The NFL Surprises of the Year

In our pre-season preview issue, we asked the question “How do you spell strength in the NFL?” The answer was a brief one: AFC.

Well, we are sorry to say since the pre-season ended, the AFC has not lived up to its reputation as the dominating force it was touted to be. Sure, the AFC is home to the Patriots, Colts and Steelers, but game-for-game, this conference has not put up enough winning performances to be considered the NFL’s stronger conference. Let’s look at some stats and some other inter-conference surprises:

* The AFC and the NFC right now both have 104 wins and losses, which means in inter-conference games, the NFC and AFC are .500 each.

* The NFC Packers, who we didn't expect to be a playoff team - let alone a team with an 11-2 record, will most likely have a first-round bye in the playoffs.

* We expected the Cowboys to be a good team, but we didn’t expect a 12-1 record with a virtual lock on home field throughout the playoffs. In our pre-season preview issue we said we expected them to make the playoffs and win their division, but we had them at 9-7 mostly due to uncertainty surrounding their coaching change. So, I guess you can say Wade Phillips is one of the surprises of the year too.

* Now, the Patriots – they were not a surprise especially to PossessionPoints.com. We said in our preview issue that they appeared to have it all: offense, defense and coaching continuity. Since our human brains thought it was nearly impossible to go 16-0, we kept making adjustments and runs until the computer produced one loss. On the other hand, the computer expected the Ravens to be better this year, and so we had Baltimore beating the Patriots to give them that 15-1 record for the season.

During the next few weeks, we will expound on some of the other surprises that this season had in store for us all. Many of these surprises we touched upon in our pre-season issue, and while those who are not subscribers didn’t receive this issue, take heart. There is always next season to come on board and get the new preview issue plus all our other information.

A quick little note on last week’s games: PossessionPoints.com went 11-5 straight up for our picks.