The early games feature several matchups that only a mother of a player could love. Or a hard core fan. I’ll be watching, of course, but this isn’t the most compelling time slot ever.  The Pittsburgh-Oakland matchup is the only game featuring two winning teams.  Detroit-Dallas and Buffalo-Cincinnati feature draft pick battles.  The Jets will try to keep up the overtime luck against the Texans at home, and Tennessee-Washington, Kansas City-Arizona, Jacksonville-Cleveland, Carolina-Baltimore, and Minnesota-Green Bay are your other matchups. Of course, just because they don’t seem compelling at the start doesn’t mean we won’t end with some close, entertaining games.  That’s usually how it works with the NFL.  Still, rather than talking about the specific games, I’m going to just post something that I started to work on last week, which is a look at the “knockout times” for wins and losses for each NFL team.  This was originally discussed a couple of years ago by Doctor Saturday and Doug Drinen. I guess it shows us when teams scored the points necessary to ultimately win the game, but I’m not sure it shows more than that, although last year, the Jets were first in this category, and all four teams that reached the championship games were in the top six.

I realize I could have been very specific and found the actual times, but I ran out of time.  So, these are estimates, were a knockout is defined as scoring the points that ultimately outscored what the opponent did for the entire game.  A first quarter knockout earns 4 points, second quarter 3 points, etc.  Overtime is a zero.  Here are all teams, with the total positive and negative knockout points, as well as the knockout average for wins, losses, and overall.  Green Bay is your knockout leader so far in 2010.

TEAM WINSLOSSES KO/WKO/LOVERALL
GB 17-1 2.83-0.331.78
NYG 16-7 2.67-2.331.00
NO 13-4 2.17-1.331.00
IND 12-3 2.00-1.001.00
PIT 10-3 1.67-1.000.78
ATL 10-3 1.43-1.500.78
PHI 13-6 2.17-2.000.78
BAL 8-2 1.33-0.670.67
CHI 11-5 1.83-1.670.67
NE 10-5 1.43-2.500.56
TEN 11-7 2.20-1.750.44
KC 8-5 1.60-1.250.33
NYJ 8-6 1.14-3.000.22
STL 8-6 2.67-1.200.22
WAS 8-7 2.00-1.400.11
CLE 8-7 2.00-1.170.11
OAK 9-8 1.80-2.000.11
SD 8-7 2.67-1.400.11
TB 10-9 1.67-3.000.11
MIA 5-5 1.00-1.250.00
DEN 7-10 1.75-1.67-0.33
SEA 9-14 1.80-3.50-0.56
SF 3-9 0.75-1.50-0.67
JAX 7-13 1.40-3.25-0.67
ARI 4-11 1.00-1.83-0.78
DET 4-11 2.00-1.57-0.78
HOU 3-10 1.00-2.00-0.78
CIN 4-12 2.00-1.71-0.89
MIN 4-12 1.00-2.00-0.89
DAL 4-13 2.00-1.86-1.00
BUF 2-13 2.00-1.63-1.22
CAR 1-21 1.00-2.63-2.22

[photo via Getty]