The Big Pig needs no cross bar
Belated welcome to saint at Silver and Black Pride, the new(ish) SBN Oakland Raiders blog. It's actually been around since September, I just forgot to point it out. Send your Oakland Raider friends their way.
On an (un)related note, while trying to determine how many 2 win teams there were in the league, I noticed that the Redskins were tied for the 3rd strongest schedule in the league. So that is frustrating.
Speaking of schedule here's a really quick primer on it because I think it's a big misconception that winning teams get drastically tougher schedules and bad teams get really easy ones. A team plays exactly two games per season that are determined by the previous year's record. That's only about 12% of the games in a season. And this doesn't even necessarily translate into an easier season. As an example, last year we had Tampa Bay and Chicago because both those teams were horrible in 2004 (like us!). They both won their divisions in 2005. Anyways, here goes:
- Six games against division opponents (2 each).
- Four games against another division in the conference which rotates each year. Last year it was the NFC West (we played Seattle, St. Louis, Arizona, and San Fransisco). This year it is the NFC South.
- Four games against an AFC division which rotates each year. Last year it was the AFC West. This year it is the AFC South.
- The final two remaining games are played against whatever team was ranked in the same position as you in the remaining two NFC Divisions. St. Louis finished 2nd (as did we) in the West last year, so we play them this year. Minnesota finished 2nd in the South last year, so we played them.
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