AFC Preview

04 Tuesday Sep 2018

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Aaron Donald, Adam Gase, AFC, AJ McCarron, Alex Smith, Andrew Luck, Andrew Whitworth, Andy Dalton, Andy Reid, Baker Mayfield, Baltimore Ravens, Ben Roethlisberger, Bill Belichick, Blake Bortles, Case Keenum, Chad Kelly, Chicago Bears, Chris Ballard, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Denver Broncos, Derek Carr, Deshaun Watson, Frank Reich, Houston Texans, Hue Jackson, Indianapolis Colts, Isaiah Wynn, Jacksonville Jaguars, Jarvis Landry, Jay Gruden, JJ Watt, Joe Flacco, Joey Bosa, John Elway, Jon Gruden, Josh Allen, Justin Tucker, Kansas City Chiefs, Khalil Mack, LA Chargers, LA Rams, Lamar Jackson, Marcus Mariota, Marqise Lee, Marvin Lewis, Matt LaFleur, Melvin Ingram, Miami Dolphins, Mike Mularkey, Mike Vraebel, Nate Solder, Nathan Peterman, New England Patriots, New York Jets, NFL, Oakland Raiders, Patrick Mahomes, Paxton Lynch, Philip Rivers, Pittsburgh Steelers, Ryan Shazier, Ryan Tannehill, Sam Darnold, Sean McDermott, Teddy Bridgewater, Tennessee Titans, Todd Bowles, Tom Brady, Tyrod Taylor, Vance Joseph, Washington

18-09-04 AFC

With the new season only days away I thought I would take you through a whistle-stop tour of the league starting with an AFC preview and I’ll give the NFC teams their own post before the Philadelphia Eagle and Atlanta Falcons get things under way on Thursday.

I don’t particularly like making predictions as there are too many variables and injury luck is can be such a huge part of team success so I’ll be breaking the divisions up into favourites, competitive, and likely to struggle as I work my way round the division compass so without further ado let’s make a start on the .

AFC North

Much as it is painful for a Bengals fan to say it, the favourite to take the AFC North division is still the Pittsburgh Steelers. They may have questions at linebacker thanks to Ryan Shazier’s injury, but the defence still finished top ten last year by DVOA in and the options in their offence are still terrifying. Time is ticking for Ben Roethlisberger but as long as he doesn’t suffer a dramatic fall off then this is going to be one of the teams of the conference who should have their eyes on the Super Bowl.

The AFC North is always a tough division, and even when the Browns are struggling they are often a tough out, but not so much under Hue Jackson. However, with a defence that has looked good in pre-season and the additions of Jarvis Landy and Tyrod Taylor as well as new offensive co-ordinator Toddy Haley it at least feels like the infrastructure for success is more solid. In a position to let rookie quarterback Baker Mayfield develop and not rush him I think the Browns will be more competitive than last season, but whether their ill-discipline (they got penalised a lot in pre-season) will allow them to win games I don’t know. I think we’ll know a lot more about this team by the end of the first four games.

The Baltimore Ravens are another team who are perennially competitive but had to do it with defence and special teams last year. With a kicker like Justin Tucker you can mask a lot of deficiencies in offence but the thing the Ravens coaches might be most happy about having drafted Lamar Jackson this year is the fire it seems to have lit under long time quarterback Joe Flacco. He may also have been helped by better receiving options and being healthy in the offseason for the first time in two years but if the Ravens’ Super Bowl winning play caller can lead the offensive to a better ranking than twenty-first by DVOA the Ravens will be right in contention for the playoffs again.

I’ve written a fair amount about the Cincinnati Bengals this pre-season and it is telling that neither of the offensive tackles two years that they drafted to prepare for a transition of talent have worked out whilst Andrew Whitworth looked great for the LA Rams last year. With new playbooks on both sides of the ball there have been a lot of changes to coaching and the roster. Whilst the Bengals have another young team there seemed to be a lot to like and if the O-line gels, then Andy Dalton should have a much easier time finding his myriad of skill players. I’m not pencilling them into the playoffs, but I’m not ruling it out and I wasn’t sure that would be the case when it was announced the Marvin Lewis was coming back.

AFC East

Is this the year that the New England Patriots falter? For the first time Tom Brady was not ever present through the off-season, their first round offensive lineman Isaiah Wynn ruptured his Achillies after they let starting left tackle Nate Solder leave in free-agency, and this was a team that went to the Super Bowl with a defence ranked thirty-first in the league by DVOA so they can ill afford an offensive wobble. I think we’re all at the point where we’ll believe Tom Brady is done when he has signed his retirement papers, but what will help them is that none of the rest of the division are exactly standing up as challengers at the moment and so the Patriots look to be favourites still. This could finally change though.

The Buffalo Bills made the playoffs for the first time in eighteen attempts last seasons, but they responded to this by cutting the quarterback that got them there, not signing the linebacker that led the league in tackles and trading their left tackle to the Bengals in the draft manoeuvres required to get their quarterback of the future. Have traded away AJ McCarron they have opted to go with rookie Josh Allen and Nathan Peterman as their QBs, but whilst Peterman has looked good in pre-season and Allen has flashed, the Bengals defensive line had a field day against Buffalo’s o-line and it could be a very long season for whoever starts. I was impressed with everything Sean McDermott did last season bar benching Tyrod Taylor but I don’t think this season’s roster is better than last years and I have a nasty feeling they will struggle for a lot of the season.

If you trade away your best offensive and defensive players for chemistry reasons, you had better have an awful lot of talent coming in and I’m not sure that Miami Dolphins do. I thought they had a good draft and I would say Adam Gase is a good coach but I’m not at all sure of the roster construction and this feels like the latest in a long series of make or break seasons for Ryan Tannehill. I believe that Gase can keep the locker room together and make them competitive but it would not surprise me if they fall into a difficult season. Nothing would make me happier than to be proved wrong, if only to cheer Dan through the season.

Finally we have the New York Jets, and I though Todd Bowles did an excellent job of coaching with a lack of talent on the roster last season and not sure many other coaches would have got as many wins. The most ready of the rookie quarterbacks fell into their laps in the draft and Sam Darnold looked good enough in pre-season that the Jets traded Teddy Bridgewater to the New Orleans Saints. I think it will take another or season or two to turn things round and I don’t know if Bowles will get the chance to complete the job, but I can see the Jets equalling their record of last season. There will be ups and downs with a rookie quarterback but the real question for this season is have the Jets finally got a franchise QB. Everything else after that can wait.

AFC South

The Jacksonville Jaguars continued to build their defence, stuck with Blake Bortles and their big free agent signing was a offensive guard. I thought that Bortles might have learnt a thing or two in last season’s playoff run but with the exodus at receiver and the injury to Marqise Lee this team will be as reliant as ever on their defence and the run game. The good news is that the defence will be no less scary and they should rightly be considered the favourites for this division.

The Houston Texans may have only won four games last season, but they revealed they could have a bright future as long as the young quarterback Deshaun Watson can recover his blistering form from last season before his knee injury. With the defence hoping a number of players stay healthy, including JJ Watt this could be really good team even if the offensive line looks to be a big problem. There are a lot of ifs there so whilst the Texans will start out competitively, how long they will remain so is the big question.

The Tennessee Titans ground their way into the playoffs with a run first offence and a defence that ranked twenty-first in the league by DVOA. This was not enough to save Mike Mularkey his job and there rookie head coach Mike Vraebel is hoping that Matt LaFleur can revitalise the offence and fourth year quarterback Marcus Mariota. The coaches with links to Bill Belichick have not necessary flourished as head coaches and Vraebel has limited experience as the man with ultimate responsibility so I am very curious to see how he goes. The honest answer is I’m not sure so this is one of the teams we’ll need to follow closely through the start of the season.

The Indianapolis Colts have struggled mightily with Andrew Luck being out injured but this also laid bare the problems with the rest of the roster and whilst there are signs that things are improving in the second year of Chris Ballard’s rebuild, a lot will depend on Andrew Lucks surgically repaired and extensively rehabbed shoulder. The good news is that he’s back to starting but new head coach Frank Reich will be hoping that he can get enough from his franchise quarterback that the season can be a success, but I have a feeling that being competitive would qualify as just that and would be a good place to start.

AFC South

The Kansas City Chiefs won the division last year and I have too much faith in Andy Reid to see this team as anything other than competitive and I would place them as favourites to win the division. That is despite trading Alex Smith to Washington to promote Patrick Mahomes as the starter after a season where the young quarterback sat on the bench. Mahomes has the arms to make use of the myriad of skills players the Chiefs can use in their offence that has borrowed liberally from college, whilst their defence was only ranked thirtieth by DVOA last year when they won the division. It wouldn’t take much to improve that ranking and with the potential of their offence the Chiefs could be one of the most fun teams to watch this season.

The other potential favourite in this division could be the LA Chargers but it would require them to get out of their own way and they couldn’t quite manage that last season. The abiding image of Philip Rivers for me these days is a player somehow functioning as an effective quarterback despite minimal protection from his line. The defence was just outside of the top ten with a fearsome pass rush led by Melvin Ingram and Joey Bosa and they should be competitive again this season. The problem is that they have a nasty habit of losing close games and their ‘home’ games in LA were frequently more like home games for the opposition thanks to fan turnout. I’d like to think they can improve but I’m not willing to just outright declare it, although I’d be very willing to be proved wrong again.

I’m not entirely sure where to begin with the currently Oakland soon to be Las Vegas Raiders. The big move of the off-season would have been luring Jon Gruden out of the commentary booth nine years after he last coached except they have just traded Khalil Mack, one of the best young defensive players in the league, to the Chicago Bears. The reasoning is that the Mack’s contract demands were just too big, and the Bears wasted no time in signing Mack to a six year deal with $90 million guaranteed days after Aaron Donald signed a contract with $87 million guaranteed. The difference between the three franchises is that the Rams still have a young quarterback on their rookie contract as does the Bears, whilst the Raiders have already signed Derek Carr to a five year extension. The issue is that Gruden has been out of the league for a while, even if he was staying plugged into the NFL through his media gig, and the defence his brother Jay Gruden [I appear to have gone made, too many ex-Bengal coordinators involved as it is in fact Paul Guenther who is the new defensive coordinator – Ed.] takes over was ranked twenty-ninth by DVOA with Khalil Mack. I’m really not sure what to expect out of the Raiders this year, and whilst I can see the salary cap argument to an extent (I don’t study it hard, maybe that’s a task for next off-season) the Mack trade amongst others does nothing to help the Raiders now and I think this club will be in for a very interesting time this year.

Last year’s AFC West strugglers the Denver Broncos will be hoping that the addition of Case Keenum at quarterback will be enough of an upgrade to the offence to give the still competitive if retooled defence a chance of winning games. In the one game I saw them this preseason the offensive line still looked to be a problem but after a good pre-season from Chad Kelly, the Paxton Lynch development plan has finally been shelved. It is way too soon to question a GM who has won a Super Bowl and given his history as franchise quarterback you would think that the job is John Elway’s as long as he wants it. However, whilst he’s made a number of sharp moves in free-agency, his record in the draft is a bit patchier and his choice of Vance Joseph as head coach didn’t exactly yield the early returns that Elway would have hoped for. Still, if either Keenum or Kelly can make the offence competitive then the Broncos will be a team no one will want to face, especially at home and that could be enough for them to be in the playoff race come December.

2018 Pre-Season – Week 2

22 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by gee4213 in Pre-Season

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Andy Dalton, Carl Lawson, Carlos Dunlap, Case Keenum, Chad Kelly, Chicago Bears, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Ezekiel Elliott, Geno Atkins, George Iloka, Hard Knocks, Jaylon Smith, Jeff Driskel, Jessi Bates III, Jordan Willis, Matt Barkley, Mitch Trubisky, NFL, Nick Foles, Pre-Season, Roquan Smith, Sam Hubbard, Sean Lee, Trey Burton

Having concentrated on the Cleveland Browns and Hard Knocks over the weekend it’s now time to focus in on the week two pre-season games for the teams I’m following.

Firstly we have the Cincinnati Bengals who travelled on the road to face the Dallas Cowboys and got their second win of the pre-season running out 20-10 winners but I am not getting over excited yet. What won the game for the Bengals was their depth as for a lot of the game they were losing and they didn’t score any points in the first half.

The big question for this team is still the revamped offensive line and the reason that is important is that Andy Dalton’s strength is his quick decision making and ability distributing the ball but he is not able to play like that under pressure and so far the offence hasn’t sparkled. The big pre-season test is coming this week in the third game, but the truth is that as well as a revamped line the offence has a new playbook and calling system so it may well take some time for things to truly bed in. We will know more once the regular season has been under way for a couple of weeks, but Dalton cannot miss the throws he did in this game and hope to succeed. That said, there are flashes from the young receivers and again Jeff Driskel led the quarterbacks in yardage although he did throw an interception, whilst Matt Barkley got himself a touchdown.

The Bengals’ defence also has a new approach as they have a new co-ordinator this year and the big news post the week two game is the surprise release of George Iloka. There has been a lot of talk about the focus being on turnovers this season, and the Bengals clearly have been looking at this position all off-season as they had free agents come in before they picked Jessie Bates III in the second round of the draft, but I don’t think anyone was expecting the Bengals to cut their starting safety.

It really looks like the Bengals are placing a premium on speed at the moment but the strength of the Bengals’ defence looks to be pass rush and they were able to get pressure throughout the game and finished with five sacks and seriously exposed some of the backup Cowboys’ offensive linemen. It’s good to see rookie Sam Hubbard getting a strip sack and Carl Lawson also got a sack picking up from his strong rookie season last year while Jordan Willis (another of last season’s rookies) managed a pair of sacks so the depth of rusher really seems to be there without mentioned Geno Atkins or Carlos Dunlap.

As for the Cowboys, we don’t know how Ezekiel Elliott will play this year but if he plays the full year at something like his best they will be a difficult team to deal with and to me the defence looked good early in this game. They could still be as reliant on Sean Lee as they were last year but fellow linebacker Jaylon Smith looks like he is finally beginning to get back some of the form that made him such a tantalising draft prospect before the horrible knee injury in his last college game. It was a shock to many for Smith to be picked in the second round and he was still hampered last year (wearing a brace to support his foot) but he could be a big addition to the defence this year.

The Chicago Bears travelled to Denver to face the Broncos and they may have conceded the first safety that I have seen this year, but they ran out 23-24 winners to give the Bears their first win in three attempts.

The Bears revolution on offence continues and whilst there is still plenty of work to do I would say they are better than last year. There were several additions in the off-season but the obvious one in their game against the Broncos was tight end Trey Burton, he of the touchdown pass to Nick Foles in the Super Bowl. He lined up in several places round the formation and caught four balls for forty-five yards and a touchdown as well as appearing to be one of Mitch Trubisky’s favourite targets. There were some problems in pass protection, but when you’re the right tackle with no obvious help, pinned behind your own five-yard line, and Von Miller is lurking I think I might have false started too. The problem with pre-season re-surfaces here as you have to really know who is playing for what reasons and with the lack of coaches tape it’s hard to really dig into plays but I do see a step forward for the Bears but they have an incredibly tough division so let’s not get too excited yet.

The Bear’s defence got pressure in the game and came up with three sacks but this is one of the games where multiple lowering the head penalties came up and whilst everyone is adjusting to the new rule (and it is incredibly hard to adjust when the game is played at such a pace) the Bears will have to watch out for this if the officials call the penalty in the same way during the regular season. It doesn’t seem that surprising that rookie Roquan Smith is being eased in slowly after holding out through the start of camp until last week, nor that he didn’t finish practice Tuesday because of a tight hamstring. The Bears will need to get him into football shape before he hits the field and so the fans will have to wait for their first glimpse of the first round pick and it could be the regular season before he makes the field.

As for the Broncos, the offensive line still seems to be a worry but Case Keenum is an improvement on what they had last season at quarterback and it appears that Chad Kelly has overtaken Paxton Lynch on the depth chart. The defence is different, having lost still more players from the Super Bowl winning iteration but it can still be scary and so this could be an improved year for the Broncos but I’m not confident enough to declare that it will be.

Next week is the dress rehearsal games and the most we will see of the starts before the start of the regular season, which feels much closer than it ought to.

I’m sure the coaches feel the same.

As the Season of Hope Turns

08 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by gee4213 in Off-Season

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Andrew Luck, Arizona Cardinals, Baker Mayfield, Baltimore Ravens, Ben Roethlisberger, Bradley Chubb, Buffalo Bills, Carson Wentz, Case Keenum, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Davis Webb, Denver Broncos, Deshaun Watson, Drew Brees, Eli Manning, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Jared Goff, Josh Allen, Josh McCown, Josh Rosen, Kirk Cousins, LA Rams, Lamar Jackson, Minnesota Vikings, New York Giants, New York Jets, NFL, NFL Draft, Off-Season, Paxton Lynch, Philadelphia Eagles, Sam Bradford, Sam Darnold, Saquan Barkley, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Teddy Bridgewater, Tom Brady, Washington

kigoa football on green grass during daytime

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

It will not be very long before the players start practising in pads and before you know it we’ll be though the summer and into the weekly grind of the full NFL season.

Quiet as I may have been during these off-season milestones, I was following along as ever and so whilst we wait for training camp and the start of something we can actually dig our teeth into, I thought I would write a series of deliberately partial articles about what has been going on. The NFL media and coverage continues to expand and my aim has never been to bring you breaking news, but there’s been some interesting developments over the last few months along with the usual flurry of coaching and player changes so I’ll be digging into these and maybe straying into such things as the new rule changes as well, although I might side step the anthem protest developments until we are closer to some games actually being played, but let’s say I’m not exactly impressed with the NFL’s new policy or Trump’s reaction.

Rest assured that deliberately partial is not code for a long series of articles on the Bengals, although I’m sure they will feature, but I’ll pick out some key points I want to write about and I’d welcome input from any of you if there is a topic you’d like me to take a look at. However, as much as I like to say they get overly praised when a team wins, and overly blamed for each loss, not only are quarterbacks a very important part of any team but they are the focus of an awful lot of fans’ hopes in the off-season.

It has been an interesting off-season for quarterbacks. The Minnesota Vikings started the off-season with three quarterbacks going out of contract and kicked off a larger than usual move round of signal callers when they opted not to renew the contracts of any of them but instead signed Washington player Kirk Cousins to a three year guaranteed contract after Washington allowed his to expire. It is rare for a starting quality quarterback to hit the market, yet alone one who has accrued three straight four thousand yard seasons and is still in his twenties. It is an interesting contract that Cousins signed as all three years are guaranteed, but whilst I could very much see this becoming a thing for quarterbacks given their importance to the team (which does grant them additional leverage) it is hard to see the rest of the NFL players getting such deals.

With this first free agency domino falling the Vikings’ old quarterbacks were soon signed to new teams. It appears that the Denver Broncos were unable to get seriously into the competition to sign Cousins and quickly switched to signing Case Keenum after his impressive run to the Conference Finals. He had an excellent season last year but the Minnesota offensive line was unable to protect him against the Eagles pass rush in the NFC Championship game and so the Broncos will be hoping he is able to recapture the form of the regular season for them. The Broncos have named Keenum their start and are looking to continue the development of Paxton Lynch behind him despite Lynch not being able to make use of his impressive arm talent since he was drafted back in 2016. Still, this signing did allow the Broncos to draft Bradley Chubb in round one who is reckoned to be the most rounded pass rusher in this draft class and with the players already available to the Broncos, he will likely be an excellent addition to the front seven of their defence.

While Keenum headed to the Broncos, the Vikings’ opening day starter, the oft injured Sam Bradford, signed yet another big contract, this time with the Arizona Cardinals. With the retirement of Carson Palmer the Cardinals went into the off-season with no real option for a starting quarterback yet as well as the signing of Bradford, the Cardinals traded up to the tenth pick to select Josh Rosen. We won’t know how this turns out until a few years down the road but the criticism of Rosen’s off field interests seemed overblown and given the position in which the Cardinals started the off-season, they have given themselves a shot this year with their two new quarterbacks and could be set for the future if their young QB can back up his claim that the teams who passed on him made a mistake.

The final Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater signed with the New York Jets, but given that the Jets resigned last year’s starter in Josh McCown and moved up to take a quarterback it still looks like a long road back to starting for Bridgewater having suffered a horrendous injury in preseason two years ago. The Philadelphia Eagles have demonstrated the benefit of having two quarterbacks on the roster with their Super Bowl win and with the dearth at the position if Bridgewater can demonstrate he’s on the way back to something like his previous form he should get a legit shot as a starter somewhere. The early buzz coming out of the Jets OTAs (organised team activities) were that Bridgewater looked like the best quarterback of the team, but I’m always wary of the buzz surrounding players until we start seeing them in pre-season games and for quarterbacks, even good play in pre-season doesn’t necessarily translate into the regular season. The Jets could be taking a leaf out of the Eagles recent roster moves and be driving interest for a trade, but I think a lot of the league and most neutrals will be hoping Bridgewater makes a full comeback.

Before I dig properly into the first round quarterbacks who were drafted I just want to cover the saga of Washington and Kirk Cousins briefly, As I said earlier, it is not often that a quarterback still in his twenties with three consecutive four thousand yard seasons hits the free agent market. Washington seemed to be unwilling to make the kind of deal that Cousins and most quarterbacks of his ability would expect and whilst there was some defending the first franchise tag given to him two seasons ago as he was a fourth round draft pick and had really broken through late, there is no real defence for Washington not committing to Cousins long term when he threw for four thousand yards a second time. It is pretty remarkable that he completed the feat for a third straight season given that Washington let both of their top two receivers leave before last season. What they did do this year as Cousins second one year franchise tag was nearly expired was trade for thirty-four year old veteran Alex Smith from the Kansas City Chiefs, sending them a corner back as part of the trade, and signing Smith to a four year deal with fifty-five million dollars guaranteed at signing. If he makes it to the end of his contract he is guaranteed seventy-one million dollars, but whether he can make it to thirty-eight is a big question even with modern sports medicine and particularly as Smith is an underrated runner who doesn’t sit in the pocket and distribute the ball without getting hit like a Tom Brady or Drew Brees. I can’t pretend to know what lay behind these decisions, but I don’t like the process and it does not instill faith in the franchise.

So with the major quarterback moves wrapped up the NFL headed into the draft and I have already mentioned two teams that double dipped signing Vikings’ free agents and drafted quarterbacks in the first round but the first pick of the draft belonged to the Cleveland Browns and this time they did take a quarterback, but not the one everybody was expecting when they drafted Baker Mayfield. Now I’m interested in the draft and I do enjoy the analysis of players and even look up draft grades but I don’t take them seriously. We won’t know what players are going to work out or not, and so much is to do with scheme fit, changes in coaching staff, injury luck that whilst there are players you would feel more confident than others, no one can know. Hell, we’re still waiting for Andrew Luck to play again for the Indianapolis Colts having played through a shoulder injury and missed all of last season. You have to wonder at the medical advice the Colts young franchise quarterback received and why he was allowed to play for so long with what is clearly a serious issue during the 2016 season.

Getting back to the Browns, if this pick works out then great and what I do like is that they picked their player rather than the outside experts but we can’t know whether this was the right decision for a number of season. In fact we might never know as bad luck could scupper the pick or something else unforeseen. What I can question is what the New York Giants did with the second pick as whilst no one would question the talent or ability of running back Saquon Barkley, it is hard to argue that even as good as he can be that the Giants will get equivalent value out of a position that you are lucky to get through two contracts compared to having an entire career of a franchise quarterback. The Giants may well have not liked the quarterbacks in this year’s draft, but they refused to move down and even if Eli Manning regains some of the form that he has failed to display over the last two seasons, at thirty-seven he can’t have that long left in the league and when will the Giants be picking this high again?. Even if they have complete faith in the quarterback Davis Webb who didn’t see the field during a turbulent 2017 season that saw Geno Smith get a start, they could have likely traded the pick to one of the quarterback needy teams, got a big haul and still got a very good player.

What this did mean was the New York Jets who moved early to get up to the third pick took Sam Darnold who most people thought was the most ready quarterback of the draft. The Jets invested in three quarterbacks this off-season, but if Darnold can finally be the franchise quarterback the Jets have been missing for years if not decades then the cost would have been worth it. You can see the importance of the quarterback to teams who don’t have them in the moves of the Buffalo Bills, who having already traded up to the twelfth pick with the Bengals (only my second mention of them in this post) traded again with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to get to seven so they could take Josh Allen. I have already mentioned the Cardinals trading up to take Josh Rosen at ten, but at the end of the first round with the Ravens having already picked and the Eagles coming off a Super Bowl win but short on draft picks haven given up a lot to draft Carson Wentz in 2016, the Eagles traded out the first round as the Raven’s Ozzie Newsome in his final draft as GM picked the fifth quarterback to go on day one in Lamar Jackson.

I still find it somewhat strange that the 2016 Heisman trophy winner had four quarterbacks selected ahead of him and that he slipped past the Saints and Patriots who both have ageing quarterbacks that could have taught Jackson a lot. As could the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger although he was not exactly enthusiastic about the selection of Mason Rudolph in the third round and claims to be planning to play for a number of years yet despite several years of off-season where Roethlisberger talked of retirement.

This leads me to where I’m going to finish off, with this thought:

With the hope given to franchises in recent years by quarterbacks like Carson Wentz, the LA Rams’ Jared Gough, or the flashes from Deshaun Watson in Houston, it has reinforced the theory that there is no price too high to pay for getting a franchise quarterback. However, you had better be certain about that player as if you get that call wrong, even if it isn’t entirely your fault, as the person who put your faith in the player you are going to get fired if things don’t work out.

It’s not exactly fair, but that is life in the NFL.

AAF: Patrick Mahomes

07 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by gee4213 in Amateur Adventures in Film

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Albert Wilson, Alex Smith, Darian Stewart, Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, Kareem Hunt, NFL, Patrick Mahomes

The last week of the regular season was my final chance to take a look at a player or thing from twenty different teams, but it was the Chiefs decision to start rookie Patrick Mahomes in their final game ahead of the playoffs that caught my imagination.

I was intrigued to see the player that the Chiefs traded up in the first round to get last April even though they had a team capable of competing for and in the end winning their division. Having watched the game I think intrigued is definitely the word I would continue to use.

Patrick Mahomes spent most of his time taking shotgun snaps and the majority of his passes were quick throws and play action. The offence didn’t flow particularly, but there were a number of other offensive starters rested and once Kareem Hunt had run for thirty-five yard and a touchdown on his single carry he too was sat for the day now that he had the most yards on the ground for the season.

You can see why the Chiefs took Mahomes though. I tend to think that we are too focussed on arm strength when assessing a quarterback and as long as they have enough to deliver the ball accurately then you can build an offence for them to function. However, Mahomes clearly has an arm and whilst I’m don’t think I’m qualified to assess his mechanics particularly, he also has the ability to make time in the pocket and throw the ball on the move. As is frequently the case with this type of ability, this can result in wow plays that get you excited and balls that will make a QB coach scream in frustration. There were not too many, but there were definitely throws and decision that Mahomes will be discussing with his coach at some point.

The quick plays work as Mahomes can deliver the ball quickly and on target, with receiver Albert Wilson making a lot of yards after the catch to help Mahomes figures. There were plenty of times when Mahomes would escape pressure and find a receiver, dump the ball off or throw the ball away, and he was only sacked twice. He even shook of one attempted sack and completed a pass up the middle for the touchdown. However, he also threw a horrible interception where he simply overthrew the pass straight to Broncos safety Darian Stewart.

It is always hard to make grand pronouncements from one game, but it feels like a lot of people are already moving Alex Smith out of Kansas and I do wonder if the Chiefs might want to develop Mahomes for another season before they start him full time. Yes after conservative play calling and sitting Mahomes for a drive, he did lead the game winning drive that enabled the Chiefs to kick a field goal but he did get some help with a badly timed offside penalty from the Broncos. He clearly has talent, and I remain intrigued, which is as much as you should probably expect from first start in the NFL, but the Chiefs already have a quarterback who got them into the playoffs so whilst you will want him to start to develop. The timing of when this transition happens is going to be something that will be the focus for this team as soon as the season ends.

Sunday Thoughts

04 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by gee4213 in Uncategorized

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Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Derek Carr, Fletcher Cox, Jacksonville Jaguars, Kansas City Chiefs, Minnesota Vikings, NFL, Rob Gronkowski, Russell Wilson, Seattle Seahawks

It has been a frustrating season as a Bengals fan, but there comes a point where you have to accept that the playoffs really are out of reach, and whilst that happened to me a couple of weeks ago, the optimist in me still tries to hang on to hope for a couple of weeks. I am dreading what Fletcher Cox could do against the Bengals this week, but mainly I’ll be curious about what is going on with the rest of the league.

The Cowboy ran out eventual winners in an intriguing Thursday night game, but even though the Vikings defence is back to where it was earlier in the season, they couldn’t stop the first team to record double digit wins from getting their eleventh. There are two teams that could join them this week, but whilst the Raiders and Patriots stand a good chance of getting their tenth wins, injuries to Derek Carr and Rob Gronkowski could be causing differing degrees of anxiety to fans. Derek Carr came back in the game to play with his nastily injured finger, it is amazing what adrenaline will do for you, but it is possible it might affect his play. More worrying for the Patriots though will be the loss of Gronkowski for the rest of the season after having back surgery this week. You would back the Patriots staff to be able to adjust to this loss, but it is a big loss as Gronkowski is a real difference maker and is a favourite target of Brady as well as being the best tight end in the league.

No team is unaffected by injury at this time of year, but it is a question of whether you have picked up a critical injury and how strong you are at that position in the first place. The Seattle Seahawks offensive line has not been good all season, but in recent weeks they had improved enough when combined with Russel Wilson getting healthy to make the Seahawks look frightening again. However, they picked up more injuries last week and the Seahawks could only register five points against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They are still very much in control of the AFC West, which is very much going through a down season this year, but they will have their eyes on bigger prizes and I will be curious to see how well their offence goes this week against a Panthers team who have been more competitive in recent weeks, even if the results don’t necessarily reflect it.

It felt like a strange week of games to predict, there are a lot of teams whose performance is varying week to week, and when there are questions surrounding even the best of teams, it is beginning to feel that the Cowboys might be putting themselves on a level of their own as they keep grinding out wins.

I think the question of overtime could rear its head again this week with another game that did give us a winner last Sunday, but still went to the end of overtime. One of my picks is resting on whether this extra pick is enough to let the Jaguars cover, but given the previous results of teams coming off a full overtime period it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the Jaguars could pick up a win. I know that Americans are culturally obsessed with there not being draws, but if a full period of overtime is that much of a disadvantage to the participating teams the following week, I’m still not sure that in an era of concern over player well-being, that we are not better off just accepting that draws happen.

Let’s see what happens with the Chiefs and Broncos when they play today.

A Return to Form

17 Thursday Nov 2016

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Andy Reid, Brandin Cooks, Cincinnati Bengals, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Drew Brees, Jared Cricks, Justin Drescher, Justin Simmons, Kansas City Chiefs, Marvin Lewis, New Orleans Saints, New Patriots, NFL, Seattle Seahawks, Will Parks

So the games of week ten were as good as my picks were awful!

One of the reasons suggested for the NFL’s falling ratings has been the quality of the games, particularly in the nationally televised games, but we had a series of close and eventful finishes and probably the game of the season in the Sunday night prime time slot with the Seattle Seahawks beating the New England Patriots in a back and forth game that had seven lead changes. This followed and equally back and forth game between the Cowboys and Steelers that featured three touchdowns in the last two minutes.

The New Orleans Saints must have thought they had won the game when Drew Brees somehow found Brandin Cooks in the end zone despite being covered by two Broncos’ players. However, the resulting extra point was blocked by rookie safety Justin Simmons who vaulted the long snapper Justin Drescher with the help of Jared Crick who made sure that Drescher couldn’t stand up and make contact with Simmons by pushing him down. The NFL has later confirmed that as this was an open handed push it was legal. If Simmons’s block wasn’t enough though, another rookie safety in Will Parks scooped up the ball and ran it back to the end zone for a two point defensive score that gave the Broncos the lead before receiving the ball and holding on for the win. Such are the margins that games turn on in the NFL, although the Saints will likely feel aggrieved as with no definitive view of Parks who likely stepped out of bounds during the return, the return stood. It is very possible that this play would have been overturned if Parks had been wearing black boots, but it is too late now. Still, it is yet another dramatic ending for a really good slate of games over the weekend and we will likely see similar leaping block attempts in crucial field goals/extra points at the end of games, with the same manoeuvre executed on the poor long snapper who can’t do much to defend himself in that position.

The fine margins that separate winning and losing are not always so obvious, but the differences between good and average teams are not always that big. This season seems to have a particular large sample of so-so teams, with it seems everybody agreeing that the Patriots, Cowboys, and Seahawks are looking dangerous, a mass of teams with one or two potential contenders for post season success, and then likes of the Browns and 49ers vying for the first pick in next year’s draft.

The Bengals could be seen as a microcosm of this in that their 3-5-1 record is pretty awful, but they are only two games out in the surprisingly poor AFC North. They are not actually a bad team, but they seem to have been doomed by too many changes at once and things won’t quite come together. Whether certain parts of the team just got too old at the same time I don’t know, but most would consider the roster to be one of the most talented in the league. However, there have been so many changes with a new offensive coordinator and several new postition coaches on defence, and nothing has looked quite right. The lack of consistency is what is hampering the Bengals and those who have been calling for Marvin Lewis to be fired are unlikely to be quietened by anything other than a major turnaround in the second half of the season and post season success.

There are so many moving parts in an NFL franchise, that playing within a structure that is supposed to promote parity, it hardly a surprise that it is hard to be consistently good. Only the very best and worst are standing out at the moment, but whilst you will frequently hear people questioning decisions, you also frequently hear criticisms of such and such is a bad coach, and I’m not always sure that is fair.

In some corners of the NFL coverage you will frequently hear disparaging comments about Andy Reid’s clock management, and these are not entirely without merit, however as demonstrated by their come back on Sunday, even when the Chiefs fall into a hall the players believe in Reid and keep playing. He has won an awful lot of football games, and there is a lot more to being a head coach that clock management. If you get a chance, listen to Ron Riviera talking on this week’s Peter King podcast to get a flavour of what the coaches are going through. I do sometime feel that coaches are wedded to the way they were brought up in football, but there is a constant search for the next small advantage that could turn a game and we don’t always get to see or hear about them.

In a changing game with so much variation from season to season, the sustained success of the Patriots and Seahawks are all the more remarkable, and whilst there is a lot to take from the recent string of Bengals success, they still haven’t won a playoff game since 1990, the longest in the league. In a results based world like the NFL, people’s jobs are tied to very variable results and this does not always lead to better results, but with the seasons that the Bengals are having, much like the Packers who are a team who also have a history of patience with coaches, change could be in the air at the end of the season. There is still over a quarter of the season to go, but things are getting serious now so let’s see what happens.

Saints @ Panthers (-3.5)

I got bitten by the line last week, but whilst the Saints are a better team than the Browns, and have a better record than the Panthers, the Panthers played well for long stretches against the Kansas City Chiefs and have looked a lot more like themselves in recent weeks. It may be too late for a playoff push, but I’m not picking against them at home in this Thursday night game.

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

Broncos @ Chargers

16 Sunday Oct 2016

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CJ Anderson, Denver Broncos, Dexter McCluster, Gary Kubiak, Hunter Henry, Joey Bosa, Melvin Gordon, NFL, Philip Rivers, Russell Okung, San Diego Chargers, Trevor Siemian, Von Miller

Denver Broncos 13
San Diego Chargers 21

This week’s Thursday night game at least finished tensely, but in truth the Chargers were consistently better than the Broncos over three quarters, although they still had a couple of worrying moments that could have cost them.

The Chargers offence had a tale of the opening drive and then the rest of the game. The opening drive was not without incident, with a big gain for Dexter McCluster wiped out by a pass interference penalty on rookie tight end Hunter Henry but he made several other plays in the same drive that ended with the only touchdown for the Chargers’ offence when Philip Rivers stood in and delivered the ball to the rookie tight end. In fact Henry led the team in receiving yards in this game as Philip Rivers threw for a modest one hundred and seventy-eight yards although he didn’t turn the ball over. The Chargers did manage to gain just under a hundred yards on twenty-nine carries with Melvin Gordon running for ninety-four yards, but in truth they struggled to maintain drives for most of the game and kicked a series of field goals to keep eking out their lead, but they managed to win the time of possession battle and put up enough points to win.

After the opening drive, the Broncos were able to clamp down on defence, and whilst their pass rush was not particularly effect at getting to Rivers, although Von Miller got his customary sack, they were able to limit the Chargers for most of the game. However, the Broncos were behind the game flow for all of the game and the real problems were not on this side of the ball.

The Broncos offence wasn’t terrible, but they struggled to maintain drives all game against a Chargers team who seemed to have an effective game plan. They weren’t helped by a series of offensive line penalties of various holding calls and false starts which killed several drives. In fact they had a touchdown by CJ Anderson in the fourth quarter wiped out by a holding call against tackle Russell Okung after the running back had taken a dump off pass and turned it into a twenty yard touchdown play. Not only did a holding penalty cost the Broncos a touchdown, but another one in the end zone gave the Chargers a safety. When you give up eighty-three more yards in penalties than the opposition, and you have them at critical points in the game, then you are going to struggle and with the passing game not really taking off the Broncos fell well short of what they needed to win. It appears that Trevor Siemian is a good quarterback if you can keep the game flow on your side, but the big chunks of yards needed if you fall back to a first and twenty after a holding a penalty is going to really cause him to struggle. In fairness, without head coach Gary Kubiak who usually calls the plays it is perhaps not surprising that the offence struggled this week. When you run for eighty-four yards but only call sixteen run plays to fifty passing plays, you can see that the balance was off for what is usually a balanced attack and it was only late in the game that the Broncos were far enough behind that they had to throw.

That said, the Chargers defence did well enough against the Broncos, and held up in the fourth quarter to win the game with Rivers looking on nervously from the side-lines, whilst the defence withstood a late surge by the Broncos. They actually matched the Broncos defence for sacks and got two more quarterback hits whilst swatting away more passes. Rookie defensive end Joey Bosa got a couple of quarterback hits as he begins to settle in having missed all of training camp, but I am really not sure how much the Chargers limited the Broncos and how much the Broncos caused the problems to themselves. In fairness, the solitary field goal the Chargers gave up in the first half was only due to a special teams mess up on a punt return, which gave the Broncos the ball deep in the Charger’s half of the field, but we will have to see how they develop in coming games.

This game was not the best spectacle, although it was tense late, but a very lopsided set of penalties probably sealed the game for the Chargers. The Chargers cut down on the mistakes, and you could see the relief when they got the win, but I don’t know how far they will go this season.

The Broncos have now lost two in a row, but they are at home for the next two games where they will hope to get their offence back on track and I suspect they will have the return match against the Chargers in week eight very much set in their sights.

The Futility of Making Picks but Doing It Anyway

06 Thursday Oct 2016

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Arizona Cardinals, Buffalo Bills, Cam Newton, Carolina Panthers, Charles Tillman, David Johnson, Denver Broncos, Houston Texans, Josh Norman, Kelvin Benjamin, Navorro Bowman, New England Patriots, NFL, Paxton Lynch, San Francisco 49ers, Tom Brady, Trevor Siemian

Our picks have not been pretty over the last two weeks, despite me building a five point advantage over Dan, but in a way the failures highlights why I love the NFL and there is a reason we keep picking games.

One of the characteristic things about the NFL is through a combination of deliberate attempts to foster parity like the Draft and salary cap, and the unpredictable nature of a game with such large rosters and high injury rates, it is incredibly hard for a team to remain consistently good from season to season.

The Carolina Panthers, who last year went 15-1 in the regular season on the way to the Super Bowl have got off to a 1-3 start with Cam Newton picking up a concussion in the fourth quarter of their week four loss to the Atlanta Falcons. They Panthers were already well behind when Newton left the game as their defence that was such a strength last year gave up over five hundred yards of passing with Julio Jones accounting for three hundred of them as he caught twelve passes from fifteen targets and scored a touchdown. Some of this is likely down to the loss of not just Josh Norman, but Charles Tillman and the addition of two rookie corners, but team have not been in synch on offence either despite getting Kelvin Benjamin back from injury. The worry would be for me that one player was able to get so many yards individually and that the coaches didn’t adjust, but there appears to be a real problem in Carolina.

The Arizona Cardinals who played so well last season are, struggling as their offence is misfiring, and they have a fallen to a 1-3 record despite having one of my favourite head coaches in the league. Things are not clicking for them on offence in the passing game, although David Johnson looks to be continuing on from his excellent rookie season last year. However, a stumbling offence and a defence that hasn’t gelled yet do not win football games, and so it is now less surprising that the Patriots were able to beat them in week one despite Tom Brady being suspended.

Meanwhile, to counter this point the Denver Broncos are 4-0 despite losing Payton Manning and a number of defensive starters. The defence is still playing to a very high standard, whilst the offence is getting improved results from a very inexperienced starter in Trevor Siemian, and continued to do enough a win when he hurt his should and Paxton Lynch came into the game. They look to be up there again this season, and it certainly seems that John Elway has a clear idea of what he wants and this has been delivering results so far for him.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule model of consistent success for the last decade has been the New England Patriots. They have started the season 3-1 despite Tom Brady’s suspension, but even the best teams don’t win all of their games and they came a cropper this week as having beat the Texans 27-0 in week three, they lost to the Bills 16-0. I wouldn’t bet against them this week with Brady returning, but we get these kinds of results fairly regularly and so it kind of makes a mockery of picking games each week.

There is a reason that I do it though, and not just because it gives me a something to write about. I don’t really like making predictions in terms of it proving one way or another that someone knows what they are talking about, it’s a standard requirement of covering sports, but at the end of the day if the outcome was so predictable there would be no reason to play the games. I like writing about what I have seen, what happened, and why I think it did.

However, picking games against the spread gives me a framework to look at each team, and helps highlight which teams I need to watch more. Of course you always tend to be interested in certain games each week, but by looking at what might happen, it keeps you focussed across the entire league and encourages sharpness, or in the last couple of weeks, distinctly dull. That said, I doubt many people were expecting for the Bills to beat the Patriots in the way they did, and that was far from the only surprise result.

So despite the poor record, we’ll keep ploughing on and hopefully things will improve, but you can never guarantee anything in the NFL.

Gee: Week 4 6-9 Overall 27-36
Dan: Week 4 4-11 Overall 22-41

Cardinals @ 49ers (+2.5)

The Cardinals are in real trouble, with Carson Palmer not playing well even before he got a concussion and on a short week he shouldn’t play. Against almost any other team with the start they have had, this would strongly tempt me to pick against the Cardinals despite by admiration for Bruce Arians, but even though they are on the road in San Francisco, I can’t bring myself to pick the 49ers to win, especially after losing Navorro Bowman last week on defence.

Gee’s Pick: Cardinals
Dan’s Pick: 49ers

The End of Streaks

29 Thursday Sep 2016

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Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, Bill Belichick, Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers, Chicago Bears, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Denver Broncos, Gus Bradley, Houston Texans, Hue Jackson, Indianapolis Colts, International Series, Jacksonville Jaguars, JJ Watt, London, Miami Dolphins, Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, New York Giants, NFL, Odell Beckham, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, Rex Ryan, San Diego Chargers, Trevor Siemian, Tyler Eifert, Vontaze Burfict, Washington

It was a strange week three that saw many a game going differently to how people expected, and saw both Dan and I get murdered on our picks.

I wrote before making my picks last week that I expected more teams to get their first loss or win than continue their streaks, but it seems I picked all of the wrong ones and even in the games where I made the right choice, those choices were hardly convincing.

One of the unbeaten Texans and Patriots had to lose their first game, but whilst I acknowledged that Bill Belichick could win this game, I was not expecting the Patriots to manage a 27-0 win over the Texans.
The Cardinals went to Buffalo and lost, giving them a losing record and granting the Bills their first win of the season and resulting in the usual Rex Ryan bravado about facing the Patriots this week.
The Broncos went to 3-0 with an impressive win in Cincinnati where the Bengals defence stacked the box and dared Trevor Siemian to win the game with his arm, which he promptly did.
Even when I picked the Dolphins to beat the winless Browns in Miami and get their first win of the season, they needed overtime to do it and were nowhere near the ten point lead I needed for my pick to come through.
I expected the Viking to keep the game close against the Panthers, but instead ran out with a victory to remain unbeaten despite their injury troubles.
I didn’t see Washington beating a Giants team that were off to a great start, and yet they managed it whilst Odell Beckham grabbed headlines with another emotional outburst. This time the talented receiver lost a fight to a field goal net on the Giant’s side-line.
The Ravens went down to Jacksonville to face a desperate Jaguars team who were not desperate enough to avoid going 0-3, whilst the Ravens have the quietest unbeaten record in the league.
The Colts were one of only three games featuring a 2-0 or 0-2 record that I picked correctly, when they managed to get a win over the visiting Chargers who now have a perfect record of played three, lost three starters for the season to injury.
The Eagles put pay to the Steelers unbeaten record and kept their own, making the hype surrounding Carson Wentz even greater. I am so impressed with the Eagles coaching staff and the turnaround they have made so far, I’m really looking forward to seeing how this team develop over the rest of the season.
The Bears continued to lose, giving me my only other totally correct pick of week two where I got it right and the game went how I expected.
Finally, I was tempted into picking the Falcons because of an extra half point the Saints were giving up, but it turns out that the Falcons didn’t need these points as they ran out easy winners in a game of a lot of points.

Now, the wonderful thing about the NFL is that it is doing a sterling job of giving us talking points and excitement over the weekends, but boy is it making predicting what is going to happen difficult.

Still it is still early, and even though I will be writing my quarter poll summary in a couple of weeks, there are very few teams that should be truly despondent. However, whilst the Cleveland Browns were never likely to be looking for anything other than progress, and to their credit they are playing tough for the Hue Jackson in his first year, the Bears, Saints, and Jaguars are all in trouble. Only three teams have made the playoffs after starting 0-3 since 1990 when the playoff format was expanded to its current format. The Bears were expected to be rebuilding this year even if the injuries have made things worse than I was expecting, but the Jaguars were hoping to make the next step and push for the playoffs whilst the Saints have a Super Bowl winning quarterback who they have failed to surround with enough talent to push as far as they would expect.

The Jaguars are a particular disappointment as they head over to London to host the Colts this week, and already people are wondering if the London game is going to cost another head coach his job. Despite the warm feelings that everyone who has ever dealt with Gus Bradley seems to have, it is hard to see the Jaguars owner putting up with these results for much longer, and the Jaguars will need to turn things round quickly if Bradley is to keep his job past the end of the season.

And continuing the theme of disappointment, the big news of the last twenty-four hours is that JJ Watt has been placed on injured reserve as he having more problems with his back, and could possibly be gone for the season. I’ll write a little more about this over the weekend as I was already going through the coaching tape of Watt vs the Patriots, but hopefully he can make it all the way back as he is one of my favourite players to watch, but back injuries are hard ones to return from and people who’ve had such problems often say that they never felt the same.

The week five games look to offer plenty of excitement and intrigue, but already the attrition has really started to affect some teams, and it is an all too prescient reminder of how tough a game American Football is. I never want to see a player injured, but I will confess that part of me is curious to see what the Patriots would do if they were forced to play Julian Edelman as their quarterback.

Still, it is time to start looking at this week’s games, starting with tonight’s game that pits Dan’s Dolphins on the road against my beloved Bengals.

Our records are nothing to shout home about, particularly after our disastrous previous week, but I did manage to maintain my three point lead:

Gee: Week 3 5-11 Overall 21-27
Dan: Week 3 5-11 Overall 18-30

Dolphins @ Bengals (-6.5)

The Bengals lost their first home game of the season, in what has been a tricky open to the season, but if they can get back to 2-2 they can still hope to make a push for the playoffs. It appears that Tyler Eifert is not going to make it back for the game, but Vontaze Burfict comes off suspension and is likely to help the Bengals defence straight away. I think the Browns are going to give teams a tough game at the moment so I’m not reading too much into last week’s result for the Dolphins, but an overtime game before a short week road game is not the best prep, and I’m hopeful that the Bengals can win and hopefully find some rhythm on offence. For one game only I’m borrowing from Dan and picking blindly based on my fandom.

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

The Season Starts, Panthers at Broncos, and Week 1 Picks

11 Sunday Sep 2016

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Andy Janovich, Cam Newton, Carolina Panthers, CJ Anderson, DeMarcus Ware, Denver Broncos, Devotae Booker, Greg Olson, Kelvin Benjamin, Luke Kuechly, NFL, Star Lotulelei, Thomas Davis, Trevor Siemian, Von Miller, Week 1 Picks

And so my offseason work meets the start of the regular season as I recap what I have been watching, the season opener and then pick the rest of the week one games.

I have been following the Broncos during the offseason, where their defence has continued to look good despite losing some players, and Trevor Siemian beat out Mark Sanchez and rookie Paxton Lynch to get the starting quarterback job. With the ongoing saga regarding Von Miller’s contract, the cutting of Mark Sanchez and Ronnie Hillman, GM John Elway has certainly not been afraid to make the big decision and whilst I think there will be some come down from last season with a seventh round pick starting under centre for the first time, I do think the Broncos will be competitive again this season.

The Carolina Panthers travelled to the Denver Broncos to open the season on Thursday, and in a sign of how Dan and my picks are likely to go, the Broncos won after the Panthers missed a last seconds field goal giving us our first losses of the season.

This ended up being a close game with the Panthers starting off well and going into the half with a ten point lead, but ultimately falling short as the Broncos came back in the second half. That the game was close with two such good defences should not be surprise, but I’ll start with the offences.

The Broncos offence looked surprising good for most of the game, although it seemed to function better between the thirty yard lines than it did at getting the ball into the end zone. For the most part Trevor Siemian didn’t look like a rookie quarterback, and certainly he was better than his stat line might suggest. However, whilst for the first interception Siemian failed to get the ball over Star Lotulelei on a screen pass, and the big defensive tackle tipped the ball up for Thomas Davis to make the interception, on the second interception he was hit by Kurt Coleman who had a free run at Siemian on a blitz and hit the QB as he threw enabling Bene Benwikere to intercept the ball. Yet the Broncos were able to move the ball throughout the game, particularly on the ground where CJ Anderson was able to rack up ninety-two yards on twenty carries. Certainly the rookies in the Broncos backfield will look back on their first NFL regular season carries differently with Devnotae Booker fumbling the ball and causing a turnover on his, whilst fullback Andy Janovich took his twenty-eight yards to score the Broncos first touchdown of the season. Even with his modest eighteen of twenty-six completions for one hundred and seventy-eight yards, there were good throws by Siemian and with the defence of the Broncos playing tough they will remain.

The Panthers meanwhile look like the same team as last year when running the ball, with Cam Newton gaining fifty-four yards to complement Jonathan Stewart’s sixty-four and Ted Ginn picking up twenty on an end-around carry. In the passing game Newton was happy to have Kelvin Benjamin back, connecting with him six times on twelve attempts as well as with Greg Olson for seven catches. However, Newton still doesn’t have the prettiest of throwing motions and took a couple of hits that would worry any coach. It is hard to read too much into how they are going to go this season as they were facing another strong Broncos defence, but they did give up three sacks and so the offence line might be a worry again at the tackle spot.

If the Broncos defence didn’t quite pick up from where they did last year, they were still very good with some familiar face making some key plays. They may have been a bit softer against the run, but both Von Miller and DeMarcus Ware got sacks and Chris Harris tipped and intercepted a ball in an impressively athletic play. In fact, there were no signs of Ware having any problems with his back despite what had been said in preseason as he bent low and got round the corner for his solo sack, and he also shared in a second later in the game. With a rookie quarterback, the Broncos will be leaning on this side of the ball and the running attack and for this game that certainly worked.

The Panthers defence looked solid but not spectacular, and whilst you could see flashes of Kuechly’s usual excellences, plus they did generate the interceptions I mentioned earlier, it was not exactly a dominant performance. The rookie corners seemed to hold up okay, but there will be tougher tests down the road and we will just have to see if this group can play up to the standards that were set last year.

Moving back from the opening game, I have two more teams to cover in terms of the preseason before moving on to our picks for the rest of this week’s games.

For the Cincinnati Bengals, apart from a couple of rookies getting injured, things seem to have gone relatively smoothly through the preseason, although AJ Green limping out of the week three game was very nerve racking. This may be misplaced confidence, but I have faith in the system and so despite losing two receivers that played a lot of snaps, the new receivers are already looking the part with Tyler Boyd seeming to fit in seamlessly and rookie free agent Alex Erickson looking effective both out of the slot and as a kick/punt returner, which led to long term Bengal returner Brandon Tate being cut when the Bengals were getting down to seventy-five. The defence is getting older, but there does seem to be youth waiting to come through, but I think the Bengals will be in the playoff hunt, and I just hope the steps Andy Dalton took last year were as much to do with his development as Hue Jackson’s coaching.

The Rams have had an offseason of upheaval as they move to LA and had the Hard Knocks crew filming them. It has not been a brilliant series, but the big worry for the Rams has to be that the first round quarterback that they traded up to get has not even won the backup job for the first game of the season. I am not against bringing on quarterbacks slowly, but this has to be a worry given all they gave up to get Jared Goff. The Rams defence looked to be coming together finally in game three of the preseason, and certainly I am expecting a monster year from Aaron Donald. However, whilst Todd Gurley looks to be a staple of the Rams’ offence, what will be key is whether some of the receivers can step up and offer more in the passing games than they have over recent seasons. I have quite liked the look of rookie receiver Pharoh Cooper, but with Tavon Austin seemingly more a gadget play threat than a true number one receiver, they will need more than a rookie showing flashes to improve that side of the ball. I think the Rams may well be heading for another battle to get above 8-8, but in a tough division they could easily fall short of the playoffs again.

And now on to the rest of my week one picks:

Buccaneers @ Falcons (-3.5)

The Falcons haven’t grabbed the imagination, and whilst I like the pedigree of their head coach in Dan Quinn, his side of the ball is not fixed yet and the move of Vic Beasly to strong side linebacker is troubling given that he was supposed to be a first round pass rusher. The offence has struggled for consistency since Matt Ryan lost tight end great Tony Gonzalez, but he does have one of the best receivers in the game in Julio Jones. However, Jones can’t do everything on offence, and the Falcons could do with lowering his workload as he is taking a ton of punishments with the number of catches he is making. They will hope that the signing of Mohamed Sanu will help with this, but the proof will be seen during the season.

The Buccaneers were so keen to keep continuity for their new franchise quarterback Jameis Winson that they fired Lovie Smith and elevated offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter to head coach. They have the prize for the worst draft pick when they moved up to draft a kicker in the second round, and he has already missed kicks in the pre-season, generating a lot of extra pressure for the young player. They will be hoping that the supposed better kicking and the improvement of Winston will be enough for them to win more of the close games they lost last season, but as ever only time will tell.

I like the Bucs on the road in this one to be competitive, and possibly even win so I have been tempted into backing them on the road thanks to the extra half point the Falcons are giving up. I hope I’m not mistaken.

Gee’s Pick: Buccaneers
Dan’s Pick: Falcons

Bills @ Ravens (-3.5)

The Ravens have injury problems already at tight end, but still have a long way to go before they are as banged up as last season. I think this could be a trying season for the Ravens as there are sections of the team that are still old, but I expect them to have more wins that last season and they are never an easy opponent for anyone.

The Bills have been suffering the usual drama that seems to surround a Rex Ryan team, and with injuries to key rookies on defence just being the start to their problems, I have feeling the Bills will be missing the postseason again. I do like Tyrod Taylor, and think it’s likely that the Bill offence will be pretty good again, but whilst Taylor will want to beat the team he started with, I can’t see it happening.

Gee’s Pick: Ravens
Dan’s Pick: Ravens

Bears @ Texans (-4.5)

The Texans had a draft that was all about find other receiver to play across from DeAndre Hopkins to help him and free agent quarterback Brock Osweiler. The worry for Texans’ fans will be JJ Watt’s back injury, and how he will look in the early part of the season that he was not necessarily expected to see. That said, the word is that Jadeveon Clowney is looking the best he ever has for the Texans and they have to be hoping that without the quarterback carousel they had last season that a strong playoff push is possible.

The Bears are still a way away from such hope, and whilst I think they are heading in the right direction, I don’t think this season will see much of an improvement in terms of wins than last season. The defence is looking like it is beginning to shape up, but with a new offensive coordinator and the ever talented but interception prone Jay Cutler at quarterback, I’m not sure they have enough to cover this spread on the road.

Gee’s Pick: Texans
Dan’s Pick: Texans

Bengals @ Jets (+1.5)

The Jets have one of the older rosters in the league, and seemed to cost their starting quarterback a lot of practice reps in the offseason in a negotiating tactic that didn’t seem to net them much of a reduction in cost and has to be a bad decision overall. They still have a formidable defensive front, but I think they could slip as a team, particularly as the only AFC East team not to get a game against the Patriots whilst Tom Brady is suspended.

I still have faith that the Bengals opening up the season on the road can win this one despite them having to use new receiving options on offence, and I just hope this one doesn’t bite me for personal reasons.

Gee’s Pick: Bengals
Dan’s Pick: Bengals

Browns @ Eagles (-6.5)

The Eagles have had a torrid offseason, culminating in the trade of their starting quarterback Sam Bradford to the Vikings last weekend. I think I can see what the plan is, and I am very much looking forward to seeing Fletcher Cox let loose in Jim Schwartz’s defence, but with Carson Wentz suddenly leap frogging Chase Daniels to start at quarterback, I think it could be a long season.

The Browns seem to have a renewed vigour with a new front office approach and Hue Jackson as their head coach. They have to be hoping that the Browns’ young players show enough to convince owner Jimmy Haslam to have some faith in the process and stick with it long enough for it to bear fruit.

I am definitely looking forward to this game, and certainly intend to watch it, and I think it will be much more competitive than this line suggests.

Gee’s Pick: Browns
Dan’s Pick: Browns

Packers @ Jaguars (+4.5)

The Jaguars are all about this season, with Gus Bradley really needing to reward the Jaguars’ owner’s faith in him with at least a challenge for the playoffs. This is the team that keep getting tipped for a break out year, but with a string of moves and picks on defence to go along with a developing offence I can see it finally happening.

The Packers keep steady with their draft and develop philosophy, but the insistence on relying on receivers to get open with one on one routes last season was frustrating as they weren’t able to capitalise on having probably the best quarterback in the NFL. They look set to take the NFC North this year, but they will have their eyes on bigger prizes.

This is a big swing in points to the Jaguars, and whilst I think the Packers may well win this game, I just fancy the Jaguars to cover. This may bite me as I seem to remember this happening a lot with the Jags last year, but it hasn’t put me off in this one.

Gee’s Pick: Jaguars
Dan’s Pick: Packers

Vikings @ Titans (+2.5)

The Titans are very much focussing on the running game, with the addition of DeMarco Murray and rookie Derrick Henry at running back, and announcing their offensive philosophy as exotic smash-mouth football. If they stick with Mike Mularkey as head coach then at least they will have a consistent plan with an offseason to implement it, and they will certainly hope the running game will help keep second year quarterback Marcus Mariota healthy. There have been some surprising names let go, but clearly Mularkey is focussing on running this team his way and only time will tell if this yields an increase in wins.

The Vikings must still feel they have the team to push for a Super Bowl, or they would not have traded a first round pick and anywhere between a fourth and a second round pick for Sam Bradford. They have a strong defence, and should have won their playoff game last year barring a missed field goal. Their new stadium will see a competitive season thanks to Mike Zimmer’s excellent defence, and he will keep this tem focussed despite losing their franchise quarterback to a horrible injury, but it will be an uphill battle all the way. Still I expect them to win an ugly game against the Titan, which will be something of a throwback given the likely focus on running the ball that both teams will display.

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

Chargers @ Chiefs (-7.5)

The Chiefs defence looks to be struggling with injuries to their key pass rushers, but I still expect this team to at the top of the division, pushing for a playoff place and more. For all of his clock management issues, Andy Reid is a really good football coach and I expect this team to be there or there about come the end of the season.

The Chargers are not nearly as stable, and have not managed to win consistently despite having one of the better quarterback in the game. For a lot of last season their offence only functioned because of how quickly Philip Rivers could get rid of the ball, and with their first round pick holding out for nearly the entirety of the pre-season I worry about what kind of year Rivers will have in terms of wins.

I don’t think the Chargers are going to get off to a winning start, but I’m not sure the Chiefs will run away with this game either.

Gee’s Pick: Chargers
Dan’s Pick: Chiefs

Raiders @ Saints (-1.5)

The big question f or me this year is whether the Saints defence can improve enough for them to be competitive, and whilst it will be hard for them to be as bad as last year, there were so many holes and it has been such a problem for the Saints that I see them falling short of the playoffs again this year.

The Raiders seem poised to make a push for the playoffs, and whilst I’m worried that this may be the same kind of hope as the Jaguars that doesn’t quite materialise, they have been drafting well and with some good free agent signings for the offensive line and defence, I do expect them to pushing for the playoffs and look forward to seeing if they get there or not. I do expect them to win this one though.

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

Dolphins @ Seahawks (-9.5)

The Seahawks look to be set for another strong season despite the defence losing more depth, and an offensive line that remains a huge question. The development of quarterback Russel Wilson will need to continue as he gets handed full control of the offence with the retirement of Marshawn Lynch, but certainly his form at the end of last season will give them hope.

The Dolphins come into this year with a more coherent plan for the offence, but the back seven of their defence worries me and I think they may well fall short of the playoffs this year. I’m picking the Dolphins to cover as the Seahawks are giving away a lot of points, but I don’t expect them to win and I think it could be a long season for the fans in Miami.

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

Giants @ Cowboys (-3.5)

It might be time for Tony Romo to retire, but certainly Jerry Jones is having none of it, and at least in Dak Prescott they look to have a capable backup and very possibly a future starter. The defence is still a worry for me, but with that offensive line and Ezekiel Elliott the Cowboys will be looking to dominate in the running game and will give the Cowboys a fighting chance.

The Giants made a lot of moves to shore up their defence, which does not fill me with a lot of hope as the winners of free agency rarely seem to do that well when the season rolls around. This is one of those wait and see teams, but with the all the problems they had on the roster last season, I think there is more wrong than just Tom Coughlin who the owners were clearly pointing the finger at when they fired him and stuck with everyone else. I really think there is more to it than that.

We will have to see how this game goes, and I don’t feel that strongly, but I’m backing the Cowboy reluctantly at home as I just don’t trust the Giants.

Gee’s Pick: Cowboys
Dan’s Pick: Giants

Lions @ Colts (-5.5)

Everyone is expecting a better season for the Colts, but whilst I prefer the intentions of their draft, the line hasn’t necessarily gelled yet and I’m still not sure where the pass rush will come on defence or how they’ll cope without the injured corner Vontae Davis. I’m not saying there season won’t be better, but I’m certainly not ready to pencil them in for a division win just yet.

The Lions are a team in flux, but I quite like the direction of their offence with Jim Bob Cooter changing things when he became offensive coordinator last season, and I think the pairing of Golden Tate and Marvin Jones at receiver will do well even if no one can replace Calvin Johnson. The defence hopes to be healthier at defensive tackle, but I’m not sure how much of a push this team will make overall. However, I’m certainly not ready to back the Colts giving away 5.5 points yet.

Gee’s Pick: Lions
Dan’s Pick: Colts

Patriots @ Cardinals (-5.5)

The Cardinals are in win now mode, and with the additions of Chandler Jones and Robert Nkemdiche they look to have an improved pass rush for a defence that already blitzed as much as anyone in the league. You know that a Bruce Arians offence will be taking plenty of shots downfield, and running back David Johnson will be looking to build on his excellent rookie season. I think they will be in contention at the end of the year, with the only questions being about keeping ageing quarterback Carson Palmer healthy and hoping there aren’t any big game legacies from last year’s playoff loss.

The Patriots are everyone’s tip to win the AFC East despite Tom Brady being suspended for four games. Certainly the addition of Martellus Bennett as a second tight end has excited people about the Patriots double tight end sets for when Brady returns. However, this is pretty much as tough an opening game for this team as they could have been set. I think that Belichick will win out in the end, but it is not unusual for his teams to start slow and with a quarterback making his first NFL regular season start I think the Patriots start off with a loss, even if there won’t be too many more to follow.

Gee’s Pick: Cardinals
Dan’s Pick: Cardinals

Steelers @ Washington (+3.5)

Washington really gained momentum at the end of last year to win their division, and with another solid draft and the signing of Josh Norman, I expect them to be competitive in their division again this year as Kirk Cousins tries to earn himself a franchise quarterback’s contract.

When the Steelers have all their players on offence they are truly terrifying, and their defence is beginning to take shape, but I do think the suspensions will take their toll early. They could easily make me look stupid as Antonia Brown is the best receiver in the game, but I’m not sure that they will run away as winners in this game and so I’m taking the home underdog to cover in this one.

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

Rans @ 49ers (+2.5)

The 49ers woes will continue into this year if for no other reason than it takes time to rebuild a roster. It will be fascinating to see how Chip Kelly does and what he has learnt from what happened in Philidelphia, but I could very easily see the 49ers picking first at next year’s draft.

The Rams will want to be making fans in LA by winning, and despite the worries that I laid out earlier, I think that they will win their opener in San Francisco.

Gee’s Pick: Rams
Dan’s Pick: Rams

The Wrong Football

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

Tag Archives: Denver Broncos

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2018 Pre-Season – Week 2

As the Season of Hope Turns

AAF: Patrick Mahomes

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The End of Streaks

The Season Starts, Panthers at Broncos, and Week 1 Picks