The Disappointed Eighteen – NFC Edition

09 Saturday Jan 2021

Tags

Andy Dalton, Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Bob Quinn, Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers, Carson Wentz, Christian McCaffrey, Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys, Dalvin Cook, Dan Quinn, Daniel Jones, David Tepper, DeAndre Hopkins, Detroit Lions, Disappointed Eighteen, Doug Pederson, Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans, Jalen Hurts, Jason Garrett, Jerry Jones, Jim Caldwell, Jimmy Garoppolo, Joe Judge, Josh Allen, Justin Jefferson, Kliff Kingsbury, Kyle Shanahan, Kyler Murray, Larry Fitzgerald, Matt LaFleur, Matt Patricia, Matt Rhule, Matt Ryan, Matthew Stafford, Mike McCarthy, Mike Zimmer, Minnesota Vikings, New Orleans Saints, New York Giants, NFL, Philadelphia Eagles, Raheem Morris, Randy Moss, Robert Saleh, Russell Wilson, San Francisco 49ers, Saquon Barkley, Seattle Seahawks, Stefon Diggs, Thomas Dimitroff

Welcome to part two of my rundown of the disappointed eighteen teams who did not make the 2020 NFL play-offs.

In this post I shall be looking at the NFC conference and I’ll work in ascending number of wins and descending draft order.

The cap numbers for next season still come from spotrac.com and the ranking/numbers were right at time of posting with an assumed team salary cap of $175 million.

Atlanta Falcons (4-12)

The Falcons never seem to have quite got over their loss in the Super Bowl back at the start of 2017 even though they got back to play-offs the following year, and after two losing season and an 0-5 start the Falcons let go both head coach Dan Quinn and GM Thomas Dimitroff. The Falcons fortunes picked up initially under interim head coach Raheem Morris who went a very respectable 4-2 in his first six games in charge of the Falcons, but they then lost five straight to finish out the season. It was a strange year for Matt Ryan who threw for over four and a half thousand yards and twenty-six touchdowns to eleven interceptions, but the timing of those interception often seemed to be poor. An offensive ranking of twenty-first undermined and average defence but it is interesting to see the Falcons picking fourth by their record but were ranked seventeenth overall by DVOA. Rebuilding this team could a difficult task, Matt Ryan might have a few years left in him at 35, but this is a team who are $32 million over the 2021 cap, behind only the Eagles and the Saints in terms of being over the cap. There are some painful decisions to make and unsurprisingly for a team picking in the top five, a lot of work to be done but this is one of those situations where we shall have to see what vision their new GM sells to ownership and how well they can implement it. It’s not like there are no good players in Atlanta, but there are a lot of questions and I simply do not know how the Falcons will bounce back next season.

Philadelphia Eagles (4-11-1)

I can see why the three teams who are the most over the cap got there, the Saints are trying to maximise their chances of getting back to the Super Bowl at the end of their Hall of Fame quarterback’s last season, whilst both the Falcons and Eagles have been to the Super Bowl in the last five seasons. However, if the Falcons never managed to get over their loss, the Eagles might not have moved past their win. The Eagles roster has frequently been spoken of as one of the deepest in the league in the last few season seasons, including by myself, but familiar names have not saved them from injuries and the slow decay over seasons that finally tipped into losing this year. Worse still, their franchise quarterback Carson Wentz who had to watch their Super Bowl win from the side-lines in 2018 fell apart this season, which having signed a four-year $128 million extension in 2019 that kicks in this season causes all kind of problems this off-season. Carson Wentz was dropped for rookie Jalen Hurts towards the end of the season and it has been stated that Wentz’s relationship with head coach Doug Pederson has completely broken down, but Wentz simply cannot be cut. Wentz will count as $34.5 million on the cap next season and there would be a cap hit of $59 million if he was cut. I’m not sure what cap tricks can be pulled, but at $74 million over the cap, and the salary number is expected to down next season because of the lost game day revenue, there are huge questions about what can be done in the off-season. I am no capologist and I don’t cover the off-season in granular detail, but I will be watching with the situation in Philadelphia with interest. I certainly can’t predict a rapid turn around given this franchise doesn’t look to have functioned to the same level since a number coaches left Pederson’s staff after the Super Bowl win. I do wonder how long the owner’s patience will last if things don’t turn around quickly next season though.

Detroit Lions (5-11)

I left the possibility that Matt Patricia could surprise me before the season, but I did not foresee the Lions improving that much this season and that was very much the case. I questioned Patricia’s ability to create a good defence outside the environment of the Patriots where he made his name as a defensive coordinator, and sure enough they finished this season ranked thirty-second in the league by DVOA at the end of the season. Patricia was let go at the end of week twelve having fallen to 4-7 after a blow out loss to the Texans on Thanksgiving along with GM Bob Quinn. Since letting go of Jim Caldwell the Lions have had three seasons with double digit losses so they need to get the hiring decisions right this off-season. As discussed on the podcast this week, the Lions have the second longest play-off win drought in the NFL (second only to the Bengals) but twenty-nine years is a long time to wait for a play-off win! The Lions are not in desperate cap trouble, but $6 million under when you have the worst defence in the league does not give you a lot of options to work with so this is another team that needs the right GM to build a franchise up over a number of years. There is talk that perhaps they should trade quarterback Matthew Stafford and rebuild from the ground up, but at thirty-two he should have a few good years left though he may fancy a change of team if the right opportunity presents itself. There is too much uncertainty right now to predict how the Lions will fair, but I have a feeling that a multi-year rebuild is coming.

Carolina Panthers (5-11)

This was always going to be a tough season for the Panthers who were starting a major rebuild with first time NFL head coach Matt Rhule and a curtailed pre-season. They lost their first two games, but then won their next three despite Christian McCaffery being unavailable due to injury (a situatin that was the case more often that not in 2020) and having heard Rhule on the Peter King’s podcast I was really impressed with how things were shaping up for the Panthers under their new head coach. Unfortunately, what followed was five straight losses and the Panthers were only able to get two more wins over the rest of the season. The Panthers made the decision to move on from GM Marty Hurney who has an overall record of 106-32 with the Panthers but 16-30 since he re-joined in 2017. The Panthers only have marginally more cap space to play with than the Lions so this is yet another franchise who look like they are in for a patient rebuild, but we will have to see and certainly owner David Tepper is not shy of making changes now he has had the team for a while. I still have a good impression of Matt Rhule but it looks like there is a lot more work to do and at some point the question of a franchise quarterback is going needs to be dealt with.

Dallas Cowboys (6-10)

I am almost not sure where to start with the Cowboys who were much fancied going into the season under new head coach Mike McCarthy who started his time in Dallas going 1-4 despite Dak Prescott playing very impressively. Unfortunately, then things went from bad to worse in game five when Prescott went down to a horrible ankle injury that helped turned the sputtering 1-4 start into a 2-7 record before the bye. Things improved in the home run of the season with the Cowboys maintaining a winning record and went into week seventeen with a shot of winning the NFC East. However, a woeful performance from backup quarterback Andy Dalton saw them lose the game as Dalton slipped to a 4-5 record as the starter this season. The Cowboys will face more off-season turmoil about getting Prescott signed to a long term deal but at least he should be fit for the start of next season. The real concern though is the defence, which slipped from sixteenth in the league by DVOA in 2019 to twenty-fourth and the Cowboys go into 2021 with £10 million of space to sign a quarterback so the route to a defence surely lies through the draft and better coaching. It was an odd season for a new coaching staff to take control so you might feel that it is unfair to judge McCarthy too harshly, but it is worth pointing out that McCarthy went 11-16 in his last two seasons with the Packers and his successor Matt LaFleur has gone 26-6. I have concerns about how the Cowboys run by Jerry Jones and how good the coaching staff are so whilst I’m not saying the Cowboys can’t compete next year, they have not been able to compete consistently for a reason which makes it hard to expect good things next season.

New York Giants (6-10)

The New York Giants were understandably frustrated when the Eagles pulled Jalen Hurts at the end of a close game they eventually lost against the Washington Football Team, handing the NFC East to the capitol, but with only six wins the Giants really only have themselves to blame about not making the play-offs. Their season started badly with the Giants going 0-5 and losing Saquon Barkely for the season after only two games. The Giants got their first win for rookie head coach Joe Judge against Washington, but that was followed by two more losses until the Giants went to Washington and swept their divisional opponents. This was followed by two more wins against the Eagles and the Bengals before their marquee win of the season, a masterpiece of a defensive performance that saw the Giants hold Russel Wilson and the Seahawks to twelve points in Seattle and come away with the win. At this point in the season I was really becoming very impressed with the coaching job Judge was doing and fancied them to make a run at the division. To be fair, they were still in the race on the final day despite losing the next three games, but the Giants needed Washington to lose because the their twenty-sixth ranked offence couldn’t score enough points for them to maintain their challenge for the division. I am not convinced by Daniel Jones as a quarterback or for that matter, Jason Garrett as an offensive coordinator but I do feel like this season finally represents progress after three seasons of failing to make the play-offs, even if the Giants still recorded double digit losses. However, the slow progress will have to continue with the Giants over the cap by $9 million next season, and I do think they need another quarterback, but with the arrow finally pointing up and a talent like Barkley returning next year they could well be a surprise in the NFC East.

San Francisco 49ers (6-10)

The 49ers season seemed doomed from the start due to injuries, a problem that followed them all through the 2020 season. Once again Jimmy Garoppolo couldn’t make it through an entire season with the teasing quarterback only playing in six games this season and it would not exactly be a surprise to see the 49ers make a move at that position in the off-season. Still, Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch have created a great culture in San Francisco so this 6-10 feels a lot more positive than how a lot of teams might feel. Certainly defensive coordinator Robert Saleh did well to get his unit to a ranking of sixth in the league overall by DVOA and it would not be a surprise to seem him as a head coach next season. The 49ers have cap space next season but not necessarily enough to sign a big contract quarterback without some clever moves, but I do expect them to compete again next season. If they can finish the regular season ranked eleventh overall by DVOA despite their raft of injures then with a bit of luck they can sustain a challenge in the very competitive NFC West.

Minnesota Vikings (7-9)

It’s perhaps not a surprise that the Vikings struggled on defence this season given that they let 223 collective career games in their secondary walk out the locker room in the off-season. I should also mention that the Vikings were part of that rare thing, the NFL trade that benefited both participants. The Vikings sent disgruntled receiver Stefon Diggs to the Bills and he transformed the Bills’ offence alongside Josh Allen’s remarkable development, whilst the Vikings used the pick they acquired to draft Justin Jefferson who set a Vikings rookie receiving record which is no mean feat when the pervious record holder was Randy Moss. The Vikings actually made fifteen draft picks in a year with no proper off-season programme so they did pretty well to reach 7-9 with a defence that Mike Zimmer called the worst he ever coached. That said, the defence still ranked eighteenth by DVOA and if anything, it was the problems the Vikings had with winning when running back Dalvin Cook wasn’t available that stopped them from making the play-offs. Still, under Mike Zimmer the Vikings have been to the play-offs every other year and while this is only his second losing season since his first with the team in 2014, I don’t see any major reason why they can’t challenge again next season. Their path there still might not be that straight forward though as they are $17.5 over next year’s cap and so once again they will have to rely on draft picks and coaching. I wonder who else on the current roster might be let go. However, given the Vikings have been consistently able to be competitive I expect them to be so again next season.

Arizona Cardinals (8-8)

The Cardinals pulled off something of a coup in the off-season, acquiring receiver DeAndre Hopkins in a trade with the Houston Texans that most would say the Cardianls got the better of the deal. They also got off to a good start this season going 5-2 before their bye, but were unable to keep pace with the more experienced play-off contenders in the NFC West and just missed out on the play-offs. Though there were no announcements, it seemed like second year quarterback Kyler Murray was dealing with some kind of injury mid-season as there was a notable drop in his rushing production for a number of weeks and this seemed to hamper the offence. Still, they got back to winning ways towards the end of the season but losses to two divisional opponents in the final two weeks sees them on the outside of the play-offs looking in. A year of development is nothing to be sneezed at, but while the three more wins and ten place improvement in defensive ranking by DVOA from their 2019 record is good, as is the thirteenth ranking by overall DVOA, the slip in offensive ranking given the acquisition of Hopkins is a concern. This might all be down to the injury I suspect Murray was dealing with, but I have heard enough concern about head coach Kliff Kingsbury’s play calling and game management to be very curious to see if they can improve again next season or if they hit a plateau or get worse. The Cardinals don’t have a huge amount of cap space available to them next season, and we are once again wondering if this is the last season for veteran receiver Larry Fitzgerald, but I wonder if the results of season rest on the lessons the coaching staff learnt this year and whether they can apply suitable changes to get them over the top next season. To me this is one of the more interesting situations in the league going into next season so I will be watching with interest.

DVOA is Football Outsiders statistic for measuring a team’s success on every play versus the league average, and you can read more about it and other football topics at https://footballoutsiders.com.

2020 Week Nine Picks

08 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts, Picks Competition

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Tags

Arizona Cardinals, Baltimore Ravens, Buffalo Bills, Cam Newton, Chicago Bears, Christian McCaffrey, Covid-19, Dez Bryant, Drew Brees, Indianapolis Colts, Joe Flacco, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Mark Andrews, Marquise Brown, Matthew Stafford, Miami Dolphins, Michael Thomas, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, New York Jets, NFL, Russell Wilson, Sam Darnold, Seattle Seahawks, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tennessee Titans, Tom Brady, Tua Tagovailoa, Week 9 Picks

So after a convincing win for the Packers on Thursday our focus moves to the Sunday slate of games and the injury/Covid-19 lists with several recognizable names getting activated, be it Dez Bryant getting elevated to the active roster for the Ravens, Christian McCaffery making the Panthers’ fifty-three man roster from IR or Matthew Stafford coming off the reserve/Covid-19 list having been in contact with someone who tested positive but has continued to test negative. It’s hard to keep track of everything, but this can and will have an effect on our picks so let’s take a look and do our best to sort through things as they stand.

Early Games:

For me there are two games that really jump out of the early slate are the Seattle Seahawks visiting the Buffalo Bills and the Baltimore Ravens at the Indianapolis Colts.

The Bills maintained a two game lead on the Dolphins with a close fought win over the Patriots last week, but whilst they are still the favourites to win the AFC East, the Bills have not looked as they did in their opening four games. The defence that was top ten last year has slipped to twenty-third by DVOA whilst opposing defences look to have found coverages that have cooled Josh Allen’s hot start. The Seahawks defence is only ranked a couple of places higher by DVOA, but Russell Wilson is playing elite level quarterback and has led the Seahawks’ offence to third in the league by DVOA with the shackles finally off as Wilson throws them to big wins instead of relying on the run. The Bills are still a good team, but I don’t see them quite in the same league as the Seahawks and while I think this will be a good watch, I think the Seahawks are likely to prevail.

The Ravens are coming off a tough loss to the Steelers in a game they could have won if it were not for the pair of interceptions that Lamar Jackson threw, but as this was the Ravens second loss against a tope tier 2020 team there are plenty of questions now being asked about how good the Ravens are against the best franchises. In large part this is because the offense has not looked right this season, and whilst Jackson is still playing well, it feels like the Ravens offense has not been able to adjust to how teams are playing them this year and that there needs to be a more consistent third aspect to the passing game beyond Marquise Brown and Mark Andrews. They travel to face a Colts team who have quietly got to a 5-2 record with a firth overall ranking by DVOA. Their loss to the Jaguars in week one does not look great, but apart from their loss to the Browns, the Colts have been competitive in every game and are coming off a convincing win against the Lions in Detroit last week. This is probably their toughest test of the season so far and if their top five defence and special teams can keep them in the game then I will be interested to see if Phillip Rivers can do enough with an offence that hasn’t quite found its feet to run out winners.

The other game that catches my eye out of the early schedule is the Chicago Bears taking on the Tennessee Titans. The Bears have scrapped their way to 5-3 on the back of the sixth ranked defence by DVOA and just enough production from a limited offence. The Titans have dropped two games in a. row to the AFC North with the loss to the Bengals last week being a serious upset. The line for this game sees the Titans bigger favourites than I think they should be, and I think this has the potential to be a close game given the Bears’ defence could be able to restrict the Titans offense whilst the Titans’ defence is struggling. I’m not sure it will be the most spectacular game but it will be a tense game with a lot at stake for both teams as they try to stay in the race for their respective divisions.

Other things of interest from the early games:

The Falcons have gone 2-1 since Raheem Morris has taken over as acting head coach and a healthy Julio Jones is also a big help, but I’m not sure what to make of them and they welcome a Broncos team fresh off a comeback win against the Chargers. The Broncos are 3-1 in their last four games, with the only loss to the frightening Chiefs but this game could reveal a lot about how these teams are going to look over the second half of the season
The Minnesota Vikings got a monster game from running back Dalvin Cook last week as he returned from injury and helped the Vikings get the upset win against the Packers. The Detriot Lions have failed to convince all season and I wonder how competitive they can make this game although getting Matthew Stafford back from the Covid-19 list should help.
The Carolina Panthers have dropped back to 3-5 having lost three then won three to start their season, but star running back Christian McCaffery is making his way back from injury and the Panthers are still ahead of where many thought they could be coming into the season. However, the loss to the Falcons last week will be disappointing and I wonder how competitive they can truly be against the Kansas City Chiefs who clearly wanted to make a statement against the Jets last week and look poised to be one of the teams to beat this season.
Just as I said that the Giants seemed to be coming together under first year head coach Joe Judge and were building something, there was the news about veteran receiver Golden Tate’s benching and he won’t be travelling with the team this week. The Washington Football Team have not convinced, even if they did beat the Cowboys last week and having already lost close to the Giants this season so I think this could well be another close game.
The Houston Texans are a team in flux and did not move JJ Watt or Will Fuller before the trade deadline, but they are still in purgatory and it hard to see that changing soon. They should have enough to beat a Jaguars team who flattered to deceive at the start of the season, but are as bad as many suspected coming into the season and who are turning to a different sixth round quarterback in rookie Jake Luton to evaluate what they have their whilst Gardner Minshew gets the chance to heal the strained ligament and multiple fractures in his right thumb.

Broncos @ Falcons (-3.5)

Gee’s Pick: Broncos
Dan’s Pick: Broncos

Seahawks @ Bills (+2.5)

Gee’s Pick: Seahawks
Dan’s Pick: Seahawks

Bears @ Titans (-5.5)

Gee’s Pick: Bears
Dan’s Pick: Titans

Lions @ Vikings (-3.5)

Gee’s Pick: Vikings
Dan’s Pick: Vikings

Ravens @ Colts (+2.5)

Gee’s Pick: Ravens
Dan’s Pick: Ravens

Panthers @ Chiefs (-10.5)

Gee’s Pick: Panthers
Dan’s Pick: Panthers

Giants @ Washington (-3.5)

Gee’s Pick: Giants
Dan’s Pick: Washington

Texans @ Jaguars (+6.5)

Gee’s Pick: Texans
Dan’s Pick: Jaguars

Late Games:

The most interesting game of the late starts for me is the Miami Dolphins fresh off their win against the Rams taking on the Arizona Cardinals. The Dolphins won last week thanks to great defence and special teams so Tua Tagovailoa’s modest NFL debut was not a huge contributing factor. The Cardinals should prove to be a tougher test and I will be interested to see how Tagovailoa does in his second game and how things shake out for the Cardinals who are ranked two places lower by overall DVOA but are solid in all three phases of the game.

Thoughts on the other games:

The Raiders have amassed yet more fines related to Covid-19 protocol failures and have not entirely convinced despite having wins against the Saints, Chiefs, and Browns this season. They might have enough to beat the Chargers, but I am curious if their defensive frailties could get exploited by Chargers’ rookie quarterback sensation Justin Herbert
The Cowboys have a new starting quarterback but have problems on both sides of the ball and are unlikely to do much against the only remaining unbeaten team in the NFL unless the Steelers have a let-down game after their always tough matchup against the Ravens last week.

Raiders @ Chargers (-1.5)

Gee’s Pick: Raiders
Dan’s Pick: Raiders

Steelers @ Cowboys (+10.5)

Gee’s Pick: Steelers
Dan’s Pick: Steelers

Dolphins @ Cardinals (-4.5)

Gee’s Pick: Dolphins
Dan’s Pick: Dolphins

Sunday Night Football:

Saints @ Buccaneers (-4.5)

The Sunday night game is the matchup of the week as it sees a divisional matchup between the 6-2 Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the 5-2 New Orleans Saints. All the talk coming into the season for the Buccaneers was the signing of Tom Brady, but it is the defence that has truly impressed given it is the best in the league by DVOA and has led the Bucs to the top of the DVOA standings by 9.1%. This defence will taking on a Saints team who are ranked seventh overall by DVOA despite missing their leading receiver Michael Thomas for nearly the who season through one injury or another. There is so much debate surrounding Drew Brees’ arm, but his accuracy in the short to intermediate area of the field is still supreme and Alvin Kamara has been leading the way from the backfield in keeping the Saints offence in the top ten. The Saints might not be as complete a team as we thought coming in to the season, but they are still winning at an impressive rate and I think this rematch has a chance to be more impressive than their season opener. This is not a game to miss.

Gee’s Pick: Saints
Dan’s Pick: Saints

Monday Night Football

Patriots @ Jets (+7.5)

The week nine slate of games closes with a bit of a whimper as the New England Patriots take on the New York Jets in a contest that can only muster two wins between both teams. The Jets are having a putrid season, made more difficult by Sam Darnold re-aggravating the AC joint sprain in his throwing shoulder so we see a return to the starting line-up for Joe Flacco that is likely to scupper my bold prediction of the Jets’ offence scoring more points than the Cowboy, but doesn’t completely rule it out. The Patriots meanwhile should win this game, but they really need to find something to hang their hat on for the rest of the season. We still don’t know if Cam Newton is hurt or feeling the effects of recovering from Covid-19, but he has not looked good since he returned and the Patriots look as bad as they have done since Bill Belichick became head coach in 2000. They should win this game, but the Pats are not as competitive as I was expecting even given their tough circumstances so what interest there is in this game will be how they look against a divisional rival who have simply been woeful this season.

Gee’s Pick: Patriots
Dan’s Pick: Patriotså

DVOA is Football Outsiders statistic for measure a team’s success on every play versus the league average and you can read more about it and other football topics at https://footballoutsiders.com.å

Who Needs a Schedule Anyway?

15 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts

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Tags

Andrew Whitworth, Andy Dalton, Atlanta Falcons, Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers, Chicago Bears, Christian McCaffrey, Cincinnati Bengals, Covid-19, Dak Prescott, Dan Quinn, Jamel Dean, Jim Turner, Joe Burrow, Kansas City Chiefs, Ke'Shawn Vaughn, Matt Rhule, Minnesota Vikings, NFL, Nick Foles, Russell Wilson, Sean McVay, Seattle Seahawks, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tennessee Titans, Thomas Dimitroff, Tom Brady, TWF NFL Dynasty League, Zac Taylor

Well ,week five finished with an unexpected result that I called wrong in the picks competition, which is becoming a worrying trend, but at least the Titans are back playing games and the NFL looks like it can keep to its scheduling plan for now. Meanwhile, the Bills after facing two scenarios about who they were playing have to move on quickly as they face the Chiefs on Monday night.

That said, I feel all over the place with the site at the moment, and having spent a chunk of time yesterday dealing with how our dynasty league would managed the waiver wire this week given that we were still locked in week five, I delayed this post by a day as there is no competition Thursday this week as we have no Thursday night game.

So let’s take a look at what happened in week five.

What I Saw

The week five Thursday night game was a ragged affair that I still found entertaining thanks to the two good defences on display, but it was frustrating to get my pick wrong as my assessment of the Buccaneers ability was fairly spot on but it was their indiscipline on offence that cost the Bucs this game. The Bucs actually went up by ten points in the first quarter of the game as the Bears struggled to move the ball consistently but kept themselves in touch thanks to their defence. The Bucs finished this game with three-hundred and thirty-nine yards of offence, ninety-six yards more than the Bears were able to generate but the Bucs also were flagged eleven times for a loss of one hundred and nine yards. This was forty-three more yards in penalties than the Bears and the combination of penalties and the Bears defence meant that after the first quarter the Bucs were only able to kick field goals for the rest of the game. That said, despite being streaky, Nick Foles managed to complete more passes that Tom Brady, even with Bucs corner Jamel Dean seeming to wage a one-person battle on the Bears’ passing attack at the end of the game. The Bears were able to do enough on offence against a Bucs defence that was regularly getting pressure to eek out a one point lead at the end of the game, but with how tight the game was the key play might have been when Bucs’ running back Ke’Shawn Vaughn caught a short pass and fumbled the ball setting up the Bears offence with a short field and that led to their second and last touchdown of the game in a crucial burst of point scoring in the second quarter. This is a game that I feel the Bucs really could have and probably should have won, but they need to clean up the penalties if they are to reach their potential. Meanwhile, if the Bears can keep getting enough production from Nick Foles on offence then their defence is good enough that they will keep winning games even if they likely won’t maintain their current twelve win pace or compete with the best teams in the NFL.

I don’t want to spend too much time on the Bengals this week as they were very poor, but the problem remains the offensive line and I’m now getting really worried about Joe Burrow operating behind it. In fact, I have a wider concern, Zac Taylor is a young head coach, hired due to his relationship with Sean McVay and the Bengals stressed how much they committed to his plan with rearrangements of both the practice facilities and offices, as well as hiring Taylor the largest staff they have ever had, but the offensive line is a good representation of my wider worry. Taylor’s choice of Jim Turner as o-line coach didn’t sit well with me from the start. Turner not only tolerated the bullying in his position group whilst at the Dolphins, but the investigation into the resulting scandal implicated him in taking part. Not content with this, when he returned to Texas A&M he was involved in another scandal involving inappropriate jokes at a football clinic for women. It’s one thing for a person to make a mistake and learn from it, but I have no patience for bullies or people who clearly have no interest in reforming their ways. The o-line has been a problem since Andrew Whitworth was let go, and the lead in to last season was undeniably tough with injuries and retirements, but it doesn’t feel like anything is changing or that players are developing and if the head coach can’t see this then I have to wonder about their judgement. It is appears I lied about spending too much time on the Bengals, but moving on to the Ravens – the blip against the Chiefs aside the Ravens are clearly a very good football team who will meet far stiffer challenges over the rest of the season and likely emerge victorious from most of them.

The other early game Sunday game I watched this week was the Carolina Panthers winning their third straight game, beating the still winless Atlanta Falcons. It was not a spectacle of a game, but the seventeen points the Panthers scored in the second quarter was enough for them to comfortably beat a Falcons team who have continued to struggle and that ultimately led to both GM Thomas Dimitroff and head coach Dan Quinn being fired. The Falcons have been trending this way for a while, but it had to be a difficult decision as a lot of the basis for the team that went to the Super Bowl is still there, but they have just not been able to recapture that form. Meanwhile, the Panthers have quietly got themselves to 3-2 despite losing Christian McCaffery to injury in week two, but could very well still be in contention by the time he returns from IR and that is a lot more than I was expecting of them coming into the season. The rest of this year will be strange for the Falcons as both players and coaches will be trying to prove they belong in the league, but it is going to be a long time before the Falcons as an organisation can do anything directly in terms of replacing their GM and head coach. That said, if the head start in the background checks the Falcons get by making the decision now leads to a similar result as what the Panthers have got so far with their new head coach having made an early change themselves last season then they will be very happy.

The final game I got to watch in week five was the closely fought contest that the Minnesota Vikings narrowly lost 27-26 to the Seattle Seahawks. The Vikings scored thirteen unanswered points to build a halftime lead, but came roaring back in the third quarter with three touchdowns and were taken to the wire by the Vikings. The big talking point coming out of this game was the Vikings decision to go for it on fourth down on the Seahawks’ six yard line with two minutes on the clock rather than kick a field goal. There may well be a statistical argument for doing what they did, both in terms of if they made the first down and in turning the ball over with under two minutes left on the clock on the opponents six yard line, and I would usually totally support the decision if that was the case. However, there are a handful of quarterbacks that you feel could execute a ninety-four yard drive in that time and Russell Wilson would be very much near the top of that list, particularly with the form he is in this season. The Seahawks did precisely that, scored the winning touchdown but failed on the following two-point conversion. The same conversion they would have needed to take the game to overtime if the Vikings had just kicked the field goal and taken an eight point lead. It is easy to be wise in hindsight, and I would normally support the maths, but this is one of the few times where I would countenance taking the safe option.

What I Heard

I am going to have to start taking better notes as I have heard lots of interesting things and couldn’t immediately bring a lot of it to mind. However, one thing that did stick is that whilst looking for what coaching tape to watch, I decided to look at the Football Outsiders DVOA stats for offensive line and have a look at the best team. Well, according to the site the team with the best adjusted line yards were the Cleveland Browns (closely followed by Dan’s Dolphins [the real NFL franchise, not his dynasty team]) and this was not wholly a surprise. Unlike the Bengals, who many people have commented on as being poor (although not in adjusted line yards where they rank a lofty twenty-six despite conceding the most sacks in the season so far), I have heard several people talking about how good the Browns’ offensive line is, and how impressive this was given they had a new coaching staff that had to install their offence during a Covid- shortened pre-season. A lot of credit has brrn given to their o-line coach Bill Callahan, and whilst I don’t know enough to evaluate him or the praise, it does make sense and I am looking forward to getting a head start on the coaching film this week with no Thursday night game.

What I Think

Despite the situation with the Titans, the NFL has as yet not lost a game from their schedule and they will be hoping the problems in Tennessee were an outlier and not a foreshadowing of what is to come. The NFL are continuing to adjust their protocols and re-enforce existing ones with talk of restricting the roles of those who are found to have been close contacts of players who have tested positive. I am still pretty impressed that the season has run as well as it has so far, but we are now heading into autumn with the weather becoming more favourable for the virus so soon we shall know if this start was the positive beginning of getting the season finished, or the warning signs that things are about to get a lot tougher.

What I Know

I know the Bengals o-line is bad, that the Panthers are better than I thought they were and that I am looking forward to seeing what Andy Dalton can do with the Dallas offence this week. It may not seem like much, but with everything going on at the moment I’m clinging to the small things and hoping the rest falls into place. I just hope the NFL have planned more carefully than that!

What I Hope

There is only one possible thin I can hope after the week five games, and that is both that Dak Prescott make a full and speedy recovery from his horrible injury sustained on Sunday and that it is a long time until we see anything similar.

AFC and NFC South Preview

06 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts, Pre-Season

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Adam Vinatieri, AFC South, AJ Brown, Alvin Kamara, Andrew Luck, Atlanta Falcons, Bill O'Brien, Bruce Arians, Cam Newton, Carolina Panthers, Chris Ballard, Chris Godwin, Christian McCaffrey, Dan Quinn, Darius Leonard, David Caldwell, David Tepper, DeAndre Hopkins, Derek Henry, Deshaun Watson, Dirk Koetter, Doug Marrone, Doug Pederson, Drew Brees, Frank Reich, Gardner Minshew, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars, Jadeveon Clowney, Jameis Winston, JJ Watt, Joe Brady, Julio Jones, Leonard Fournette, Luke Kuechly, Marcus Mariota, Marshon Lattimore, Matt Rhule, Matt Ryan, Michael Thomas, Mike Evans, Mike Vraebel, New Orleans Saints, NFL, Nick Foles, OJ Howard, Philip Rivers, Rob Gronkowski, Ron Rivera, Ryan Tannehill, Sean Payton, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Teddy Bridgewater, Tennessee Titans, Thomas Dimitroff, Todd Bowles, Tom Brady, Tom Coughlin, Will Fuller, Yannick Ngakoue

Somehow this is the final weekend before our first NFL Sunday, and having take part in the Kickers Matter podcast-athon yesterday, the TWF Dynasty draft is in the home stretch and I think I have time to get the last previews up ahead of Thursday’s season opener.

It has been an odd pre-season given the state of the world and the lack of games so it almost feels weird that we’re going to get actual football this coming week, but here it comes so I had better get to it is as we go through the AFC & NFC South divisions.

AFC South

Houston Texans

The Texans are one of the stranger teams to assess in the league as every year there is plenty of criticism of head coach Bill O’Brien, particularly now he has personnel control and the trading away of star receiver DeAndre Hopkins this off-season has done nothing but encourage that criticism. However, O’Brien has only had one losing season in his six years in Houston, going to the play-offs four times so he has almost always kept the team competitive, even if he has not always had a top tier quarterback to work with. Now that he has a franchise QB, O’Brien will be relying on Deshaun Watson to run his offence without Hopkins, and it will be interesting to see how this goes as there did seem to be two Texans’ offences last year, depending on whether receiver Will Fuller was fit and able to stretch the field or not. To go 10-6 with an offence that only ranked seventeenth by DVOA and a defence ranked even lower at twenty-second is not something I think will be easily replicable so the Texans will be hoping to improve but having traded big names like Jadeveon Clowney ahead of last season, and Hopkins this year, fans will be worried. I have a feeling that given his track record, that O’Brien will manage to keep the Texans competitive and my love of JJ Watt is well documented but my hunch for who is going to win this AFC South is another team, and not the team who came second last season either, but more of that in a moment.

Tennessee Titans

The Titans were one of the surprises of the 2019 season, and after a modest start where they went 2-4 with Marcus Mariota as their starting quarterback, the Titans switched to Ryan Tannehill and rolled all the way to the conference championship where they fell to the eventual Super Bowl champions. It was only Mike Vrabel’s second year as a head coach, and he only spent one year as defensive coordinator in Houston before that, but he’s gone 9-7 twice and after last season’s run the Titans will be looking to be good again this season. The issue with that could be they have had to let some players go as they handed big contracts to both Derek Henry and Ryan Tannehill. It is good to see Tannehill succeed after things never came together for him in Miami, but in truth we don’t know if last year was an aberration or if he can finally establish himself as a franchise quarterback. It is for this reason that I completely understand the big contract that they gave Derek Henry. It doesn’t always make sense to invest a lot of money in a running back, but given how central Henry is to their game plan and the fact that it is only guaranteed for two years, it’s an okay investment. They will also be hoping receiver AJ Brown can build on his great rookie season but whether they can stay top ten by DVOA I don’t know. The defence was tough but didn’t rank great last season but it feels like the Titans are one of those teams who have taken on the identity of their coach and so I am expecting them to be pushing for the division all season.

Indianapolis Colts

The Colts had a tough season where the shocks started before the opening game had taken place with their franchise quarterback Andrew Luck retiring at age twenty-nine, choosing to step away to do other things and given all the injuries he had fought through it did made sense to me, although that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The Colts season actually started promisingly, but fell flat down the stretch, not helped by Adam Vinatieri at age forty-seven having some health problems and missing some kicks that he hadn’t throughout his career. I have been really impressed by the job GM Chris Ballard has done in building the Colts roster in recent years, avoiding splashing in free agency and building a talented roster but the Luck retirement was clearly a huge blow. They have several QBs on the roster and Jacoby Brissett was able to do a job for them last season but the signing of Phillip Rivers could be a coup if he can regain his form behind an offensive line that will be able to give him the time that the Chargers couldn’t in recent years. It helps that Rivers is familiar with head coach Frank Reich’s offence, and Reich’s success with the Colts has made some wonder how much of the Eagles Super Bowl win was down to his work rather than Doug Pederson’s. In truth of course the answer lies somewhere in the middle but has Reich had success with the offence already and there looks to be potential for them to be really good this year. The defence will be hoping to be nearer to their 2018 ranking of eleventh by DVOA rather than the nineteenth that they were last season, but with Luke Kuechly’s retirement the Colts have probably my favourite linebacker in Darius Leonard so I’m sure I will be watching their defence at some point. I could be completely wrong, but as Dan is desperately trying to make me make bold predictions, I’m going to suggest that the Colts are my pick for the AFC South in 2020.

Jacksonville Jaguars

So last, and actually probably least in this division if not the league we have the Jacksonville Jaguars who were a pretty rotten 6-10 last season, but held on to head coach Doug Marrone despite racking up double-digit losses for the second season in a row. Additionally, after grievances were upheld against the franchise over the excessive use of fines, a scathing letter was released by the NFLPA announcing that more than twenty-five percent of all grievances filed by players in the entire league were filed against the Jags and that players might want to consider this when selecting their next club. The visible reaction to those of us outside of the team was the firing of Tom Coughlin, but GM David Caldwell was retained despite a number of high profile players being moved on and the Jags once again being in rebuild mode. On the field it did not help that their new Super Bowl winning quarterback Nick Foles was lost to injury after four games, but their sixth round rookie QB Gardner Minshew II manage to lead them to a 6-6 record in the games he started giving the Jaguars some life and endearing himself to fans in the process. Minshew now has the chance to prove what he can do, but the trade moves continued with pass rusher Yannick Ngakoue being moved on this off-season to join players like Jalen Ramsey as highly drafted young players who are no longer on the roster. In fact the defence already looks very different to the Sacksonville Jaguars defence of 2017 that carried the team to the conference championship game. The ugly truth for GM David Caldwell is that through the seven years he has been in charge that 2017 team are the only ones to reach the play-offs, in fact they are the only team that didn’t amass double digit losses in a season. The Jaguars need to find out if Minshew can be consistently competitive and if they have found a gem in the sixth round that will set them up for success, but they have already held on to one supposed franchise quarterback for too long considering their on-field results. The Jags have not made life easy for themselves in building a roster given that they selected running back Leonard Fournette fourth in the 2017 draft, ahead of franchise QBs like Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, and have not even given Fournette a second contract. In fact they cut the running back after his most productive season so didn’t even get anything back for him. You can’t hope to succeed with this kind of roster churn and I expect the Jaguars to struggle this season. If they can progress with Minshew as quarterback then there could be hope for the Jaguars, but there’s been precious little success over the last decade and I can’t help but wonder when the Jaguars will be truly set themselves up to be a winning franchise.

NFC South

New Orleans Saints

The Saints were one of three NFC teams to win their division with a 13-3 record in 2019, but for the second time in three years lost to the Vikings in the play-offs, this time not making it out of the wild card round. There has been a consistent push to maximise the Saint’s chances of winning a Super Bowl before Drew Brees retires and last season’s success was all the more remarkable considering that Brees missed five weeks with a torn ligament in the thumb of his throwing hand and the Saints went 5-0 with backup Teddy Bridgewater. The Saints have made some big moves in the draft but with players like Alvin Kamara, Michael Thomas and Marshon Lattimore they have built a roster to compete and this offseason seems to be no exception. Brees has returned for another shot at getting back to the big game, and whilst Teddy Bridgewater has moved on to division rivals the Panthers, they signed former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Jameis Winston to be the backup this season. Winston will be hoping that a season under the tutelage of Brees and head coach Sean Payton will help his development and lead to a chance to start next season, be it for the Saints or another franchise, although the Saints will be hoping the former first overall pick will be sat all season. The front office of the Saints really had done a great job of keeping the Saints relevant in the last few years, but the clock is ticking for forty-one year old Brees and the Saints will be hoping that given the history of old quarterback’s level of play declining rapidly when it does go, that Brees can continue to defy age and they can once again push for the Super Bowl. They certainly could be helped with the continuity of their squad and with Sean Payton trying to get as many players as he can living in a hotel to mimic a bubble I think that it is likely the Saints will be successful in their aim as long as Brees can get somewhere near the level he has reached in recent seasons.

Atlanta Falcons

The Falcons are coming of their second consecutive losing season and have been searching to recreate the formula that took them to the Super Bowl in the 2016 season. The Falcons have had seven winning seasons with GM Thomas Dimitroff in charge and they chose to stay the course with head coach Dan Quinn after he brought the Falcons back to 7-9 after a 1-7 start. In fact the Falcons went 6-2 after the bye week where Quinn and his coaching staff found something to get the Falcons going. To be fair there were a lot of injuries to the defence, but at thirty-five quarterback Matt Ryan will be hoping to get back to the Super Bowl if he can to make up for the tough loss to the Patriots. There are certainly big names on this roster including one of the best receivers in the game in Julio Jones, and with Dirk Koetter remaining offensive coordinator there is a good chance that the offence can improve on their ranking of fifteenth but it is the defence that has not come together in recent years. Some of this is down to health but my concern would be the cover-3 style brought over from the Seahawks by Quinn, which has been great if you had top class talent but hasn’t really been as successful anywhere else and Quinn has struggled to make the defence consistently good in Atlanta. However, this is another team with a good degree of continuity, and I can see them competing for the division this season if they can build on their performance in the second half of last season. However, it is not hard to see things going the other way either so it could be a tough season for the Falcons, but at this point there is definitely hope and we shall just have to see if that survives initial contact with the season.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

It has been an off-season of excitement and frustration in Tampa Bay as after head coach Bruce Arians could only get the Bucs to seven wins in his first year, the Bucs let their 2015 first round draft pick Jameis Winstone walk after he threw thirty interceptions to go with his thirty-three touchdowns and signed Tom Brady to be their new franchise quarterback, if only for however many seasons Brady (now forty-three) has left. The problem is that they are trying to integrate Brady into a new team in the year of Covid and so whilst Brady has been holding plenty of throwing sessions with his receivers before training camp started, he only took his place in the Bucs’ huddle for the first time a couple of weeks ago. In Mike Evans and Chriss Godwin the Bucs have two Pro Bowl receivers that gained over a thousand yards last season, and with Rob Gronkowski coming out of retirement and Brady apparently coaching up OJ Howard there are options at tight-end although who knows how productive they will be. There have been some very bold predictions this off-season, but whilst I am not prepared to write them into the Super Bowl just yet, I do think that a defence that finished sixth by DVOA last season and an offence helmed by Brady with a better selection of skill players than he has had in a long time means the Bucs do have a lot of potential. I also have a lot of faith in Bruce Arians and Todd Bowles is overly qualified to be a only a defensive coordinator so I expect them to compete but it will be a magical season if Brady takes them deep into the play-offs or to what would be only the second Super Bowl in the franchise’s history.

Carolina Panthers

It is all change for the Carolina Panthers in the off-season as having fired Ron Rivera during a disappointing 5-11 season they let franchise quarterback Cam Newton go as the Panthers embraced a rebuild. They hired college coach Matt Rhule to be their new head coach and gave him a huge contract of $62 million over seven years. The off-season also saw the retirement of standout linebacker Luke Kuechly who in his eight seasons went to seven Pro Bowls and was name First-Team All-Pro five times. Kuechly never dropped below one hundred tackles despite loosing a number of games to concussions and other injuries so as much as I would have loved to see him play for longer, I’m happy he is getting out now. However, the Panthers have had a lot of change this off-season and having signed Teddy Bridgewater to be their starting quarterback this season and handed Christian McCaffrey a four year contract extension they drafted seven defensive players. It should be an exciting time for fans of the Panthers, Rhule hired Joe Brady who was the passing game coordinator at LSU and was credited with having a large part in the turnaround in Joe Burrow’s play last season to be offesnive coordinator. However, with so much change, a head coach brand new to the NFL and coordinators hired from the college game it could take time for potential to turn into results. As good as Bridgewater looked last season for the Saints in the five games he started, it has been years since he was the starting quarterback for a franchise and this is not a one year rebuild. The positive thing from my point of view is that in the contract that owner David Tepper gave Rhule demonstrates a commitment to a long term project, but as ever in the NFL we shall have to see if that commitment survives the results on the field. It will be a year to see progression for the Panthers and we shall have to see how that manifests, but the Panthers are definitely a team I am looking forward to watching this season regardless of their record.

DVOA is Football Outsiders statistic for measuring a team’s success on every play versus the league average and you can read more about it and other football topics at https://footballoutsiders.com.

Competition Thursday & The Disappointed Twenty: NFC Edition

02 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts, Picks Competition

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Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Bruce Allen, Bruce Arians, Cam Newton, Carolina Panthers, Chicago Bears, Christian McCaffrey, Dallas Cowboys, Dan Snyder, Daniel Jones, Dave Gettleman, David Tepper, Detroit Lions, Disappointed Twenty, Jameis Winston, Jared Goff, Jason Garrett, Jay Gruden, Jim Caldwell, Kliff Kingsbury, Kyle Allen, Kyler Murray, LA Rams, Matt Patricia, Matt Stafford, Mitchell Trubisky, New York Giants, NFL, Pat Shurmur, Picks Competition, Ron Rivera, Sean McVay, Steve Keim, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Todd Gurley, Washington

Well the picks competition is over and for a second consecutive year since he started competing, Dan’s Dad is pick champion whilst I slipped back to third.

Dan’s Dad:	Week 17: 6-10	Overall: 143-113
Dan:	Week 17: 6-10	Overall: 136-120
Gee:	Week 17: 7-9	Overall: 130-126

Looking back at last year I am three points worse whilst Dan has increased his score by eleven (I suspect through not blindly picking the Dolphins) whilst Dan’s Dad added a modest six to beat Dan by seven, which is a three point increase on his lead over me last season.

The moral of all this is that Dan and I will need to really step are games up next season if we’re stop the blog permanently being purple and gold. I’ll let 3D fill in the rest in his trivia write up, whilst I take a run through the teams from the NFC who left us this week.

The Disappointed Twenty: NFC Edition

The Dallas Cowboys have plenty of talent on the roster, but couldn’t convert good statistics into wins with clear issues in coaching. However, there is still no word out of Dallas about Jason Garrett losing his job despite everybody thinking it would happen. His contract doesn’t run out until later this month, but with a series of solid drafts the big question for next season is what is going to happen with the coach and until we know that, you can’t say too much about the Cowboys’ plans for next year, although they do have to make big decisions on who to re-sign.

The New York Giants had a tough season with a few scattered bright spots from rookie quarterback Daniel Jones, but clearly had a disappointing season finishing 4-12. After two consecutive losing season this has cost Pat Shurmur his job, but interestingly not Dave Gettleman. I mention Gettleman not because I have any wish to campaign for someone to be fired, but the Giants have not won for two season and Gettleman was responsible for picking Saquon Barkley with the second pick two years ago rather than taking a quarterback or even listening to offers. Even in last year’s draft he took Daniel Jones at a position much higher than he was predicted to go when he had a second pick in the first round to use on him. It’s hard to know what is going to happen in the off-season, but I don’t have a lot of faith in this franchise to make enough of the right decisions to improve drastically next season.

The seasons of failure continued in Washington, but Dan Snyder has certainly wasted no time in making changes having fired Jay Gruden earlier in the season. Gone from the front office is Bruce Allen whilst the news of new head coach Ron Rivera’s hiring was broken Monday and made official on Wednesday. There is a lot of work to turn around the culture in Washington and a lot will depend on who the new GM is and who has final say in drafting players and roster moves, but they do at least have an experienced coach who has always had a great relationship with his locker room.

The Chicago Bears finished 8-8 with third year quarterback Mitchell Trubisky failing to develop from last season. There are some big decisions coming with regards to their signal caller, and certainly the move to get him is not justifying itself yet so all eyes will be on him until he either proves himself or another player is given a go. It will be worth watching the Bears in the off-season to see if they make any moves at quarterback.

The Detroit Lions hired Matt Patricia to put them over the top having missed out on the playoffs with a 9-7 record under Jim Caldwell. Unfortunately, Patricia decided an overhaul was needed and the Lions have been rewarded with first a 6-10 season and now 3-12-1 so next season is a big one for Patricia who has kept his job. It may be that the saving grace for him was quarterback Matt Stafford being out for the latter half of the year, but the defence hasn’t been good (it’s never good for a head coach if their side of the ball is not great) and I imagine there will need to be a dramatic turnaround next season for there not to be big changes.

The Atlanta Falcons started the season 1-7 but managed to finish 7-9 and come second in the NFC South as the players seemed to rally round their head coach Dan Quinn and were successful in keeping him his job. However, I don’t know if they can turn things round in the off-season given that things haven’t really been right since they were in the Super Bowl and at some point there may need to be a change to get back to winning ways.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers also finished 7-9, although they started 2-6 but their season can be summed up in the performance of Jameis Winston who threw for over five thousand yards and thirty touchdowns, but he also threw thirty interceptions. It feels like the positive statistics means that you have to re-sign Winston, but unless Bruce Arians can find a way to limit the turnovers it is hard to see the Bucs consistently win.

The Carolina Panthers had a rough season, starting with two losses before Cam Newton was sat with injuries that ultimately didn’t see him return to the field. The Panthers turned to backup quarterback Kyle Allen who was able to get the team back to a 5-3 record before things truly fell apart and they could not win another game this season. This led to Ron Rivera being fired before the end of the season, and has overshadowed the remarkable feat of running back Christian McCaffrey who managed to amass over a thousand yards rushing and receiving. New owner David Tepper says he wants to meld old school football toughness with modern analytics and is also overhauling the front office so we shall just have to see what this results in next year.

The LA Rams finished with a winning record, but could never quite compete with the Seahawks and 49ers in their division. They never fell below .500 but Todd Gurley does not look the same running back and as a result for much of the season Sean McVay couldn’t find the right balance on offence. He is still a really good coach, but there are now structural problems with the roster as they have a lot of money tied up Todd Gurley and Jared Goff. Neither player have really lived up to them, and there are other players who also need signing and not many draft picks to refresh the roster. The front office think they have a different formula to compete, but next season will be key to see if the franchise can bounce back or if things are going to go badly.

Finally, we have the Arizona Cardinals who got five wins in Kliff Kingsbury’s first season as an NFL head coach with rookie quarterback Kyler Murray showing promise. Given how much work was needed to improve the roster, it was no mean feat to improve their season record by two wins and a draw from last year given the quality of the other teams in the NFC West. However, they will need Steve Keim to have a good off-season if the Cardinals are to get enough talent for them to challenge for the playoffs and if they fail to make it for a fifth season then perhaps the position of Keim is the one that will need examining.

Wildcard Trivia

‘Greetings Friends

Week 17 has come and gone and the end of the Regular Season has delivered what we hope will be a juicy playoff series.

I will be keen to see if the Vikings can reverse their recent collapse of momentum against the Saints, but with the 49ers lying in wait this will be a big ask. Equally attractive is the Seahawks and Eagles vying for a match up at Green Bay. Yet again the NFC seems to deliver some meaty games.

In the AFC I am less excited by the Wildcard games, although never rule out the Pats is one lesson I’ve learned. The excitement though will be in the next games when the oft-unfancied Ravens and the Chiefs re-enter the battle.

I feel that the week’s gap for 4 teams can go either way. Momentum or recovery time can be important and this is one area where a coach earns their corn.

I’ll stick my neck out now and predict that Superbowl LIV will be contested between the Saints and the Chiefs with Kansas running out narrow winners. There, I’ve given you a stick to beat me with. Ho Hum never mind.

Talking of predictions the Picks competition also ended on Sunday and I agree with Gee’s comments in Thursdays post that week 17 is very difficult to call as some teams have nothing to play for while others would be desperate to position themselves well for either the Play-offs or, don’t forget, who will be on the roster for next year. Already we have seen the coaching merry-go-round starting up and I see this being a very busy closed season.

I think the mixed agendas contributed to one of the lowest scoring weeks we have had. What is pleasing though is that as a group we have increased the total of wins by 9 over last season. Dan and I managed a disappointing 6 each but the week was won by Gee on 7. But how I achieved a rank of 2253 in the whole competition I will never know. Maybe it proves I have a smarter pin than I thought.

One thing that is still running through the post season is the trivia quiz and in week 17 I set 2 questions both around LA Quarterbacks. They were:

I was the quarterback that led the Rams to a victory in the 2000 Super Bowl against the Tennessee Titans. I lost my starting job after I fumbled six times in the first game of the 2003 season. Who am I?

This was correctly identified by both Dan and Gee as Kurt Warner

Which Charger quarterback bounced back from a dismal 2003-04 season, winning the Comeback Player of the Year Award, throwing 27 touchdowns to seven interceptions, and landing himself a spot in the 2005 NFL Pro Bowl?

Here too they both named Drew Brees.

So 4 points each being Gee up to 19 and Dan 22.

This week I will drop in at 3 teams and again there is 2 points for each.

First we are at the Miami Dolphins, so no pressure here Dan.

After the Dolphins made it to Super Bowl VIII after the 1973 season, what was the next season they saw Super Bowl action?

Next we relocate to the Twin Cities to ask this about the Vikes.

Who did the Vikings play in their first Super Bowl, which was Super Bowl IV, played on January 11, 1970?

Finally this week it is the New England Patriots,

The Patriots moved and changed their name in 1971. What was the home city and their name prior to that?

Right then, that’s 2019 done and we look for a vision for 2020. Catch you next week’

The Unknowable NFL

02 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts

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Aaron Rodgers, Alvin Kamara, Andy Dalton, Arizona Cardinals, Bryan Bulaga, Cam Newton, Carolina Panthers, Chase Daniels, Chicago Bears, Christian McCaffrey, Cincinnati Bengals, Dallas Cowboys, Daniel Jones, Deshaun Watson, Drew Brees, Gardiner Minshew, Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans, Jaylen Samuels, Khalil Mack, Kirk Cousins, Kyle Allen, Matt LaFleur, Mike Zimmer, Minnesota Vikings, New Orleans Saints, NFL, Oakland Raiders, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, Teddy Bridgewater, Vontae Davis

All bar the two teams on a bye last week have sailed past the quarter pole of the season and this Sunday sees the first of the four game London series getting played so we can definitely say that the 2019 season is in full swing, but as so often the case it feels like we know less for certain than ever about how the teams are going. Let’s see if I can explains some of that as I take you through my week of the NFL.

What I Saw

Week four started with one of the more entertaining games we have seen this year with he Philadelphia Eagles running out 34-27 winner in Green Bay against the Packers. The game started out as I expected with the Packers defence looking strong and the packers taking an early touchdown lead but in the second quarter three Eagles’ touchdowns saw them take a lead that they would hold until late in the third quarter and retake in the fourth. A strong offensive line performance enabled the Eagles to rush for one hundred and seventy-six yards and not give up any sacks whilst their defence held the Packers to under four yards per carry until the Packers virtually gave up on running that ball. What the Packers were able to do was throw the ball and it was Aaron Rodgers who kept them in the game (despite losing tackle Bryan Bulaga early) thanks to a four hundred and twenty-two yard passing day. The offence may not be clicking yet for the Packers but I think that Rodgers and Matt LaFleur will find a way and the league had better watch out when they do given how the Packers defence has played. The Eagles meanwhile really needed that win to stay in the NFC East race now that the New York Giants have found two wins in the opening four games. They had some players come back from injury but it was good to see the coaching staff get the win despite the players they were still missing.

The first of the Sunday games that I watched was between the Houston Texans and the Carolina Panthers who through a defensive game that saw only two touchdowns but nine sacks as the Panthers ran out 16-10 winners on the road. This win was built on the Panthers’ derfence’s ability to contain the Texans offence, particularly in the passing game where Deshaun Watson only threw for one hundred and sixty yards whilst getting sacked six times and harried a lot more. There are still problems with the offensive line (which might be worth a coaching tape look at some point) and Watson has a tendency to hold onto the ball trying to make a play. You can hear him talk about the coverage in this clip that got a lot of people talking about his honesty so it’s worth having a look. Meanwhile the Panthers have got their second straight win since Kyle Allen has replace the injured Cam Newton, but whilst he was efficient enough to get the win he has to work on his ball security/pocket awareness as you can’t expect to fumble away the ball three times and expect to keep winning games. The defence played well, but in this era of multiple offences and running back by committee special mention has to go to Christian McCaffery who played all sixty-eight of the Panthers’ offensive snaps, amassing ninety-three yards on the ground with the teams only touchdown as well as eighty-six yards catching the ball. The Panthers look to be holding things together whilst they wait for Newton to get properly healthy, but they have an awful lot resting on the body of McCaffery at the moment and I just hope he can keep carrying the load until Newton comes back. Meanwhile the Texans are one of the four AFC South teams that are 2-2, which looks again to be a division that will beat each other up all year and then one or two teams will get hot at the end of the season and make the playoffs. The long term concern is the roster construction given the draft picks they have traded away going into the season as it does not appear that they are as close to challenging for the Super Bowl as the trades would suggest they think they are.

The second Sunday game I watched was another low scoring affair (if I wanted offence the Buccaneers @ Rams was the way to go) as the Dallas Cowboy lost a close one on the road 12-10 to the New Orleans Saints. This was a game that only saw one touchdown and that was for the losing Cowboys as both defences dominated the day. For all their early season success the Cowboys struggled to move the ball, particularly on the ground where they were only able to get forty-five yards as the Saints defence new exactly where to be for each run. The Cowboys were not able to get enough done through the air to win the game with Presscott throwing for two hundred and twenty-three yards and an interception. If the Cowboys didn’t quite look like themselves on the road, the Saints look to have a really good defence that is allowing them to win games without Drew Brees. Teddy Bridgewater threw for under two hundred yards in this game with a long of only twenty yards but the offence managed to rush for over one hundred yards thanks in large part to the power and balance of Alvin Kamara. The Saints will be hoping to keep themselves in the hunt until Drew Brees gets back, but I don’t know if they can keep relying on their defence to play like they did in this game. Meanwhile, the Cowboys have to hope that this was a blip road loss, but the offence did not look like it was flowing properly and that’s something to keep an eye on.

I don’t want to write about the final game of the week, but given that the Cincinnati Bengals were playing in the Monday night game against the Pittsburgh Steelers I have no good reason not to cover their miserable 3-27 loss on the road. The problems are perhaps obvious and to an extent predictable as the Bengals kept losing offensive line starters before the season had even started and four games into the season they are struggling to make room in the running game or protect Andy Dalton when passing the ball. The other worry I have is at linebacker and in particular at the edges of the defence and this came to pass as the Steelers used Jaylen Samuels to take direct snaps and touch passes to attach the edges. It’s hard to tell how much of a turnaround this is for the Steelers given how Bengals have played this season but it’s a step. Meanwhile, the Bengals are facing a huge game this Sunday as in only their second home game of the season they welcome another winless team, the Arizona Cardinals and if they don’t win that one then this thing could get really ugly. I’m probably clinging to tightly the fact that two of the games were really competitive and the Bengals have face three tough road games so far but that comes to an end this week.

What I Heard

There has been continuing conversations about the new wave of quarterbacks and backups as rookies Gardiner Minshew II and Daniel Jones got their second wins as starters, Kyle Allen got a second win with the Panthers whilst Chase Daniels came off the bench to help the Bears beat the Vikings in a performance that has drawn comments about how Daniels was able to at least get the ball out where it was supposed to and accurately on the underneath throws.

The Vikings offence has been another source of discussion given it’s focus on running the ball despite Kirk Cousins being in the second year of an $84 million guaranteed contract. Normally you might question the offensive coordinator’s but given his track record with OCs this really sits with head coach Mike Zimmer who is always talking about running the ball, but it doesn’t make sense to be so focussed on that when you have arguably one of the best receiving duos in the league. There’s been plenty of criticism of Kirk Cousins, but to my mind that feels a lot like the criticism of Andy Dalton and no these are not the elite of the elite, but they are good enough to win if you put the right team around them. I agree with the commentators who say that you can compete by paying elite but were you get into trouble is overpaying for talent. This isn’t a matter of who deserves to get paid as a human being but how you build a competitive roster in a salary cap sport and the I don’t think the problem is necessarily in the roster of the Vikings (their o-line could be better but so could most teams these days) but there is a disconnect in paying Cousins what they are and then not utilising him. I respect coach Zimmer and was reluctant to see him leave the Bengals although happy he was finally getting a chance to lead a team, but I do wonder if he has reached his level if he can’t allow his offence to run as the current version of the NFL dictates. I have a feeling he’s stubborn enough to keep the team playing like this and so the Vikings will be competitive but I don’t know that they are going to maximise this year’s team and that is a worry as the defence is not getting any younger.

What I Think

I have watched the transformation of Vontaze Burfict from a tone setting star of the defence who got the team lined up and played up to the line whilst straying over it occasionally to a liability who seems lost in his own mythos as his time on the field got less reducing both his productivity and conduct. The hit that got him ejected from this week’s game is being legislated out of the game for a reason, but almost as bad was the grin as trotted off as if he was proud of himself. There are team mates and coaches for the Raiders who are unhappy but I’m not sure that feeling will be shared around the league and there are plenty who are happy to see him gone for the season. In fact it’s not hard to find people who don’t want to see him play again. There is an argument about taking away someone’s lively hood but the fact of the matter is that in no other industry would a disregard of the rules be tolerated, particularly in a matter of health and safety. It’s not always possible to adjust when players are going at full speed but when you have the track record of Burfict you lose the benefit of the doubt.

What I Know

That after a thoroughly miserable time watching the Bengals this week I am hoping to both actually get to some coaching tape and to cheer myself up by watching Khalil Mack who is once again showing just how bad an idea it was to trade him away. It should be a fun subplot this weekend in London as the Bears take on the Raiders for the first time since Mack was trade to Chicago last year.

What I Hope

That one of Dan and I get put out of our misery and gets our first win and that the NFL continues to be as unpredictable as it was this week, even if it is terrible for our picks…

The Disappointed Twenty: NFC Edition

03 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts

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Aaron Rodgers, Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Bill Belichick, Bruce Arians, Cam Newton, Carolina Panthers, Christian McCaffrey, Dave Gettleman, Detroit Lions, Dirk Koetter, Eli Manning, Green Bay Packers, Jameis Winston, Jason Licht, Jerrick McKinnon, Jim Bob Cooter, Jimmy Garoppolo, John Lynch, Kirk Cousins, Kyle Shanahan, Matt Patricia, Matt Ryan, Mike Zimmer, Minnesota Vikings, New York Giants, NFL, Norv Turner, Rueben Foster, San Francisco 49ers, Saquon Barkley, Steve Keim, Steve Wilks, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Washington

Following on from yesterday’s post it is time to say farewell to the NFC half of the disappointed twenty.

Washington

I almost don’t where to being with this team. They had a 6-3 record going into week eleven but no team can survive two quarterbacks breaking their legs and they also lost both starting guards in two separate games as injuries wreaked havoc over their roster and 2018 campaign. However, this is a franchise that has also just fired a huge number of their front office staff whilst the coaching staff have never quite convinced. Meanwhile, fans are attending games in ever fewer numbers and the glory days on the field are now over a generation away. I’m really not sure what to expect this offseason, a team that claims Reuben Foster on waivers three days after a domestic violence arrest are capable of pretty much anything but it’s possible they could compete in NFC East next year yet I could equally see it all going wrong and I certainly have very little confidence in them for the upcoming off-season.

New York Giants

The Giants got themselves a possibly all-time great a running back in this year’s draft, but that didn’t exactly result in a huge turnaround for the team, which is why the pick was questioned back in April. There is still talk of Eli Manning coming back for another year, but whilst he’s a lot better than I would be, he doesn’t look like the player who was part of two Super Bowl wins. Until they truly face up to, and resolve, the quarterback situation for the future then I think there is a pretty severe limitation to what this franchise can achieve. They also have other areas of the roster to address and are not exactly flushed with cap-space either but at least GM Dave Gettleman has built a Super Bowl contender before. There were questions about his iteration of the Panthers, but they built around Cam Newton and right now I think the Giants need a quarterback they can build round before they can improve by much. The Giants’ fans will live in interesting times this off-season.

Minnesota Vikings

The Vikings went into the season’s final week needing a win to make it to the playoffs and so they can hope to compete next year, but the window might be closing for a talented team that were hoping that the addition of Kirk Cousins as their quarterback would put them over the top. This very much did not happen, but there were other issues as the offence sputtered this season. The defence may have only slipped a couple of places in DVOA by the end of the year, but you don’t expect a Mike Zimmer defence to ship twenty-seven points to a woeful Bills offence and there were other slip ups. I love Zimmer as a coach, but he has not been able to find an offensive co-ordinator or quarterback to work with long term and this is something the Vikings need to get right this offseason. Cousins isn’t going anywhere with his guaranteed contract and the Vikings have the least amount of cap space available going into next year of the teams who aren’t actually over the cap at the moment i.e. thirtieth in the league. The problem with that is the Vikings’ offensive line is still letting its skill players down and so I have to wonder whether the Vikings will be able to pull something together next season or if they are going to have similar problems again. They are not going to turn into a bad team overnight but I’m not sure how they get the answers they need on offence, which would be a concern if you a fan or attached to the team but I wouldn’t rule them out of improving either. It’s just not as easy to see as for certain other teams and they need to hire the right offensive coordinator and stick by them.

Green Bay Packers

The Packers fired one of the longest tenured coaches in the league this season, having hired a new GM in the offseason and so now we get even more change. On the face of it the Packers job is appealing given the tradition of the Packers and the presence of Aaron Rodgers. However enough people have speculated about Rodgers to make me wonder if there is something about the way he has been handled by the franchise and the stories of his attitude. More concerning is the fact that he is thirty-five, the expectations that come with this job will be huge yet the Packers are in the bottom half of the league for available cap space next season and Green Bay is not exactly a free-agency destination. This is the first season where a healthy enough Aaron Rodgers hasn’t got you into the playoffs, and with the right hires and roster moves I’m sure the Packers can be back in contention next season, but I’m not sure if it is the slam dunk that some might have you believe.

Detroit Lions

The coaching tree of Bill Belichick has not exactly prospered when they have left New England and Matt Partricia had a difficult first season. The offence was hobbled by injury at the skill positions, but long term offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter paid the price and Patricia will now get to hire his own coach to run the offence. However, it would not surprise me if there was very little room for Patricia to manoeuvre going forward as he was hired to take the team on and they went backwards from their 9-7 record of the 2017 season. If Patricia can step away from some of the Belichick inspired behaviours and find his own way then the team could rebound next season, but I would not exactly be surprised if the Lions have another difficult year and then Patricia should be very concerned about his job given how cut throat the world of NFL coaching has got in recent years.

Atlanta Falcons

The Falcons had a difficult season, with injuries up the spine of their defence wrecking their hopes early in the season and they actually battled back pretty well to finish 7-9. It was always going to be a hard job to follow Kyle Shanahan as offensive coordinator, but the offence has never quite been the same since he left and Steve Sarkisian has paid the price this off-season after two years of not quite putting it together. That said they still finished with a top ten offence by DVOA and Matt Ryan is thirty-three so whilst the Falcons window to get a championship has not closed, they need to get the new co-ordinator hire right if they are to make this a blip rather than the start of a downward trend. They also can’t have a defence that ranks thirty-first in the league by DVOA, but getting players back from injury and a good draft should solve that, but they really need their offence to fly again if you’ll forgive me the pun. I couldn’t help myself. Sorry…

Carolina Panthers

This was one of the stranger falls from grace as the Panthers were 6-2 after week nine but then lost seven straight games before closing out with a win against a resting Saints team in week seventeen. Until his shoulder started to bother him the unlikely pairing of Cam Newton and sixty-six year old offensive co-ordinator Norv Turner was paying dividends in their first season together, ably assisted by Christian McCaffrey who totalled nearly two thousand yards of offence this season and might have hit it if Cam Newton had not been sat for the last couple of games. More worrying for this team is that the defence slipped from seventh in the league by DVOA to twenty-second. I’m not entirely sure what the off-season holds given that the Panthers have a new owner with a background in finance and analytics whilst the coaching staff have an avowedly old school feel and the team ranks twenty-eighth in terms of cap space for next season. I think a lot of this will be immaterial if Cam Newton can’t get his shoulder healthy and manage it so he’s healthy for all of next season. I know I like to say we’ll have to wait and see a lot, but with the Panthers I think that is especially true for the next fourteen months or so.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The Buccaneers got off to an entertaining start whilst Jameis Winston was suspended, but then things fell apart and head coach Dirk Koetter was let go after a 5-11 season. I’m more surprised that GM Jason Licht is staying and that the Bucs have committed to Winston for next season, but now whoever the new head coach is, he will have to buy into a roster that has threatened but never quite lived up to expectations and make it work. The Bucs are actually twenty-ninth in the league for cap space next year and with a new coach but no questioning of a regime who have failed to have a winning season then I’m not sure I can buy into a turnaround until I can actually see it. For context, the Buccaneers haven’t had a winning season since 2010 or back to back winning seasons since the 1999/2000 seasons. I take no pleasure in this, but I can’t look at this record and the previous four years of Jameis Winston and say yes, the Bucs are going to be fighting for the playoffs next season. As ever, I would be delighted to be proved wrong but I think there is more turbulence to come for this franchise unless they knock this coaching hire out the park.

San Francisco

The 49ers got their first bad piece of injury news in pre-season when running back Jerrick McKinnon, who came across from the Vikings in the off-season, was lost to IR with a knee injury and then quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was lost for the season before the 49ers even made it through a quarter of the season. In fairness the season never really got going and that will be a worry, as will the performance of a defence that couldn’t get out of the twenties by DVOA and a team who were thirtieth in the league overall. You can’t really judge the direction of this franchise by this season but I would imagine that both head coach Kyle Shanahan and GM John Lynch will be feeling a sense of urgency going into this offseason. I don’t think it is time to panic, but they could do with a good offseason and a definitive improvement to solidify their project in San Francisco or they might not get to complete it. The 49ers are at least in the top ten for cap space next season so they have room to manoeuvre and I wouldn’t necessarily bet against Lynch and Shanahan pulling it off but we’ll know a lot more by about week five of next season.

Arizona Cardinals

The first thing I want to say about the Cardinals disaster of a season is given the state of the roster, that GM Steve Keim had a five-week suspension from the team after pleading guilty to an extreme DUI charge in the summer, and that the Cardinals’ defence was top ten at points this season, it feels a little unfair to fire head coach Steve Wilks after one year. The offence had a rookie quarterback for lots of the season and a bad offensive line and there is a lot of work to do with this team. I will be interested to see who they go with for next season and how much room Keim will be given to manoeuvre, although he seemed to work very well with Bruce Arians so has some track record with the franchise. It could take more than one offseason to turn things round again though and clearly this is a franchise who now expect a certain level of success but I wonder if they will be able to achieve the results they expect if they don’t show some patience. There are certainly a number of coaches around the league who have demonstrated that in the right situation it is possible to turn things round quickly, but I’m not convinced that any coach doesn’t deserve more than a year unless there are serious problems in the locker room or behind the scenes and I’m not aware of anything like that in Arizona. This is a situation I’m going to watch closely but I wouldn’t like to predict right now what I think will happen next season.

Wildcard Sunday

07 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by gee4213 in Playoffs

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Avin Kamara, Blake Bortles, Buffalo Bills, Cam Newton, Carolina Panthers, Christian McCaffrey, Doug Marrone, Drew Brees, Greg Olson, Gus Bradley, Jacksonville Jaguars, LeSean McCoy, Mark Ingram, Marshone Lattimore, Nathan Peterman, New Orleans Saints, NFL, Sean McDermott, Tom Coughlin, Tyrod Taylor, Wildcard Weekend

Buffalo Bills (9-7) @ Jacksonville Jaguars (10-6)

The early game on Sunday is also probably the unlikeliest if you had asked anyone before the start of the season as it features the Bills breaking a seventeen season streak of not making the playoffs travelling to Jacksonville to face a Jaguars team who themselves haven’t played a playoff game in ten years.

The Jaguars stuck with interim head coach Doug Marrone having fired Gus Bradley during last season and brought Tom Coughlin back to help in the front office. The change has worked with a couple of further additions to an already talented defence creating a unit that led the league by DVOA and that has carried the team through the season. The only problem has been that the offence has been so focussed on running the ball and limiting quarterback Blake Bortles that this is not a team built to come from behind. With the league’s best passing defence this has not been a problem during the regular season but could be an issue in the playoff as the level of competition increases and they face some of the best offences in the league.

The Bills come into this game after the high of breaking a streak of missing the playoff but I’m not sure anyone would have predicted that happening during an offseason where the new regime overhauled the roster, trading away known names as they started again. This continued into the season and it was clear that a long term project was under way and that the team wanted a particular type of player on the roster. The main talk surrounding first year head coach Sean McDermott was his decision to start Nathan Peterman in week eleven. The rookie quarterback threw five interceptions and the game was lost horribly but to McDermott’s credit he did not lose the team after this debacle and nearly everything else has been impressive about the way the Bills have competed in his first year. Their offence may only be ranked twenty-sixth in the league by DVOA, but they can run the ball and Tyrod Taylor may be conservative but he does not turn the ball over. In LeShaun McCoy the Bills have a running back that can break big runs but he is carrying an ankle injury coming into this game and whilst it looks like he will start, a back that is successful because of their lateral movement and explosiveness is definitely going to be affected by an ankle problem. This is a shame given that the Jaguars rank a surprising twenty-sixth against the run. The Bills defence is sold rather than spectacular but did generate twenty-five turn overs, which was eleventh in the league.

In this battle of playoff underdogs my heart wants the Bills to win, but the head thinks that the Jaguars are the better team. If Blake Bortles has a bad game and McCoy can show some of his top form then the Bills can win this game, but they really need further improvements to truly compete and I would expect the Jaguars to win this one.

This game does represent want the NFL wants, competitive balance with every team truly able to sell to their fans that next season we can make the playoffs..

Carolina Panthers ((11-5) @ New Orleans Saints (11-5)

The final game of the weekend looks to be one of the most competitive as two division rivals with matching records face off against each other.

The Carolina Panthers have had a strange season where their defence has looked good all year, finishing sixth by DVOA but the offence has been up and down all season. An early attempt to change the way Cam Newton plays did not work and it was only when they went back to running him that the offence was truly effective. The problem with this is that unlike the season where he led this team to the Super Bowl, Newton’s play has been erratic and he has put in some truly bad passing performances. However, he is a truly dynamic player that can wreak havoc running the ball and he is likely to need to as his receiving options are not playing that well currently and his favourite receiver Greg Olson has not returned to his usual form since returning from the foot injury that kept the tight end out for most of the season. The Panthers do have a dynamic rookie receiving running back in Christian McCaffrey but with the evolution of the offence it doesn’t feel like the Panthers have a clear overall plan and so he has flashed his undoubted skill rather than dominated.

The Panthers travel to face a Saints team who have demonstrated just how quickly a team can turn round in the NFL. The Saints were coming off three seasons of 7-9 and seemed to be wasting the end of Drew Brees Hall of Fame career as they could not surround him with a defence that could make the team competitive. The highlights of this turn around are two players who could arguably be offensive and defensive rookie of the year. In running back Alvin Kamara they have an efficient complement to Mark Ingram who is truly terrifying in space and has the hands to help Drew Brees in the short passing game. In Marshone Lattimore they have a rookie corner who looks anything but a rookie and although it took a few weeks for the defence to gel, they finished the season ranked eighth in the league by DVOA and the Saints were overall number one as well.

The easy narrative for this game is that it is hard to beat a team three times in a row, but football is a game of matchups and in both of their previous games the Saints have scored thirty points and won the game. The Panthers have been one of the more aggressive teams in the league in terms of blitzing and the Saints have been pretty similar in this aspect of defence, but Brees is a much more precise quarterback and is better equipped to exploit the quick passes necessary to disarm the blitz. Newton is more than capable of using his legs to gain yards and avoid pressure but it feels like the Panthers, whilst being competitive are less likely to win this game.

I am very much looking forward to seeing how this game unfolds, but I do expect the Saints to run out winners for a third time.

The Wrong Football

~ A UK American Football fan writes about the game he loves

Tag Archives: Christian McCaffrey

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