The State of the NFL, From a College Lens

Right now, it may be fair to ask if anyone in the NFL is either: 1) Actually good! or 2) Actually happy or believe in their success!

It’s a product of the state of the league where many of the successful teams that are winning, like the first place Broncos, Colts, Patriots, or Bears, are unproven commodities, whereas some of the other contenders are playing in a fashion that doesn’t compare to where they’ve been in previous iterations like the Eagles, Ravens, Bills, or Buccaneers.

The current state of the playoffs would look like this:

• The AFC would run through Denver, with the Patriots playing the Jaguars, the Colts playing the Chargers, and the Steelers playing the Bills.
• The NFC would go to Philly, with the Rams hosting the 49ers, the Bears playing the Packers, and the Bucs playing the Seahawks.

You can make the argument that many of those teams either don’t deserve to have the homefield advantage or shouldn’t even be there at all, but that’s why the games are played.

In the college football selection process, we get to actually turn on that dumb part of our sports brain and argue. Aside from the automatic qualifiers, we get to look at resumes, the eye test, and what we know, and then yell about it to determine the 12 best.

Let’s create a hypothetical 12-team playoff at this stage of the NFL and see where we’d land using their qualifications.

However, we’re still going to use the caveat that there must be at least one team from every division.

The first four teams that would have a bye:

1) Philadelphia Eagles

They’re the champ until proven otherwise, as miserable a team they’ve been off the field with AJ Brown’s saga, and they’d have the head-to-head over the Rams.

Credit: Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

The offense is brotherly shove reliant, but the defense hasn’t taken a step back one bit since winning it all.

2) Los Angeles Rams

Matthew Stafford is still at an MVP level; they won the hypothetical playoff game against Seattle this week, and McVay continues to be a machine at getting the team to overperform with the game plans he creates.

3) New England Patriots

They’ve got an 8-2 resume with a win over Buffalo in Buffalo and have only gotten better on both sides of the ball since their opening loss to the Raiders.

Drake Maye looks like the future (another quarterback in New England has hit!), and Mike Vrabel is doing exactly what we thought he’d do on the defensive side of the ball.

4) Denver Broncos

Each week, we keep thinking that Bo Nix not playing well for 70% of the game is going to cost them, and each week, he leads game-winning drives with the best defense in the AFC. You don’t get style points for winning 10-7 on a Thursday against the Raiders, but you do get the “we believe in you” points for beating the Chiefs, who have owned the AFC West for that long.

That would make for these first round matchups:

5 Seattle Seahawks vs 12 Baltimore Ravens

The Ravens are the team that aren’t winning the division over Pittsburgh but are the healthier team that everyone still fears and would get that nod over the Steelers after the Aaron Rodgers injury and the way both teams are trending in the same way that Florida State was left out after Jordan Travis was out at quarterback for the Noles; they’re your AFC North representative by default.

The Seahawks are the outside-looking-in non-division leader after this loss to the Rams, but even with Sam Darnold throwing 4 picks, the defense kept them in the game, and the offense had been humming otherwise.

6 Indianapolis Colts vs 11 Green Bay Packers

We keep questioning how long Daniel Jones can keep this up, and he keeps proving us wrong for doubting him despite the offense being increasingly reliant upon Jonathan Taylor. They’d face the Packers, who are the team that we believe in as Super Bowl contenders when they made the big trade for Micah Parsons, but have sleepwalked, mainly, only to score 27 points with Jordan Love to win. We need to see them get hot, but they have the pedigree that the committee would believe in.

7 Buffalo Bills vs 10 Chicago Bears

The Bills have the belief from the committee on how much of an alien of an athlete Josh Allen is to take any roster over the top, but are dinged by the losses on their schedule from the games where he hasn’t been able to cover up the cracks.

The Bears slot in at the 10 because, despite leading the NFC North, they’re doing it in ways where their own fans aren’t happy with it at all because they haven’t seen enough to believe in “generational” Caleb Williams yet under Ben Johnson.

8 San Francisco 49ers vs 9 Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers have stayed in the fight despite all the injuries- a tale as old as time.

Meanwhile, the Bucs have recently shown their NFC South-ness to them in going on a bit of a skid with their poor injury luck as well, but Baker Mayfield has done everything he can to keep every game within a score at the end.

We’d get to argue about the Chiefs, Lions, Steelers, and Texans all being on the outside looking in.

Much more fun than our playoffs, right?