lol I don't know what to say anymore. math and logic are hard?

for comparisons sake, look at the dreadful NFC North. sometimes the culpepper vikes are elite, sometimes the bears have 13 win seasons, sometimes Brett favre gets first round byes for the Vikings

In the NFC south, the falcons alternate between getting first round byes and spending january in the caribbean. Cam newton went 15-1 last year, be pretty hard to top that! Brees had good teams. hell, going back 16 years the Bucs were legit elite

Now you're going to respond with something about how the bills are good

This is sooooo true. You have to go back all the way to 2016 to find an AFC East not named the patriots to make the playoffs. Think their W-L was inflated by good fortune? Then you'd have to go even further back to 2015 to find a team that was top 10 in DVOA.

Listen man, when people back up their statements with actual facts and numbers and stuff, replying with easily disprovable nonsense makes you look like a clown.

ahh yes the 17th ranked DVOA Dolphins. man they were good this year. and who could forget the 2015 Jets! Sure they missed the playoffs but they were totally #9 in DVOA!

patriot fans* are a national treasure

*celtics and sox fans included

The good news is that we have <3 years before Brady and Belichick retire, the Pats return to irrelevance and all their fans crawl back into whatever hole they crawled out of 15 years ago.

I gave you two different measures to judge a team and you crapped on both using the other as justification. Impressive work.

my broader point is clearly that there has been no elite competition. you laser focused on the argument that there's no good teams and "disproved" it using a #9 dvoa team and a #17 dvoa team (even averaging those gets to you #13. which is.... average). If you want to hang your hat on two obviously average 10-6 teams with below average QBs, one which didn't even make the playoffs (not to mention both having greater than 80:1 superbowl odds in week 17), fine.

it's pretty dumb though

This thread has the perfect recipe to produce both hilarious posts and memes and severe butt hurt

I don't even know where to start with you, since you haven't even been able to understand the basic math. and then you have goalpost shifted (twice!) from "lol who is the 2nd best QB in the division?" to

to

which is a ridiculous litmus test since it's not that common for any one division to consistently have more than 1 really good team.


Sometimes it does happens, though, like in the...

2001 AFC East! (NYJ #9, MIA #10, Pats #11 per DVOA)
Or in the 2002 AFC East! (MIA #3, Pats #7)
Or in the 2003 AFC East! (Pats #4, MIA #9)
Or in the 2004 AFC East! (Pats #2, BUF #3, NYJ #4)
Or in the 2009 AFC East! (Pats #1, NYJ #9)
Or in the 2010 AFC East! (Pats #1, NYJ #6)
Or in the 2011 AFC East! (Pats #3, NYJ #10)
Or in the 2014 AFC East! (Pats #4, BUF #9)
Or in the 2015 AFC East! (Pats #5, NYJ #9)

That's 9/16 years there have been 2 top 10 teams in the AFC East.

Are we done yet? Please say you're done. or are you going to try a 4th new argument?

I'll admit to recency bias in that there's been one top 8 dvoa team in the last 12 years (and zero top 5). maybe we have different definitions of elite? citing #9 and #10 as evidence for this is laughable

my point is that the Pats haven't faced any elite level divisional competition. Outside of '04 and '02 (when they missed the playoffs), that holds true. I do agree that the AFC East is an average division from a dvoa/winning percentage perspective.

as I posted above, almost every other division has experienced different top level dvoa teams, multiple times.

so top 8 DVOA is what you are looking for? not top 9? I'm confused bc originally your definition was "an ocassional good team" and then you said "elite team" and now you are saying "top 8 DVOA" so it keeps changing!


how about you go through each division and name all the ones that have had 2 "elite" or "good" or "top 8 DVOA" teams in the same year and compare it to the AFC East.

Lol you make a thread coz for some odd reason you are butthurt pats always have a high seed and then mock boston fans in the thread. Seems weird.

actually I like the patriots and am not annoyed by their seeding in any way. I made the thread because it's interesting and funny how uniquely terrible the AFC East has been at producing high level competition for the last 16 years. It's interesting because it's a phenomenon generally unique to the AFCe and because Brady and Belichick are generally regarded as the greatest ever. It's funny because the QBs involved on the other side are stunningly bad.

but I guess it's because everyone in the world hates New england teams because they're jealous

...

I'll be here waiting for that. I already did the AFC East DVOA results above.

That 2001 Peyton wasn't good.

74.5 rating outside.

5.25 AY/A outside.

8 TDs and 9 INTs outside.

Ton of weapons for him on offense, too. Really an awful season, worse than any Brady has ever had.

the overall point hasn't changed. "top 8" was meant to highlight that you were describing #9 dvoa teams that didn't make the playoffs as 'elite'.


well I won't do that because that would only tangentially relate to my argument. I would do that if I were trying to prove there was another Patriot level dynasty over the last 16 years that hadn't properly emerged due to competition (there obviously hasn't been). my argument, however, is that the AFC east is unique in producing basically no top-tier teams to compete with the top-est tier team of them all. Hence the poll pointing out that the best QB in 48 seasons has been Chad Pennington.

I just looked at dvoa over the last 10 seasons. the AFC east was the only division to have only one franchise finish in the top 5 dvoa (the Patriots). I didn't even really look at records which would lend stronger support to my argument (basically only the 2010 jets had a record that was good enough to come close to dislodging brady/bb. still wasn't good enough). for example, the other obvious weak divisions over that time frame, the AFC south and NFC north, had multiple teams each get to 11 wins (the afc south had a 13-3 Titans team somehow sandwiched in the Manning run as well as 12-4 texan, and two 11 win Luck teams, and the bears, vikes, packers all had multiple 11+ win seasons).

you also said "good" teams. those are clearly "good" teams!

1. I've already showed you that the bolded is wrong (2002, 2004, 2010) Why are you ignoring this? B/c you're just trolling I assume?

2. Your argument is dumb for a second reason, in that you seem to think that all the other divisions have often produced 2 elite teams in the same year. You are complaining that this hasn't been the case in the AFC East while ignoring that is typically isn't the case in other divisions.

The AFC East is unique in that one team has stayed on top for so long instead of say the Chargers and Broncos flip flopping and being elite at different times. But you seem to think other divisions often have two elite teams? just find all these divisions!

So your point is that the bills, jets and dolphins have never been a top 5 team by DVOA in the BB/Brady era? Cuz it really sounds like you were saying the patriots success was largely gifted to them through an easy schedule.

If that's your actual point, it's one I'll gladly concede. Those three teams have never been top 5 in DVOA, and it doesn't change the fact that the patriots haven't faced cupcake schedules every year.

what are you mike mccarthy? they are a good football team. we're going to prepare for them like every other team. they're a well coached team


good. that's (sort of) my point. the division doesn't ever produce elite teams to challenge the patriots. that's not surprising, because the best QBs in the last 10 years have been Fitzpatrick, Chad Pennington, and Tyrod Taylor

now we can stop arguing I think.

by almost any metric, the bills/jets/dolphins have had less moments of 'good'/'elite' than every other division. yes the patriots are really good and always have a really good record. but those three have never once managed to catch lightning in a bottle for a 12-4, 13-3, 14-2 type season.

you know, like the Bengals, Steelers, Ravens, Packers, Bears, Vikings, Panthers, Falcons, Saints, Cardinals, Seahawks, 49ers, Broncos, Chiefs, Raiders, Chargers, Giants, Cowboys, Texans, Colts, Titans and so on (only went back 10 years, assume I'm missing the rest of the league besides the browns)

well but again no division acts like this. It's not like the Seahawks rose up to challenge the 49ers and the 49ers cowered in the corner like a beta chimpanzee who submitted to the alpha and that was the end of the 49ers.

it's just that most teams now have a natural ebb and flow to them. the Dolphins and Jets and Bills aren't really unique but the Pats have been

lol, I love how you say "by almost any metric" and then refuse to look for any when asked.

start at 2001, look at DVOA by top teams within a division. this isn't that hard.

Shouldn't weak divisions help top teams immensely due to the seeding/bye weeks/HFA aspects of the game? Aren't the teams in the AFCE other than the Pats hurt by the fact that they have had to face the Pats twice a year, every year leading to 70-80% losses to them. I don't think the AFCE over the period of time the OP is suggesting has been that much worse than other divisions sans the Pats--if you sampled the bottom 3 teams in each division over a similar period i doubt the results are significantly different. Yes, it's hardly the case where 1 team is the best team for that sustained period of time, but the other divisions have had a ton of issues similar to the AFCE.

While the QBs in the division haven't been that elite sans Brady, the Ds, running games, etc. have probably been above average during the same period.

I agree the division hasn't been too bad on the basis of overall strength. there's been virtually no instances of a lightning-in-a-bottle type year that would prevent the pats from walking into a top seed (last year for example, the Bengals, who suck this year, went 12-4. the cardinals, who suffered no injuries this year, were a top DVOA team last year and went 13-3. the Panthers went 15-1 and lost a corner and now suck)

yeah no ****. the ebb and flow of the dolphins jets and bills has been closer to a flat line than a wave. there hasn't been an AFCe team close to the [dvoa, record, implied vegas probability] peak that Sea or Ari hit last year, or SF just a couple years before


wtf, I mean you can say that Chad penningtons dolphins were an elite team over and over but it doesn't make it true. Wild-card sanchez did *almost make the superbowl. still wouldn't call those Jets 'elite'