NFC South Records

I was curious about how we fared against the rest of the division since the formation of the NFC South in 2002, so I put together the charts below. The Panthers have been the most successful franchise of the four both in total regular season games and games within the division. Pretty cool.

 

That's very interesting. Almost counterintuitive.

 

I still can't believe how high the media is on New Orleans.

 

Thanks; man except for 05 Tampa has really been declining

Collin:
I can: The media wants to milk the Katrina angle and pump Reggie Bush as the next great superstar (esp. with Vick gone).

I don't think they'll do much- that defense is still too shaky.

 

Not bad against a division that has placed a team in the NFC championship game every year since its formation.

 

John Fox should be fired if we don't win the Super Bowl.

 

I agree with you. Its crazy. I live in NO and these bastards are going nuts. Local talk show guys talking about maybe winning 14 games. I just don't see it

 

At least they are acknowledging that we are going to sweep them.

 

I originally made this observation with regard to fantasy football, but it applies to this as well. In baseball, excellence is usually followed by an expectation of regression. So most people expected Ryan Howard's ridiculous '06 numbers to come down in '07. Similarly, most people didn't expect the Blue Jays to win 90+ this season after registering a surprising 87 in '06.

In football, however, it always seems like people expect the breakout performers to get even better. Even "experts" look at Frank Gore's impressive rushing totals last year and expect him to be even better. Ditto for Maurice Drew, and in both cases it's crazy. Regression is the norm in any type of performance. The biggest surprises are more likely to get worse than better, and the biggest disappointments are more likely to better than worse.

As far as the Saints are concerned, it's somewhat impressive that they're the only NFC South team without two losing seasons in the last five, but their 10 wins last season were something of a surprise and it's more reasonable to expect some degree of regression. Brees' shoulder held up in '06, but will it in '07? The same question goes for McAllister's legs, the linebacker play, and the seemingly atrocious secondary. I'm not expecting them to suddenly be bad again, but any projection above 9-7 is optimistic in my opinion.

 

I think Bush will be much better this year, but yeah, he's getting too much hype for a guy who had a crappy YPC average and caught a bunch of short passes.