The concept of mailing it in for the final week of the season is a fairly new one.

 

The change to eight four-team divisions in 2002 meant more teams had their playoff seeding wrapped up earlier in the season than they did with bigger 5- or 6-team divisions, and led to glorified preseason games in the thick of what should be heated playoff races.

 

This phenomenon, disliked by fans everywhere, seemed to backfire on teams that employed the tactic in a big way this year.

 

The Giants, who played hard against New England in their season finale even though they were locked in to the No. 5 seed in the NFC, upset Tampa and Dallas in the playoffs – neither of which played to win in Week 17. Same went for the Colts, who were upset by a Charger team that played to the wire in the regular season and had a win under their belt heading to Indianapolis.

 

The easy conclusion is “See! They got what they deserve! The coach is an idiot! Resting guys always backfires!”

 

Being disciples of the Cold, Hard Football Facts, we decided to dig a bit deeper.

 

From 2002-2007, 19 playoff-bound teams chose to mail in their Week 17 game. We defined this as: resting healthy starters, almost always including the quarterback, and not playing to win the game.

 

There were some borderline decisions to be made as to which teams fit the criteria, and here’s an example: The 2007 Packers, in Week 17, rested starters, but left QB Brett Favre in until the game was in hand, and clearly played to beat the Lions (which they did). That’s playing it out.

 

The 2007 Cowboys, in Week 17, yanked Tony Romo out despite being behind against a Washington team fighting for the playoffs. That’s mailing it in.

 

Of the 19 teams that mailed it in, two played their first game of the second season against fellow mail-it-inners, and won’t be part of our study.

 

That leaves 17 teams that played their first game of the playoffs – all at home -- against road teams that played hard to the wire.

 

How they fared:

 

So, thanks to this year’s collapses, the mail-it-inners stand at 10-7 playing as home favorites against the play-hards since 2002. That’s a .588 winning percentage, significantly lower than you’d expect considering the 69 percent winning percentage for home teams in the Super Bowl era.

 

The other 41 home teams from 2002-2007 had an overall record of 26-15, a winning percentage of .634.

 

The difference in winning percentage (.588 to .634) isn’t really large enough to say that mailing it in was a disadvantage, at least over a six-year sample with a small number of games (58 total).

 

Consider that this season’s three negative results dropped the mail-it-in teams from a winning percentage of .714 from 2002-2006 – better than the average home team over the Super Bowl era – to .588 from 2002-07.

 

Sorry, but pending further data, the Cold, Hard Football Facts can only conclude that the “mail-it-in” effect is more coincidence than trend.

 

Somehow we’d guess Cowboy and Colts fans don’t agree.