The NFL playoffs are here. When your team makes the playoffs, there are seven possible
outcomes. Only one of them is awesome and the rest have some degree of bummer
to them. Let’s break them down from best to worst.
Winning the Super Bowl: It's pretty great.
Losing the Super Bowl: It’s a bummer, but not that bad if
you can keep the proper perspective. Your team is the second best in football,
so that is actually pretty good. As a Broncos fan, I have experienced four
Super Bowl losses, every single one a blowout. That does not include the Super
Bowl beatdown when I was four years old. I am getting pretty good at handling
this outcome.
Winning in the Wild Card round, winning in the Divisional
round, and losing the Conference Championship: In this scenario, your team won
two playoff games, including a road win in the Divisional Round, one of the
hardest wins to achieve in football. If your team played in the Wild Card
round, expectations were probably fairly low so falling one game short of the
Super Bowl is pretty good.
Winning in the Divisional Round, losing the Conference
Championship: In this scenario, your team got a first round bye and then won a
home playoff game. Expectations are high and the Super Bowl is one game away
but the teams falls short. The 2005 Broncos fell into this category, and after
the game, I just kept thinking about what could have been. For Vikings fans in
1998 and 2010, this scenario still haunts them. The reason it is not lower on
the list is that your team at least won a playoff game before heading home for
the rest of the playoffs.
Winning in the Wild Card round, lose in the Divisional
round: Most likely the expectations were low but your team did win a playoff
game. At least your team made the playoffs and won a game. The 2011 Broncos
season felt like a success since the team had failed to make the playoffs for
the previous five seasons and then scored a victory when they did. On the other
side, the 2005 Patriots were defending Super Bowl Champs and getting bounced in
the Divisional round was pretty crushing to them. Perspective is everything
with this one.
Losing in the Wild Card round: Chances are that your team
was not very good but you still held out hope that they would make a run. Instead,
your team rewarded your hope by failing to win a playoff game. Bengals fans
just keep experiencing the scenario and it crushes their souls. The 2008 Colts
won twelve games but lost in this round and their fans probably never recovered.
Losing in the Divisional Round: This one is the worst. Your
team was good enough for a first round bye and is playing at home against a
team that had to play a week before. Home teams win 75% of the time in this
round. The Divisional round loses in 1996, 2012, and 2014 haunt me way more
than the Super Bowl loses. The 2012 loss against Baltimore still makes me want
to throw up. The Broncos will need to win multiple Super
Bowls before I get over that game. Now that I write it out, that sounds kind of
pathetic.
The Broncos have the #1 seed for the playoff so I am hoping for an outcome on the higher end of this list.
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