Published October 17, 2026 09:18 AM
One of the basic realities of life in the NFL is that each team is assigned to a division with three other teams, permanently. (Until there’s a reason to realign, which last happened in 2002.) And whether a team is in a good division or a bad division controls much of a team’s success, or not, in a given year.
Of the 17 games played, six of them are determined by the division to which it is assigned. If the other teams are really good, it makes it harder for an otherwise good team to be as good as it can be. If the other teams aren’t very good, it’s easier.
The fact that this is so obvious shows how fundamentally unfair it is. It can give some lesser teams a shot at hosting a playoff game. It can give the one good team in an otherwise bad division a chance to win enough games to emerge as the top seed in a conference (for example, the Patriots throughout most of the 2010s).
This year, the teams of the AFC and NFC North will each have a tougher road to whatever their best-case scenario could be, based simply on membership in a predetermined division. All of them are over .500 through five weeks.
Via NBC Sports research, a full division has been above .500 after six weeks only three times since 2002 (the 2025 NFC North, the 2024 NFC North, and the 2005 NFC East). Depending on how this weekend goes, both the AFC North and NFC North can turn that list of three into five.
The Vikings, Lions, and Bengals are off, so the six-week hay is in the barn as to each of them. To complete the feat, the 3-2 Browns need to beat the 4-1 Ravens, the 3-2 Bears need to beat the Falcons, the 3-2 Packers need to beat the Cowboys, and the 3-2 Steelers need to beat the Buccaneers.
If the Bears and Packers win, it’ll be the third straight year that every team in the NFC North is above .500 through six weeks. Which will make it harder for each of them to get to wherever they want to be.
That will likely change when the NFL expands the regular season to 18 games and seeds the playoff tree without regard to whether a team has won its division. That still won’t solve the problem, and it will bolster the argument that there should be no divisions at all. Or, alternatively, that the two games per year against each of the other teams in the division should become one game per year.
The point for now is that each of the four teams in the AFC North and NFC North could end up being objectively playoff-worthy in 2026, but playing six games against those other teams will make it harder to qualify. Meanwhile, someone from the NFC South will be winning the division and hosting a playoff game — even if (like last year) none of them ends up at or above .500.
The entire approach makes it harder for the NFL to honor sports’ most basic, longstanding message: “May the best team win.” Given the way the NFL arranges its teams, the best team could end up with roadblocks that the not-best team won’t have to navigate. Which could make it easier for the not-best team to win the Super Bowl.