Field Gulls
That’s a wrap on the regular season. The NFL Playoffs are set, a bunch of Wild Card teams are better than two division winners, and Aaron Rodgers has bamboozled Baltimore once again.
I knew from a few weeks back the Seattle Seahawks had done something impressive in terms of beating current playoff-caliber teams. That curiosity turned into the following. A three-piece window into all 14 teams. Total record, point differential, and how many wins each team secured against one of their 2025 postseason brethren. This was fun and informative, and most importantly I now know who will be in the Super Bowl.
Two nuggets from the AFC. First, the Steelers are hilarious, man. Congratulations on possibly not getting Mike Tomlin fired, but they have not been the better team than almost anyone all season.
Second, those Jacksonville Jaguars really put it together. There’s an artificial 34-point bump from beating the meaningless Tennessee Titans in the final game of the season. Cut that in half against a real team: they’re still the second-best point differential in the conference. And they did beat a bunch of real teams, unlike the Patriots.
Good at defense, and with a strong-armed, long-haired quarterback you say?
We now turn our attention to our own conference.
Two nuggets again. The Panthers are the worst playoff team in a decade. Maybe even a decade and a half, as the artificially intelligent Google search will say they’re the worst team since someone called the 2010 Seattle Seahawks.
Second, what the Seahawks did is special. They not only blew teams out, but they played a bunch of good ones along the way. Of their three losses, one was to a Tampa Bay Buccaneers team that was 4-1 and looking...
