Best playoff teams ’78-present not to make divisional round

[74_75_78_79_]

Strong wild-cards or post-’89 3rd-seeds or post-’01 4th-seeds that didn’t get by the 1st Rd of the playoffs. What team(s) first come to mind?

I’ll start off with the 1980 Rams. Very sold regular season body of work. Looked much like a 12-4 team in disguise of 11-5. Cowboys were the favorite in that WC game because it was at Dallas, but Rams just got done torching them on MNF penultimate week. The week before that, they bring Bills into OT at frigid Rich. They win at NE a few weeks earlier. Both games in their split with Atl both very competitive games; and Falcons did have to win that finale to assure homefield - which they ended up getting anyway because Eagles lost. Much reason to be optimistic going into the WCG, logic being that if the 9-7 Rams win at Dallas the year before, and then go on to the SB, then why not be able to do it all again in ’80? But not to be. Dallas winning? Understandable. But blowing Rams out?

[7DnBrnc53]

1981 Jets: Had weapons (Wesley Walker, Jerome Barkum, Freeman McNeil), a good O-line, and a solid Richard Todd. They also had the Sack Exchange. Lost to Buffalo in the WC Game.

1989 Eagles: Had the Gang Green defense with Randall Cunningham, Cris Carter, Mike Quick, and Keith Jackson on offense. Lost to the Rams in the WC game.

[Todd Pence]

I started essentially this same thread two years ago:

http://www.profootballresearchers.com/f ... f=5&t=3478

To that earlier list, I would add last season's Rams.

[74_75_78_79_]

I started essentially this same thread two years ago:

http://www.profootballresearchers.com/f ... f=5&t=3478

To that earlier list, I would add last season's Rams.

Oops! My mistake. If I knew/remembered, I would have simply revived the thread.

Others to add to that original thread are the 12-4 ’08 Colts who went on to win their final 9 games, one of them at champs-to-be Pittsburgh.

Also the defending-champ 11-5 Saints of 2010.

2011 Steelers? I don’t know. Yes, they did do something that year they hardly ever do - beat the Pats - but throughout that entire campaign they simply didn’t seem or feel like a 12-4 team. And then they get Tebow-ed to an 8-8. Yes, that campaign had to signal a playoff-drought to come.

[Todd Pence]

No big deal. It has been two years, after all. I had forgotten myself until I started to research the thread topic and realized that my research seemed familiar. I said to myself "I think this topic has been done before." I searched the archives and found out that not only was it done before, I was the one who started the original thread!