At Least Pretend

While I was reading Bill Simmons' mailbag, where he responds to his readers' questions, I came across this little nugget of an answer.


SG: That's right, just five months until the 2006 season! (By the way, I'd like to thank the NFL Schedule Gods for finally including the Patriots on the "Teams With A Cream Puff Schedule" list. So we get to play Buffalo twice, the Jets twice, Houston, Tennessee, everyone in the NFC North, plus Indy and Denver at home? Thank you, Schedule Gods. That nearly made up for the Vinatieri/McGinest departures. Actually, no, it didn't. Not even close. Uh-oh, my blood sugar is crashing again.)

To try to guess which teams will have the easiest or hardest schedules five months before not only the season begins, but the final rosters have been decided can mean only one of two things. Either you are extremely bored or you get paid to make predictions, which will inevitably turn out to be wrong. And who is better at being wrong than sports writers?

However, Simmons assuming that he knows which schedule is easy and which one is hard months before the season begins does not concern me today. What does concern me is the way in which he thanks the NFL Schedule Gods for scheduling Buffalo and the Jets twice. Both Buffalo and the Jets are in the same division as the Patriots, meaning the Patriots play them twice a year every single year. It is not as if this is an anomaly and worthy of thanking anyone.

And if he thinks the Patriots have it easy by getting to play Houston and Tennessee once each, just think what Colts fans are thinking right now about the schedule that allows the Colts to play both of these teams twice. They must be just ecstatic. Unless, of course, the Colts fans understand what Bill Simmons does not and already knew that Indianapolis would be playing its division foes twice.