Top 3/Bottom 3 Wild Card qualifiers, 1970-thru-1977

[74_75_78_79_]

This includes overall body-of-work, regular & post-season.

Here are all the ones to choose from for both lists...

1970 - Miami (10-4), Detroit (10-4)
1971 - Baltimore (10-4), Washington (9-4-1)
1972 - Cleveland (10-4), Dallas (10-4)
1973 - Pittsburgh (10-4), Washington (10-4)
1974 - Buffalo (9-5), Washington (10-4)
1975 - Cincinnati (11-3), Dallas (10-4)
1976 - New England (11-3), Washington (10-4)
1977 - Oakland (11-3), Chicago (9-5)

Here are my tops...
1) '75 Cowboys
2) ''76 Patriots
3) '77 Raiders

Bottom...
14) '72 Browns
15) '74 Bills
16) '77 Bears

[Brian wolf]

Top 3 would be ...
76 NE
77 Oak
71 Balt

75 Cowboys had a great run but Vikings should have won Hail Mary game ...

76 NE should have beaten the Raiders after slipping at the end of the season

77 Raiders were defending champs that recovered Lytles's fumble but got jobbed, going down 14-3 and never getting the ball back the final 3:30 against Denver.

71 Colts beat Miami and Oak but underestimated Plunkett/NE on the final day and lost their division title.

[Some Guy From Mars]

Top 3:

75 Bengals
76 Patriots
75 Cowboys

Bottom:

77 Chicago
74 Buffalo
72 Cleveland

[Brian wolf]

Yeah, that 75 Bengals team was excellent too and had their chance to possibly take the division from Pittsburgh but they got blown out against the Steelers in wk 13 and should have been blown out by the Raiders in the playoffs but Stabler got bored and sloppy and allowed turnovers to get them back in the game until Ted Hendricks sealed the deal with pressure on Anderson ...

[Bryan]

Yeah, that 75 Bengals team was excellent too and had their chance to possibly take the division from Pittsburgh but they got blown out against the Steelers in wk 13 and should have been blown out by the Raiders in the playoffs but Stabler got bored and sloppy and allowed turnovers to get them back in the game until Ted Hendricks sealed the deal with pressure on Anderson ...

And Madden had Hendricks playing behind Gerald Irons for most of the year. That's up there with Bill Parcells starting Scott Brunner over Phil Simms in terms of OMG.

[74_75_78_79_]

Top 3 would be ...
76 NE
77 Oak
71 Balt

75 Cowboys had a great run but Vikings should have won Hail Mary game ...

76 NE should have beaten the Raiders after slipping at the end of the season

77 Raiders were defending champs that recovered Lytles's fumble but got jobbed, going down 14-3 and never getting the ball back the final 3:30 against Denver.

71 Colts beat Miami and Oak but underestimated Plunkett/NE on the final day and lost their division title.

Excellent point, Brian! Dallas could have, and should have, easily been one-and-done. It wasn't so much that it was a 'Hail Mary', but (correct me if wrong) offense-pass-interference was applied by Pearson which wasn't called; and I keep forgetting that part. What stuck-out with me before the re-reminder was Dallas beating the Rams that regular season and splitting with StL & Wash; a much tougher schedule than Minn who only played two above-500s in '75: 8-6 Wash & 8-6 Buf with Vikes only beating the latter of the two, in the finale. I still feel that Dallas was the better team going into that divisional despite 10-4 as opposed to 12-2. And not to mention they destroying the Rams at the Colosseum en route to possibly being a better-timed Percy Howard end-zone leap from toppling those very '75 Steelers!

But that top-3 of mine could still very easily be your top-3! Yes, '71 Colts to me are definitely the next team to mention on this topic. Returning to the AFFCG, their regular-season body-of-work and stats are noticeably better than their SB-win season a year prior.

[Brian wolf]

Yeah, that Cowboy run was phenomenal but to this day, I felt Landry held their offense too far back against the Steelers.
Maybe he felt the Cowboys were tougher and could win a closer-to-the vest type of game but the Steelers defense just kept stoning them ... though youre right, Howard could have changed that outcome !

[Brian wolf]

Another OMG-hindsight moment from Madden and the Raiders Bryan, was Bob Moore starting for two years over my favorite TE, Dave Casper ... I never knew that Casper went back to the Raiders in 1984 ...

[Mark]

Regarding the 1975 Cowboys based on the stats it seems they outplayed the Vikings for the most part. As far as the Hail Mary play I can see why some think it was interference from one angle but from the opposite angle it seems the Viking player wasn't that close and that he just lost his balance when the two players adjusted for the under thrown ball. Maybe I should re-watch it to see if my memory is correct.

[Gary Najman]

Regarding the 1975 Cowboys based on the stats it seems they outplayed the Vikings for the most part. As far as the Hail Mary play I can see why some think it was interference from one angle but from the opposite angle it seems the Viking player wasn't that close and that he just lost his balance when the two players adjusted for the under thrown ball. Maybe I should re-watch it to see if my memory is correct.

A fan threw an orange that appears to be a flag, and bounced between Nate Wright and Paul Krause. I don't remember the rules at the time, but it appears more than an interference that the one called on Benny Barnes to Lynn Swann in Super Bowl XIII.