A Thinking Fan's Guide To The NFL Season. The following is excerpted from the team chapters of the always- excellent Football Outsiders Almanac. Buy it here as a PDF, or here in print. AFC North. Baltimore Ravens: The Ravens face a choice. After two years of Marc Trestman’s Dumpoff Fiesta (if you buy the line that offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg was coaching with Trestman’s playbook), it’s clear that the Ravens need to run the ball a lot more to succeed. The Warriors Tv Composite Fan Edit Notice To MarinersBaltimore’s offense ranked seventh in their average lead per drive, yet only two teams had fewer rushing attempts. The only other team with an average lead and rushing total anywhere near Baltimore’s last year was Green Bay, and they A) have the best quarterback in the game and B) had to turn a wide receiver into their starting running back. The Ravens don’t even have the excuse that the rushing game was unproductive, as Terrance West and Kenneth Dixon were each right around the league average in rushing DVOA. Samurai Warriors Samurai Warriors 2 Samurai Warriors 3 Introduced in Samurai Warriors 4 Born: 1566 Died: November 12, 1658 Elder brother of Yukimura. As a. The End of Time was a two-part Doctor Who special broadcast during the 2009–2010 Christmas. West was a spectacular reclamation project, and Dixon has true three- down ability if he ever stays on the field for a full season. A PED suspension will cost him the first four games in 2. The offensive line could use some work, but so could the line for about 2. Marshal Yanda. (Rivers Mc. Cown)Cincinnati Bengals: While the Bengals finally shed Rey Maualuga and Domata Peko this offseason, replacing Maualuga with two- down run- stuffer Kevin Minter, they didn’t put much of an effort into finding passable solutions beyond that. If their young edge rushers fail, the answer is still Michael Johnson. Pat Sims is still here. Wallace Gilberry is still here. Reinard Wilson is still here. These are the dumbest fans in the NFL. It’s not close. Ask any other fan of any other team who the stupidest fans they’ve ever encountered are, and they will tell. OK, OK, we made that last one up. But you get the gist: there’s very little upside here unless the Bengals have hit on their draft picks. The stopgap solutions are just the same guys you saw in 2. Rivers Mc. Cown)Cleveland Browns: The biggest deal may have been one Cleveland didn’t make. Most pre- draft speculation had the Browns taking Texas A& M defensive end Myles Garrett with the No. Then, just days before the draft, rumors began to float that Cleveland might take North Carolina quarterback Mitch Trubisky. Even stranger, the rumors said that the analytics department was pushing Trubisky over Garrett, even though no team with a strong analytical background would gamble on a risky one- year starter. In the end, the Browns took Garrett, then sat back and watched as Chicago traded up to grab Trubisky. The rest of this paragraph is purely speculation, but it seems likely the Browns knew Chicago was looking to make a deal and were leaking the Trubisky rumors to try to bait the Bears into a mega- package. In the end, they could not get an offer they liked more than Garrett, and stood pat. This is why Browns management was shown on the draft broadcast congratulating each other after the pick was made—they had done their due diligence in exploring all options with that first pick and chosen the option that best fit their needs. And it was another sign of the new intelligence in Cleveland—while the old Browns might have been happy to make a deal, the new Browns are only interested in the right deal. Vincent Verhei)Pittsburgh Steelers: A trio of 2. Pittsburgh’s defense. First- rounder Artie Burns played in all 1. Week 8 bye. His charting numbers were quite poor, but many highly- drafted cornerbacks struggle as rookies and take two, three, or even four seasons to fully develop. Second- round safety Sean Davis started the last seven games of the regular season and all three playoff games. He showed promising potential as an in- the- box type, though he must improve his tackling. Third- round nose tackle Javon Hargrave outplayed the two men picked before him, starting 1. As a nose tackle, it’s doubtful he’ll ever put up big individual numbers of any kind, but his continued development would solve a lot of problems for a defense that hasn’t finished in the top 1. Vincent Verhei)AFC West. Denver Broncos: While Trevor Siemian, the team’s official starting quarterback, boasted better overall numbers, this looks like the classic low ceiling (Siemian) vs. Paxton Lynch) argument. Siemian exhibited a lot of traits shared by division rival Alex Smith in his careful way of protecting the ball; at least he costs only a small fraction of what Smith makes in Kansas City. Meanwhile, Lynch was more of the deep- throwing, get- on- the- move wild child with questionable accuracy. We’re not calling him Tebow 2. Lynch’s 2. 4. 7 percent rate of off- target throws (over- or underthrown passes according to ESPN Stats & Info) was the second highest in 2. Scott Kacsmar)Kansas City Chiefs: Either ultimate success comes early, or the situation deteriorates and someone has to go. With the Chiefs entering Year 5 of Andy Reid/Alex Smith, it is really on Smith to deliver this season. We know Reid isn’t going anywhere after the team signed him to a four- year extension in June. Clearly, there have been limitations within this offense that start at the quarterback position. The Chiefs jumped on the opportunity to trade up with Buffalo for Texas Tech quarterback Patrick Mahomes, moving from 2. Going from Smith to an Air Raid quarterback sounds like a huge change, but it’s likely not one we will see until 2. The Chiefs have not won a regular- season game with a quarterback they drafted since September 1. Todd Blackledge), and that streak is all but guaranteed to extend beyond 3. Scott Kacsmar)Los Angeles Chargers: If the Chargers can finally stay healthy this year, then head coach Anthony Lynn is inheriting a very talented starting roster on both sides of the ball. Depth is of course an issue, but let’s consider the range of talent that this team has put together. As always, we have to start at the quarterback. The fact that Philip Rivers has started every game since 2. This is the weakness in blaming injuries for Mike Mc. Coy’s ineffective tenure. Yes, there have been a lot of injuries, but a top player at the most important position remained healthy enough to suit up every single week, and the Chargers still went 2. Scott Kacsmar)Oakland Raiders: It is not an insult to believe that the Raiders will regress and win fewer games this season. Stacking 1. 2- win seasons is a very difficult thing to do in this league. Joe Montana, Steve Young, Roger Staubach, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Ben Roethlisberger, and Matt Ryan have never stacked together consecutive 1. A team basically has to have Peyton Manning or Tom Brady at quarterback to consistently win 1. Derek Carr is not at that level yet. Last year’s team was rough around the edges despite the record, and the inability to beat Kansas City limited them to a wild- card berth. Lesser competition also tended to give the Raiders all they could handle. Scott Kacsmar)AFC South. Houston Texans: Right now, the Texans look very much like a team that has gambled their future on Deshaun Watson reinvigorating a dead passing offense. It could work, but it’s more likely to work in the longer term. Rookie quarterbacks being good right away is a hard thing for projection systems to catch on to, and we have no empirical data that points to Watson excelling immediately. We also have a lot of evidence proving that the other teams in this division have gotten better. The Colts finally got rid of their dead- end general manager and stopped fielding an AARP defense. The Jaguars are building a great defense and are only tied to Blake Bortles for one more year. The Titans are relying a lot on green defenders, but have become a much scarier team on the other side of the ball. These are some of the things that head coach Bill O’Brien may begin to see show up on tape this year, rather than abstract analytical terms. Rivers Mc. Cown)Indianapolis Colts: For the Colts to make an immediate beeline to the playoffs would take some things going right even beyond QB Andrew Luck’s health. It would take an immediate reconsolidation by a defense that, in many ways, is pieced together on the fly without any continuity. It would take a healthy supporting cast around Luck. It would probably require fourth- round rookie Marlon Mack to show some juice and make hay out of Chuck Pagano’s preferred offensive style. That’s a lot of change necessary for a team that hasn’t changed much at all over the four years since it drafted Luck.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
November 2017
Categories |