I am going to say by far it is the NFC East. This is a very tough division from top to bottom this year, and I dare someone to convince me of anything different.

I think the NFC North will be much more competitive than the NFC East this year.

I mean after the G-men there is no one left in that division worth a damn.

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This tends to smooth out the effect of anomalous teams that are rated
much higher and lower than the middle team(s) in the group. The
"simple average" ("arithmetic mean") weights each team equally
no matter where they are relative to the middle.

DIVISION CENTRAL MEAN SIMPLE AVERAGE TEAMS

1 (afc west) = 24.90 24.29 ( 1) 4
2 (NFC EAST) = 23.21 22.89 ( 2) 4
3 (afc north) = 22.00 22.71 ( 3) 4
4 (NFC SOUTH) = 19.54 19.36 ( 4) 4
5 (afc south) = 17.90 18.23 ( 5) 4
6 (NFC NORTH) = 17.74 17.93 ( 6) 4
7 (afc east) = 17.42 17.70 ( 7) 4
8 (NFC WEST) = 16.06 16.91 ( 8) 4

second best will have to do Mike.

Now see, that is just your blind faith for the Gnats. I have to admit, they will be very competitive in their quest for 2nd place in the division and should have little problem beating out the Eagles and the Redskins for that spot.

the AFC west is one of the hardest in football

Sorry guys, I aint buying into this AFC West nonsense.

Oakland may be one of the worst teams in the NFL. San Diego is throwing out an unproven Quarterback to throw to a 95 year old receiver. Who knows what to exect from Kansas City now that they have downgraded in coaching. Denver is the cream of the crop in this division and the only realy case to make for it being tough.

The NFC East has a chance to have all 4 teams finish with winning records this year. Probably wont happen, but I would feel confident in saying that ate least 3 of them will.

AFC West was one of the toughest divisions....LAST YEAR!! This year, theyt will not be as good for the reasons pointed out by Mike.

I think the 2 toughest divisions this year will be the NFC East, and the NFC North. Both should be much impoved top to bottom.

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lol my bad, yea the nfc north i hope will be better this year

Now, with that said, watch Rivers come out like Peyton Manning in his prime and just make NFL defense look stupid, LOL

the numbers don't lie. Those are productivity numbers. They tend to cancel out against their own division. Those are based on final standings for last year and strength of schedule is weighted heavier than other factors. These have served very well as a predictor of future performance. I was somewhat reluctant to release them. They go a long way toward determing lines in conjunction with the rest of the associated data. Use these with caution.

I would place NFC East toward the top, but I would also say the AFC north will be about the same. All teams in both those divisions have made great moves to improve their teams and take care of weaknesses.

NFC North will be a two pony show this year...but in a year or two it could be interesting.

AFC west will only be a three team race if Rivers shows he can compete in SD. Otherwise it also will be a two horse race.

In my modest opinion........

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Oakland raised the level of the afc east solely based on their strength number, which was the second hardest in the league. They went 1 and 8 against the leagues final top 10. SD was at 5 and KC was 8th and Denver was 3.

I dont need all those numbers to tell me that the Raiders stunk last year

the numbers are good for trending purposes. For example, teams that played top ten schedules the year before and lost 10 or more games by an average of 9 pts or less tended to improve to 8-8 the following year and to 10 wins in the 2nd year.

Yes, but there are alot of other variables in place here. First, the Raiders are involved. This team has problems. The Chargers got a new quarterback taking over. Going to be some learning curves there.

that's the fun of this league. Nothing is certain. For all of our abilities to cut through the crap and make these judgements there is always some variable that you can't factor into an equation and that's the human element. Numbers only mean anything at the end of the game and the end of the season. Trying to account for heart and desire is hard enough without all the other factors that can effect an outcome. One of the ways we do that is to use a trailing number, a delta, to account for franchise ineptness. A three year rolling average that includes draft grades from three years ago. How many starters and back-ups from a draft are still on the team vs how many start at other teams and how many are out of the league. We also assign coordinators rating numbers. We were amazed at the correlation between certain coordinators and statistical performance as it related to a random sample. Certain guys out performed the median consistently to a statistical certainty. These numbers and ratings are proprietary so don't ask. Some of this is used to subvert betting lines and some of it is used to trend franchise direction to target pontential free agents 2-3 years in advance. This tends to smooth out the effect of anomalous teams that are rated
much higher and lower than the middle team(s) in the group. The
"simple average" ("arithmetic mean") weights each team equally
no matter where they are relative to the middle.
Then again, I coulda just made it all up.

The NFC North as strong division? You've got to be kidding me. It's going to be another year of bad and mediocre teams competing to see who gets knocked out in the first round.

I'm gonna have to go with the NFC East. I pretty much despise the Philadelphia Eagles, but they'll still pose a threat and the Redskins should at least improve off last year. and the Cowboys and Giants will just show people how the game is played. so i'm gonna say NFC East. i'm still pulling for the AFC North though-b/c my Ravens.