The dream, in the 14-team NFL playoff era, is one division getting all four teams into the postseason. It hasn't happened yet, but we've been close. The AFC West and the NFC North each put three in the playoffs last season. The AFC North did the same the year before, when all four of its teams had winning records but the 9-8 Bengals missed the postseason. In 2022, the NFC East, if you can believe it, came the closest when Washington went 8-8-1 and missed the playoffs by half a game.

Someday, this will happen. And when it does, there will be no debate about which of the league's eight divisions is the best. Until then, when we do our annual ranking of the divisions, we have a debate.

In this exercise, we tend to highlight the way ESPN's Football Power Index ranks the divisions, but we

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