A Tough Year Ahead

I am happy the browns had such a good record last year but then I saw whom they play next year it is then that I realized that next year was going to be tough. The reason is they play every team in the AFC South and the NFC East. Each year a team plays one entire division from the AFC and one from the NFC. Both of those divisions sent both of the wild cards from last year. What that means is that of the 12 teams that went to the playoffs last year the Browns will face 7 of them. Since they play Pittsburgh 2 times that means that half of the Browns games this year will be against playoff teams from the year before. Last year they only played 4 games against playoff teams and they only won 1 game. Let me break it down some.

Last year the Browns “Strength of Schedule” was a low 0.43. This year it’s up to 0.54. I know your thinking that is not a big difference but it is in “Strength of schedule” terms. The Strength of Schedule is basically the won lost records of all the teams the Browns play/played combined.

To better explain if we look at the number of teams the Browns played last year that had winning records. They played 4 games out of 16 against teams with wining records. In those 4 games they went 1 and 3. That means the only team they beat with a winning record was Seattle, which finished only 9-7 which they barley won.

The browns beat only one team with a winning record. They won 9 of their 10 games against teams that did not have winning records. That does not look good for next year when they face 8 teams with winning records. That means if you take that 1 and 4 against winning teams over 8 games then it comes to 2 and 8. That means if they win there other 6 games the best they can hope for is 8 and 8. Which probably is not going to get it done.

In order for the browns to hope to make this playoffs this year it looks like they are going to have to win their division because with a schedule that tough it does not look like their record will be good enough to get in as a wild card. This basically that means that we must beat Pittsburgh this year in order to win the division to make the playoffs. People that think they Browns are going to improve on a 10 and 6 record from last year based on the games they play this year is probably not going to happen.

~Jim