I realized something recently. This upcoming 2012 season marks my 10th year of being an ardent NFL fan, someone who watches every week, understands the game to some level, and spends time thinking about the game way too much. By around 2007-08, this love of the game reached its apex (a level that it hasn't really dropped from) as I started venturing out onto the internet to find better, smarter and more focused ways to analyze the game. There, I found Football Outsiders, and 18to88 and a host of other sites with fans just like me, who think like me, talk like me and are similarly obsessed with a game in a way that is unhealthy. It has been 10 years.
A lot has changed in the NFL over the ten years that encompass my true fanhood. 10 years ago, heading into the 2002 season, the Patriots were a lovable underdog team that fought and lucked its way into a Super Bowl. The Rams were the glory team of the NFL. The best two QBs (again, heading into the season, not during it) were Kurt Warner of the Rams and Brett Favre of the Packers. That truly seems like a lifetime ago. Only two coaches coaching then still coach for that same team (Bill Belichick and Andy Reid) and only two others even coach for other teams (Shanahan and John Fox - who was about to enter his first season in Carolina). Only one QB remains on the team he was on back then (Tom Brady). If you consider Donovan McNabb to be retired (as I do), only Brady and Peyton remain at all. That is scary. 10 years in an eternity in the NFL, and I just finished living my first one.
2002 was a weird time. It was the last year of the transition phase of the NFL, as the league went from the 49ers-Cowboys-Packers era from 1992-1997 (or really the NFC Dominance era from 1984-1996) to the Patriots-Colts-Steelers era from 2003 to now (those three teams have still combined for the last nine AFC titles – although they’ve also combined to be the last three Super Bowl losers now). It is something similar to the years between the Sampras-Agassi era and the Fed-Nadal-Djokovic era known as 2001-2004, when Fed dominated late, but a host of randoms (Thomas Johansson, Albert Costa, Goran Ivanisevic, Yvgeny Kafelnikov) and good but not great players (Lleyton Hewitt, Marat Safin, Andy Roddick) won slams. 1999-2002 was this era in the NFL. 2002 was the last year when Brady wasn’t mythologized (he, gasp, missed the playoffs by losing a game at home to the Jets in Week 16) and Manning was still a playoff-o-fer, zero-time MVP. It really was as if 2002 was the last year the league was wild. And it was a fun year.
2002 was a year where the 11-5 Raiders, my team, won the AFC, but more ridiculously, earned home field advantage with that record. No team in the AFC won more than eleven games. Since 2002, no AFC team has even earned a bye with less than 12. Hell, in 2004 and 2006, all four division winners won 12 games, and in 2008, the Patriots didn’t qualify at 11-5. That Raider team immediately fell apart mainly due to age, but it was the zenith of Al Davis’s last creation, as they were the best form of the 1999-2002 Raiders run, with their impeccable passing offense led by MVP Rich Gannon (and he earned it). 2002, however, was also a year where ridiculous things happened all around the league. Here is a quick rundown of the 2002 season:
- The Jets won the AFC East despite a 2-5 start to the season, while the Titans won the AFC South and earned a 1st round bye despite a 1-4 start to the season.
- The Browns, at 9-7, made the playoffs behind the exploits of backup Kelly Holcomb, and the great receiving of Dennis Northcutt.
- The Eagles went 12-4 and got the #1 seed in the NFC, and went 4-0 late in the season starting Koy Detmer, who got hurt, and then AJ Feeley. I’m sure Miami regrets the fact that Koy Detmer got hurt.
- The Saints, in the most Jim Haslett-Aaron Brooks type year ever, went 8-8 but somehow with those two scored 432 points.
- Mike Sherman and Warren Sapp got into a verbal fight after their MNF game in October, with Sapp yelling the memorable line “You so tough? You so tough? Put a Jersey On! Put a Jersey On!” to a finger-wagging Mike Sherman.
- Michael Vick sprung to life in 2002, and his legend was cemented with his incredible overtime game-winning 40-yard TD run against the Minnesota Vikings
- 2002 marked the first year of the Dick Vermeil offensive renaissance in Kansas City, as the Chiefs scored 467 points, which they followed with seasons of 484 and 483.
- 2002 also was the first season for the Houston Texans, and the current divisions/playoffs and scheduling format.
- The Buccaneers featured what might have been the best pass defense ever. Most advanced statistical analysis on the matter concludes this. They have the best pass defense by DVOA, and when the pro-football-reference did a study of QB Super Bowl performances adjusted for opponent, Rich Gannon’s actually came out average – that was the strength of that defense.
Overall, 2002 was the perfect initiation for a fan. My team was really good (the Raiders were my main team back then). The league was really wild. There were no perfect teams, no truly unstoppable offenses. Just a lot of fun, flawed teams competing in the last year of true sanity. It all changed in 2003, when Tom Brady won a 2nd ring despite not being that great of a QB (he did play excellent in Super Bowl XXXVIII, admittedly). Then, to justify that this guy had won two rings and the fact that the MVP of the league and clearly more talented, better player in Peyton Manning had won zero, the rigns=greatness movement started. In a way, it was also the beginning of the overarching story of the next eight years, the Colts-Patriots rivalry and the Manning-Brady debate, but in a way, it marginalized every position not named QB.
I have no idea how the 2003 and 2004 seasons buoyed my interest in the NFL. Those were easily the two darkest seasons for me as a fan (not only because the Patriots were at their very best, although that definitely was a factor), but also just average seasons all around. They had great teams (especially 2004) but few great stories like the 2002 seasons. There were no miracle teams in 2003 and 2004 (the Panthers came the closest, but they started 2003 5-1, so we all could see it). 2004 was probably the nadir of the imbalance between the QB and defense rich AFC and the pathetic NFC, as the AFC Playoff field consisted of a 15-1 team, a 14-2 team, two 12-4 teams and two 10-6 teams, while the NFC field was a 13-3 team, an 11-5 team, a 10-6 team, a 9-7 team and two 8-8 Wild Card teams. At least 2003 had a mostly magnificent postseason (four great divisional games, a great Super Bowl, one truly memorable Wild Card game), but the 2004 postseason was awful. Only four of the 11 playoff games were less than 10-point affairs.
There was a light at the end of that dark tunnel, though, and it was 2005. Although that postseason was nothing special, it was the first year that a team chased perfection. Other than the explosion of offensive numbers and the Patriots-Colts-Steelers dominance, nothing explains the 2002-2011 period other than this idea. The chase of perfection. The Colts were the first team to do it in 2005, and they were easily the best team in the NFL that season. The won each of their first 13 games by at least a touchdown and did it with clinical efficiency. As a Colts fan, it was incredible to watch Manning play so well, but also so reserved. He didn’t force balls. He didn’t throw 45 times a game. It was minimalism at its best. Of course, San Diego upset them in Week 15, Tony Dungy’s son tragically committed suicide, and the Steelers upset the Colts in what would start the other great trend of the period, #1 seeds losing and lower-seeded teams making and winning Super Bowls.
2006 had the Colts chase perfection with a 9-0 start, and then the flawed Colts, statistically their worst team from 2003-2009, win the Super Bowl as a #3 seed despite a historically bad run defense. 2007 had the Patriots chase and achieve perfection, and then the Giants magical run to the Super Bowl becoming in the process the worst team to ever win one. 2008 had the Titans(!) chase perfection with a 10-0 start, and then a mad playoffs where three of the four bye teams lost their opener, and an NFC Championship between a #6 and a #4 seed, and the 9-7 Cardinals that had lost games 56-31, 48-21 and 47-17 during the season, come within 30 seconds of winning the Super Bowl. 2009 had the Saints and Colts chase perfection, one starting 13-0 and getting beaten, the latter starting 14-0 and giving up their fight in a calculated move. 2010 was the one year where no team really chased perfection, but had the 10-6 #6 seed Packers romp their way to the Super Bowl without ever trailing in the 2nd in any of their playoff games. And 2011 had those same Packers start 13-0 before shockingly losing to the eventually 7-9 Chiefs, and then the Giants again, this time at 9-7 and having been outscored during the season, winning the Super Bowl.
Those two elements made the last half-decade or so incredible. There were some great teams (the 2005 Colts, 2006 Chargers, 2007 Pats, Colts, Cowboys, 2009 Colts, Saints, 2010 Pats, 2011 Packers) but rarely did that team actually win it all (out of that list, only the 2009 Saints). The NFL was achieving a new kind of parity, which is what the league wanted. In 2002, there already was parity, what with no AFC team going better than 11-5, and no team overall going better than 12-4, but those playoffs were routine in that both conference title games featured 1v2 matchups. By 2011, there were four 13-3 or better teams, but none of them won the title. It is a different NFL, but as a fan maybe more enjoyable.
Overall, the last ten years of football have been special. They have featured six Super Bowls that rank in the good to epic category (38, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46), two more that had their memorable moments (41, 42) and just one dud (37). They have featured so many great playoff games. In the end, that is what I will remember most about this era, the games. The stories, and stats and all are nice, but the actual game is what makes the sport so great, and the period from 2002-2011, my first football decade, was the perfect example. I remember each of the 110 playoff games played during that time. Some I didn’t see live, some I’ve not only seen live but watched 10 more times. The games are what truly define and make this era of football, and this mini-project is about that.
*yes, that was an extremely long, rambling, sometimes wayward introduction*
Over the next month before my 2nd decade as a football fan begins (2012-2021 here I come), I will be remembering the playoffs from 2002-2011. NFL Playoff Football, to me, is the best package of sports you will find. The NHL Playoffs comes close but it drags at time, plus the one-game format is inherently more special than a 7-game series. I will be ranking all 40 Wild-Card Round games, 40 Divisional Games, 20 Conference Title Games and 10 Super Bowls. This isn’t really an exercise in ranking them, but in looking back. For each, I’ll give a quick paragraph review and some interesting, fact or play that I remember about that game. Let the playoff-rewind for my initial decade of football watching begin.
