
Was it a good coaching job to go 11-5 with Cassell? Sure. But anyone who thinks it was best coaching job ever by a six-time SB winning coach shouldn't be taken seriously (and to be fair, you never said this, you just mentioned that some have argued this).
And yeah, I'm super bored this Sunday morning.