NFC Has Shown Early Alpha Dog Status

I understand that it is only week two of the NFL season but one thing is glaringly obvious, the NFC is the better conference.  On Sunday the two best AFC teams took on NFC foes.  The New England Patriots took on the Arizona Cardinals and their backup quarterback Kevin Kolb.  The Pats looked lost on offense for most of the game and the Cards played them perfectly.  In the end, Arizona won on a late field goal miss by Stephen Gostowski.  In Philadelphia, the bandwagon for the Ravens crashed with Michael Vick and the Eagles taking them down by a score of 24-23.  The two best teams in one conference could not beat teams that weren't even considered best in their division.  That is saying a lot about the state of the AFC.

Through almost two weeks (this is being written before the Monday night Broncos-Falcons game) the NFC has a six to one advantage over the AFC.  The plus minus for the seven head to head games is NFC plus 40.  The AFC's lone winner is the Indianapolis Colts over the Vikings by three.  The Colts were slaughtered by 20 last week by the Bears.  I understand that this is early and quite possibly a coincidence, but the numbers are still eye popping. 

Take the best teams in the NFC and put them up against the best teams in the AFC.  In the AFC I would take the Patriots, Ravens, Steelers, Broncos, Texans, and either the Chargers or Bengals.  In the NFC you're going with the Packers, Falcons, 49ers, Giants, Eagles and either the Bears or the Cowboys.  Which teams do you trust more?  In the AFC you have two teams that have shown the inability to stay healthy (Steelers and Texans), two that are relying on young players to bring them far (Bengals and Patriots), one whose quarterback is coming off serious neck surgery (Broncos), and one that is coached by Norv Turner (Chargers).  In the NFC you have the last two Super Bowl champs (Giants and Packers), a 13-3 team that seems to have improved (49ers), a team that was picked by half the world to win it this year (Eagles), two extremely dynamic offenses with sneaky good defenses (Falcons and Cowboys) and the team who was supposed to be the hush hush pick prior to last weeks loss (Bears).  Who are you going to go with?  The AFC is one big question mark.  How did New England blow the Cardinals game at home?  How did Baltimore let Philly come back and win it?  Too many questions that still need to be answered here.

The moral of this story is the NFC has more good and great teams than the AFC.  Does that means an NFC team is going to win the Super Bowl? No, not necessarily, but it does mean that the NFC is going to get a bunch of wins against weak AFC competition.  The Dolphins, Raiders, Chiefs, Browns, Jaguars and Titans just aren't very good.  They will get cheap wins against each other but will never be able to play against higher competition.  The best way to judge which conference is by looking at the bottom of the two conferences and see which teams would give the best competition to the top.  The saying goes, you're only as good as you're weakest link, and the weak links in the AFC are just plain bad. 

All in all there are still fifty-five games remaining that put AFC teams against NFC teams, so this is still a small sample size.  Facts are facts and so far the facts say there is one conference that is head and shoulders above the other.  The NFC is on the way to a dominant season, it is up the big boys in the AFC to step up and show they have a chance come February.