The 2015 NFL season is bad. I mean, top to bottom atrocious. Pretty much starting with the conclusion of the 2014 season where the P*tri*ts were awarded the Lombardi trophy in the midst of a multi-million dollar investigation into their latest cheating venture, I’d say ineptness is the term to describe the 2015 NFL season. From sponsors, to front offices, to players — look, I know everyone’s feeling all blue these days so I won’t beat up on you all by discussing the season’s lowlights — just trust me that they are there (or I will come back and detail everything from chimpan-A to chimpan-Z).

But, alas, there is good news because your team is still in the playoff hunt! That’s right, you, guy who abandoned all hope when you realized the Cowboys O Line couldn’t turn just anyone into 2014 Demarco Murray (oh, and how ‘just anybody’ is the perfect description of the Dallas backfield this season) and saw Dez and Romo knocked out for months! At 2-7, the Cowboys are sitting pretty just three games out of hosting a playoff game.

“Oh sure,” grumbles Mr. AFC South fan, “at least the Cowboys have some defensive talent. Our division is terrible.” Actually, the AFC South is terrible like a fox; wisely positioning themselves with the Color Rush Jags just one game out of first, the Color Rush Titans only two games out, and the Last In Rush (yards per attempt) Texans somewhere in between. With the AFC South teams all playing each other in the closing weeks, you’re basically in playoff mode starting……NOW!

With no teams mathematically eliminated from the playoffs yet, below is the breakdown of the playoff races as it stands today (courtesy of CBS Sports):

If you’re like me, upon a cursory glance, your first thought is that NFL teams have somehow cumulatively racked up about 35% more losses than wins this season. This is actually an optical illusion as the numbers do add up. With the top three teams in each conference combining to hoard 37 wins (the ten non-playoff teams in each conference have a cumulative 35 and 31 wins, respectively) through ten weeks — with undefeated Cincinnati to face the Scary Houston Texans tonight — just keep this season in mind when the news discusses how the US economy, as a whole, has recovered.

To get a clearer picture of what this jumble means, FiveThirtyEight’s ELO rankings are worth a peek, in my opinion, because they consider remaining schedules. Sure sure, [DFO] readers who are over 65, ELO doesn’t have an eye test but here’s the thing about that — anyone who has to give the eye test to the NFL this season will surely be gushing blood from their sockets by the end of the AM slate every weekend (AM slate halftime if it’s a London game week). Frankly, I’ve barely had the patience to watch 75% of my hometown team’s games this season; I’m not volunteering to view the offerings that is non-primetime Slurs football (perfect QB rating or not).

I’m not going to get into evaluating teams and schedules because that shit just gets tedious and, if you care about experts making predictions, read the weekly gambling post.  What I really wondered was, if the playoffs started today and we got to make the conferences face-off in a skins style tournament, who would come out as having the better non-playoff field. Yes, these futile exercises are what the 2015 NFL season offers but…

Hold on….I’m getting a phone call.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g4dkBF5anU

So it turns out having a slate of post-season games where the non-playoff teams compete for nothing is now going to be presented at the next owners meeting. The additional week of play, it seems, would generate upwards of $145 million in kinda-wanted revenue. Well, taking the seriousness of the situation into consideration, here is my predictions that I spent all of eight seconds on.

Granted, I don’t even know if these teams have played yet or not. Or maybe they do in the coming weeks. It really doesn’t matter because all you need to know is that I’ve used advanced statistics to show that, while the AFC has a stronger mid-conference, the NFC has more depth on a head-to-head basis and, thus, [DFO] has become the top analysis site on the internet.