Lions can get in and so can the Bills, but one of these teams lacks the impact playmakers on defense and offense so you have to lean with one of them...
Adding last year's tendencies to this year's (early) reality, both teams are in divisions with much stronger competition.
Right now the Bills look a little better on that front - they've defeated the Pats once. The Lions have yet to play the Bears or Packers (or any decent team really).
Neither Stafford or Fitzpatrick has ever played 16 games in a season in the NFL. Fitzpatrick, 6 seasons- Stafford 2.
Truth be told theres a LOT more competition in the NFC for a wild card spot this year. In the AFC you got 1 team from afc north and 1 team from the afc east (2 if you count the Bills) And thats really it unless you want to take the Raiders and Titans seriously as playoff contenders. In the NFC they just got a whole god damn boatload of teams, starting with the entire NFC east (which as terrible as they all are, they are all wild card contenders), 3 teams in the NFC north, and 3 teams in the nfc south. Yet all that and im rather confident the Lions make it IF stafford stays healthy. But they're might need 11 wins to do it.
We have a great chance to be 6-0 heading into the bye week. No way we don't make the playoffs when that happens.
Team A = Patriots Team B = Bills Team B beats Team A when Team A had a 10 game regular season winning streak. Team B continues to get no respect despite the fact they beat Team A which was picked as a superbowl winner this year by many. Here is Team B's upcoming opponents... @ Bengals........W Eagles.............L @ Giants..........W Redkins (Canada) W Jets.................W @ Cowboys.......L @Dolphins.........W @Jets..............L Titans..............W @ Chargers.......W Dolphins...........W Broncos...........W @ Pats.............L 12-4 record and a first round bye. Yes I'm serious.
That's all fine and good, no reason not to be confident this week. I happen to remember two years ago when the jets came out of nowhere to a 3-0 start and all our fans blew their load with 13-3 12-4 predicitons. It's a long season and having a hot september doesn't necessarily mean anything a few weeks from now.
Oh i agree and I'm trying to stay as grounded as I can especially with what looks like 3 of the top 6 or 7 teams in the AFC are from the East.
A "great" chance? WHEN that happens? You're getting ahead of yourself. The Bills will lose at least one game between Weeks 5 and 6. After the bye, I could easily see them only winning 2-3 games. I like Ryan Fitzpatrick and Fred Jackson. I still think their peak potential is 9-7...MAYBE 10-6. The latter may still not be good enough for the postseason.
Why did you do the whole "Team A", "Team B" thing AFTER you told us which team was which. Isn't the point of that to hide identity until a surprising point is made?
I agree with that. He had developing personnel last season and played well. The FO showed a decided commitment to him by allowing him to develop that personnel into this season without an heir apparent waiting, and it paid off well.
Still not sure the Lions are a 10 win team. No running game to speak of and they really haven't been tested on the defensive backend. That's going to change next Sunday. Their schedule isn't exactly easy to close out the season; GB twice, NO, @ Oakland and SD at home in the last six weeks.
