As Playoffs Draw Nearer, It's Patriots, Falcons and Unpredictability

Filed under: Patriots, NFL Analysis

It's official. In the weekly quest to identify the "best'' team in the NFL, every media outlet and every blogger now has tabbed New England. That's true in official terms, too, if you consider that the Patriots are the first team to clinch a playoff spot.

But let's just remember what happened to the Patriots in the Super Bowl three years ago -- although this season, they don't have the burden of entering the playoffs unbeaten.

With three weeks to go in the regular season, it might finally be time to identify the real contenders (the Patriots at the top, quite obviously) and dismiss the pretenders (clearly, the Jets). But it's also time to add the qualifier that in 2007, the Giants, at this point, were a 9-4 team slated to end up as a wild-card playoff entry; and that in 2005, Pittsburgh was 8-5, slated to finish behind Cincinnati in the AFC North.

Both the Giants and Steelers finished as champions, the New Yorkers preventing New England from becoming the first 19-0 team in NFL history with that historic upset in Arizona. Like the Steelers two years earlier, they won three road games as a wild card before winning the title -- Pittsburgh's big pre-Super Bowl win was a wacky upset in Indianapolis marked by a botched replay and a Ben Roethlisberger desperation tackle against a Colts team that had dominated the regular season.

Source: http://nfl.fanhouse.com/2010/12/13/as-playoffs-draw-nearer-its-patriots-falcons-and-unpredictabi/

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