the schedule
 

i'll tell you, i've been looking at it, and the more i look, the harder it looks.
anyone thinks we have a weak schedule? smitty

We definitely got a toughie, no gimme's included.

What pisses me off, is the Philadelphia Eagles schedule. They made it to the Superbowl, yet 10 of the 16 games they play is against teams with losing schedules last year. It's even worse, b/c my roomate is an Eagles fan, so I have to put up with him all year.

Well, that's not really the Eagles fault since the schedules are now made years in advance. There's only like two flex games for every team. Look at the Falcons schedule. They made it to the NFC champ game and based on SOS, have a schedule ranked in the bottom half of the league. Now part of that is due to Carolina falling off last year, us being us, and Tampa sucking, and the other part is the pre-made rotating schedule. Hopefully we will catch a break like that next year should we make some noise this year.

The Eagles schedule strength is really just a product of the rotating division matchups. If you look, they have the exact same divisions we had last year...the west in both conferences. We went 4-4 in those matchups, typical Saints mediocrity. The one that really hurt was the Cardinals and the fact that the Hawks couldn't knock off the Rams to keep us from getting hosed on that bogus tiebreaker.
The Eagles 2 random games are against the Falcons and the Packers....all division winners last season. So that's where they try to make it tough. (Ours are the Vikes and Rams.)
The difference between the Saints and Eagles is that the Eagles will go either 3-1 or 4-0 vs. the NFC west because they are better than those teams.

Also, let me add this. Counting wins and losses at the beginning of an NFL season never works. Especially with the Saints. (It wouldn't surprise me if we beat the Pats and lost to the Dolphins or comething crazy like that.) There are only a few "sure" wins in this league and we are fortunate to have 2 of them on our schedule. (Dolphins and Bears will almost certainly both suck...you can throw the Browns and Niners in that mix....the Bucs could be bad as well). Other than that, the 10-6 teams through the 6-10 teams will be separated by about 4-5 plays one way or the other. That's why this league is so fun to watch. (Unless you're 8-8 every year.)

Thanks for the emphasis Yas. :D

Might not be Yas, might be the site just acting a little strange with the migration going on. I'm seeing oddball behavior from here myself - random disconnects, etc.

I was just clowning with him anyway, thus the smilie. :)

The Eagles schedule strength is really just a product of the rotating division matchups. If you look, they have the exact same divisions we had last year...the west in both conferences. We went 4-4 in those matchups, typical Saints mediocrity. The one that really hurt was the Cardinals and the fact that the Hawks couldn't knock off the Rams to keep us from getting hosed on that bogus tiebreaker.
The Eagles 2 random games are against the Falcons and the Packers....all division winners last season. So that's where they try to make it tough. (Ours are the Vikes and Rams.)
The difference between the Saints and Eagles is that the Eagles will go either 3-1 or 4-0 vs. the NFC west because they are better than those teams.

Also, let me add this. Counting wins and losses at the beginning of an NFL season never works. Especially with the Saints. (It wouldn't surprise me if we beat the Pats and lost to the Dolphins or comething crazy like that.) There are only a few "sure" wins in this league and we are fortunate to have 2 of them on our schedule. (Dolphins and Bears will almost certainly both suck...you can throw the Browns and Niners in that mix....the Bucs could be bad as well). Other than that, the 10-6 teams through the 6-10 teams will be separated by about 4-5 plays one way or the other. That's why this league is so fun to watch. (Unless you're 8-8 every year.)

Damn...sorry about that guys. I was getting errors and I apparently posted the same thing 50 times. My bad.

"sure wins"? we are talking about the Saints here right? lol. I don't put anything into a sure win... I mean everyone who suits up on Sundays is a paid professional.