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AFC and NFC West Preview

09 Wednesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Gee's Thoughts, Pre-Season

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AFC West

Kansas City Chiefs

How much is there to really say about the Chiefs? They won the Super Bowl last season, kept the core of their team intact including offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy and look set to have another strong season. They extended Patrick Mahomes so they have him for ten years, extended disrupted defensive tackle Chris Jones and drafted a new running back for the offence. Said offence should stay one of the most fearsome in the league and may even be stronger given that Mahomes missed two games with injury last season. The defence will be back under Steve Spagnuolo for a second year and having improved their ranking from twenty-seventh by DVOA in the 2018 season to fourteenth in 2019, all they need to do is maintain a ranking somewhere around there to keep the team winning. You can never guarantee anything in the NFL, particularly this season but the Chiefs feel like one of the safest bets to be making a noise in the play-offs. Given how fun it is to watch an Andy Reid schemed offence, yet alone one helmed by a quarterback of the talents of Mahomes, I am sure everyone is planning to watch the Chiefs a lot this season. I certainly am.

Denver Broncos

The Broncos have not made the play-offs since they won the Super Bowl and have had a losing record  in each of the last three seasons, but there is some hope for the 2020 Broncos as there’s a possibility that John Elway has found a franchise quarterback. It was always going to challenge to follow Peyton Manning, even if he was limited in his passing ability during the final Super Bowl winning year. However, after a number of false starts the Broncos made second round draft pick Drew Lock the starter for the last five games of the 2019 season where he went 4-1. Now judging a quarterback solely on wins is a massive oversimplification so we should be wary of drawing too much from such a small sample of games, but it has at least given the Broncos a plan for the season. In his second year as head coach, Vic Fangio will be looking to get the defence to improve after it was ranked thirteenth by DVOA last season and losing a corner of the ability of Chris Harris will hurt but as defence tends to be more volatile from season to season than offence, a lot could rest on the Broncos being able to maintain a similar standard of defence and the offence improving. This is particularly the case with Bradley Chubb still making his way back from injury and All-Pro pass rusher Von Miller dislocating an ankle tendon and facing the real possibility of being out for the season. These previews have been giving me a series of things that I want to follow this season, and I think I need to take a look at Lock to see how he plays pretty soon. I’m not sure that the Broncos can compete for the playoffs, although with the expanded format it is possible, but it might not take too much to catapult the Broncos up there so definitely a team to keep an eye on.

Las Vegas Raiders

The Raiders get to open the Death Star, or Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas as it’s properly called behind closed doors, and there is still much to uncover about this team. Last season’s 7-9 record was an improvement for Jon Gruden but he has yet to have a winning season since re-joining the Raiders in 2018 and will be looking to get back to winning ways this year. There are still questions about Gruden’s commitment to his starting quarterback Derek Carr, but the offence really wasn’t the problem last season. A ranking inside the top ten by DVOA on offence will not satisfy Gruden, but it was a defence that was ranked thirty-first and special teams that ranked twenty-fifth that sank last season’s team. Ex-Bengals defensive coordinator Paul Guenther had good success in Cincinnati when he took over their Defence from Mike Zimmer, but last season the Raiders’ signing of Vontaze Burfict backfired, and the loss of big hitting rookie safety Johnathan Abram didn’t help. I don’t know if Guenther will be able to improve a defence that has ranked thirty-first by DVOA for two seasons in a row, but if he can’t that will only increase the pressure for Gruden to improve the offence. There seems to be a rotating cast of receivers, although last year’s rookie running back Josh Jacobs impressed until his shoulder injury hampered his ability to get on the field late in the season. This is another team where there is a lot up in the air and with the shortened off-season I don’t know what to expect, but I think the season likely rests on getting the defence to at least be respectable.

LA Chargers

The Chargers are something of an enigma. They have a talented roster but have struggled on the offensive line and have been bitten by the injury bug often. They may have an advantage compared to the rest of the league when playing in empty stadiums as unlike last season where their home games often had more away fans than their own, at least they can control the environment in the shiny new SoFi Stadium. I like Anthony Lynn as a coach and there is a lot of intriguing talent on the roster, but they paired a twelfth ranked offence by DVOA with the twenty-fifth ranked defence and were dead last special teams. Even with Philip Rivers moving to Indianapolis there is hope for the offence and the Chargers have just extended the contracts of pass rushing duo Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram, but the injury bug has already bit with last season’s rookie sensation First-Team All-Pro safety Derwin James on IR with a torn meniscus. The Chargers won or were within a touchdown in fourteen of their sixteen games last season, so they were close to a much better record, but in a tough division where they have to face the Chiefs twice and travel to face Denver in high-altitude I don’t know if they can expect a huge turn around. I think it is possible, but they would need to be healthy for once and have some bounces go their way. It feels like the Chargers are due a run of luck, but with Tyrod Taylor as starting quarterback it is hard to predict that they will do much more that be competitive this season unless Taylor improves on his previous record.

NFC West

San Francisco 49ers

Last season the 49ers finally delivered on the promise they have flashed through the rebuild masterminded by head coach Kyle Shanahan and GM John Lynch. A fearsome defence ranked second only to the Patriots by DVOA was paired with a top ten offence that Shanahan schemed to enough success for them all the way to the Super Bowl and they should be in contention again this year. However, they did trade defensive linemen DeForest Buckner away to allow them the cap flexibility to retain other players and they are already having problems at receiver with multiple players injured before the team have taken a competitive snap against another team. Shanahan is such a good coach that unless the number of injuries gets too big they 49ers should be able to compete, but the NFC West looks like a fearsome division so there could be a surprise or two in store.

Seattle Seahawks

The Seahawks come into the 2020 season on the back of eight consecutive winning seasons, despite having to overhaul the vaunted Leigion of Boom defence in the last couple of seasons. In Russell Wilson they have one of the best quarterbacks in the league and last year’s rookie receiver DK Metcalf flashed alongside Tyler Lockett whilst Chris Carson was again the running back required to fit the run focussed offensive game plan that Pete Carroll wants to run. I do wonder how much home advantage the Seahawks will lose by not being able to play in front of their famously loud home crowd, but it is hard to see them do anything other than compete as that is Carroll’s mantra and even at the start of his time in Seattle, Carroll’s two losing seasons were still 7-9. That said, the usually strong defence was only ranked twenty-first by DVOA and whilst you have to go back to 2016 to find them ranked inside the top ten, their offence has not been that explosive so we shall have to see how this team does without the help of the home crowd.

LA Rams

The Rams failed to make the play-offs for the first time in Sean McVay’s three years with the franchise, and there was plenty of talk that teams had worked out the McVay’s offence. That said, the Rams still went 9-7, and later in the season the Rams started to use more 12 personnel as McVay adjusted to the adjustments opposing defences had made to his scheme. The Rams were also not helped by the dip in play from Todd Gurley that led to him being cut in the off-season and this was one of a number of adjustments the Rams had to make to the roster to get themselves under the salary cap. They also fired defensive coordinator Wade Philips, which is one of bigger decisions McVay has made in his tenure and could be an interesting one to monitor as  the defence was ranked top ten by DVOA last season and Philips is very experienced coach, but the only big names left on the defence are Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey. Now Donald is arguably the most important non-quarterback in the league and a bona fide pass rush nightmare, but Donald plus a lockdown corner in Ramsey does not a defence make and with a number of defensive starters gone from last season it is not hard to see a slip on that side of the ball this year. I wouldn’t count the Rams out, but there are enough questions that you can’t simply put them in the play-offs. With the expanded wildcard slots I wouldn’t rule out them being there or there abouts, but this could be a big season for McVay’s long term prospects in LA.

Arizona Cardinals

The Cardinals knew they were in for a long rebuild going into last season, but their 5-11 record was not actually that bad considering the 3-13 disaster it followed and there were some promising things to take away. Although Kyler Murray (their second first round quarterback selection in two years) didn’t set the league alight, he showed promise and proved that he could get through a season despite the size that many were worried about. Murray looked to have the Russell Wilson knack of not taking the big hit and although his college now NFL head coach Kliff Kingsbury had to adjust his scheme when it didn’t work when facing NFL defences, he did just that and so they come into the season hoping to build on last year. The addition of DeAndre Hopkins is upgrade to the Cardinals’ receiver group, although the continuing presence of Larry Fitzgerald also reassures but he must retire soon and so Hopkins is a valuable addition for the next couple of years at least. The defence still needs work but I am curious about how this team does so I look forward to monitoring how they progress this season.

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The End of the 2019 Regular Season

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

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So here we are at the end of the regular season, but the start of playoffs and a new decade. I’m going to do a recap of the games I watched in week seventeen before I run through the AFC side of the Disappointed Twenty, and will follow up tomorrow with the NFC side.

What I Saw

The first game I watched in week seventeen had no bearing on the playoffs or draft position, but it still made me happy as the Cincinnati Bengals secured only their second win of the season as they beat the Cleveland Browns in a relatively comfortable manner. The Bengals pass rush was able to harass Baker Mayfield all game and got six sacks as well as picking him off three times. I’ll be talking about both of these teams in my roundup so only thing I will add here is that I was surprisingly happy about this win, even if it was ultimately meaningless in the wider scheme of things.

Whilst the Bengals win had no real affect on things, one of the other TWF teams had a definitive effect on the playoffs even thought they will not be playing either. For a bad season in terms of results, there has been much to be cheered about this season for a Miami Dolphins team, who got more wins that you are supposed to whilst rebooting your roster and look to have found a really good head coach who cemented this view with a win against the New England Patriots that cost their divisional foes a bye week and throws them into an eminently losable match-up against the Tennessee Titans next week. The problems that have plagued the Patriots offence resurfaced this week, but in addition Tom Brady threw a horrid pick-six where he sailed a ball between two receivers that Eric Rowe grabbed and took gratefully into the end zone. If that wasn’t bad enough, Stephon Gilmore did not look at all like the shutdown corner he has looked like for most of the season and the Pats’ defence did not look itself. I’m still not going to declare the Patriots done until I’ve seen them eliminated, but I can’t remember a recent time where the Pats looked this vulnerable this late in the season.

There were two divisions up for grabs in week seventeen and the first of them to be won saw the Philadelphia Eagles finish their mission impossible with four straight wins despite the injuries that plagued them all season. Their final victim were the New York Giants who offered up some glimpses of what Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley might be able to achieve between them as the Giants kept the game close into the fourth quarter, helped by an impressive sixty-eight yard touchdown run from Barkley, but whilst Jones managed to outgain the Eagles’ Carson Wentz through the air, he could not match his care with the ball and the Eagles finished strongly to win 34-17.

The final game of the regular season was to decide the AFC West as the Seattle Seahawks hosted the San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers had dipped in form thanks to injury but looked to be getting back to some of their mid-season form in recent weeks and got out to a strong start in this one, building a thirteen point lead that should have been more whilst holding the Seahawks scoreless. The Seahawks have injury problems of their own, hence the signing of Marshawn Lynch out of retirement, who provoked a huge response from the Seattle crowd despite not producing that many yards but did get a touchdown. However, Russel Wilson was able to work out the 49ers defence in the second half and mount a comeback that very easily could have produced the win were it not for a combination of refereeing and the return of late game mismanagement. The Seahawks had three downs on the one-yard line to get the winning touchdown, or would have if they had not been called for delay of game and then failed to get in from the five. The result means the Seahawks travel to face the Eagles and could very well face the 49ers again before the end of the playoffs.

The Disappointed Twenty: AFC Edition

So here is my quick run through the AFC teams who missed out on the playoffs.

The New York Jets finished 7-9, despite losing their starting quarterback to mono and so you could say that this was not a bad year. The problem is that I am not convinced by Adam Gase as a head coach these days, but whilst I don’t think he has done anything to lose his job, a lot will be riding on next season.

I have already mentioned that the Dolphins looked to have found a really good head coach in Brian Flores, and with the influx of picks coming in the next couple of years things could really take off for the Dolphins. They need to find a franchise quarterback, and Dan would very much like them to re-sign Ryan Fitzpatrick as a mentor/capable backup, but if the Dolphins get the picks right they could be peaking as the Patriots enter into a new phase of the franchise.

Given the Pittsburgh Steelers lost their franchise quarterback to injury in week two, their 8-8 record is very creditable, and Mike Tomlin answered those who suggested that the Steelers might need to make a change at head coach. However, now having fixed the defence it is the offence that needs attention now, and given this franchise’s record of finding receivers in recent years you would like to think this is possible.  However, the Steelers are another franchise who will need a new quarterback sooner than later, but we shall have to see if Ben Roethlisberger has another trip to the playoffs in him.

The Cleveland Browns had a horrible year full of dysfunction and disappointment that ended with the firing of both Freddie Kitchens and GM John Dorsey. I wrote that there were warning signs before the season, and having created a roster full of character issues and not been prepared to change his role after a discussion with owner Jimmy Haslam, Dorsey lost his job for it. There is a lot to put right in Cleveland and it feels like they need a coach capable of building a winning culture at the Browns and sorting out Baker Mayfield. Given their track record it’s hard to have faith that Haslam will get this decision right but the fans in Cleveland definitely deserve better.

The results for the Bengals may have been hugely disappointed, but the culture in Cincinnati certainly seemed to hold up through the season and the players were saying good things about Zac Taylor. It looks like Joe Burrow is going to be the Bengals selection with the first overall pick, which is exciting because of both the player he is and the person he seems to be (Heisman Speech). I always hoped that Andy Dalton would get the right team to prove people wrong as under the right circumstances he was a really good quarterback (that 2015 team will forever haunt me because of his injury) and I hope he gets to enjoy success going forward, but I am ready for a new leader and hopefully a better team. It will need to be given the how good the Ravens are likely to be for years to come.

The Indianapolis Colts had their plans for the season thrown into the air with Andrew Luck’s surprise retirement, but further burnished the credentials of head coach Frank Reich by going 7-9 with Jacoby Brissett as quarterback and with some different injury luck could have won more game. I wonder if they will be looking at quarterbacks in the off-season, but given their franchise progress over the last couple of years under GM Chris Ballard I see them being competitive again next season. That said, the other reason they struggled this year was that after a Hall of Fame career, kicker Adam Vinatieri had a bad year before having knee surgery that ended his season. It’s hard to see a forty-seven year old man coming back next season, but you would have said that for a number of seasons before now and it has been an incredibly impressive career that should not tarnished by a difficult season.

The Jacksonville Jaguars had a disappointing year where a sixth-round rookie Gardner Minshew outplayed their prime off-season signing at quarterback. The Jaguars have provided a structural conundrum for a while and really need to establish an identity, but it is interesting that after a second season of missing the playoffs they are keeping GM Dave Caldwell and head coach Doug Marrone in place having fired Tom Coughlin once the players’ union announced that the Jaguars accounted for 25% of all their filed grievances. I’m really not sure what to expect next season as there are a lot of questions surrounding their roster and we shall have to see if they can get everyone pointed in the right direction next season.

The Denver Broncos finished the season with four wins out of five and in Drew Lock may well have finally found a quarterback to follow Peyton Manning. It may have taken some time for Vic Fangio to get things working for the Broncos in his first year, but if they can build on their late season success in the off-season then the Broncos can be back in contention next season.

The last year of the Raiders playing in Oakland saw them improve by three wins from 2018, but Jon Gruden still finished with a losing record and questions will continue to be asked about quarterback Derek Carr. The Raiders lost their first round safety early in the season, but rookie running back Josh Jacobs established himself as franchise back until he was injured and if the Raiders can continue to add talent they can compete for the playoffs in their first season in Las Vegas. There’s still something that is making me hesitate to say they will do this, but if Mike Mayock and Jon Gruden have a second good off-season and don’t have the distractions of Antonio Brown they could easily do so.

It felt like Philip Rivers was saying goodbye after the LA Chargers last game, and the franchise seems to be in flux having failed to build on last year’s success, hampered again by injuries and seeming short on fans in LA. I don’t know what is going to happen to this franchise in the off-season, head coach Anthony Lynn seems safe but the Chargers need a new quarterback and something to bring the fans in. To be honest I’m not sure they are going to make a success of life in LA and whilst I think a possible move to London is a non-story (as their owner colourfuly explained earlier this year), I do think they could rue the day they left San Diego, even if Dean Spanos is unlikely to admit it.

That’s it for today’s post – check back tomorrow for a round up of the NFC teams as Competition Thursday swings into gear.

Dragging Themselves into the Playoff Race

13 Wednesday Nov 2019

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If the season in the NFL has been characterised by a few teams with good records and some with very bad records who are already turning their eyes to next season, then my season covering it has been one of scrambling to get posts out, and occasionally getting coaching tape watched. This week I find myself further behind in my process than I would like to be so let’s see what I can get out this evening.

What I Saw

The first game of week ten saw the Oakland Raiders host the LA Chargers and run out narrow 26-24 winners to get themselves into the playoff hunt despite a five week streak of road games that including them hosting the Bears in London. It was not a spectacular team performance, but Josh Jacobs gained one hundred combined rushing and receiving yards as the rookie running back continues to impress as the centre of Jon Gruden’s offence. I also through that Derek Carr looked sharp and in control of the offence, but with a total of only two-hundred and seventy-eight yards it was the team performance that got the win. The LA Chargers actually out gained the Raiders in total offence and rushed for one hundred and forty-six yards but the Raiders were able to get five sacks as they got pressure all game and picked off Philip Rivers three times with another voided by a holding penalty. That voided interception would have been Eric Harris’s third, but he still got over one hundred return yards and a touchdown from his two picks that counted. The Chargers have been competitive for a lot of their games despite their injuries but at 4-6 they would need a spectacular closing run to make the playoffs and I struggle to see them winning five or six of their remaining games to get to the nine or ten wins they’ll likely need to get to the post season.

On to the Sunday games and I’ll start with the Cincinnati Bengals hosting the Baltimore Ravens, which was no contest and there’s really not a lot I can say further about the Bengals. There wasn’t much difference in result for the Bengals, although Joe Mixon got a hundred yards off the back of thirty carries as the offensive game plan was rejigged for rookie quarterback Ryan Finley’s first regular season start, who was not great and threw a couple of interceptions but wasn’t awful. The defence is awful though, but the worst part is that I love the Ravens setup at the moment, Lamar Jackson is a special player to watch and the spin move he pulled off in this game is going to be on many a highlight reel. In fact Jackson has the eleventh most rushing yards in the league as well as being top ten in passer rating so it’s no surprise that he is in the discussion for league MVP. I also want to mention Patrick Ricard who is playing both ways for the Ravens, lining up as a three hundred pound full-back and playing on the defensive line, picking up a couple of solo tackles and a sack in this game. There really a lot about the Ravens that the TWF team are enthused by, I just with they weren’t in the same division as the Bengals!

Speaking of the TWF team, the other Sunday game I watched was Dan’s Miami Dolphins taking on the Indianapolis Colts and recording their second win of the year. It wasn’t a pretty game, and the defences did most of the work, but despite all the roster turnover and being bottom of the DVOA rankings, Brian Flores has made the Dolphins competitive for several weeks and now has two wins. It may not be what they wanted in terms of draft position next year, but I think they have a coach that is going to maximise the influx of talent is coming. As for the Colts, they were also competitive and the roster is still playing well, but the injury to Jacoby Brissett was a quarterback injury too far and they will be hoping that Brissett will be there for the run of three division games that are coming up. They are not out of the playoff hunt, but as the situation muddies in the AFC this is a loss they could come to regret.

Finally, the Monday night game lived up to its top billing as the Seattle Seahawks won in the last seconds of overtime with a field goal separating them for the now beaten San Francisco 49errs. It was a topsy-turvy game where the 49ers looked the better team at the start with their defence halting the Seahawks and the 49ers taking a ten point lead that held up until half-time. However, the Seahawks took a lead in the third quarter that despite getting level multiple times, the 49ers were not able to regain and the worry for the 49ers is that when it really mattered, it was Russell Wilson who got his team into a position to win and got them over the line. It could well be different the next time these teams play, but Jimmy Garoppolo could have thrown a couple more interceptions in the second half if Seahawks defenders were able to hold onto the ball and that is a worry for the 49ers. We get a rematch in week seventeen and I am already looking forward to it!

What I Heard

I don’t have big central point to expand on here, but there’s several snippets that spring to mine. One is that the volatility of the league was on full display, and that’s not an excuse for another poor week picking.

The Atlanta Falcons beat the New Orleans Saints, which I’m not sure anyone saw coming, although the points should have been tempting in this divisional game where both teams were coming off a bye. The interesting thing from my point of view was the talk of the Falcons pass rush chasing Drew Brees around, which is surprising as the Falcons pass rush has been struggling this season and the Saints offensive line is one of the better units in the league, so I’ll be taking a look at that on coaching tape if the opportunity arises.

What I Think

I am not ruling any team with five wins out of the playoff hunt, but there are a couple of those five win teams who have really pulled themselves back into contention rather than are still hanging on. The Raiders have won two weeks in a row to take second place in the AFC South, but the team who have caught my eye are another AFC North team, and not the Cleveland Browns. The Pittsburgh Steelers started the season 1-4, lost their franchise quarterback, and I was as surprised as anyone when their response was to trade for Minkah Fitzpatrick and not stock up picks and prepare for a high draft pick next year. In stead Fitazpatrick has helped the Steelers defence turn into the third best unit in the league by DVOA, and it is this defence and not asking backup quarterback Mason Rudolph to do too much that has enabled the Steelers to win four straight games and drag themselves back into the playoff hunt. I’m not saying they’ll get there, but the Steelers stand more chance than the Browns and that is thanks to some really impressive coaching by Mike Tomlin and his staff, plus the work done by the Steelers’ front office.

What I Know

I am still enjoying the NFL season despite the woeful performance of the Bengals, and I’m not feeling the grind as Dan and I have in the past back when we were podcasting, but it would be nice if work calmed down a little bit so I could dig in more. Sadly, I suspect that is unlikely and this is going to be the shape of the 2019 season. I shall make the best of it as I can, we are now past the halfway point of the regular season and before we know it the Thanksgiving games will be here and we’ll be staring at the playoff schedule.

What I Hope

I’ve not been able to settle on a singe NFC team to embrace to counteract the Bengals losing, but thanks to covering the league there’s plenty of intrigue and things to watch – but I hope the Bengals get a win at some point. It’s one thing for a season to go wrong and to get the first pick in the draft, controlling the whole might be exciting when we get there, but I wouldn’t wish a winless season on any player yet alone those playing for the team I support.