The college football folks get to deal with conference realignments all the damn time. But in the NFL world, the league’s corporate structure makes it pretty rare that conferences and divisions get changed around at all.
Legend, monster or mammal? Imagining an NFL organized by team names
NFL teams are divided up, mostly, by geography. But the league could be a lot more fun if we broke it out by animal and human nicknames.
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But it does occasionally happen. Remember when the Buccaneers were part of the NFC Central with the Packers? WILD TIMES, MAN!
I don’t remember which game between animal-named teams I was watching (it was the preseason, so it wasn’t exactly a memorable affair), but it got me thinking about the various categories of team names the NFL uses. There’s a mostly even split between animal nicknames and those derived from humans or human creations.
I was probably procrastinating some management type shit or not reading emails, but one thing led to another and I decided to re-configure the divisions based on team nicknames.
Here’s what that looks like, with a brief description about the logic for that division and a few thoughts about how it might shake out competitively. Feel free to take issue with any of this in the comments.
I’ve listed the teams in the order I think they would finish this season in these hypothetical divisions.
Zoological Football Conference
Birds of Prey
About this division: These are some tough fuckin’ birds, man. However, the Seahawks did themselves a huge disservice with that front-facing bird face logo. It’s real hard to take that shit seriously.
Competitive landscape: This might be the most competitive division, top to bottom, on the list. Of course, the Ravens will need their defense to do all the heavy lifting, so they’re more of a spoiler here than anything else. The Falcons and Seahawks could provide some entertaining tilts along the way, and as a bonus the can both commiserate on two of the most epic choke jobs in sports history, not to mention ones that made the Patriots and their fans that much more insufferable with two Super Bowls they didn’t deserve.
Non-Domesticated Cats
About this division: Even predatory cats are like, “Why the hell are you starting Blake Bortles?” Probably. Seriously though, these teams wouldn’t frighten a house cat.
Competitive Landscape: This is a division set up to let the Bengals do what they always do, have a decent enough regular season record and get bounced in the playoffs. This year, however, it’d be the Panthers’ division to lose.
Randos
About this division: Cardinals and Dolphins are neat animals, but they don’t really belong with the rest of the creatures. I’m sure Jets were a really neat thing in the late industrial age, but much like the team itself, they’re mostly just noise pollution and something to complain about now. Dan Snyder insists on keeping the racist name for his team, so we’ll put it here for now.
Competitive landscape: It doesn’t matter what division, real or imagined, you put the Jets in, they’re absolutely hopeless. I have the sneaky feeling Kirk Cousins will have overplayed his hand and be exposed without DeSean Jackson in the lineup. It’s honestly a toss-up between the Cardinals and Dolphins and their ancient quarterbacks, one of whom seemed perfectly content not to be playing this season. Still, the Dolphins feel like they’re perpetually trapped in second place.
Large Mammals
About this division: They’re big, they’re hairy, and they’re mostly not all that great at football. But props to the NFL for making this easy with exactly four non-cat animals.
Competitive landscape: This might be the best thing that could possibly happen to the Broncos. Sure, they STILL won’t have the best QB in the division, but the other three teams are so bad Trevor Siemian would be good enough to bank on winning the Large Mammal division every year for awhile.
Anthropomorphic Football Conference
Western Myths
About this division: Weirdly enough, the Chiefs actually started life in Dallas as an AFL team called the Texans. Life on the prairie is a bigger circle than anywhere else, I guess. The Bills don’t have any roots in Texas, but they do have an AFL lineage. And I’m sure Buffalo Bill Cody took his Wild West show to Texas a few times, thus perpetuating the Western mythology.
Competitive landscape: This would be one of the more competitive divisions in this landscape, except for the Bills. I think Kansas City is the most talented team here, but it’s probably close enough with the Cowboys that it might come down to the finer points of coaching, in which case Andy Reid would be forced to think about the clock, and, welp. However, don’t sleep on Houston’s defense to ruin things for either Dallas or the team that used to be in Dallas.
Maritime Marauders
About this division: The Chargers aren’t a perfect fit, but since they were named for the aggressive bugle call, we’ll go ahead and stick them with the various pirates and pillagers that ride around on boats.
Competitive landscape: I could see a Raiders-Bucs rivalry developing, and it would be a lot of fun. The over/under on those games might be set at 50 points, as long the offensive players are healthy.
Workin’ Folk
About this division: Just so much grit here. Football has its roots in the blue collar trades around the Great Lakes, and no teams embody that lineage more than the Packers and Steelers. I’m putting the Browns in here too. Even though they’re named after Paul Brown, they really are the story of the Rust Belt in football form. And, yeah, the 49ers are named for a grizzled old prospector with a pick axe, but we have to make some compromises to get these divisions to work.
Competitive landscape: The Packers and Steelers in the same division should make for two of the better regular-season games every year. I’m sure the 49ers and Browns will be relevant someday too; hang in there! For now, I’d say the Steelers would win out. Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown would just confuse the hell out of Mike McCarthy and Dom Capers when the game actually counted.
Legends and Leaders
About this division: All sort of mythical things. Technically, I guess a Patriot wouldn’t fall into the same class as a Titan, Saint, or a Giant, but it’s more of a concept that makes it a fit here.
Competitive landscape: It might not be so easy for Tom Brady and Bill Belichick in this division. Their struggles against Giants are the stuff of legend already. And Big Blue’s got the kind of defense that could give them trouble, or at least make them have to work to win a division in way they’ve never really had to in the AFC East. The Titans would be the dominant team in the division, once Brady succumbs to age or carbohydrates.
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