February 16, 2017

SportsFilter: The Thursday Huddle:

A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.

posted by huddle to general at 06:00 AM - 4 comments

Greg Maddux steps away from serial murder to prank Kris Bryant

I hope I'm doing this right. It's been a long time.

posted by The_Black_Hand at 06:40 PM on February 16, 2017

Just happened to see the 2017 NFL season Strength of Schedule.

The top 4 toughest schedules belong to the entire AFC West: Denver, KC, SD, Oakland in that order.

Then, three of the next four teams are from the AFC East. Everyone except...the Patriots, who are down the chart a few notches.

I don't see the SOS every year so I don't know if this sort of divisional bunching is typical or not.

posted by beaverboard at 09:14 PM on February 16, 2017

I don't know if this sort of divisional bunching is typical or not.

It would make sense that teams from a given division would all (or mostly) end up bunched in opponents' strength of schedule. It is the result of all teams in a division playing all of the teams in 2 other divisions, one NFC and one AFC. If your division draws a division with more than one good team, your division's strength of schedule rises accordingly. The AFC West played all of the NFC South teams this past season, thus running into Tampa Bay, New Orleans, Carolina, and Atlanta. All 4 were decent with the exception of Carolina. Of course Atlanta was not too bad. The teams from the AFC East played AFC North and NFC West. AFC North had 1 very good team, Pittsburgh, and 2 decent teams, Baltimore and Cincinnati. NFC West had Arizona and Seattle to balance Los Angeles and San Francisco. So why is New England;s strength of schedule lower than the other 3 teams in the AFC East? It's pretty simple; New England doesn't have to play the Patriots, while the other 3 teams get to play them twice.

posted by Howard_T at 01:00 AM on February 17, 2017

The_Black_Hand: Greg Maddux steps away from serial murder to prank Kris Bryant

I hope I'm doing this right. It's been a long time.

Ha! That was fantastic. You could see the point where Bryant was thinking "The fuck, I can't hit a goddamn curveball thrown by the sound guy?!?". Well sure, if the sound guy is one of the top 5 right-hand pitchers of literally all time.

And of course, it was... very important that Bryant took it all in good humor. :)

posted by hincandenza at 02:51 AM on February 17, 2017

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