OK, the Titans, Buccaneers and Rams are winless. The Chiefs and Browns have one win. The Dolphins, Bills, Chargers, Raiders, Redskins, Panthers and Seahawks have two wins.
And nine teams have at least four wins already, with the Broncos, Vikings, Colts and Saints still undefeated.
I get it. Yet in the wake of that, with seemingly more air time to fill in more outlets than ever before, there are a lot of folks in spiffy designer suits offering up that parity has somehow suddenly disappeared in the NFL.
Uh, hate to break it to them, but parity hasn’t really had a ticket for quite some time.
A lot of teams having the chance to put it together for one season and win a championship, as Tampa Bay, Baltimore and St. Louis did since the salary cap arrived, is not, by definition, parity.
A team being able to go from last one season to first the next, like those ’99 Rams, is not parity. That’s opportunity.
Parity is, and always will be, an “equality in power, value, etc. …”
And equality in power does not exist in the NFL — again.
Those teams losing all of those games are losing them to somebody — it seems to work that way.
Consider that when 10 teams finished with at least 11 wins in 2005, including the 13-win Broncos, and set the league record, seven teams finished that same season with four or fewer wins.
A lot of teams won, and a lot of teams lost.
In 2004, there were three — count ’em — three 12-1 teams at one point in the season. That’s have and have-not stuff, not parity.
In 2003, six teams with at least 12 wins went to the playoffs, a league-record, yes, but not in any way parity.
In 1999, there were four 13-win teams in the playoffs and 10 teams — three in the AFC Central and three in the NFC West alone — that lost at least 10 games.
Or even as far back as 1972, when the Dolphins won the Super Bowl and finished off their historical undefeated season, not another team in their division even finished above .500, and they played just two teams in the entire regular season that year that finished above .500 — and both of those were 8-6.
So this is business as usual right now. Some teams win a lot, so some teams lose a lot. That’s football, and parity isn’t usually invited to the party.
Jeff Legwold: 303-954-2359 or jlegwold@denverpost.com
