When the NFL and the commissioner want a team to make the play-offs, it is not that hard for them to fix the schedule to make it easy when you finish in the middle of the pack the year before.
I think the Ravens will beat the Pats Sunday unless Tom B. has a a no pick day. This game is a toss-up IMO.
How do you "fix" the NFL schedule? It's pretty much laid out in stone. You play teams within your own division twice, you play all the teams from another division in your conference (on a rotating basis from year-to-year), you play all the teams from a division in the other conference (again on a rotation), that's 14 games. The other two games are against the opponents from the other two divisions in your conference, who you are not playing in it's entirety, who finished in the same position as you did the previous year, e.g., if you finished third in the NFC South, and you are playing the entire NFC West that year, then you play the third place teams from the NFC North and East. So I don't see how the Commissioner can "fix" a schedule to benefit a supposedly favored team. If a good team has a bad year and finishes lower in the division, it may be easier to bubble up to the top again, because they are playing lower tier teams in those two extra games, but I don't think it's because the schedule is "fixed".
