Wild-card weekend is for suckers

Jan. 10, 2010. Ray Rice had an 83-yard touchdown run on the first play from scrimmage at the Ravens beat the Patriots, 33-14.

That was the last time New England played on wild-card weekend.

By almost any metric, the 2009 Patriots were the worst team of the Belichick era. Sure, they missed the playoffs in 2002 and 2008, but 2009 represented rock bottom in a number of ways for New England.

Six seasons have elapsed since then, with a seventh nearing completion. All seven of these seasons will have ended with the Patriots securing a first-round bye.

Eight teams, or exactly one quarter of Roger Goodell's professional football league, also have not played on wild-card weekend since then: the Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars, Tennessee Titans, Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, St. Louis Los Angeles Rams and Las Vegas Oakland Raiders.

Of course, none of those teams have made the playoffs at all in these last seven seasons (Oakland clinched a berth today, and actually may well avoid playing on WC weekend again).

There's no shortage of ways to describe what the Brady/Belichick era has been like, but if that little tidbit on the merits of not playing the first weekend of January doesn't do it for you I don't know what will.

Wild-card weekend really just serves as a way for the rest of the NFL to showcase just how far 31 other franchises lag behind the Patriots.