Porn for Blutarsky

This is too long to fit into a tweet, so I just want to paste a whole paragraph from Andrew Sharp's excellent NFL predictions:

The Patriots And Packers Will Both Go 13-3 And Lose In The Playoffs. They are probably the two best teams in football, but neither team's built to dominate in their freezing cold home stadiums in January, and plus, it just wouldn't be the NFL if the favorites actually met in the Super Bowl. While we're here, a reminder: The NFL Playoffs are basically the NCAA Tournament. It's not even surprising anymore when the best teams lose. That's just how things work in the parity era. The Giants, for instance, are Michigan State during the 2000s, the crappy team that always manage to sneak in to the Sweet 16 and then shock everyone and end up in the Final Four. This also means that the NFL regular season is every bit as meaningless as the college hoops season, so keep that in mind, too.

It's one thing for a pair of college football apologists from the South to say it.  It's another thing entirely when NFL writers start to notice that their playoff system is devaluing the larger part of the season.