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Snoopy on 02 January 2019
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MTZehvor said:
Snoopy said:

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).

First off, Giants and Dolphins are pretty decent teams at the end. So it shouldn't come as a surprise they win against them. If memory serves me correctly, Bears was missing their starting QB against the Giants too which played a huge role.  Also, Greenbay, Lions, and Vikings are out class significantly by the Bears in almost every way and yet the games were close as hell. It has to do with familiarity and matching the rival team's players in the draft because you have to play your rivals twice a year.

So it makes sense to counter your rival teams.  You shouldn't bring up the Cowboys as proof that it isn't because Bears' division is weak. Cowboys division teams such as Redskins are considered weak and we lost to them and almost lost to them again when their starting QB was out. Also, the big reason why Cowboys point differential against teams outside their division is huge was they got blown out by the Colts. An insanely good team and a team I hope Cowboys don't play in SB if they get there. Also, has to do with the fact most of Cowboys loses to non-divisional teams happen before we got Cooper.