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MTZehvor on 07 January 2019
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Snoopy said:
MTZehvor said:

All right, let's try going over this one more time, very slowly.

I never said the NFC North was weak, and that I'm 100% confident on. I never compared the NFC North to the NFC East. I brought up two independent examples of division winners who did well against their division and did not play as well outside of their division, demonstrating that, no, division winners do not perform worse against their division than they do outside of it. I never once said the two divisions were equivalent, or that they were weak divisions, or that any team outside of the Giants and Dolphins were bad teams

I picked the Bears and Cowboys because they were easy examples, but I can point to others as well. My own Patriots went 5-1 in their division and 6-4 outside of it. The Rams went 6-0 in their division and 6-4 outside of it. None of this says anything about them as a team, or either the Cowboys or Bears. It merely shows that teams do not perform better against their division than teams outside of it.

Once again: I have never said anything negative about the NFC East, North, or any other division, or about any team besides saying the Giants and Dolphins are awful teams. If you somehow think after reading this that I'm still insulting the Cowboys or the NFC East, please find your local English teacher and ask for a refund.

You did say the NFC North was a weak division.

"And it's not as if this is just a case of the NFC North being weak and the Bears having a better record only because everyone in their division sucks; "

Also, you said the Cowboys win wasn't impressive because they barely won against the "weak giants".

"a playoff team should probably be more than one point better than the Giants."

Quoting the first few words of that first sentence:

"And it's not as if"

...in other words, I'm saying that this is not the case. My argument there is deflecting the potential counterargument that the Bears just play in a weak division. Someone might try to counter the point I had made previously by saying that the reason the Bears had a better in division record than out of division record was because they played in a weak division. I'm directly arguing against that point of view by saying that, no, this isn't the case, it's a phenomenon spread league wide.

Also, you said the Cowboys win wasn't impressive because they barely won against the "weak giants".

And I stand by that. There is no scenario where beating the fourth worst team in the league by one point is going to be impressive. That doesn't mean I think the Cowboys are a bad team; there are several wins from the Patriots' season that I also think were thoroughly underwhelming (both games against the Bills, first game against the Jets), and I don't believe New England is a bad team. Same goes for the Chiefs, Saints, Rams, and every other team still alive in the Super Bowl race. Every team has at least one game where they played a bad team and should have won by a lot more than they did given the quality of their opponent. 

None of that means I think those teams are bad. It's just that I wouldn't go bragging about barely beating a bad team, regardless of the circumstances.