Of course, there are no traditional “playoffs” in New Jersey high school football in 2020, if there were, Watchung Hills and North Brunswick would be well in the drivers seat for top seeds and home-field advantage throughout the sectionals.
In the unofficial Week 4 standings, Watchung Hills remains the top overall seed in the North Group 5 supersection, putting a little more distance between themselves and the next team back – now Clifton – after a 21-20 home win over Phillipsburg Saturday. It was the Warriors’ first-ever win over the Stateliners.
Ridge holds in third overall, while Bridgewater-Raritan dropped a few spots despite sitting out the week due to a COVID-related issue in the district.
While two 1-3 teams – Ridgewood and Montclair – sit in the top 16, which qualify for the playoffs in a typical year, it’s still early despite the season being two-thirds of the way over as the most anyone has played is four games. Such drastic point swings – the result, in part, of numerous cancellations – are part of the reason the NJSIAA declared no “playoffs” would be held in high school football this year.
As for the South Group 5 supersection, North Brunswick remains second overall, which would get them a hypothetical top-seed in Central 5, while Williamstown is tops overall and would get the highest seed in South 5.
The supersection appears to be strong: the top four teams are all 4-0 and there isn’t a 2-loss team until the 9th overall seed – the bottom half of the top 16. Only one sub-.500 team is in that grouping: Washington Township at 1-2.
Below are the current UNOFFICIAL standings for the North Group 5 and South Group 5 supersections
The Top 16 teams would be qualifiers, designated in bold.
Please take note that all calculations are unofficial, and no mechanism exists to check or confirm these numbers and standings. Strength Index and OSI are not being calculated publicly. Only records have been confirmed. All standings are purely hypothetical.
Note: The below standings were updated at 1:41 am on 10/27/20 after a technical glitch was discovered in the calculating program.
