This was supposed to be the year the NFC played on an equal plane with the AFC, the NFL's best conference since 1996.
Heading into the season, the NFC East was viewed as the toughest division in football. The NFC South was considered the second toughest. Of those eight teams, only the Saints were considered the weak link, an assessment that was wrong. The Saints could be the surprise winner of the NFC South, and the NFC East has turned into a two-way race.
Heading into Week 13, the AFC leads the interconference competition 32-20, needing only one win to clinch the AFC's fifth consecutive championship. Since 1996, the best the NFC could do is a pair of 30-30 ties in 2000 and 2001. The AFC leads the all-time series 984-886-10.
What's disappointing is the NFC lost ground in 2006. Thanks to the quality of the NFC East, the NFC made a big jump in 2005. Rebounding from the embarrassment of the all-time low of losing to the AFC 44-20 in 2004, the NFC lost by only four games in 2005 (34-30). Heading into this year, it was believed the NFC fielded at least nine teams that could hold their own against AFC competition.
Boy were we wrong.
With only a dozen interconference games remaining, the only NFC team guaranteed to have a winning record versus the AFC is the Cowboys, who finished 3-1 against the AFC South. The Panthers are 2-1 against the AFC North and the Seahawks are 1-1 against the AFC West, but they are the only other teams with a chance to have a winning record against the senior conference.
So where did it go awry?
In my opinion, the main reason for the retreat of the NFC is that many NFC quarterbacks hit the growing-pain stages of their careers. Every quarterback does go through growing pains. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady went through theirs and are much the better for it.
Look around the NFC and you feel the pain of offensive coordinators and coaches in the conference. Eli Manning's struggles with the Giants through 34 starts are well-documented. Michael Vick in Atlanta is at 62 starts and is still trying to figure out his best offensive strategy. Carolina's Jake Delhomme has hit a little bit of a wall at his 60th start. Rex Grossman of the Bears and Alex Smith of the 49ers are up and down at 18 starts each, so there is still a lot of growing to do there. The Vikings (Brad Johnson) and Lions (Jon Kitna) went for experienced hands, but those moves didn't translate into winning records.
Where the problems at quarterback really show is in the Pro Bowl voting. The top four vote-getters in the AFC among the fans are Peyton Manning, Brady, Philip Rivers and Carson Palmer, all deserving. Chad Pennington of the Jets is fifth and is probably the Comeback Player of the Year. With Donovan McNabb out for the season with a knee injury, who are the NFC Pro Bowl quarterbacks?
Drew Brees is the likely starter for what he's done with New Orleans. He's had 69 starts, so he's through the growing stage of his career. Grossman will probably make it because of his team's 9-2 record and his fast start. Rams quarterback Marc Bulger has had a Pro Bowl season. After that, the Cowboys' Tony Romo just got on the ballot and is making a late push, but he's had only five starts and will experience some growing pains. The four missed games with a knee injury by Matt Hasselbeck could cost him a Pro Bowl spot, and Delhomme hasn't played at a Pro Bowl level this season.
The "CSI" postmortem on the NFC begins in the predicted weakest divisions the NFC North and NFC West. The AFC East rolled through the NFC North 9-4. The AFC West is 7-3 against the NFC West, and with six more games in this series still to come, the numbers could get worse.
To the credit of the NFL, the schedule makers did a phenomenal job of balancing the interconference schedule. In 2004, I kept complaining about how the NFL erred in putting too many interconference games early in the season, screwing up the division races throughout the league. It made the AFC races runaways because so many teams had 3-1 or 4-0 records and it diminished the NFC races because so many playoff contenders had three and four interconference losses tacked to their records early.
This is without doubt the best season for scheduling balance. Division games were spread evenly. The bulk of the interconference games came in the middle and late parts of the season. Part of the reason several NFC playoff contenders are backsliding is because they are losing their interconference games, but those games had to be played sometime.
One of the reasons for the NFL's success in creating more balance in the scheduling of games is the use of computer formulas to study more options and make things work better. Good work by them.
For whatever reason, the NFC was the higher-scoring conference at midseason. Those numbers have evened out because of the interconference games. As it turns out, the NFC's early fling with higher scoring had more to do with defensive problems than offensive success.
Including all of the games this season, AFC defenses are 2.2 points a game better than NFC defenses (19.3 to 21.5). NFC teams are giving up over eight yards a game more through the air than AFC teams.
The NFC is the 4-3 conference. Many defenses use the Tampa Bay Cover 2 scheme, and the good NFC defenses rely on speedier athletes. But there aren't enough good, young Cover 2 linebackers to spread to all the teams in the NFC. Those patching holes with older, veteran pluggers are struggling.
That's not to say the NFC needs to switch to the 3-4 tendencies of the top AFC teams. The 49ers tried it but didn't have enough linebackers or big defensive linemen. They wisely stayed with the 4-3.
But it is telling that the only team that looks like an AFC team is the Cowboys, who are trying to lock up the No. 2 seed in the NFC. The Cowboys rank seventh in defense and third among the 3-4 teams. They finished 3-1 against the AFC South and gave Peyton Manning trouble with their pressure packages.
Another problem for the NFC has been its teams' inconsistencies on the road. Which NFC teams have the ability to win on the road is going to be a big question heading into the playoffs.
For the future, it's important that the NFC's young quarterbacks get through their growing phases and become as established as the top quarterbacks in the AFC. Quarterback remains the most important position in football. It's one of the reasons the league goes overboard in protecting quarterbacks from hits by defensive players.
The NFC keeps trying to catch up to the AFC, but 2006 was a setback instead of gain. Oh well, there's always next year.
John Clayton is a senior writer for ESPN.com.