"Fred Goodwin, CMA" wrote in message $eY.6046@newssvr13.news.prodigy.net...
> Will NFC finally end its drought vs. AFC this season?
>
>
> http://tinyurl.com/3a72fw
>
> Friday, November 23, 2007
> By Len Pasquarelli
> ESPN.com
>
> It has been a long, long time since the NFC won the annual interconference
> series against its AFC counterparts.
>
> How long? Well, Bill Clinton was still president. Most of the country was
> fixated on O.J. Simpson's murder trial. Bosnia was the most prominent
> international hot spot. The FBI was still desperately searching for the
> Unabomber. Devoted Deadheads were mourning the death of Jerry Garcia. And
> pro basketball fans were celebrating the unretirement of Michael Jordan.
>
> Consumers were still getting accustomed to ordering Christmas presents
> online from the year-old Amazon.com and computer hackers were still three
> years away from Googling anything. TLC was rhapsodizing about "Waterfalls"
> and, on movie screens, loveable but bumbling Forrest Gump was
> philosophizing over the meaning of life and chocolates.
>
> The Atlanta Braves, Houston Rockets, New Jersey Devils and, yikes, even
> the Nebraska Cornhuskers, were all champions.
>
> Yes, it has been that long, 1995 to be exact, since the NFC won the
> interconference series. The NFC topped the AFC in 33 of 60 matchups that
> season, with the Dallas Cowboys punctuating the senior conference's
> dominance by defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers, 27-17, in Super Bowl XXX.
>
> Since then, the NFC's less-than-scintillating performance against the AFC
> should pretty much be XXX-out.
>
> In the past 11 seasons, the AFC has registered a 370-300-2 record in the
> AFC-NFC matchups, and has won the competition every year, except in 2000
> and 2001, when the NFC held its own at 30-30 in each of those seasons. The
> AFC also has claimed eight of 11 Super Bowl championships, including the
> past four titles, and six of the past seven.
>
> "It's obscene, ridiculous, really, that the AFC has owned the series for
> so many years," said Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre, who has been
> around for the entire reign of terror by the junior conference. "It just
> shouldn't be that way."
>
> And maybe, at long last, it won't be that way this season -- thanks in
> part to Favre and the Packers, who own a 3-0 mark for 2007 against AFC
> foes with one interconference game left, a home contest against the
> Oakland Raiders on Dec. 9.
>
> Through the Thanksgiving Day games, the NFC surprisingly leads the
> interconference series this season by a 24-22 count. And if those two
> dozen victories don't seem like all that much, well, consider this: With
> 18 interconference games still to play, the 24 wins are as many as the NFC
> managed in 2006, when the AFC posted a 40-24 record. And they are nearly
> as much as the NFC's average of 24.6 wins the past three seasons.
>
> So 24 wins for the NFC at this point of the season is progress of a sort.
>
> That the NFC has been so thoroughly manhandled for more than a decade now,
> with the AFC's superiority reflected in a .557 winning mark, is both
> incomprehensible and inexplicable. What it hasn't been is cyclical,
> because, in the NFL, such pendulum swings clearly aren't supposed to last
> so long.
>
> It's as if the AFC never received the memo about parity.
>
> "It really has been a long time," Indianapolis Colts center Jeff Saturday
> said. "And it doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?"
>
> Sensible or not, it's tough to argue with the recent history of the
> series, and more difficult yet to pinpoint the differences that have
> permitted the AFC to dominate for such an extended stretch.
>
> For much of the time, the AFC has possessed the better quarterbacks and,
> seemingly, made better draft choices. And though it has been more than
> three decades since the old AFL's wide-open style, with offenses that
> threw the ball all over the field and with little regard for game
> situation, it seems the AFC has been the more imaginative of the two
> conferences.
>
> Many veterans who have played in both conferences say they have witnessed
> little difference between the two in terms of overall player talent. But
> Denver cornerback Champ Bailey, who played the first five seasons of his
> celebrated nine-year career in Washington until he was dealt to the
> Broncos in 2004, has noted there is a palpably different feel between the
> conferences.
>
> "I don't know if it's just because [the AFC] has been so good for as long
> as I've been in the league or whatever, but there is kind of this sense
> that it's the better conference," Bailey said. "Even when I was with the
> Redskins, you felt that way. It just seems that AFC teams carry themselves
> a little different. There's a different air to them or something. It looks
> like AFC teams are more confident, especially when they are playing NFC
> teams. It's as if there is this superiority complex."
>
> Bailey is hardly the only player in the league who feels that way. In
> fact, several New England veterans, none of whom wanted to be identified
> because of obvious consequences, noted that the Patriots' coaching staff
> prepares for games against NFC opponents harboring what one player termed
> "something bordering on disdain."
>
> Said one New England player: "It's not a lack of respect. It's more like,
> 'Hey, [the NFC] just isn't as good as us.' That feeling just [emanates]
> from the top on down when we're playing an NFC team. I mean, doesn't it
> show?"
>
> The results do.
>
> Since Bill Belichick became its coach in 2000, New England has a 22-8
> record versus NFC teams, with a matchup against Philadelphia on Sunday and
> the season finale against the New York Giants on Dec. 29 still remaining.
>
> Even more remarkable is that half of the Patriots' eight defeats to NFC
> franchises during the Belichick era came in his first season with the
> team, when New England was 0-4 in interconference play and just 5-11
> overall. Since that 2000 season, the Patriots have never lost more than
> once a season to NFC opponents, and they are 13-1 since the start of the
> 2004 season.
>
> And that doesn't even include the Pats' three Super Bowl victories.
>
> "They pretty much define what [the AFC] has been about in the series,"
> Philadelphia free safety Brian Dawkins said.
>
> To this point of the 2007 season, though, the NFC has ignored the
> definition. Or at least two of the conference's four divisions have.
>
> Nine of the 16 NFC franchises, including all four teams in both the NFC
> East and NFC North, have winning records in the interconference
> competition. There are four NFC teams undefeated against their AFC
> counterparts.
>
> In terms of the interconference competition, the NFC certainly is split
> into the haves and the have-nots this season. The NFC East and NFC North
> have played, respectively, the teams from the AFC East and the AFC West in
> 2007, and have amassed a cumulative 18-4 record in those matchups (the
> Pats having beaten the Cowboys and Redskins for two of those four wins).
> None of the eight teams in those two NFC divisions has more than one loss
> in the interconference series.
>
> On the flip side, the NFC South is a woeful 3-11 versus its AFC South
> counterparts and all four of its teams have losing records. The NFC West
> is 3-7 in games against the AFC North and, of its four teams, just Arizona
> (2-1) is on the plus side of the ledger. In fact, Arizona is the only club
> in either the NFC South or NFC West with more than one victory against AFC
> teams.
>
> Still, the NFC, which has become accustomed to losing the season series,
> will take the results of 2007 over those of the previous 11 seasons. This
> may well be a serendipitous season, in which the schedule has unwittingly
> placed the NFC's best divisions against the worst divisions in the AFC.
> But players from the NFC, who have grown weary of losing the
> interconference series, didn't make excuses in the past and aren't about
> to issue any apologies now.
>
> "Maybe it's time," Dallas tight end Jason Witten said, "for things to even
> out some, huh?"
>
> Things are exactly even in the current ESPN.com Power Rankings, with the
> NFC sporting five teams among the top 10 and eight in the top half of the
> poll. It may be a one-team league right now, with everyone chasing the
> Patriots, but at least there are some NFC teams in the chase, and the
> conference is finally holding its own in interconference play.
>
> --
> Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.

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