If you're a football junkie like myself, you probably caught CBS' ranking of the five most disrespected program in college football.
It's pretty much a guarantee the Bengals would be at or near the top if such a ranking was made for the NFL. Year in and year out, the national media seems to be digging for every little reason why the Bengals won't be good, won't have a winning record and why they won't make the playoffs.
The latest to embark on this journey is Mike Harris of Football Outsiders. Harris just updated his formula that calculates the playoff odds of the 15 likeliest teams to make it to the postseason. It uses a combination of various aspects, including strength of schedule and simply how good said team is projected to be in 2016.
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Here is a look at the odds for the 15 likeliest teams to make the 2017 NFL playoffs:
Odds to Make 2016 Postseason | ||||||||
1 | SEA | 72.2% | 6 | KC | 60.3% | 11 | CIN | 40.9% |
2 | ARI | 69.3% | 7 | BAL | 50.7% | 12 | BUF | 39.9% |
3 | PIT | 66.9% | 8 | DAL | 50.5% | 13 | IND | 38.9% |
4 | NE | 65.5% | 9 | CAR | 47.7% | 14 | SD | 37.2% |
5 | GB | 64.8% | 10 | MIN | 41.4% | 15 | DEN | 37.0% |
The top teams shouldn't come as much of a surprise with the Seahawks, Cardinals, Patriots and Packers in the top five. The Steelers having the third-best odds is debatable, and while I do expect them to be in the postseason, they're not as far above the Bengals as everyone wants to believe.
Speaking of, the Bengals came in with just the 11th-best odds to make it to the playoffs in 2016, just ahead of the Bills, Colts, Chargers and Broncos with the fifth-best odds of any AFC team to make it to the postseason.
First off, Chargers over Broncos? Cowboys over Panthers?
This ranking loses me right there, so it probably shouldn't be a surprise to see the Bengals so low, not to mention the Ravens of all teams, having better postseason odds. The notion that a team with a quarterback coming off major knee surgery that was 5-11 last year, could move past the 12-4 Bengals in one year is debatable enough.
Did Skip Bayless come up with these?