The best division in football
The NFC
West could
have 3 teams
in the
playoffs
Let it never be said that sport is stagnant and predictable. Over the course of the last year the NFC West has gone from the "NFC Worst" to, in my opinion the "NFC Best". There are multiple reasons for this, which I will discuss shortly but lets first look at where we were a few years ago. Between the seasons 08 - 10 the four teams in this division combined for a 37% winning percentage. Over the last two years it has been exactly 50%. In fact, all four teams could combine for a total of 9 wins and they would still beat their total from the 08-10 period. This remarkable improvement has been down to 2 key points. The first is incredible drafting, the second is great coaching. Do these names mean anything to you? Aldon Smith? Richard Sherman? Sam Bradford? Colin Kaepernick? Russell Okung? Russell Wilson? Navarro Bowman? Mike Iupati? Patrick Peterson? The list is staggering when you go through and see all of the successes that have been found through the draft process for all of these teams. These organisations have been run well and have understood that scouting and utilising young talent combined with established veterans is the age old and tested method of building a team. This effect is accelerated when your rival teams are doing the same, the tendency is to trend towards that being the norm. This has both positive and negative effects, as when the teams were not as good, and levels of competition were lower, this too became the norm, meaning the effect was prolonged.
These teams, as previously mentioned are also very well coached. Arizona are a bit of a wildcard this year with Bruce Arians coming in, but what cannot be denied is that though there may be more experienced heads out there, I defy you to find a group more intense and passionate than the four head coaches that grace this division. It will be a stunning season and I predict at least two of these teams hitting the playoffs again but could potentially have three teams make it if other teams in the NFC struggle.
The truth is however, that whilst these teams are dominant now they will struggle to maintain this. Carson Palmer, if he is successful, is not getting any younger. It also remains to be seen whether the read option run by Seattle and San Francisco is a "fad" or a true picture of offenses for the next decade.
We also have to consider the nature of the other teams in the NFC. This article, if more general in scale could have been entitled "NFC - The best Conference in Football" and whilst the NFC West has a plethora of talent, one cannot mistake the incredible athletes found in the NFC North for example. Aaron Rodgers, AP and Megatron to name but three who are all the top at their position in the league.
So why does it matter?
The reason I am so inclined to celebrate the teams in the NFC West is the incredible blend of youth, vitality, impressive drafting, keeping up with modern attacks whilst maintaining the fundamentals of lights out defence and an impressive running attack. I also love the coaches in this division, from top to bottom it is a roster of guys who love the game of football, and in the transition times of changing safety rules and tension with former players, its good to know there are still some of these guys around.
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