AFC v NFC: Star v System

AFC v NFC: Star v System

GuyWhoLikesSport GuyWhoLikesSport

A lot has been made of how virtually all of the best quarterbacks in the NFL reside in the AFC, and this column is not here to argue with that.

The top-5 quarterbacks in the league are Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, and Justin Herbert in some order.

Four of those five, Burrow the exception, are going to make the playoffs.

And Burrow is playing so well he’s threatening his cheapskate owner and the decision makers in the front office.

Four of the five, this time Herbert is the exception, have dragged their teams to the promised land on their backs. Their teams are built in the image of the quarterback and hinge on his level of play.

Take the Bills.

This was a soft reset year for Buffalo.

They shed a significant amount of talent and salary this offseason and came into the season with Josh Allen and Allenettes.

They clearly planned to take a step back, but their quarterback had other ideas.

He’s had a season-long run of those scenes in Die Hard where John McClane is making chicken salad out of chicken shit. Khalil Shakir has been his version of finding C4 in Hans’ bag and he’s spent the rest of the season covering the rest of the league in glass (who gives a shit about glass?!).

Adding Amari Cooper has been his version of the scene where John sends the guy down the elevator – “Now I have a #1. Ho ho ho.”

In games he started and finished, the Bills were 13-3 and are the #2 seed in the AFC. They also handed the #1 seed Chiefs their only loss of the season on the back of Josh Allen’s career best game. They’re the best offense in the league by EPA/play.

Even Lamar of the Ravens, one of the best franchises in the league before Lamar got there, is the Lamar show.

Unlike Buffalo, Baltimore was meant to be good this year, just not this good.

Even without a great receiving corps, an offensive line that changed three of five starters, and no game wreckers that don’t reside in the backfield with Lamar and Derrick Henry, they are the top success rate offence in the league and the second-best EPA/play team in the NFL.

They lead the league in net yards per pass attempt by half a yard.

Even with that backfield, it’s pretty clear that Lamar creates the space for Henry rather than vice versa given.

Lamar’s work from both inside and outside of the pocket and his willingness to test the defence vertically even with a height challenged receiver corps – he leads the league in air yards per attempt among quarterbacks who have started at least 15 games – opens up lanes for the running back.

Despite the start, the point of this column isn’t to wax lyrical about how good quarterback play in the AFC has been.

It’s to point out that even if the NFC is struggling more for high-end quarterback play, that conference is built in a different way.

I’m not saying that all of the AFC teams suck outside of their quarterbacks. Nor am I saying that the NFC teams have quarterbacks who are terrible. I’m talking about what defines the top end teams in each conference.

If the top-end of the AFC is full of teams that are built around star quarterbacks who transcend their situations, then the top of the NFC is comprised of teams who do the opposite.

They have limited, but not necessarily cheap quarterbacks, who are elevated by exceptional surroundings.

Between the conferences, it’s a battle of stars versus systems. The superstar versus the infrastructure.

It’s kind of Superman with his physical gifts versus Batman with his technological ones.

Obviously, it’s not perfect.

Pittsburgh is more of an NFC-style infrastructure led team while the Chargers are a bit of a hybrid. Jayden Daniels and the Commanders, on the other hand, seem to be more AFC-ish.

But there’s a clear pattern.

Each of the Lions, Bucs, Rams, and Vikings are quarterbacks by once top-3 picks who are not on the teams that drafted them, largely because of disappointments with their play (other than Stafford).

Each of them have 10 or more wins.

You can extend the conversation to the Eagles and to a lesser extent the Packers. While Jalen Hurts is on the team that drafted him, he is not the reason for their #2 seed in the way that Josh Allen is for the Bills.

Hurts has two elite receivers, an elite back, an elite offensive line, and an elite defence. It’s not to say that he’s not a good player, but he’s a character actor not the star. He’s John Turturro to Lamar Jackson’s Brad Pitt.

Jordan Love is a less limited player than Hurts, but it’s hard not to notice that the Packers went 2-0 without him this season and were 47-19 with Matt LaFleur in the years before Jordan Love.

Even the 49ers, the class of the NFC for basically the last 4 years prior to season 2024 where they’ve had a worse run than Joe Biden, was also a stacked roster that elevated at times limited quarterback play with Jimmy Garropolo and Brock Purdy.

The NFC is Blumhouse horror films like The Purge that can get by on story and genre fans and don’t need a star on the poster. The infrastructure of “there’s something wrong with the house” or “what if all crime was legal for X days” is good enough for success.

The AFC, on the other hand, rom-coms that need to be populated by hot stars in order to get traction like Anyone But You.

Nobody’s going for the infrastructure, but you might get to see Sydney Sweeney’s structures.

Over the past five years, the AFC is 3-2 in Super Bowls mostly because Patrick Mahomes has torn various teams’ hearts out. One of the two NFC wins was Tom Brady switching conferences.

Clearly, you’d rather have the quarterback.

However, Josh Allens don’t come out in the draft every year. The NFC’s conference-wide acknowledgement of that and embrace of guys that you can win with rather than win because of has been impressive.

Because of that acknowledgement, the NFC is more fun and has been just as successful as the AFC seven teams over 10 wins.

I am a fan of Blumhouse football.

 

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