Admittedly Jacksonville’s schedule was anything but impressive. However, a closer look shows that several of the playoff teams had similar or worse schedule strengths than the Jaguars did. Playing in the pathetic NFC West the Seahawks had the easiest schedule of any team with a .430 opponents’ W-L percentage.

For reference Jacksonville was at .465. Indy (.457), Carolina (.449), Chicago (.457), and Tampa Bay (.449) were all worse.

Only two of the playoff contenders had opponents' W-L percentages over .500: Washington (.539) and New England (.508).

I don’t dispute that the Jaguars had an easy schedule or that their record was inflated. However, at this point I think that just about any team going into New England would be hard-pressed pretty to come within ten points of the Patriots.

Jacksonville’s schedule for next year does appear to be much harder though.

 

Is that compiled by year end records, or the records at the time the games were played?

Also, without crunching the stats myself, isn't that skewed by taking the median instead of the mean? Rather than taking the overall %, look at individual points on the graph. Jax played Indy twice, Denver, and Seattle, who are a combined what, 55-7 or something (counting indy twice)? They also played 11 win Cin and Pitts, so that's 6 tough games of which they commendably won 3. 5 of those were in the first 6 weeks though, and of their other opponents not one was even respectibly decent, including just 1 in the last 10 weeks.

Hence their overall opponent winning percentage is way skewed by them playing 4 games against the top 3 teams. Enough to largely cancel out their 2 games against Houston, 1 against SF, 2 Tenn, 1 cleve, 1 NYJ, etc.

 

Those numbers were compiled with the team's year-end records. The numbers used came from:

http://www.gbnreport.com/weeklydraftorder.htm

Jacksonville's schedule was largely the inverse of Indy's. While Indy got a creampuff schedule for the first half of the season the Jaguars played their toughest opponents. Things worked out nicely for the Jaguars and they got to play weaker teams in the second half while Indy went up against NE, Cin, Pitt, Jax, SD, and Seattle.

Obviously when the NFL makes the schedules they can only speculate as to what teams will be good and what teams won't. But, since the schedules are planned out in a rotating fashion through 2009, it's more a matter of placement and chance than anything else. The Jaguars were lucky to play Pitt with Roethlisberger out (and Maddox in...), but the Jaguars also got the Jets earlier before injuries starting hitting New York left and right. Pennington and Martin were healthy for that game. Pennington injured his shoulder on the first series of the third quarter.

Jacksonville played Denver and New York because the team finished 2nd in the AFC South in 2004 and those teams finished 2nd in their respective divisions. The NFL’s best assumption at making the schedule harder for teams that were good in the previous year is giving them same-place division finishers from that year. With a first place schedule Indy had 7 tough games. With a second place schedule Jacksonville had 6. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Jacksonville’s average schedule (total wins of opponents divided by 16 and total losses divided by 16): 7.44 – 8.56

For comparison, Indy’s average schedule: 7.31 – 8.69

7 – 9 in both cases, if you want to round.

 

I see that Eli is following in Peyton's footsteps and not Archie's.

 

So...you mean that he's actually getting to playoff games instead of missing them every year like Archie?

I say "skofoy" to that!