Inconsistency Hamstrings NFC South; NFL's Weakest Division Limps Toward Playoffs

The NFC South isn't just the weakest division in the NFL this year. It's cringingly weak. Historically weak. Challenging-the-NFL's-entire-competitive-model weak.

Just when everyone thought the New Orleans Saints were finally, shakily jelling into a squad that could rally to finish near, at or even above .500, they got dunked on. The miserable Carolina Panthers, who came limping into the game with a 3-8-1 record, housed the Saints 41-10 in the Superdome.

That game made it official: There are no good football teams in the NFC South.

At the time of this writing, the Saints could still win the division at 6-10. Not only is it possible, but the Saints could also clinch the NFC's No. 4 seed with a pathetic six-win season; they would then host a playoff game against an NFC wild-card team with 10 or 11 wins under its belt.

How could a single NFL division have all its teams under .500, while the AFC, an entire conference, has only four losing teams? What kind of freaky season is this—and what's gone awry with the NFL's nearly mythical engines of parity?

First, let's look at the simple win-loss breakdown of the eight divisions:

Credit: Ty Schalter/Bleacher Report

Since all divisions will go .500 against themselves, the out-of-division breakdowns are more reflective of their respective strength. No surprise, the NFC West and AFC North are clearly the two best divisions in football; the 6-7 St. Louis Rams are the only non-winning team in either division. Both divisions are beating the rest of the NFL at about a 65 percent clip.

Way down at the other end of the league, the NFC South has an awful .236 winning percentage against the rest of the league. The Atlanta Falcons are tied for the top overall winning percentage in the division, but it's only because they're undefeated against the Panthers, Saints and Buccaneers. So far, the Falcons are an appalling 1-8 against the rest of the league.

We know wins and losses aren't the only way to measure football performance, or even a particularly accurate way. That funny-shaped ball bounces strangely sometimes, and things such as fumble luck, officiating and fluke plays can often put the better-playing team on the wrong end of the final score.

Let's take a look at another relative-strength metric, Pro-Football-Reference.com's Simple Rating System. It boils down to scoring differential modified by strength of schedule, but it's a strongly predictive way to compare teams. The NFC South gets crushed here, too:

Credit: Ty Schalter/Bleacher Report

Notice, though, that taking margin of victory and strength of schedule into account dramatically changes the order of the top divisions. The AFC East rockets from the middle of the pack to a dominant No. 1, and both northern divisions fall to the midway point. The NFC East and AFC South are still the third- and second-weakest divisions, though the NFC East is much closer to the pack.

Since SRS is a predictive metric, this is a snapshot of the strength of the league. If divisions could play head-to-head, we'd expect the AFC East to win head-to-head over any other division and the NFC South to get whomped by any other division.

But divisions can't play head-to-head, because "divisions" are just ways of organizing the NFL schedule. What about these teams' relative performance? Football Outsiders' Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average adjusts team performance for situational value and opponent strength, so it is about as accurate as a one-number measure gets. Here's how the divisions break down by average DVOA:

Credit: Ty Schalter/Bleacher Report

Did you just hear a record scratch?

Per DVOA, the NFC South isn't the weakest division!

Once we adjust for situation and opponent, both the AFC South and NFC South are far, far less effective than the rest of the NFL—so much so that every other division is above average!

DVOA still likes the AFC East the best but puts the AFC North in the No. 2 slot. That leapfrogs both western divisions, but not by much. In fact, the next four divisions are right behind the AFC East, with the fifth (NFC North) just off that pace.

How can the AFC South be every bit as bad as the putrid NFC South?

Here's how the two divisions stack up, team for team:

AFC South	W-L	SRS	DVOA	NFC South	W-L	SRS	DVOA
IND (3)	9-4	6.2	8.30%	ATL (4)	5-8	-2.5	-1.60%
HOU	7-6	1.1	-7.70%	NOR	5-8	-3.1	-1.40%
JAX	2-11	-12.2	-30.10%	CAR	4-8-1	-5.1	-16.90%
TEN	2-11	-11.7	-33.30%	TAM	2-11	-10.1	-30.80%

The Indianapolis Colts are the only legitimately good team in either division, ranked 11th overall in DVOA. The Houston Texans are almost as far below average as the Colts are above it, ranked 22nd, and the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tennessee Titans are just putrid. They're ranked 30th and 32nd in DVOA, respectively.

In the NFC South, both the Falcons and Saints are just a hair behind league average. The 26th-ranked Panthers slot in the middle of the chasm between the two top NFC South teams and the 31st-ranked Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

If the Falcons and Saints are both significantly better than the Texans, how can the NFC South be so hard up for wins? In a word, consistency.

DVOA has a sub-stat, variance, which measures how much a team's performance swings from week to week. The Colts rank eighth in DVOA variance, and the Texans rank second. Atlanta is the ninth-most consistent team by DVOA, but the Panthers are 16th, the Buccaneers are 27th and the Saints are a schizophrenic 30th.

When the most talented, best coached team in the division—the one with the highest DVOA and non-division winning percentage—is also the third-least consistent squad in the NFL, wins are going to be tough to come by.

From Week 1 on, the all-over-the-place Saints have been the hardest team in the NFL to figure out; that shocking Panthers home rout is just the most egregious example.

The Falcons followed up a 56-14 beatdown of the lowly Buccaneers by taking a 41-28 pounding from the 6-7 Minnesota Vikings. The Bucs took that beating from the Falcons and then in the next two weeks shocked the 8-5 Steelers and took the Saints to overtime.

"This year has been different than any season I recall in a while," Saints head coach Sean Payton told Terrance Harris of The Times-Picayune. "We've been inconsistent," he admitted, and said "we all have to continue to look at being a little bit more consistent as opposed to up and down and really trying to bring out the best we can do each week coaching and playing."

The NFC South is poor; there's no doubt about it. Being matched up against the tough AFC North and NFC North in the NFL's rotational schedule doesn't help, either. But the top three teams not being able to take care of business against weaker opponents is making the whole division look even worse.

"We know if we had made a play here or there we could be 8-4," Saints running back Mark Ingram told Harris. "The season is so delicate, each game is so delicate so you just have to continue to improve and not make those mistakes. We know we can play with the best teams in the league when we are all on the same page."

Unless the Saints, Falcons or Panthers flip a switch and play up to their potential talent, that undeserved home playoff game is only going to compound the NFC South's image problem.