It's been 7 years since a team made the Super Bowl without a 1st Round bye. And it gets worse. (1 Viewer)

[Saint Spud]

What the Fork! dude. How about you just give up, not watch, and do something else for the rest of the season?

Seriously, what it the point of this inane thread?

To point out how much tonight’s loss hurt our chances at winning a championship.

 

[rail]

To point out how much tonight’s loss hurt our chances at winning a championship.

Cool story bro.

 

[DaveXA]

To point out how much tonight’s loss hurt our chances at winning a championship.

But you don't know that it has. For all we know, we might be a better team on the road than at home. So based on this seasons' home/away record, nothing was hurt tonight. Regardless, we won't know what any of this means until the week 17 games are played. Hawks play 9ers and Packers play Lions. Stranger things have happened. A 9-7 Giants wild card team beat an unbeaten Patriots in the Super Bowl. Any given playoffs. A team gets hot at the right time and they often can go far. Home or away doesn't guarantee anything. I'm not really worried regardless.

 

[csg1027]

teams get to rest and game plan in advance for you.

Umm... they can't game plan for you until the wild card round is over...

 

[Saint Spud]

Umm... they can't game plan for you until the wild card round is over...

Why not? What’s stopping them from doing advance scouting on all their possible opponents?

As the 2-seed, they can only play the 3. 4 or 5. Not hard to do a ton of research into those three teams and come up with solid preliminary plans.

 

[ilvdsnts]

Yes. And before 2009, no team had ever lost the last 3 regular season games and won the Super Bowl.
Saints do a lot of things that are not usually done or have never been done before.
Bring it on.

Yeah, but no team had ever lost the last 3 games and still got the #1 seed. The point is right, best team don’t always win a la NOLA no call. Injuries can be the great neutralizer.

 

[ilvdsnts]

Umm... they can't game plan for you until the wild card round is over...

Where is that rule written?

 

[Alaina]

Where is that rule written?

There's no rule written... but how are they gonna know who to plan for unless the wildcard game is decided?

 

[NewOrleansBoy]

Well, then, it's a good thing SF and Carolina will lose

 

[SaintsFan83]

If it's any consolation, we haven't exactly played out best after extended rest this season.

 

[TribuneUK]

That's fine.

The bottom line is that none of that tends to matter in the playoffs. Attrition sets in when you don't get the bye. You suffer more injuries, teams get to rest and game plan in advance for you.

Our chances of making the Super Bowl just dropped exponentially.

Exponentially might be an overstatement. Although the stat I found interesting in your graphic is that a team with a bye is 7.3x more likely to reach a super bowl than one without a bye. That's significant.

It's not quite as tragic as some of us would like to make out, though.

After all, we were sat in the #1 seed last year, all the stats said we therefore had a high probability of progressing. Of course we know what happened.

Play the games and let them come.

 

[Spylake]

I have a much simpler statistic. Win and we get to the SuperBowl. Teams on the edge have to sit on their hands and hope someone else wins or loses. We are not in that boat. We may not control the route we have to take but since Thanksgiving we have been in command of our final destination.

 

[Witness]

Don't write off Seattle yet folks.

 

[ilvdsnts]

There's no rule written... but how are they gonna know who to plan for unless the wildcard game is decided?

The same way LSU game-planned for alabama since the summer but still also game-planned each week for that week’s opponent. You have different staff members start the game planning for different teams.

 

[NUSaintsfan]

And the year the Saints won the Super Bowl, no team had lost three straight games heading into the post season yet still made it to Miami.

You can find a stat to support any argument or theory.

If the Saints play the game the way we all know they are capable of and stop with pre-snap penalties or dumb defensive penalties that keep the defense on the field or nullify a turnover or sack then the Saints can beat anyone, anywhere.

They were not supposed to be able to go into Seattle and win but went in with a back up and won...the list is long on the things the Saints are not supposed to be able to do but play Saints football and let coach worry about the things he can affect during the playoffs.