We've got a new staff writer joining us. His name is Aseem, and I think he's going to write some good stuff. He'll officially introduce himself a little later when he has time, but for now here's the first post he submitted to Outside the Boxscore. Enjoy.
"It's not how you play, it's who you play..."Excuse the lame parody on an old cliche, but I felt it appropriate in describing the quirks of the NFL season schedule. It really is all about who you play. Take my beloved Cleveland Browns, for example: two seasons ago, the Browns went 10-6 on the ostensible strength of Derek Anderson's cannon of a right arm, but truly they were carried on the weak shoulders of their opponents. Their opposing team's winning percentage in that season was a paltry .430. The next season? A wicked .543 constituted one of the toughest schedules in the league.
So which teams are up for a major fall from Cinderella grace this season? Look to the NFC South for some huge drop-offs. That division (by some miracle handed down by GOoDell) sent two teams to the playoffs last year, Carolina and Atlanta. We can attribute some of Atlanta's success to the emergence of AP Offensive Rookie of the Year and quarterback wunderkind Matt Ryan (not so much in the case of Mr. 5-Interception in the Biggest Game of the Season Jake Delhomme...), but a lot of their wins were delivered on a silver platter by the league's bottom-dwellers. This year, they have the fourth-hardest strength of schedule, while Carolina checks in with a scary #2 ranking in that category. In fact, the NFC East has an interesting history of first-to-worst and worst-to-first transitions, much of which is due to the influences of their schedules.
Will we see the same turnaround this year, when all four teams in the NFC South rank in the top ten in strength of schedule? You can bet that a 9-7 record will probably take the division title and echo the Cardinals path to the Super Bowl last year.
