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Message: [QUOTE="boba, post: 2539695, member: 1556"] Good use of statistics to say practically nothing. Your argument is the Patriots have an advantage because the division is bad. Your statistics show the Patriots have an exceptional record against members of their division. Unfortunately that is all they show. Since the Patriots were division winners each of those years they also played the other division winners, AFC North, South, & West as well as the NFC division on the schedule, so the not winning team only plays 2 division winners (besides the Patriots) Patriots play 4, and the unbalanced schedule is absent from those statistics. Then there's the other schedules and records. This year the NFC South and AFC East matched up, and iIrc, the AFCE did OK. The NFCS also sent 3 teams to the playoffs, so the overall quality of the play in the AFCE doesn't appear to be too deficient as they compete outside of division play. The records of the AFCE teams those years are absent, and should provide something to bolster your argument because the counter to your narrative is that it is only the Patriots are just better; better than the teams in the AFC, this has been determined by play. Which is the nub of it. Regardless of division they were placed, they still could/would win the division, and win it handily. Their schedule already includes the division of division winners, the unbalanced schedule that is supposed to be the rectification, and the Patriots just beat the other division winners to earn the bye and home field (KC notwithstanding). You really think Tomlin or Harbaugh want to face the Patriots twice a year? They usually get their chance to take home field or whatever from the Patriots, and somehow it just seems that it doesn't happen, not in Foxborough, not in wherever. Fortune favors the prepared, so whether the lucky play, call, or magic happens, it's fortune bestowing a reward for preparation. Reality is that the Patriots would put a hurting on whomever was in their division, so any division with the Patriots in it gets relegated to mediocrity based on that domination. And if I was at work I could gather some statistics and make a pretty graph to show that to be the case [dot] [dot] [dot] but I'm just a fan, not a fanatic. [/QUOTE]

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