I GET that is is a formula.
But come on....Putting the 2021 teams as 8th pretty much craps on everything else
I guess that happens with blind data.
12-5 regular season (6 vs weak division) with few or no good wins all year.
They got bullied in the wildcard round of the playoffs by a team that did not make it to the Super Bowl.
Come on
And 2007 was better (at least they lost a nail-biter to the eventual SB winner) but they are are also still ranked too high.
All of those teams that went to the NFC title game should be higher.
2014 also maybe should even be higher than 2021 or 2016 (or, more accurately, they should be lower)....imo
The rankings had absolutely nothing to do with the postseason. In fact, one of my purposes for ranking them only according to their regular season was to demonstrate the disparity between regular season and postseason success.
Strength of schedule is one of those "egg or chicken first" conundrums. You can't physically pair a team of one season against another and claim one was stronger from the start. What proof do you have? Are you going to try and prove that an undefeated team is stronger than a 9-7 team? The 2007 Giants might and did have something to say about that.
The 2021 Cowboys played a 17 game schedule. Only 6 of those were against an NFC East opponent. That's 35.2% of the schedule. They also played three 1st place teams in their division and four 2nd place teams. They played five teams that ended up in the playoffs.
In 2007 there were three teams that ended up 13-3 and one that ended up 16-0. That is a valid argument for claiming that the 2007 NFL was weaker than the 2021 NFL, especially considering the Super Bowl champion had a 9-7 regular season. However, in reality, who knows?
