if you cut or trade a player you shouldnt be afraid to face him because you’ve made the decision that your team is better with whatever you kept instead. When I see talk about trying to send a player someplace you won’t have to face him (like Favre) it’s a cowardly attitude… not a champions attitude. Same with the purse clutching about playoff byes, homefield, opponents. Your either the best team or you’re not. If you’re looking for another team to beat somebody so you won’t have to face them … you have a losers attitude already
I don't know if I entirely agree with that sentiment. The goal is of course to win the Super Bowl. But to win the Super Bowl you don't have to be able to consistently beat every single possible team - you only have to beat the 3-4 games on your postseason schedule. And sometimes there are matchups that simply work more or less favorably for you and IMO there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that.
For instance, right now, the current seeding has it 1. Lions, 2. Eagles, 3. Seahawks, 4. Buccaneers, 5. Vikings, 6. Packers, 7. Commanders. That would give Detroit the bye, with Washington (7) playing Philly (2), GB (6) playing Seattle (3), and Minnesota (5) playing Tampa (4).
Now let's pretend the playoffs start today and let me propose for you two scenarios. One is the "be the best or not" or the "you have to beat the best to be the best" scenario.
In this one, we beat Seattle (3), Philly (2) beats Washington (7), and Minnesota (5) beats Tampa (4) (While seeded lower, I think most of us would agree Minny are a stronger team). This would see us travel again to Detroit (1) in the divisional and Minnesota play in Philly. Then we'd have to beat Detroit and let's say again travel to Philly in the NFCCG to get to the Super Bowl. In this scenario, our Super Bowl-path is by way of playing Seattle, Detroit, and Philadelphia, and then whoever comes through on the AFC. I guess for sake of "toughest" we'll probably say KC or Buffalo.
But alternatively - let's say that Washington manage to upset Philly. This alone benefits us in two ways: it eliminates the #2 seed, and sends Washington to Detroit instead of us right away. And go ahead and imagine Tampa "upsets" Minnesota. We'd play in Tampa, with Washington going to Detroit. And just for kicks, imagine that Washington upsets Detroit. They'd then have to come to us for the NFCCG, no? Here our "path" is Seattle, Tampa, and back home in Green Bay. And say someone really creates chaos in the AFC bracket and similar stuff goes down and we end up playing Houston or someone in the Super Bowl.
Now obviously both of these scenarios are vanishingly unlikely. But my point is this: if you make it to the Super Bowl and win it, the majority of the time in a few years nobody will remember the "path" you took to win it (and those that do won't care!). If we won the Super Bowl by "path B" this year, nobody would be saying "Well it should come with an asterisk because we didn't have to play the best teams to get there". Like I said: all you can do is beat the teams that are drawn before you, but there's nothing wrong with hoping or angling for a "favorable" draw to come your way.