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MTZehvor on 01 January 2019
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Snoopy said:
MTZehvor said:

The Jags, Lions, Titans, and Steelers also beat the Patriots. The Panthers and Titans beat the Cowboys. The Bills pulled off the largest upset in the history of the league by point spread this season on the road in Minnesota. Upsets happen in the league.

The point is that they don't happen at any higher of a rate inside of the division than outside. As a Dallas fan this year, you should be aware of this; the Cowboys were 5-1 inside of their division this year, but just 5-5 outside of it. New England was 5-1 in the AFC East this season and 6-4 outside of it. The Rams were 6-0 inside their division and 7-3 outside of it. The Bears were 5-1 in the NFC North and 7-3 outside of it. Of the eight division winners this year, only one had a division record that was worse than their out of division record (New Orleans).

Besides, most of your examples are extremely cherry picked. Miami needed a last second lateral craze to win, which hardly suggests some kind of deep personnel knowledge. The Browns are by no means a bad team, and the Ravens were still starting Joe Flacco when Cleveland beat them. Washington beat Dallas when the latter was terrible and didn't yet have Amari Cooper. The Bucs beat the Saints in Week 1, which means next to nothing as both teams are still figuring out how good they are. The only one that stands is the Colts losing to the Jags, and even then, upsets happen. It's the NFL. Someone's going to lose to a team they're better than eventually.

It isn't cherry picking, green bay beat the bears as well. The Panther and Titans are good teams and missed the playoffs by a few games. Cleveland won despite having a historically horrible Coach. Also, Cowboys won their division but each division game was pretty close imo.

It is cherry picking when you pick like five or six division games that were upsets and ignore the myriad of upsets that occurred outside the division. Yeah, Green Bay beat Chicago. So did the Dolphins and the Giants. Upsets happen both inside and outside the division. What you're ignoring is that those upsets were just as, if not more, likely to occur outside the division than inside. Again, Chicago was 5-1 against NFC North teams and 7-3 against the rest of the league. Being almost 15% more likely to lose outside of your division than inside doesn't exactly support the idea that division games are somehow tougher.

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; this phenomenon is throughout the league. As I previously mentioned, of the eight division winners this year, only one had a worse winning percentage inside their division than outside. And that includes your Cowboys, who went 5-1 in the NFC East and 5-5 outside of it.

Speaking of which, yes, Dallas' games against division opponents were pretty close. But so were their games against everyone else. In fact, their point differential against the NFC East (+26) is substantially better than against opponents outside of their division (-9).