WASHINGTON — Two things really stood out in the NFL this week: the number of still-undefeated teams and the way we were able to watch one of Sunday’s worst matchups.
Record Number of Unbeatens
There are a total of five 6-0 teams, the most ever in a single NFL season. This may seem like a cool footnote to the 2015 season, but it really speaks to just how parity has evaporated in recent years.
Look back a decade. In 2005, three teams finished with 13 or more wins and just two teams had 13 or more losses. That season, 11 teams had between 6 and 10 wins, meaning about 1/3 of the league had average or mediocre won/loss records. Those are the kind of numbers that would make Pete Rozelle smile.
Obviously, we can’t extrapolate the precise records so soon since it’s highly unlikely we’ll see more than one team go undefeated, if any (although I wouldn’t bet against the Patriots doing it again). However, you have to think no less than four of the still-undefeated teams will finish with at least 12 wins. And that’s not to mention the one or two teams still capable of winning 12 or more, like Atlanta and Arizona.
Meanwhile, there are currently 11 teams over .500, which ties the 2012 season for the fewest since the league expanded to 32 teams in 2002. Compare that to 2005, when 17 teams posted winning records.
This means there’s a record number of “haves” and “have nots” with not too many teams residing in the gray area. The reasons vary team-to-team, but chief among them is the lack of good quarterbacks in the league. In the present-day NFL, a team without an elite QB can pretty much forget about a deep playoff run. The days of winning Super Bowls with guys like Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson have been over for several years.
Given the state of the college QBs entering the NFL, and rules that all but prohibit a dominant defense, it looks like the league’s power structure will look less NFL and more NBA — the same half dozen teams having a legit chance at winning a championship year to year.
The Way We Watch The Games
In case you missed it (as we often do with the lousy London matchups), the Jaguars-Bills game was live streamed on Yahoo and only on television in the Buffalo and Jacksonville markets.
This is notable because it’s the first time an NFL game was live streamed, with viewers experiencing mixed results. The NFL is notoriously stringent when it comes to the dissemination of their product, so for a game to air live on something other than an established network or NFL property is a pretty big deal — especially when you consider that the ability to watch an NFL game with nothing more than Internet access is a potential game-changer.
Yahoo reported Monday that they had over 15 million unique viewers with over 33 million streams across all devices. Yahoo’s pie chart also reveals about one-third of said streams were overseas (which shakes out to about 11.2 million streams outside the U.S. of A.).
Even though it won’t happen more than once a year initially, the possibilities for massive change already exist.
Not being tied down to a television means the world for fans seeking to watch their out-of-town team. When I lived up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I had to hit the local Redskins bar when the Eagles pre-empted the ‘Skins (which was often). The bar scene is fun, but if I can save a few dozen bucks watching the game on my computer or on my smart TV, I’m going to do it.
At a time when people are worried about the future of the game — whether it’s an 18-game schedule, player safety, or the decline of parity — the way we literally view it could be a part of its evolution. And as the great George Allen once said, the future is now.
And so is the Week 7 Recap. (It’s technically a day old, but trust me … it’s still fresh.)
