2023 NFL Regular Season Through Super Bowl LVIII

[Red Comet]

20 hours ago, Unocal said:

 

Outside of PHI/SF, the rest of the NFC is meh. Who else are they going to pick- THE LIONS?

It wouldn't shock me all things considered what with the NFC turning into the AFC of the 80s and 90s. 

Would be hilarious if the NFL's Opening Night game winds up being the Super Bowl. 

Edited July 28, 2023 by Red Comet

[Unocal]

On 7/27/2023 at 7:43 PM, Red Comet said:

It wouldn't shock me all things considered what with the NFC turning into the AFC of the 80s and 90s. 

Would be hilarious if the NFL's Opening Night game winds up being the Super Bowl. 

 

The NFC has won 2 of the last 3 SB's.

[gothedistance]

5 hours ago, Unocal said:

 

The NFC has won 2 of the last 3 SB's.

 

The AFC has far better QBs. While the NFC has many middle tier ones. 

[BBTV]

On 7/27/2023 at 8:43 PM, Red Comet said:

the NFC turning into the AFC of the 80s and 90s.

 

The AFC lost 13 straight SBs in the 80s/90s.

 

In the last 13 SBs, it's nearly even with the AFC at 7 and NFC at 6 (including 3/3 in last 6 games, some of which have come down to the wire.)

 

There's absolutely no comparison between the current NFC and the AFC of the 80s and 90s.

[Gary]

On 7/26/2023 at 9:00 PM, Unocal said:

 

Outside of PHI/SF, the rest of the NFC is meh. Who else are they going to pick- THE LIONS?

I mean its better than choosing the Packers or Bears. For once I'm excited to be a Lions fan 

[Rockstar Matt]

On 7/30/2023 at 7:12 AM, BBTV said:

The AFC lost 13 straight SBs in the 80s/90s.

 

I know this stat is correct, but it still baffles me that a streak like that ever happened between the two conferences. Even through the AFC's relative dominance over the NFC during the late 90's and early 00's, that kind of streak never really came close to being repeated.

[GDAWG]

 

[BBTV]

57 minutes ago, Rockstar Matt said:

 

I know this stat is correct, but it still baffles me that a streak like that ever happened between the two conferences. Even through the AFC's relative dominance over the NFC during the late 90's and early 00's, that kind of streak never really came close to being repeated.

 

I'm sure that free agency in 93 and the salary cap in 94 had a lot to do with it, as eventually some level of parity leveled the field and created more balance.

 

 

As for how the field became so tilted?  I don't know.  Some of it is luck, in that you had the Montana/Walsh 49ers, the Cowboys dynasty, and Gibbs' and Parcell's systems during that time frame.  But also the AFC had Elway, Marino, an incredible Bills team, run-and-shoot Warren Moon, and couldn't get it done.

 

The thing is that other than the Bills vs Giants game, the AFC teams weren't even competitive.  How many of the games in that run were embarrassing blowouts?  The majority IIRC.  To be fair, the Bills really should have won 1990, which would have made the streak not nearly as bad.  But as great as they were - and they were great - the Cowboys completely worked them, and they couldn't stop Doug Williams and the counter.

 

[ManillaToad]

1 hour ago, BBTV said:

How many of the games in that run were embarrassing blowouts?  The majority IIRC. 

 

All of them except 49ers-Bengals II and Cowboys-Steelers III. Packers-Pats wasn't a blowout but GB led by two touchdowns the entire 4th quarter

[infrared41]

1 hour ago, BBTV said:

To be fair, the Bills really should have won 1990, which would have made the streak not nearly as bad.  But as great as they were - and they were great - the Cowboys completely worked them, and they couldn't stop Doug Williams and the counter.

 

 

Mark Rypien was the QB for the Washingtons in that Super Bowl, but your point remains.

[SeaTac]

Those NFC teams had great defenses when NFL defenses were actually allowed to play defense. 

[infrared41]

4 hours ago, BBTV said:

As for how the field became so tilted?  I don't know.  Some of it is luck, in that you had the Montana/Walsh 49ers, the Cowboys dynasty, and Gibbs' and Parcell's systems during that time frame.  But also the AFC had Elway, Marino, an incredible Bills team, run-and-shoot Warren Moon, and couldn't get it done.

 

I think you nailed it. The AFC Super Bowl losing streak ran from the 1984 season thru the 1996 season. How much of it was due to facing a couple dynasties, a couple almost dynasties, and a defense for the ages  vs. how much of it was due to the AFC simply not being good enough to win? Let's take a look.

 

• 1984 - Montana and the Niners are in the middle of their run and easily pick up Super Bowl win #2 against Dan Marino, Duper, Clayton, and a bunch of nobodies on the Dolphins. The 80's Dolphins were never much more than Marino and hope for the best with the rest.
• 1985 - The '85 Bears. For my money that Bears defense was the greatest defense of all time. No one was beating them that season. Especially not the '85 Patriots. When asked if he thought the Pats could beat the Bears, NBC analyst, Bob Trumpy said "I'm not sure they can score a point."
• 1986 - Parcells, LT and a great Giants defense make quick work of Elway and the Broncos. I think people remember those 80's Broncos teams as better than they actually were. It was basically Elway, a decent defense, and not much else.  And Elway spent most of every game waiting for Dan Reeves to turn him loose. I think my Browns would have been a tougher match up for the Giants that year, but we all know how that turned out.
• 1987 - Gibbs, Doug Williams, and the Washingtons totally expose Denver's secondary and hang 35 of them in one quarter. Hard to believe now, but Denver was up 10-0 in that game.
• 1988 - Montana and the Niners rip the heart out of Cincinnati while making jokes about John Candy. Credit to the Bengals, they somehow managed to hang around against a team that was way better than they were.
• 1989 - The Niners are at their pinnacle. Montana shows the world how sick he is of being of being compared to John Elway and hangs 55 on the Broncos. The Broncos are now officially the new Vikings.
• 1990 - Ottis Anderson signs a deal with the devil and Parcells and the Giants execute the perfect game plan to stop the Bills. The Bills should have won this one. They were by far and away the best team the AFC had sent to the Super Bowl since the '83 Raiders.
• 1991 - Thurman Thomas loses his helmet and Gibbs and the Washingtons do what they do. Maybe Washington was just the better team that year, but I think the Bills showed up a little tight and never loosened up.
• 1992 - It's the Cowboys turn to do the dynasty thing for a while. The Bills never stood a chance. Losing the last two Super Bowls was in their heads big time at this point.
• 1993 - See 1992 except the Bills are now in complete "we're gonna this up no matter what" mode.
• 1994 - The Niners and their other HOF QB come back for an encore and destroy a Chargers team that had no business being there.
• 1995 - The Cowboys are coming down the other side of the hill, but they still had more than enough to catch the passes Neil O'Donnell threw right to them and beat the Steelers.
• 1996 - The Niners and Cowboys have slowed enough for the Packers to finally break through and beat Parcells and the Pats, but there was light at the end of the tunnel for the AFC.

Long story short, of the 13 straight losses, I'd argue that the Bills were the only AFC team that came close to having the talent to beat any of the NFC Super Bowl teams during that run. They should have gotten the first one, they were certainly good enough to win the second one, but that's about it. Every other AFC team in that stretch had huge holes somewhere. If memory serves, Buffalo was the only AFC team to be favored during the streak. I don't remember the NFC being loaded top to bottom over those years, but the top teams were just that much better than everyone else in the league and it wasn't particularly close.

[MJWalker45]

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/38113170/spongebob-slime-highlight-nickelodeon-super-bowl-telecast

SpongeBob and Slime Cannons!!! Nickelodeon will be included in the Super Bowl coverage this year. 

 

"The NFL and CBS Sports announced Tuesday that this season's Super Bowl will have a kids-centric presentation on Nickelodeon, marking the first time the Super Bowl has had an alternate telecast on another network.

CBS has the rights to Super Bowl 58, which will be played in Las Vegas on Feb. 11, 2024.

"We're thrilled to partner with CBS Sports and Nickelodeon to present the first alternate telecast of the Super Bowl," NFL media executive vice president Hans Schroeder said in a statement. "Our previous telecasts on Nickelodeon have been huge hits and created a new and different way to experience an NFL game. We're excited to bring that creativity to Super Bowl 58 and give our fans another way to enjoy one of the world's most popular sporting events."

[Unocal]

On 7/31/2023 at 10:40 PM, infrared41 said:

 

 

• 1984 - Montana and the Niners are in the middle of their run and easily pick up Super Bowl win #2 against Dan Marino, Duper, Clayton, and a bunch of nobodies on the Dolphins. The 80's Dolphins were never much more than Marino and hope for the best with the rest.
• 1990 - Ottis Anderson signs a deal with the devil and Parcells and the Giants execute the perfect game plan to stop the Bills. The Bills should have won this one. They were by far and away the best team the AFC had sent to the Super Bowl since the '83 Raiders.

Long story short, of the 13 straight losses, I'd argue that the Bills were the only AFC team that came close to having the talent to beat any of the NFC Super Bowl teams during that run. They should have gotten the first one, they were certainly good enough to win the second one, but that's about it. Every other AFC team in that stretch had huge holes somewhere. If memory serves, Buffalo was the only AFC team to be favored during the streak. I don't remember the NFC being loaded top to bottom over those years, but the top teams were just that much better than everyone else in the league and it wasn't particularly close.

 

1984- That 84 49er team was Montana, Lott and not much else. They played a schedule so soft that Matt Cavanaugh could have gone 18-1.

 

1990- The Giants so-called perfect game plan was 3 yards and a cloud of dust. Parcells played not to lose and got away with conservative cowardly football.

 

The NFC was top heavy outside of the 49ers and the Eastern Division teams

 

The West outside of SF was predictable and the Central was a hot mess.

[Unocal]

I said it last January, I'll say it again:

 

Dak and Josh Allen 1-for-1 would be a win win trade for both teams

[infrared41]

5 hours ago, Unocal said:

1984- That 84 49er team was Montana, Lott and not much else. They played a schedule so soft that Matt Cavanaugh could have gone 18-1.

 

I don't know, I'd say Roger Craig and Keena Turner were pretty good too. It wasn't like it was Montana, Lott, and a bunch of hacks. There were a lot of solid players on that team.  In any case, the Niners had no trouble with the Dolphins. Teams play who is on their schedule. You can't hold that against them. And Matt Cavanaugh ain't going 18-1 in the Big Ten, let alone the NFL.

 

5 hours ago, Unocal said:

1990- The Giants so-called perfect game plan was 3 yards and a cloud of dust. Parcells played not to lose and got away with conservative cowardly football.

 

"Cowardly football?" What was Parcells supposed to do, try to win a shootout against the Bills with Jeff Hostetler, Ottis Anderson, and a bunch of guys named Stephen Baker? Played not to lose. Please. The Giants played to their strengths and won the game. Granted, they should have lost, but even if they had, they still kept it closer than it ever should have been by playing "cowardly football."

 

5 hours ago, Unocal said:

The NFC was top heavy outside of the 49ers and the Eastern Division teams

 

Outside the the Niners and the Eastern Division teams? They were the teams that made the NFC top heavy during that period. In the 13 year AFC losing streak, the Niners won four Super Bowls,  Cowboys won three, and the Giants and Washingtons won two each. That's 11 out of 13, but yeah, those teams weren't the reason the NFC was top heavy.

[infrared41]

5 hours ago, Unocal said:

I said it last January, I'll say it again:

 

Dak and Josh Allen 1-for-1 would be a win win trade for both teams

 

And you're just as wrong today as you were in January.

[tBBP]

So who's this Dorian Thompson-Robinson guy? Dude looked pretty good out there! Other than being a rookie I don't know how he got kicked to 3rd string behind Kellen Mond...Monday looked horrid out there. I'd be shocked if he makes it past preseason as #2, unless Kevin Stefanski is just stubborn to keep the rook at #3.

 

That said, yes it's just one preseason game, but imma be real: I saw a lot of the same moxie out of Thompson-Robinson that I saw out of young Aaron Rodgers when he was still backing up the Favreness. This could get interesting for the Browns...except this is the Browns here, and I don't think even Griffin sees any reality in which Cleveland doesn't screw this up.

 

I know one thing, though: if this kid ever makes it as a starter, he's already got the record for longest NOB of any active QB in NFL History locked down. 

 

 

[BBTV]

Another thing about the pre-cap era is that teams tended to scheme and draft to compete against their divisional/conference opponents rather than have grander ambitions in mind.  The conferences felt more segregated back then, even though the actual scheduling doesn't support that.  But I remember reading a SI article back sometime during that era where someone - either a GM or writer, was saying how once the AFC started to decline, it snowballed because the AFC teams were only focused on building to win their division and the AFC, while the same was going on in the NFC, which lead to a snowball on the positive side. 

 

Basically, the Broncos get blown out in the SB, but become the standard that the AFC teams are building against, rather than the NFC teams, who are building against the standard set by the 49ers et al.  There's several NFC teams that never sniffed the SB that IMO would have blown out the AFC champion, with the possible exception of a couple of those Bills teams.

[Glover]

9 hours ago, tBBP said:

So who's this Dorian Thompson-Robinson guy? Dude looked pretty good out there! Other than being a rookie I don't know how he got kicked to 3rd string behind Kellen Mond...Monday looked horrid out there. I'd be shocked if he makes it past preseason as #2, unless Kevin Stefanski is just stubborn to keep the rook at #3.

 

That said, yes it's just one preseason game, but imma be real: I saw a lot of the same moxie out of Thompson-Robinson that I saw out of young Aaron Rodgers when he was still backing up the Favreness. This could get interesting for the Browns...except this is the Browns here, and I don't think even Griffin sees any reality in which Cleveland doesn't screw this up.

 

I know one thing, though: if this kid ever makes it as a starter, he's already got the record for longest NOB of any active QB in NFL History locked down. 

 

 

He actually is the 4th string at the moment. Watson-Dobbs-Mond-DTR. He will absolutely move up in the depth chart though.