41 years ago...

[coachtj]

....ok, need some opinions here and hoping all of you help out. 1973 after the 11-25 games the steelers were 8-3, browns 7-3-1, and bengals 7-4. with the standings being the way they are in the afc north with both the browns & bengals winning today.....who wins this division this year, and why? as a senior in college in the autumn of '73 just knew the steelers would win the division(much to my chagrin). for this year, can enter the courtroom with tom cruise and jack nicholson and learn whether or not "you can't handle the truth". fire away boys....

[Reaser]

Before the season I predicted this order and records:
BAL 11-5
PIT 10-6
CIN 9-7
Didn't think Cleveland would be in it.

So until proven otherwise I'll stick with roughly that order, Baltimore will probably lose more than once the rest of the way, so maybe they and the Steelers finished tied at 10-6, Cinci at 9-6-1 and Cleveland at 9-7, which then it would come down to tiebreakers. Possibly how Pittsburgh and Baltimore do in their respective games against the Saints will determine who will win on the comment opponents tiebreaker, at least if one of them loses to NO, or the Steelers-Bengals games could determine division record tiebreaker.

Regardless, I still think the Steelers and Ravens are the top two teams in the division.

[Mark L. Ford]

....ok, need some opinions here and hoping all of you help out. 1973 after the 11-25 games the steelers were 8-3, browns 7-3-1, and bengals 7-4. with the standings being the way they are in the afc north with both the browns & bengals winning today.....who wins this division this year, and why? as a senior in college in the autumn of '73 just knew the steelers would win the division(much to my chagrin). for this year, can enter the courtroom with tom cruise and jack nicholson and learn whether or not "you can't handle the truth". fire away boys....

I'm confused. I get the premise that on the last Monday of November 1973 and today, the last Monday of November 2014, we have a close Cincinnati-Pittsburgh-Cleveland division race (which is remarkable), but I'm not sure I understand the question. At this point in 1973, there were only three games left: Pittsburgh had Miami (at Miami), Houston and San Francisco; Cleveland had three road games at Kansas City, Cincinnati and Los Angeles; and Cincinnati had Minnesota and Cleveland at home, and Houston on the road. The Steelers and Bengals both could expect to beat Houston (1-10-0 by now) that year, and probably expected to lose, respectively, their games to 10-1-0 Miami and Minnesota, and for the Browns to lose at Los Angeles (9-2-0 by now); I would expect the Steelers to beat San Francisco. The Cleveland-Kansas City game and the Cleveland-Cincinnati game would be less certain, but Cleveland is the visitor on both.
So, my prediction at that point would probably have been Pittsburgh 10-4, and Cincinnati either 9-5 or 8-6 depending on the Browns game, and Cleveland to be somewhere between 7-6-1 and 9-4-1 depending on the outcome of their road trips, with the Steelers getting the division win and the Bengals getting the wild card.
As it turned out, Cincinnati would not only beat Minnesota, they would beat them 27-0, and win the division after they and Pittsburgh finished 10-4. Ironically, winning the AFC Central in 1973 was worse than winning the wild card, since the division champ had to visit an AFC East winner that happened to be the defending Super Bowl champion as well. If the Steelers had won the division, they would have won another visit to Miami. For 2014, the three teams still have five games left, with the Steelers and Bengals still yet to play their home-and-home series, but none of them have that certain win or certain loss thing that they faced in 1973.

[Bryan]

This is only tangentially related, but through the first half of the 1973 season the Steelers were 6-1 and IIRC they were leading the NFL in scoring with 26.3 points per game. Then Bradshaw gets hurt, returns in the 2nd half of the Dolphins game in week 12 and almost pulls off a miracle comeback, and wins his final 2 regular season starts with point totals of 33 and 37. So in essence, the Steelers were 8-1 with Bradshaw and leading the league in scoring, and they were 2-3 without him. Does it really make any sense for Chuck Noll to replace Bradshaw with Joe Gilliam to start the 1974 season?