We’re down to the final 30 hours or so before football begins, but let’s fast forward and talk about how the season ends.
Guest blogger Neil and I have been pumping out predictions all week and the only thing left to do is identify the playoff teams and figure out the Super Bowl matchup.
For me, the starting point in this exercise is making sure four or five teams who did not make the playoffs last year are included in the postseason this year. It’s as certain as a 12-seed over a 5-seed in March. Let’s see if Neil followed that rule.
Neil’s Playoff Teams
NFC
Philadelphia
Green Bay
Seattle
Atlanta
Dallas
St. Louis
AFC
Indianapolis
New England
Baltimore
Kansas City
Denver
Miami
Neil’s Playoff Results
Wildcard Round
(3)Seattle over (6)St. Louis
(5)Dallas over (4)Atlanta
(3)Baltimore over (6)Miami*
(4)Kansas City over (5)Denver
Divisional Round
(3)Seattle over (2)Green Bay
(1)Philadelphia over (5)Dallas
(2)New England over (3)Baltimore
(4)Kansas City over (1)Indianapolis
Conference Championships
(3)Seattle over (1)Philadelphia
(2)New England over (4)Kansas City
Super Bowl Pick: Seattle 28, New England 24
Last year’s game was close enough that I think this year’s goes the other way. Hopefully this is a reverse jinx though.
* = I could not for the life of me figure out who the 6th playoff team in the AFC is going to be. I was sick of trying to guess records and coming up with 9-7 or 8-8 for everyone. So I went with Miami because they seem to have the least issues out of anyone else I guess? Maybe? I almost wanted to just leave it empty and say “some team that will lose to Baltimore and is not as deserving as the 7th best NFC team.”
Ross’ Playoff Teams
NFC
Dallas
Green Bay
Seattle
Atlanta
NY Giants
St. Louis
AFC
New England
Indianapolis
Kansas City
Baltimore
Denver
San Diego
Ross’ Playoff Results
Wildcard Round
(3)Seattle over (6)St. Louis
(5)NY Giants over (4)Atlanta
(3)Kansas City over (6)San Diego
(4)Baltimore over (5)Denver
Divisional Round
(2)Green Bay over (3)Seattle
(1)Dallas over (5)NY Giants
(3)Kansas City over (2)Indianapolis
(1)New England over (4)Baltimore
Conference Championships
(1)Dallas over (2)Green Bay
(3)Kansas City over (1)New England
Super Bowl Pick: Kansas City 30, Dallas 20
What? You expected me to pick the Patriots? Since I pick them to win the Super Bowl every year in this blog, I figured I’d go a little outside the box this year and look forward to being wrong. I like the NFC setup where Green Bay will get its revenge on Seattle right before Dallas gets its revenge on Green Bay.
By accident or not, Neil & I both chose five teams that didn’t make the playoffs last year. For both of us, it was three in the NFC and two in the AFC. The thing that stood out to me most is that Neil’s #1 seed in the NFC, Philly, didn’t even make the playoffs in my alternate universe. That seems like the team we’re farthest apart on this year. But hey, if a Mark Sanchez-led team (you know Bradford’s not lasting a full season) claims the #1 seed in the NFC, I’ll gladly laugh at myself for being so stupid not picking them to make the playoffs. I’ll be the first in line to congratulate Neil.
But before that happens, we’ve got 17 weeks of football to watch! Let’s Do This! Let’s help Roger Goodell stay in power by setting records in 2015 for TV ratings, merchandise purchased and tweets about the season. Can’t wait.
When doing in-depth predictions for each NFL team’s win-loss record just isn’t enough, there’s the tried & true “superlatives column.” It’s the typical article that guesses who will win all the important awards and accolades over the course of the NFL season. Guest blogger Neil & I like to take that concept to the next level with our “Superlatives & Inferiorities” guesses. Here they are in no particular order:
Who will lead the league in passing yards?
Neil: Andrew Luck (7/2 odds). Hard to imagine him not going over 5000 yards with their easy schedule and the number of receiving weapons. Also, their defense will be bad enough that the offense needs to score in the upper 20s/lower 30s most games.
Ross: Eli Manning (16/1 odds). I’m starting these picks off with a bit of a wildcard. But I’m imagining a world where the Giants are terrible defensively, causing them to constantly be throwing to keep up with their opponent; horrible running the football because honestly, what do we know about Rashad Jennings or Andre Williams being competent full-time NFL running backs; and they take advantage of a pretty easy schedule in terms of opponents’ pass defense. It’s not surprising that Eli’s total passing yards spiked in 2014 with it being his first year with Odell Beckham and offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo.
Who will lead the league in rushing yards?
Neil: This is a tough one. I wanted to say definitely someone in the NFC North, either Lacy (Green Bay maybe runs a bit more without Jordy) or Peterson (comes back angry and with a vengeance), but I’m going to say Jeremy Hill (9/1 odds). They have a “run first” offensive coordinator, and they probably want to keep the ball out of Dalton’s hands as much as possible.
Ross: Jeremy Hill. My fantasy football co-owners can back up my claim that I’ve been rock hard over Jeremy Hill for months now. I was considering taking him with the #1 overall pick had I gotten it in any of my leagues. I’m just going out on a limb thinking the Cincy offense will closely resemble the 2014 Dallas Cowboys. Great offensive line, receivers who have to be respected by the defense, lack of a threatening #2 running back eating into the carries. The huge difference is the Bengals are going to do everything in their power to hide Andy Dalton, which just adds to the idea of a run-heavy clock-controlled offense all year.
Who will lead the league in receiving yards?
Neil: Let’s go with Julio Jones (6/1) here. Fairly easy division, good QB, clearly the top receiving option, plays in a dome.
Ross: Julio Jones. This is the biggest crapshoot of these first 3 superlatives because there are so many deserving receivers, but I’ll take Jones to finally win this title. You could convince me Randall Cobb is the right choice very easily though.
Who will be named regular season MVP?
Neil: Barring an injury, this is going to Andrew Luck (3/1). I think the league is just dying to give this to him.
Ross: J.J. Watt (20/1). Even though I think the J.J. Watt ballwashing by the media has reached annoying levels, I could easily see him breaking the sacks record this year while being Houston’s leading scorer on offense. And even if his season is just “good” by his standards, he’ll probably win if no QB breaks away from the pack.
Who will be named Offensive Player of the Year?
Neil: Andrew Luck (9/2).
Ross: Eli Manning (50/1). This award definitely goes to a quarterback or running back (Jerry Rice is the only receiver to be named OPOY in the 43 years they’ve been handing this title out). I might as well double down on jinxing the 2015 Giants so they don’t follow in the footsteps of the ’07 and ’11 installments of the G-Men.
Who will be named Defensive Player of the Year?
Neil: Seems like barring injury this is going to go to J.J. Watt (3/2) the next two or three years.
Ross: J.J. Watt. And if anyone says differently, they are wrong.
Who will be named Offensive Rookie of the Year?
Neil: Historically this is very much a RB’s award. I’m not sure Todd Gurley plays enough to win it though, and I’m not sure how Melvin Gordon is going to be used in San Diego. It would be easy to pick one of the top two draft picks, but I’m going with a dark horse and picking a receiver, Nelson Agholor (14/1).
Ross: Melvin Gordon (6/1). I came close to picking Amari Cooper because I’m mesmerized by his talent, but I’m worried about the Oakland stink rubbing off on him immediately. And if Derek Carr is bad, that’s a fatal blow to Cooper’s chances of putting up big numbers. The Chargers have been patching together their running game ever since perennial playoff crybaby LaDainian Tomlinson left town. Gordon finally gives them a legitimate stud runner.
Who will be named Defensive Rookie of the Year?
Neil: I’m going to go with Leonard Williams (6/1). The Jets defense should be on the field most of the game which will give him plenty of opportunity, and there are enough other players on that line to focus on that it should allow Williams to have some easy matches the first half of the season.
Ross: Vic Beasley (9/1). He’s supposedly a stud pass rusher on a team that’s had an anemic pass rush for what seems like the past 10 years. Beasley will collect the majority of sacks for the Falcons this year.
Who will be named Comeback Player of the Year?
Neil: Sam Bradford (14/1) if he stays healthy. Even if Peterson has a slightly better season, I’d think the NFL would rather give this to Bradford.
Ross: Carson Palmer (14/1). Ten of the past 14 winners of this award have been quarterbacks so I only ever considered Palmer and Sam Bradford. The winner will be whoever stays healthy longer. It’s that simple. And it’s a complete coin flip. Bradford has the better offensive line to protect him and an offense that revolves around getting the ball out of the QB’s hands quickly, but Palmer has the track record of actually playing full seasons at least at some point in his career. Tough call. (Is Jason Pierre-Paul a dark horse candidate for this award? Do the voters go for self-inflicted offseason injuries?)
Who will be named Coach of the Year?
Neil: Chip Kelly, Philadelphia (10/1). If Bradford stays healthy and Philly wins 10-11 games, people are going to be saying his offseason moves were genius.
Ross: Dan Quinn, Atlanta (14/1). He might not even end up being very good. It’s just that the juxtaposition of Quinn and last year’s coaching “effort” by Mike Smith might trick voters’ eyes into thinking Quinn is a coaching god.
Who will be the First Coach Fired?
Neil: This is a tough one this year. So many candidates. Here in the Bay Area, rumors that Jim Tomsula has already lost the Niners locker room are starting to circulate. I’m not sure San Francisco feels like they have to give him a full year. I could see Jeff Fisher being in trouble if St. Louis gets off to a slow start, but I think their defense will get them wins until their offense can become average. Jay Gruden probably gets a full year to see what he can do with Kirk Cousins; however, the entire Washington scene seems to be getting worse by the day. I think it ends up being Marvin Lewis or Mike Pettine. We know the Cleveland ownership does not like to let coaches do too much building and their QB situation is a mess so they should be fairly bad this season. If Cincinnati starts off bad, do they axe Lewis before the end of the year in an effort to sell A.J. Green on the idea of, “Hey look, we’re changing, you should stay here!”? Cincy’s schedule starts easy enough that I think Mike Pettine is the first gone (+275).
Ross: Jay Gruden (3/1). By my count there are 13 coaches who could find themselves on a very hot seat by season’s end, but there are only two options for in-season firing: Gruden and Joe Philbin. The only hesitation I have on Gruden is that he might quit in October and I’d lose this prediction on a technicality.
Who will be the First QB Benched Due to Ineffectiveness?
Neil: I think Pettine feels more pressure to be good this year than Rex Ryan does, so I think it’s Josh McCown first. How awesome would it be if the right answer turns out to be Peyton Manning?
Ross: Kirk Cousins. I would not put it past Jay Gruden to change QBs every week, rotate all three guys regularly, and do everything short of chug whiskey on the sidelines.
Will there be an off-the-field controversy at any time during the season that dominates the news? (Just Kidding. It’s the NFL! Of course there will be! The question is, what kind of controversy and how far along into the season?)
Neil: The controversy is going to be around moving teams to LA. Although I’d prefer something that results in Jim Irsay getting a lifetime ban.
Ross: I’m pretty sure it’ll be concussions and head injuries. The NFL has done a masterful job creating decoy news to distract from the ongoing head injury issues over the past few years (Deflategate, Bountygate, relocation rumors, feigned outrage over marijuana smokers). But unfortunately I think we’re overdue for some incident on or off the field to shove head trauma back into the limelight. Whatever it is, I’m sure Goodell will handle it with great aplomb.
Over or Under 7.5 head coaches who totally botch the math throughout the season when deciding whether to go for 1 point or 2 points after a touchdown?
Neil: Waaaaaaaay over. I’m already mad about it. It is going to be my pet peeve all season, and I am going to bring it up a lot so be prepared. Let me start here: Every time the first score of a game is a touchdown and the scoring team does not go for two, I’m going to be giving out exaggerated eye-rolls.
Ross: I’m taking the over because more than 10 coaches immediately came to mind when thinking about this answer. Half of those ten will screw up because they like to play way too conservatively. The other half will mess up out of sheer ineptitude and terrible decision making.
Who will be the last undefeated team?
Neil: Indianapolis is the last undefeated team. Their first loss is exactly on 18-October.
Ross: Miami. The Dolphins aren’t even a lock to make the playoffs, but their starting schedule makes it impossible not to pick them: @Washington, @Jacksonville, Buffalo, NY Jets, @Tennessee, Houston, @New England. That’s a pretty simple path to 6-0 before that game against the Patriots.
Who will be the last winless team?
Neil: I’m going to go with the 49ers. If they can’t beat Minnesota opening weekend, I have no idea when they get their first win.
Ross: San Francisco. In last week’s NFL column I said, “If ever there was going to be a surprise 0-16 team, [San Francisco] would be the one.” I still believe that. If they can’t handle Minnesota at home to open the season, we could be talking about an 0-8 49ers team heading into a home game against Atlanta in week 9.
Which team will have the 1st overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft?
Neil: Cleveland (9/1). It is hard for me to see the McCown/Manziel/Pettine situation ending in anything other than the first pick.
Ross: Tennessee (5/1). You’re in uncharted territory when teams like Jacksonville and Oakland are light years ahead of you in competitiveness. Good job, Titans.
If you knew in advance the Patriots weren’t going to win the Super Bowl this season (let’s say, for instance, the NFL had an axe to grind with them and the league made sure the referees created calls to “help” the Patriots lose), which team would you be rooting for?
Neil: St. Louis. Two reason: 1) I think their defense is going to be dominant this year…able to win games by themselves. I mean, Nick Fairley is coming off the bench. It is fun to root for teams like that, and 2) If St. Louis wins their second Super Bowl and the NFL tries to move them to LA, there is no way Goodell comes out of the situation as Commissioner.
Ross: This is easy. I want the outcome to be whatever would be most embarrassing for Roger Goodell and the NFL. This year it would be either the Saints winning after Goodell railroaded them with Bountygate, or it would be St. Louis winning while the league is stealing the team and moving it to LA. (Editor’s Note: On second thought, New Orleans seems to be one of the few teams that has yet to have a current or former player/coach/executive blame a loss to the Patriots over the last 15 years on some convenient excuse so I’m all-in on them.)
We’ll be back in the next 24 hours with our final predictions for the season: Playoff Teams & Super Bowl Matchup. We are now within 55 hours of actual, meaningful football. Get excited.
Are you sitting in Labor Day traffic right now? Wait, you’re not even on the road yet? You’re stuck at your job, where you’re constantly refreshing google maps only to see that dark red get longer & longer on the main freeway out of town? Yikes. Do yourself a favor and make someone else drive while you sit in the passenger seat and soak up our predictions for every NFL team’s 2015 record.
Guest blogger Neil and I have been competing in the NFL’s version of “closest to the pin” for three years now, and he leads me 2-1 overall. The game is simple. We each guess the record of all 32 teams, and whoever is closer on more of those picks wins. The wager remains the same as the last two years: Whoever wins, gets to pick 8 alcoholic beverages for the loser to consume during a 12-hour period during our annual Vegas trip in March. Neil’s strategy when he won two years ago was to make me order the most colorful and flamboyant drinks possible. My strategy last year was to find the 8 beverages with the highest alcohol content and unleash them on Mr. Conservative. It may not be the highest of high stakes, but it’s a helluva good time concocting the drink list and watching the other person squirm before he sees his fate.
Let’s jump right in. We’re doing all 32 teams in the same blog because I know you have a long road ahead of you today and you do not want to listen to your significant other talk about which of your friends might get engaged next and which couples might be pregnant (do women like anything more than randomly speculating about this stuff?). We each made a prediction and a supporting comment.
Arizona Cardinals
2014 Record: 11-5
2015 Prediction
Neil: 6-10
This team was not as good as their record last year, especially in the second half of the season. They also didn’t solve their “who plays QB when Carson Palmer gets hurt” problem.
Ross: 7-9
Plenty of people have fully bought into Bruce Arians being a miracle worker, but I’m still one year away. If he gets this very flawed team to 10 wins again, I’m done betting against the man who is singlehandedly keeping Kangol in business. If you’re taking the Cardinals to win a lot more than I am, remember that they’re banking on a very old quarterback coming off his 2nd career ACL tear to lead the way.
Atlanta Falcons
2014 Record: 6-10
2015 Prediction
Neil: 9-7
Someone has to be the best team in this crappy division, I guess let’s go with the best offense?
Ross: 10-6
Sometimes it’s as simple as fresh blood at head coach combined with the easiest (projected) schedule in the NFL. This is the NFC South, where 7 wins took the division last year and it probably won’t take much more than that in 2015. The Falcons won the offseason’s coaching sweepstakes by landing Dan Quinn, and you could make the case that they employ the two best players in the entire division (Julio Jones and Matt Ryan). They deserve to be the slight favorite that Vegas has made them to start the season.
Baltimore Ravens
2014 Record: 10-6
2015 Prediction
Neil: 10-6
Anytime Baltimore has an “off year” they bounce back with a division win, right? Plus John Harbaugh must be happy he gets the title of “biggest crybaby Harbaugh brother in the NFL” back.
Ross: 11-5
Ahh, the poor man’s New England Patriots. They’re so cute, barely sneaking into the playoffs every year and being a “tough out” for the eventual AFC champ. It’s nice to see John Harbaugh starting to show his true crybaby Harbaugh colors. Unfortunately the Ravens always reload and have a solid quarterback so something would have to go terribly wrong for them not to be in the mix for the AFC North title.
Buffalo Bills
2014 Record: 9-7
2015 Prediction
Neil: 7-9
The defense will win them 8 games; their QBs will lose them 8 games. Par for the course for Rex. (Editor’s Note: Not sure why he picked them to go 7-9 considering his 8-8 logic.)
Ross: 8-8
You gotta hand it to him. Rex Ryan certainly has a type. He shunned jobs in Atlanta, San Francisco and Chicago that would have landed him quarterbacks who have played at Pro Bowl levels at some point in their careers. Instead he opted for the team that was voted “Most Likely to Mimic the 2009-2014 New York Jets”…right down to their shitty quarterback situation. The thing is, Ryan is a very good coach. I’m just glad he’s never had a full arsenal to work with.
Carolina Panthers
2014 Record: 7-8-1
2015 Prediction
Neil: 5-11
Defense is pretty good. Cam Newton has proven he can win games by himself. However at some point having no other offensive talent has to catch up with them.
Ross: 6-10
Cam Newton needed every bit of help he could get if the Panthers were going to be good this year. Losing Kelvin Benjamin is huge because Newton isn’t very good in the first place. He’s never finished in the top 10 in FootballOutsiders’ QB efficiency stats. And his numbers have gotten worse every season of his career. His running is the only thing that keeps him employed at this point.
Chicago Bears
2014 Record: 5-11
2015 Prediction
Neil: 6-10
I have not heard anyone say anything positive about the Bears’ 2015 chances. That’s not a dig at this team. That is just a fact.
Ross: 5-11
Just a brutal schedule across the board for these guys. They face 4 of last year’s playoff teams in their first 6 games, and then face another gauntlet later in the year: @San Diego, @St. Louis, Denver, @Green Bay. Thinking we see Jay Cutler on the Jets in 2016, marking the 3rd time some team will have tried & failed to turn Cutler-to-Marshall into a winning combination.
Cincinnati Bengals
2014 Record: 10-5-1
2015 Prediction
Neil: 8-8
Good news, Cincy fans: This is most likely the last year of the Marvin Lewis era. Bad news, Cincy fans: This may be the last year of the A.J. Green era.
Ross: 9-7
Is Andy Dalton better off if the Bengals go 7-9 and miss the playoffs rather than winning 10 or 11 games and making the playoffs? This has gotta be the only situation in the NFL where that’s a legitimate question. But if Dalton isn’t given the chance to be in the playoffs, then he can’t have another playoff meltdown. Another polarizing playoff start full of errors might get Dalton kicked out of town before Marvin Lewis.
Cleveland Browns
2014 Record: 7-9
2015 Prediction
Neil: 6-10
This team is wasting some valuable years of a good defense and a good offensive line.
Ross: 3-13
With the 1st pick in the 2016 NFL Draft, the Cleveland Browns select…If they don’t end up with the 1st pick, they’ll have the 2nd pick. They’re that bad. The only intrigue to the Browns’ season revolves around their ability to out-crazy the Redskins and take back the title of “Most Dysfunctional Franchise.”
Dallas Cowboys
2014 Record: 12-4
2015 Prediction
Neil: 9-7
Even if their injury luck from last year regresses to the average they should still be deep enough on offense to make the playoffs.
Ross: 12-4
The high confidence is partly due to how good I think the Cowboys are and partly due to how bad I think their division will be. Trust me, I’d love to see Dallas fall right back to their rightful 8-8 record, but they really do have a TON of talent on both sides of the ball. The coaching staff better just hope they don’t have to back up their claims that Brandon Weeden is the team’s most improved player by actually playing him in meaningful situations.
Denver Broncos
2014 Record: 12-4
2015 Prediction
Neil: 10-6
It seems like everyone is about 75-80% sure Manning is still an NFL caliber QB. That 20% chance he is not is very intriguing.
Ross: 11-5
We haven’t been this uncertain about Peyton Manning since…2012. In his first season in Denver, coming off the neck surgeries, it took him a little while to look like the classic “best regular season QB in NFL history” Peyton, but he eventually got there. I think this year will probably be the same. And call me crazy, but I think Brock Osweiler would do just fine filling in if Manning gets hurt at any point.
Detroit Lions
2014 Record: 11-5
2015 Prediction
Neil: 7-9
No way their defense is as good as it was last year. And it’s against natural law for Detroit to make the playoffs two years in a row.
Ross: 8-8
Take last year’s playoff team, swap out the creampuff NFC South & AFC East teams on the schedule for the much tougher NFC West & AFC West teams, subtract your best defensive player, and continue to employ Jim Caldwell as your head coach. You get a .500 record. It feels like the Lions are going to be stuck winning between 7-9 games a year for as long as Matthew Stafford & Calvin Johnson are combining to take up nearly 30% of the Lions’ salary cap.
Green Bay Packers
2014 Record: 12-4
2015 Prediction
Neil: 10-6
I think Rodgers has reached the Tom Brady “I can get to double digit wins with Reche Caldwell and Jabar Gaffney as my WRs” zone, but I’m not sure they can beat Seattle without Jordy.
Ross: 11-5
If we don’t lower expectations for Green Bay at least slightly after the Jordy Nelson injury, then we’re basically saying wide receivers have no value. They’re now just like running backs, totally replaceable and interchangeable. As long as you have the right QB, the rest doesn’t matter. Is that what we’re saying? Not me. I’m lowering the Packers’ win total by a couple because I think their offense will take the smallest step back. Also, as is required at the start of each NFL season, let me just say: FIRE MIKE MCCARTHY! HE’S THE WORST AND HE’S WASTING AARON RODGERS’ CAREER!
Houston Texans
2014 Record: 9-7
2015 Prediction
Neil: 7-9
J.J. Watt is the best QB on this team. If you don’t believe me, watch episode 3 of Hard Knocks from this season. Also, Vince Wilfork. Overalls.
Ross: 9-7
When I was in Vegas in March, I put a $30 bet on the Texans to win the 2016 Super Bowl at 30/1 odds. I was kind of hoping Bill O’Brien would pull off a trade for a relevant QB or trade up to draft one…because I certainly don’t think Brian/Ryan Hoyer/Mallett can lead this team very far. I was originally going to write that having a lottery ticket that allows you to root for J.J. Watt is a good thing, but it turns out that even I have an oversaturation point when it comes to Watt. Just too much of him on Hard Knocks and too much media shoving his greatness down my throat these days. It’s not as fun anymore.
Indianapolis Colts
2014 Record: 11-5
2015 Prediction
Neil: 12-4
Week 6. Hope you’re ready.
Ross: 13-3
Their schedule is SO EASY. They face only two teams that are locks to be contenders, Denver and New England. And both of those games are at home for Indy! Even if, like me, you’re dubious at the idea of old Frank Gore and old Andre Johnson helping this team, they don’t matter. Andrew Luck has already brought this team to the playoffs multiple times without a Pro Bowl running back. And they still have T.Y. Hilton & several up-and-coming receivers regardless of what Johnson contributes. The Colts have a great chance of hanging yet another AFC Finalist banner next Spring! We better be careful. They’re gonna start to dominate those “runner-up in the semifinals” awards.
Jacksonville Jaguars
2014 Record: 3-13
2015 Prediction
Neil: 6-10
I have to say, a person whose football knowledge I really respect kept Blake Bortles in a fantasy football league. I just don’t get it.
Ross: 4-12
Last year they improved 8 spots in overall defensive efficiency (via FootballOutsiders.com) and 1 spot in offensive efficiency (from 32nd to 31st). I feel like they’re going to take similar steps this year, including the miniscule improvement in offense. Signing Julius Thomas was stupid to begin with, now he’s going to miss at least 4 games. The biggest concern is that two years from now they’re going to have a top 10 defensive unit just as they’re realizing Blake Bortles isn’t a franchise QB.
Kansas City Chiefs
2014 Record: 9-7
2015 Prediction
Neil: 8-8
I believe Maclin is a huge upgrade over Bowe. I also believe Alex Smith is still just a game manager.
Ross: 11-5
They won 11 games in Andy Reid’s first year, then 9 games last year with some bad luck and a difficult schedule. I wouldn’t be shocked if the Chiefs take the division over the Broncos, but I wouldn’t think of betting on it. I’m already looking forward to week 8, when the Red Zone Channel cuts into another game to telll us a Kansas City receiver finally caught a touchdown pass.
Miami Dolphins
2014 Record: 8-8
2015 Prediction
Neil: 8-8
With all the offseason money spent, there is going to be a lot of pressure to make the playoffs. Not sure Joe Philbin and Ryan Tannehill are going to handle it well.
Ross: 9-7
Philbin is just boring & ineffective enough to keep the Dolphins on the slowest possible trajectory toward the playoffs. They won 7 games in his first year as head coach, 8 games in his second & third years, and now they’ll grind all the way to 9 wins! If they don’t make the playoffs but their offense continues taking steps forward, expect Philbin to be replaced with Bill Lazor in 2016. Lazor is the team’s offensive coordinator who coached under Chip Kelly in Philly. Making Ryan Tannehill a good QB + having Chip Kelly’s name on your resume = head coaching job in 2016.
Minnesota Vikings
2014 Record: 7-9
2015 Prediction
Neil: 9-7
Not a real contender yet with their defense, but the offense should be fun and keep them in games.
Ross: 6-10
I love when people are already talking about “next year’s sleeper team” before the current season even ends. That was what happened to Minnesota last year. There’s no bigger red flag for me than the overhyped, extremely trendy “sleeper pick.” There are question marks all over this team, including Teddy Bridgewater. I agree that he could be a good QB, but don’t get too hard over him just yet. He finished 27th in QB efficiency in 2014, behind Derek Carr, Shaun Hill, Colt McCoy and Geno Smith. Calm yourselves.
New England Patriots
2014 Record: 12-4
2015 Prediction
Neil: 11-5
October 18th.
Ross: 13-3
Is there part of me that wants to see Jimmy Garoppolo lead the Pats to a 4-0 record to start the season just so the other 31 fanbases can freak out? Yes, but a very teeny tiny part. There’s not much to talk about here. The Patriots will win either 11, 12 or 13 games. I’m backing a scorched-earth mentality from Tom Brady this year by picking the high end. (Editor’s Note: This comment was obviously written before Judge Berman vacated Brady’s suspension. And in hindsight, no part of me wants to see Garoppolo start a Patriots game until 2019.)
New Orleans Saints
2014 Record: 7-9
2015 Prediction
Neil: 8-8
They do not seem to have the offensive weapons they’ve had in recent years, right?
Ross: 7-9
I was tempted to stick the Saints with just three or four wins and give them a top five pick in the 2016 draft, but they’re just competent enough to stay above the usual riff raff (Cleveland, Jacksonville, Oakland, Tennessee, Washington). The Saints still have lots of cap problems, had an atrocious defense last year, traded away their best two receiving options in the offseason, and have an aging quarterback who has started to look a little too much like late career Brett Favre. I think they’re significantly behind Atlanta in terms of talent at this point.
New York Giants
2014 Record: 6-10
2015 Prediction
Neil: 8-8
Sorry, not buying the “every 4 years” banter. Defense is probably going to be horrible and we have no idea if Victor Cruz will be the same.
Ross: 11-5
I’m as shocked as you are that my calculations spit out an 11-5 season for the Giants. Maybe I’m optimistic that Eli Manning can be good for the 2nd straight year. Maybe I love the combination of Odell Beckham Jr. and Victor Cruz, even if Cruz doesn’t see the field until later in the season. Or maybe I’m just a Patriots fan who knows there’s a mini-trend out there that says every four years the Giants must make a surprise playoff appearance and then shock my team in the Super Bowl. I hate knowing how this season will play out before it even happens.
New York Jets
2014 Record: 4-12
2015 Prediction
Neil: 8-8
See: Buffalo comments. Pretty much “samsies” here.
Ross: 7-9
Everything you need to know about the current state of the Jets (and really, it was a microcosm for most of the Jets’ entire history): When Geno Smith suffered a broken jaw from a teammate’s sucker punch in July, the collective reaction among football fans was, “Damn, now the Jets are gonna be semi-competent while Ryan Fitzpatrick fills in for Smith.” They have an easy schedule and a defense that should keep them in games against teams like Cleveland, Washington, Oakland, Buffalo (twice), Jacksonville, Houston and Tennessee.
Oakland Raiders
2014 Record: 3-13
2015 Prediction
Neil: 6-10
I guess this was the most stable and logical offseason the Raiders have had in a dozen years or so. So that’s something?
Ross: 5-11
If the Raiders can prove me right and climb all the way to 5-11, it’ll be their best record since 2011. For once, it doesn’t seem like being drafted a Raider is an automatic death knell for players. Derek Carr survived last year, and by all accounts, Amari Cooper is too good for the Raider stink to affect him. Finally, they have some building blocks. Too bad they play in the AFC West and have one of the hardest schedules in the league. We’ll check back in 3-4 years to see if they’re ready to be a contender.
Philadelphia Eagles
2014 Record: 10-6
2015 Prediction
Neil: 10-6
I’m probably assuming too much in terms of Sam Bradford’s health, but I actually think Chip Kelly has a plan here.
Ross: 7-9
It’s probably best to evaluate Philly as if it has a run-of-the-mill coach because if you buy into the mythology of Chip Kelly, you’re going to immediately give the Eagles bonus points they don’t necessarily deserve. You could back Kelly, still a somewhat unknown commodity as an NFL coach and a total unknown when it comes to being in charge of personnel, or you could realize that this team just jettisoned its best wide receiver, running back and offensive lineman while adding Sam Bradford in the offseason. If the mystique of Kelly wasn’t involved, would you even be considering this team for more than a handful of wins?
Pittsburgh Steelers
2014 Record: 11-5
2015 Prediction
Neil: 7-9
I’m worried the offense is not going to be quite as good as it was last year. I think they could use another receiving option. Even if everything breaks perfect I think it is an average defense.
Ross: 8-8
By some stroke of luck, the Steelers have faced a bottom-five strength of schedule for four straight years. This year they’re projected to have the 9th hardest. The offense should be fine, if not as out-of-this-world as last year’s unit. But the defense is still going to be horrific. I counted 9 games on their schedule where they face teams who might be very good offensively. I think they’re going to lose a lot of games this year when both teams score 28 or more.
San Diego Chargers
2014 Record: 9-7
2015 Prediction
Neil: 8-8
I wish this team would have made a move and traded for Mariota. I just don’t think as constructed they are ever going to win more than one playoff game in a given year.
Ross: 9-7
Over the past five years, the Chargers have won 9 games, 8 games, 7 games, 9 games and 9 games. They did nothing to change their default mediocrity in the offseason. I guess if they didn’t lose roughly 11 centers to injury last year they might have done more. But I fully expect another 9 wins that’ll either be just not enough or just enough to sneak into the playoffs as a team not to be feared.
San Francisco 49ers
2014 Record: 8-8
2015 Prediction
Neil: 5-11
So, we probably don’t have to worry about anyone getting a home game for the Super Bowl this year.
Ross: 4-12
If ever there was going to be a surprise 0-16 team, this would be the one. They are dealing with more turnover on their roster (and coaching staff) than I’ve ever seen. They have a new head coach who had never even risen to the title of coordinator before getting this job. They’re dealing with a young quarterback who took MAJOR steps back last year. And they’re also dealing with the 2nd hardest projected schedule in the league. That schedule includes nine games against 2014 playoff teams. Other than games at Cleveland and Chicago, they don’t play a single pushover team. This is going to be a rough year for 49ers fans. At least we won’t have to hear any chatter about “Will the 49ers be the first team to play at home in a Super Bowl?”
Seattle Seahawks
2014 Record: 12-4
2015 Prediction
Neil: 11-5
I know there were a lot of changes on both lines, but they kept all the key pieces. Hard to imagine another NFC team overtaking them this year.
Ross: 13-3
Listen, the Seahawks have absolutely moved into that rare space that the Patriots have occupied mostly alone for the past 15 years. We can fuss about small things that might cause them to lose a game or two, but at the end of the day, they’re a lock to win their division, probably win about 12 games, and at worst be fighting for the #1 seed until the end of the year. Their offensive line is by far their weakest spot, but they just happen to have a QB who can run whenever his pocket breaks down. Let’s just all keep our fingers crossed that God wants to teach Russell Wilson more tough lessons about adversity.
St. Louis Rams
2014 Record: 6-10
2015 Prediction
Neil: 8-8
The defense is going to be incredible. Can the offense score enough points to make them a playoff contender?
Ross: 9-7
I believe all you Minnesota bandwagon jumpers are going to wish you got on the considerably more spacious St. Louis bandwagon once the dust settles on 2015. Jeff Fisher teaming up with Nick Foles is the opposite of exciting, but the defense might be amazing, and with the Cardinals and 49ers taking huge steps back, there will be some extra wins to be had in the NFC West this year. And why not put the Rams in the playoffs just to make things even more messy for a league that’s intent on moving them to LA as soon as possible? Sounds like your classic NFL clusterfuck.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
2014 Record: 2-14
2015 Prediction
Neil: 6-10
If Lovie Smith just is not a good defensive coach anymore, this could get ugly.
Ross: 4-12
Similar to Oakland, at least the Bucs now have an intriguing offensive connection between Jameis Winston and Mike Evans. Let’s say Winston throws for over 3,500 yards and 22 touchdowns while Evans exceeds 1,000 receiving yards and scores 7 or 8 times, there will be a lot of people foaming at the mouth in Tampa in the summer of 2016. I’d rather be the Bucs right now than the Panthers or Saints.
Tennessee Titans
2014 Record: 2-14
2015 Prediction
Neil: 6-10
At least this team will be intriguing for a few weeks until we realize they are not using Marriota in the right way.
Ross: 2-14
My actual prediction for the Titans is 0-16, but it doesn’t make sense to pick 0 wins when I know Neil is going to play things conservatively and give this team at least 4 wins. I might as well go with a 2-14 record, knowing I still win if they lose 16 straight. This team has no redeeming qualities except that their rookie quarterback is a complete unknown. Their two “easy games” are against Tampa Bay and Cleveland, but both of those are on the road. What bothers me most about Tennessee is that they’re just so damn boring. If you’re going to win less than 5 games a year, you need to have some psychotic elements going on, like Cleveland and Washington. You can’t be bad and boring. That’s just boring.
Washington Redskins
2014 Record: 4-12
2015 Prediction
Neil: 6-10
Thirty months ago every team would have wanted RG3 over Andrew Luck.
Ross: 3-13
Speaking of dysfunction, our final team is also our most pathetic team. Be careful when you’re making any bets on “which coach will be fired first during the season” if you’re thinking of picking Jay Gruden. He may very well quit before he can get fired, and I doubt the sportsbook will pay your bet if he didn’t technically get canned. If any owner needs to die to immediately improve the fortune of his team, it’s Dan Snyder. Congrats to the 2015 Washington Redskins for winning the 2015 Most Pathetic Team award before a single snap of the regular season is played.
With the regular season only six days away, we’ll be back next week with playoff predictions along with some superlatives for the season (a favorite of mine because we focus on actual superlatives like “most passing yards in the regular season” and the exact opposite of superlatives like “first coach to be fired” and “first QB benched due to looking too much like a Ryan Lindley/Brandon Weeden hybrid”).
Check back in next week and enjoy your final Sunday without football until Valentine’s Day!
Oh, hey, that Wells Report thingy came out today. You remember it, right? That super serious investigation into whether or not the Patriots knowingly deflated footballs before the AFC Championship in January. It seems like we’ve been waiting on the results of this report for months. And with May being a slow news month for the NFL after the conclusion of the Draft, you had to figure it was more probable than not that the report would come out soon.
Rather than listen to ESPN’s stable of ex-NFL players who have an axe to grind with the Patriots produce a lot of hot air about this topic, I decided to write out some thoughts for anyone who wants a rational take on all this. Here are five random thoughts about the news that broke today and five modest predictions for the Patriots’ 2015 season:
I can once again rely on the pulse of all my Patriot-hating friends to decide how bad this looks for New England. Because without a doubt, if there is even a minor shred of evidence that somebody cheated, these people will come out of the woodwork with a thousand nasty things to say about the Patriots, Brady & Belichick’s legacies and the legitimacy of past Super Bowl wins. And you know what I’ve heard so far? Nothing. Not. A. Thing. It’s been hours since the story came out and all I’m hearing is crickets.
If you did take to Twitter to laugh at and takedown Pats fans, that just tells me that you didn’t bother reading any of the report. You simply saw a headline that said “New England ‘probably’ deflated footballs.” But if you read the report, you’d notice that the general gist is that they couldn’t find any true evidence of tampering or anyone of significance ordering the balls to be messed with, but they can’t imagine it happened any other way so they just assume there’s foul play.
Is “more probable than not” the weakest stand someone can take on a matter? When picking a side, is refusing to pick and staying neutral more of a stance than saying “more probable than not?” They couldn’t say things like “we strongly believe” or “there’s overwhelming evidence” because they have absolutely not conviction in the result they came up with. This is the SOFTEST conviction in the history of convicting.
Listen, when the Patriots were found guilty of taping opponents’ sideline signals in ’07 (an act that had only become illegal a few months prior to that incident), they may not have agreed with all the results of that investigation but they stood up and took their punishment, and didn’t cry foul. Obviously they have no intention of doing that this time, assuming Belichick, Brady and everyone else follows the blueprint their boss just laid out for them.
Remember when I wrote that the NFL purposely let the DeflateGate accusations leak and did nothing about it after the AFC Championship game because they wanted to own the news cycles during that week off before the Super Bowl? Well here we are again. Why did this report take 100 days to come out? Because this was the best possible time for the NFL to use it to keep dominating the news. A week ago we had the NFL Draft to take up all our time. The week before that was the Greg Hardy suspension news. If you go back week by week to the end of the playoffs, you’ll find that significant news or rumors have come up on an almost-scheduled basis so the NFL never went away for long. Well since the draft is over and people have moved on from reading post-draft material, it was time to get us all to turn back to the NFL Network or click on ESPN.com’s fresh takes on this news. Any sort of punishment coming from this report will take about a week, I’m sure. As soon as the collective media’s most recent erection over this topic starts to soften, the NFL will take action.
And let’s not sleep on the fact that the Patriots are now so polarizing that the NFL gets its biggest villain in a long time for an entire season. Even Patriots/Jaguars and Patriots/Titans will draw huge ratings and interest during the 2015 season. This is the most perfect result possible for the NFL. How convenient.
Predictions for the season:
The ceiling has been lifted on the upcoming Patriots’ season. The Broncos set the record for most points in a season with 606 in 2013. I’m predicting a modest 950 points for the Patriots in 2015. I know a lot of times we pump up the concept of athletes going into Eff You mode more than they actually follow through with it, but remember that there’s an exact precedent for this when it comes to the Belichick/Brady Patriots:
Don’t expect Patriots fans to be even remotely rational this year. We’ve tried to use logic & reason with you people over the entire 14 years that you’ve hated New England. But no more. We’re going to meet your irrational stupidity with our own irrational stupidity. The Patriots are going 19-0. They’ll outscore every opponent 60-0. Tom Brady is Jesus. Bill Belichick is god. Our team has the undisputed greatest QB of all time and greatest coach of all time. Even with the league office, the referees and every fan base conspiring against them, the Pats will be hoisting Lombardi #5 next February.
I may exaggerate slightly with my predictions on how many points the Pats will put up in 2015, but whatever you do, please, please, PLEASE make sure you clear your schedule for Sunday, October 18th, at 8:30pm Eastern. That is when the Patriots will take the field in Indy for the greatest revenge game in sports history. If the Patriots are favored by anything less than 28 points, I’m putting everything I’ve got on them. Only two games in NFL history have featured a team scoring more than 70 points. I think the Patriots make it three on October 18th.
The biggest losers in all of this are the Pittsburgh Steelers. They were already dealing with playing against the Patriots in New England on opening night when the Super Bowl banner will be raised and the fans will be frothing at the mouth over the start of Super Bowl run #5. Now you also have to be the first team to face a pissed off Patriots team?
The NFL won’t dare to seriously punish the Patriots. Sure, NFL, you could punish the Patriots for all of this circumstantial evidence, but do you really want to provoke them any further? You screwed with them during the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl (which, by the way, they won behind 4 Brady touchdown passes against the best defense in the league) and now you’ve soiled their reputation with this nebulous report. If you don’t want your 2015 season ruined by a runaway train known as the Eff You Patriots, you’ll stop short of any real punishments. I think you should heed the advice of my favorite TV villain:
As inappropriate as it would be for the league to suspend Brady for a game or two at the start of the season, I almost want this to happen so that when Jimmy Garoppolo leads the Patriots to a 2-0 start behind a pair of blowout wins, the rest of the NFL can freak out about how good New England will be even after Brady retires in 11 years.
I’m geeking out so hard about the 2015 NFL season that I had to turn my simple NFL schedule review into a two-part column. Here is the link to part one, where I went through weeks 1-8 and identified the games I’m most excited for and the matchup that I feel is going to be the most overhyped each week.
Now I’ll continue with weeks 9-17. And if for some reason you can’t bring yourself to read all this, I suggest skipping down to the end where I tallied up which teams had the most appearances in the “most excited for” category and which had the most “overhyped games” on its schedule. Enjoy.
Week 9
Overall Excitement Level: Extra Low
It looks like one of those weeks where all the good teams are facing all the bad teams. Those are the worst weeks.
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Denver at Indianapolis – The Colts are actually 2-1 against Denver since Peyton went West and Andrew Luck took over at quarterback. Obviously this is a huge game if both teams continue to be the class of their respective divisions. And you know the Broncos have a horrible taste in their mouths from their 2014 season ending at the hands of Indy. It’s a little surprising this is a Sunday afternoon game and not the Monday night game.
Philadelphia at Dallas – Here we go again with the NFC East and a primetime game. This Sunday nighter will have DeMarco Murray playing in front of the Dallas fans for the first time since the Cowboys let him walk in free agency. And by this point of the season, we will know if Chip Kelly is smart, dumb or simply trolling us.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Chicago at San Diego – This is your Monday Night Football matchup. If Jay Cutler and Philip Rivers are still the starting QBs of these two teams, we’ll be hearing an awful lot about their futures with potentially different teams leading up to this. The problem is neither of these two guys has ever won anything of significance with their current teams so the talk about them is always overblown.
Week 10
Overall Excitement Level: A Solid Medium
A handful of divisional games and some matchups of teams that are supposed to be good heading into the season. And as a bonus, this week features a preview of the Super Bowl 50 matchup, most likely.
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Miami at Philadelphia – This is a sneaky intriguing game. Both teams have shown promise the last couple years without any real results to show for it. Both teams made huge offseason moves in hopes of getting over that hump that separates the playoff teams from the 9-7 teams. This might be an extremely important out of conference tilt for both of them.
New England at Giants – And here’s your Super Bowl 50 matchup! I’m joking, but not entirely. In 2007 these two teams faced each other in the regular season before the Giants ended New England’s perfect season in the Super Bowl. In 2011, the same thing happened, minus the perfect season being on the line. The Patriots have now lost three straight to Eli Manning, Tom Coughlin and this confusing franchise. I know people think I’m crazy, but every four years history seems to be repeating itself. And the Giants are currently 25/1 to win the Super Bowl. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Houston at Cincinnati – Oh, you don’t think this will be hyped? Well this is going to be Andy Dalton’s second primetime game of the season. His first is the week before against Cleveland. This man is known to be a wreck under the spotlight. What if he loses to the Browns the previous week? How much pressure will there be about replacing him if he fails to rise to the occasion once again? And we might be talking about two playoff teams here.
Week 11
Overall Excitement Level: There is no excitement
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Denver at Chicago – OK, if the Bears bottom out this year, I really won’t be excited for this one. But we are seeing John Fox against his former Broncos team. We are seeing Jay Cutler against his former Broncos team. (What? That storyline is like six years old? OK, fine.) It’s really all about Fox trying to get some revenge for being ousted after having an awesome four-year run that almost any team would have appreciated. Except, apparently, for a team run by Peyton Manning.
Dallas at Miami – Similar to the Miami/Philly game, this is an interconference game late in the season that could have a ton of meaning if both teams perform similar to last year.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Buffalo at New England – For the second time, Rex vs the Patriots earns this award. Rex is obsessed with New England, and the media is obsessed with Rex. This is an easy pick.
Week 12
Overall Excitement Level: A High Medium
The real reason there’s some true excitement on my part for week 12 is because it’s Thanksgiving weekend. Not only do we get three games spread out across the Fattest Day of the Year, but the Sunday of this weekend only features 12 games, making it much easier to view the important stuff.
Games I’m Most Excited For:
New Orleans at Houston – What can I say? I’m high on this Texans team. And watching J.J. Watt against an error-prone Drew Brees should be plenty entertaining.
Pittsburgh at Seattle – Last year the Cowboys went into Seattle with the league’s best rushing attack, a solid quarterback and an all-world receiver and beat the Seahawks. The Steelers could have those very same offensive components this year. Not saying it’ll happen, but they could be a team to escape the Northwest with a victory. Also, is Seattle still bitching about the officiating from the 2006 Super Bowl?
New England at Denver – This is either going to be the 17th installment of Brady vs Manning or the first installment of Brady vs Osweiler. It’s strange. With Manning’s rapid aging and the escalated hatred by Pats fans for teams like Indy, Baltimore and the Jets, this just doesn’t feel like the rivalry it was a few years back. Still must-see TV on Sunday night.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Chicago at Green Bay – Thanksgiving Night! NFC North Rivalry! Brett Favre’s Jersey Retirement! Ignore the fact that the Bears are 4-7!
Week 13
Overall Excitement Level: A Solid Medium
Believe it or not, there are eight games this week where both teams either made the playoffs in 2014 or nearly did. That’s good enough for me.
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Baltimore at Miami – The Ravens have gone into Miami two straight years and won. Last year it was in week 14 and it was a key game because the Ravens went to 8-5 and the Dolphins fell to 7-6. That was kind of the end of the line for Miami. This year could be exactly the same with both teams desperately needing this game.
Seattle at Minnesota – Intriguing because Minnesota is absolutely going to be a major sleeper going into this season. Actually, they won’t be because everyone will talk about how they’re a sleeper and then they’ll quickly be overrated. But if they happen to play up to expectations, this could be a huge test for them. Teddy Bridgewater will have almost two seasons of games under his belt at this point so we’ll all be looking at this as a benchmark game for him too.
Indianapolis at Pittsburgh – Last year these teams combined for 85 points in a game Pittsburgh won 51-34. No reason to think this year will be much different in terms of two fantastic offenses and two horrific defenses. And I can’t imagine a scenario where this week 13 game isn’t important for both teams.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Jets at Giants: Because it’s New York. Because Eli will either be having a great season or an awful season. Because Geno Smith/Ryan Fitzpatrick/Marcus Mariota(?) will be struggling big time for the Jets. Because Tom Coughlin will probably be on the annual hot seat.
Week 14
Overall Excitement Level: It’s not a full erection, but definitely a chubby.
Some possibly good games like Minnesota/Arizona, Pittsburgh/Cincy and New England/Houston don’t even crack my top three. There’s also a good possibility of seeing a lot of anger at MetLife Stadium when Marcus Mariota and the Titans go there to play the Jets and the home fans get to see what their team didn’t trade up for.
Games I’m Most Excited For:
San Diego at Kansas City – The Philip Rivers AFC West Farewell Tour kicks off with a game in Arrowhead. He plays all three AFC West rivals on the road between week 14 and week 17. Of course there’s a chance this game is actually meaningful. It could either have wildcard implications, or if Denver falls flat, this could be for the division.
Dallas at Green Bay – You think the Cowboys are looking forward to this one? Maybe Dez Bryant will make a catch or two and over-exaggerate showing the ball to the refs to make sure they see he has actually caught it? The Cowboys return to the scene of the crime from the NFC Divisional Round this past January. High expectations for this one.
Seattle at Baltimore – A Sunday night game between what should be one of the best teams from each conference. If the AFC North is especially tight at this point, Baltimore knows going into this week that either Pittsburgh or Cincinnati have to get a win since they face each other. The pressure will be on to beat the two-time defending NFC Champs.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Buffalo at Philadelphia – Depending on what’s happening with these two teams at this point in the season, we’re going to hear one of two things over and over and over leading up to this game: 1) Chip Kelly was stupid to get rid of LeSean McCoy and the Eagles’ offense just isn’t the same without him, or 2) Buffalo screwed up by trading for and then extending the contract of a running back who came off a bad year and is getting to that age where running backs’ performances seem to fall off a cliff.
Week 15
Overall Excitement Level: Moderate
The schedule really blows in week 15, but we’re talking about the third-to-last week of the regular season. How can it not be somewhat exciting? And this is probably a good time to mention that the second half of this column feels especially futile because the exciting games are going to be largely determined by each team’s record since unlikely playoff contenders always emerge. Maybe the most interesting aspect of week 15 will be trying to figure out whether the Browns lose in Seattle by 50 points or just 40 points.
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Houston at Indianapolis – If things go how I’m expecting, this game is going to effectively determine the AFC South Champion. For me it’s very easy to root for Vince Wilfork, Bill O’Brien and of course J.J. Watt (and it’s ridiculously easy to root against the sore loser Colts).
Denver at Pittsburgh – One of the few true bright spots on this week’s schedule. This probably could have been the overhyped game considering we’ll hear 48 straight hours during the week of Peyton Manning vs the cold weather. But both teams should have winning record and be fighting for either a spot in the playoffs or specific seeding.
Detroit at New Orleans – This is either a game with major playoff implications or a game where we get to laugh at both teams for letting their most important player go in the offseason (Ndamukong Suh for Detroit, Jimmy Graham for New Orleans).
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Tampa Bay at St. Louis – This won’t be overhyped at all, but I did want to take a moment to recognize what will be the final home game for this current installment of the St. Louis Rams. And the NFL went ahead and put it in the terrible Thursday night slot against Tampa Bay. I’ve never seen so much disrespect.
Week 16
Overall Excitement Level: High
It’s week 16 for crying out loud! Get excited!
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Cleveland at Kansas City – Because we’ll probably be watching a game between two teams who have yet to throw a touchdown pass to a wide receiver on the season. And for the Chiefs, that would make it a 31 game streak of no TD passes to receivers coming into this one if my prediction is right. Who wouldn’t want to watch a game that’s intriguing for all the wrong reasons?
Indianapolis at Miami – The schedule makers do not like the Dolphins apparently. Their final five games go like this: vs Baltimore, vs the Giants, at San Diego, vs Indianapolis, vs New England. Sure, four of those games are at home, but I don’t see an easy opponent in there. Anyway, here’s another game that can determine some key AFC playoff spots.
Pittsburgh at Baltimore – This second meeting between these AFC North teams will probably be as nasty as the first.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Cincinnati at Denver – A game featuring Peyton Manning and primetime Andy Dalton will get talked up a ton. This is the final Monday night game of the season. And possibly Dalton’s final primetime start as a Bengal.
Week 17
Overall Excitement Level: Through the Effing Roof!
It’s the final week of the season. The final time we get the RedZone Channel in 2015 (technically all these games take place in 2016, but you get my point). And every game is a divisional matchup. Even the NFL can’t mess this up.
Games I’m Most Excited For:
All of them – Seriously, who knows? We could be in a situation where 11 of 12 playoff spots are locked up. Or it could be the exact opposite. Maybe six of eight divisions will still be up for grabs on the final day. I’m not going to bother giving any sort of excitement or overhyped list because the entire day is going to be exciting and overhyped!
Now that we’ve gotten through that way-too-early look at the schedule, let’s tally up the counts and see what sticks out.
Here are the teams with the most “most excited” games on my list:
Dallas (9 times)
Indianapolis (8)
Baltimore (6), Denver (6), Pittsburgh (6)
Miami (5), New England (5), Seattle (5)
New Orleans (4)
This tells me I’m a lot more excited about AFC teams than NFC teams. It also makes me feel so very dirty. I’m most excited about watching the Cowboys and then four of the Patriots’ biggest rivals in the AFC? Just terrible. But sadly this proves out why the suits at the broadcasting companies are always putting Dallas on national TV.
Here are the teams that didn’t get a single “most excited” on my list:
Arizona, Atlanta, Carolina, Oakland, St. Louis, San Francisco, Tampa Bay, Tennessee
Not too surprising there. I think all those teams are either going to be terrible (Arizona, Oakland, Tennessee, etc) or mediocre without any true star power (Atlanta, Carolina, San Francisco). And the poor NFC West has three of its four teams on this unexcited designation. Seattle can probably start planning for at least one home playoff game.
As for the winners of the “overhyped” games, here’s who had the most of those:
Chicago (4), New England (4)
Buffalo (3), Jets (3), Philadelphia (3)
Cincinnati (2), Detroit (2), Green Bay (2)
Interestingly enough, teams can be in an overhyped game either because they’re the good team who is going to destroy a talked-up team that isn’t very good (like New England and Green Bay will be doing to several opponents). Or they can be on the other end, receiving the punishment from the good teams (like Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo and the Jets will be doing).
There wasn’t a single team that got on the overhyped list but had no “most excited” games. I have no idea of that stat’s meaning.
Thanks for reading. I think you can tell that I desperately wish the NFL season wasn’t still so far away. I’m not an NFL Draft overreactor so you probably won’t see a football post from me for a couple months. Be sure to get your fill of all the other sports before September rolls around!
If you scoured the internet hard enough on Tuesday, you may have read that the NFL released its full schedule for the 2015 season. It was done in a very understated way. Only ESPN, The NFL Network, CNN and The Hallmark Channel produced special “NFL Schedule Release” shows.
Without the benefit of looking at other writers’ articles on 2015’s most exciting games, I decided to take a stab at identifying a few games each week that have piqued my interest. In honor of Earth Day, before I printed out the entire schedule I condensed it from 17 pages to 11 pages by making the font smaller and reducing the line spacing on my Google Doc. I’ve always been one to do his part to help Mother Earth.
Of course there are still 140 days until the Patriots and Steelers kickoff the new season. We still have to get through the draft, training camps, roster cuts, player holdouts, unforeseen trades and loads of injuries. It’s somewhat useless to try to predict what games will be the most entertaining by the time Fall comes around. But my second favorite thing after saving the Earth is getting bogged down in useless endeavors.
Here are my initial instincts on the NFL schedule. I’m giving you two or three “games I’m most looking forward to” each week and one “game that’ll be overhyped.” As you can imagine, teams like the Packers, Seahawks and Patriots made multiple appearances in the best games category, and the “often talked about in preseason but never heard from in the postseason” Jets graced the overhyped list several times.
Let’s begin with week 1 and a game I’m obviously looking forward to:
Week 1
Overall Excitement Level: High
First of all, it’s week 1 of the NFL season. Let’s get serious. They could have the Jaguars face the Titans, the Raiders face the Browns, and give the other 28 teams a bye week and I’d still be psyched about week 1. But this particular week 1 has a minimum of five games where possible playoff teams are facing each other.
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Pittsburgh at New England – The only major sport that doesn’t get its opening game right is baseball. You have to put your defending Champion on display to kickoff the new year. The NFL has been doing this for a long time, and it always feels like a big game. This year could see a lot of scoring in the opener because both teams have awesome offenses and might have middle-of-the-road or worse defenses.
Baltimore at Denver – This feels like a game to determine which AFC team will challenge the Patriots for a top seed in 2015. More importantly, it’s our first good look at Peyton Manning since Twitter left him for dead in January. It’s rare for a Baltimore defense to be bad against the run so you can expect that Manning will have to make throws to win this game.
Giants at Dallas – If it feels like NFC East games are ALWAYS on National TV (like this one, which is the Sunday nighter), it’s because they are. After all, that division includes teams in the #1 (New York), 4 (Philadelphia), 5 (Dallas) and 8 (D.C.) media markets. No one ever accused broadcast companies of not trying to make a buck. This particular game features the established “best receiver in the game” in Dez Bryant versus the up-and-coming receiver who could usurp Dez as early as this season. Odell Beckham Jr. is going to be appointment TV all year.
BONUS GAME: Tennessee at Tampa Bay – This is 100% contingent upon the Bucs drafting Jameis Winston and the Titans grabbing Marcus Mariota. If those two things don’t happen, this game is unwatchable.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Green Bay at Chicago – Let’s face it: The Bears are going to stink this year. And whether Jay Cutler is the starting quarterback for this team or not is kind of irrelevant. What seemed like a division that could produce a lot of interesting games for years to come as recently as last season, the NFC North feels like it’s heading towards a period of what the AFC East has been like lately. One dominant team and three doormats.
Week 2
Overall Excitement Level: Medium
There’s not a ton to love here as you can tell by the three games I put in the marquee spot…
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Dallas at Philadelphia – It feels like these two teams and the Giants are going to battle all year for the NFC East crown. So every game among them is going to seem huge. And of course this particular matchup pits DeMarco Murray against his former team.
Seattle at Green Bay – Last year we got this game in the NFL Opener. This year we get it on Sunday night in week 2. Of course this is the matchup in the NFC…the conference’s two best teams. But for Green Bay, the Seahawks have been a nightmare opponent in the Russell Wilson era. First, it was the FailMary game in week 3 of 2012. Then it was last year’s 36-16 opening night stomping by the Seahawks. And finally it was the NFC Championship game just three months ago, where the Packers had it won…until they didn’t (something about a botched onside kick recovery). But for the first time in all these meetings, they’re playing at Lambeau.
Jets at Indianapolis – You think I’m joking, but I’ll reiterate that this is kind of a weak week. I’m intrigued to find out if the Jets can survive (and thrive) on defense alone. They got Darrelle Revis. They got Antonio Cromartie. They got defensive guru Tood Bowles to coach them. But they don’t have a prayer at being good on offense. Can their defense be so good that it shuts down Andrew Luck in Indy on Monday night?
Overhyped Game of the Week:
New England at Buffalo – REX!!! The build-up to this one is going to be intolerable no matter what, but if the Bills beat the Colts in week 1? Look out. The Rex-a-mania hype will be through the roof. So why is it overhyped? Because the Patriots are going to continue doing to Rex in Buffalo what they (mostly) did to Rex in New York.
Week 3
Overall Excitement Level: Extremely Low
Just an awful slate of games this week. Sure, there are some that seem good if you blindly look at the team names (49ers/Cardinals, Bears/Seahawks, Broncos/Lions), but those matchups don’t do it for me when I’m confident at least one team from each game will be bad this year.
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Cincinnati at Baltimore – I’m only giving you one awesome game for this week and the best I could come up with is this? Gross. Cincinnati is never exciting. Baltimore is always good, but hardly a team you get excited to watch. Mark it down. September 27th is a fantastic day to go apple picking with your family.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Philadelphia at Jets – It’s just a perfect storm of ESPN’s favorite topics: The Jets, Chip Kelly, Mark Sanchez, Tim Tebow. And add in the fact that those two quarterbacks (assuming both are on the Eagles’ roster at this point) are technically facing their old team. Ugh, did I mention that Sunday of week 3 is the perfect time to volunteer at that animal shelter that you’ve been meaning to get to?
Week 4
Overall Excitement Level: Medium
On top of a few really nice matchups there are some games that are good purely because they feature two teams from the same division (Jags/Colts, Panthers/Bucs, Eagles/Redskins).
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Baltimore at Pittsburgh – Yeah, this is one of those ugly Thursday night games, but these two teams from the AFC North almost always play ugly games against one another anyway. Le’Veon Bell will be back from his suspension at this point so the Steelers should be playing nearly 100% healthy. More often than not, this rivalry is decided by three points. Can we ask for anything more from a Thursday game?
Jets at Dolphins – Only because this is one of those London games with a super early start time. For the east coast, it’s a 9:30am game. For us West Coasters, football begins at 6:30 in the morning! I loved everything about that Lions vs Falcons game last year that started in the wee hours of the morning (except for, you know, the two teams and the pathetic coaching meltdowns at the end of the game). I love this setup. Don’t stop doing it, NFL. You finally got something right.
Dallas at New Orleans – I’m making some pretty big assumptions that both teams will be good. My instinct is to say Dallas slides back to 8-8 after one solid season, and that New Orleans will suck after getting rid of some key pieces. But let’s pretend for now that both are at least in that 2nd tier of NFC contenders. If so, this should be an entertaining game.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Detroit at Seattle – The Lions are going to blowwwwwwwwww. But since this game features Seattle and takes place on Monday night, we will be told that this is a marquee NFC game. It’s not.
Week 5
Overall Excitement Level: Low
We only have two interesting games on the schedule, and I’m even struggling to come up with a compelling Overhyped game.
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Indianapolis at Houston – Either you think the Texans aren’t going to be any good because they lack a quarterback, or you’re like me and are blindly jumping on their bandwagon because they seem to have some nice pieces and a good coach. I think the Texans could contend in the AFC South. I also think the Colts still aren’t that great. If the Texans can’t beat them at home, then obviously I’m completely wrong. I’m looking forward to it.
New England at Dallas – If the Cowboys are similar to last year’s team, this will be a really good game. If they stink, the Patriots will win but we may still get some awesome Dez Bryant moments. It’s the best I can come up with for such an uninspiring week.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
New Orleans at Philadelphia – Will we hear the analysts talking up the two offensive gurus facing off against one another in Sean Payton and Chip Kelly? Of course we will! Even if both teams are 0-4 and neither has scored an offensive touchdown at this point in the season, the talking heads will go crazy about offensive geniuses in this one.
Week 6
Overall Excitement Level: Lower than Very Low
Our worst week yet!
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Washington at Jets – See what I mean? I guess I’m excited about this game only because I could see both teams being winless going into week 6. Also, what will the state of the quarterback position for each team be at this point in the year? The intrigue is through the roof!
New England at Indianapolis – If you combine the amount of revenge that the protagonists set out for in Django Unchained, True Grit and both Kill Bill movies, you’d still fall short of what the Patriots feel they owe the Colts in 2015. And since New England has mopped the floor with Indy in every game of the Andrew Luck era without having an axe to grind, well, week 6 can’t get here fast enough.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Chicago at Detroit – Again, everyone wants the NFC North to have all these intense rivalries, but it’s just not there. I know it’s too boring and doesn’t take up enough airtime & internet space to say the Packers are going to run away with this division, but that’s precisely what will happen.
Week 7
Overall Excitement Level: Something better than Medium but worse than High
There seem to be a lot of “above average” matchups in week 7. Nothing that qualifies for game of the year, but a nice little schedule for late October (Texans/Dolphins, Steelers/Chiefs, Ravens/Cardinals are three OK games that didn’t make my excited list).
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Buffalo at Jacksonville – Because it’s in London at 6:30am pacific time! I don’t care what anyone says. These extra early games are a thing of beauty. If you already watch 8-10 hours of football on a regular Sunday, why wouldn’t you want to watch another three?
New Orleans at Indianapolis – These aren’t two surefire contenders going into the season, but Drew Brees vs Andrew Luck is still a fun QB matchup to watch. The Colts will probably be at a disadvantage considering it’s going to take them until the Wednesday before this game to recover from the unspeakable things the Patriots are going to do to them the previous Sunday night.
Dallas at Giants – A repeat of week 1, only this time it’s in New Jersey. When you have two of the best wide receivers in football matching up, then you’re guaranteed some entertainment even if one or both of the teams have already shit the bed by this point of the season.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Jets at New England – I was going to say Seattle at San Francisco, but there’s a solid chance the 49ers are 1-5 going into that game. So instead we get Darrelle Revis and the revamped Jets defense going into New England. It’s too bad Revis and Cromartie aren’t Pro Bowl offensive players or else the competitiveness of this game might match the hype.
Week 8
Overall Excitement Level: High Medium
Out of the 14 games this week, six of them are division matchups. None of those six games made my excited list. There are a couple very compelling games in the late afternoon and evening on this Sunday.
Games I’m Most Excited For:
Detroit at Kansas City – This isn’t one of those late Sunday games. It’s actually another London 6:30am game!!! Please, NFL, you’re too kind. I feel like I owe you something now. What’s extra beautiful about this is that Jim Caldwell gets to return to the scene of last year’s coaching double debacle that he participated in with the exiled Mike Smith. If you don’t remember what I’m talking about, I beg you to read the first half of this Bill Barnwell article on Grantland.com. No one captured the insanity more perfectly.
Seattle at Dallas – The Cowboys went into Seattle last year and handed the Seahawks their only home loss on the season. The Cowboys should have gotten a chance to do it twice, but the NFL’s confounding rules on what constitutes a catch ruined a Dallas/Seattle NFC Championship game. I’m sure the Cowboys are looking at this as their biggest game of the year.
Green Bay at Denver – Two of the best regular season quarterbacks of our time, Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers, have only faced each other once, and that was way back in October 2008. So if Manning lives up to his end of the bargain and performs at his usual level in 2015, this should be a fantastic Sunday night game. But both of these QBs have some injury history, so there’s at least a 7% chance that this game pits Brock Osweiler against Scott Tolzien.
Overhyped Game of the Week:
Miami at New England – The team in the AFC East that most people think has a shot to knock off the Champs gets its first chance. The Dolphins might not be that much better than the Bills up and down the roster, but they have one key thing going for them that Buffalo doesn’t: a slightly above average QB. It’s totally understandable that the media will keep pushing the “who’s going to finally end New England’s reign” storyline because if they didn’t, there’d be nothing to talk about in that division. Good luck to Ndamukong Suh and the Dolphins in this Thursday night game.
You know what? I’ve already eclipsed 2,500 words and we’re only halfway through the schedule. I’m breaking this into two parts. Check back on Thursday for weeks 9-17 of my NFL schedule breakdown.
It’s been exactly 50 days since the confetti fell from the University of Phoenix Stadium roof during another New England Patriots Super Bowl Celebration. And it’ll be another 170 days or so until the first meaningful game of the 2015 NFL season takes place.
But, c’mon, it’s the NFL. They’re almost never out of the news entirely. True to form, football free agency dominated the sports headlines in early March. The buzz around big ticket free agents like Ndamukong Suh and Darrelle Revis we saw coming from a mile away. Some surprise trades around that same time we couldn’t foresee (Chip Kelly, I’m glaring specifically at you).
But what about all the other comings and goings of the league, its teams and its players over the past month? There are only so many hours in a day. We can’t keep up with everything, especially if we enjoy other sports besides football.
So what I’ve got for you today is my best attempt at digging up some of the less notable, but still impactful news that’s transpired since Tom Brady became the Greatest QB of All-Time less than two months ago (Please feel free to read the following headlines in your best Saturday Night Live ‘Weekend Update’ voice):
The Minnesota Vikings acquired former Packers tight end Brandon Bostick off waivers on February 18th. In the team’s subsequent press release they stated, “Hey, if we’re in position next year for Brandon Bostick to bungle an onsides kick recovery that costs us a HUGE January football game, that’s major progress for our organization. We’ll take it.”
Brandon Marshall and Percy Harvin seem to be having a heated competition, and they forgot to invite the rest of their wide receiver brethren. In the battle for which uber-talented receiver can be traded or released by his team the most often in the shortest amount of time, it’s not even close. Marshall has been traded three times in the past five years (the Jets will be his fourth NFL team since he came into the league in 2006). But Harvin has been traded or released three times in only the past two years (He’ll be working on team #4 with the Bills in 2015)! With Marshall in the quarterback dead zone of New York and having a noted volatile personality, could we see Marshall retake the lead during the 2015 season? All signs point to…who cares?
The Buffalo Bills not only traded for LeSean McCoy, but they also gave him an enormous contract extension. Because that’s definitely what you want to do with a running back coming off a down year who is already under your contractual control. But I get it, Bills. I’m the same way. In the first year of living in Los Angeles, my apartment got broken into, I discovered a bunch of things I didn’t like about my complex, and I realized the neighbors were kind of assholes. So obviously I called up my landlord and asked him to extend my lease for five more years even though I still had eight months remaining on my current agreement. Only two more years and I’m out of this place!
Jake Locker retired after a five-year stint in the NFL, saying that he no longer has the burning desire to play the game. The game of football responded by saying it no longer had the burning desire to be played by Jake Locker. The game of football, seemingly thin-skinned, also added, “Hey Jake, if that’s how you perform when you do have a burning desire, I’d hate to see the aspects of your life where you are just kinda sorta into something.” So harsh, football, so harsh.
Question: Why do seemingly mediocre quarterbacks like Andy Dalton, Colin Kaepernick, Jay Cutler and Matthew Stafford get locked up with huge deals by their respective teams?
Answer: Because if you don’t have someone at least average playing your team’s most important position, you get into a game of offseason Quarterback Russian Roullette / Sad Musical Chairs like this flurry of transactions from early March:
Bills acquire Matt Cassel from the Vikings
Jets acquire Ryan Fitzpatrick from Texans
Texans signs Brian Hoyer to compete with Ryan Mallett
Rams acquire Case Keenum from Texans
Browns sign Thad Lewis
Bills sign Tyrod Taylor
Raiders sign Christian Ponder
Or, you could go the route of puzzling mastermind Chip Kelly and stockpile a ton of quarterback assets that no one wants. There’s a chance the Eagles go into training camp with the following QB’s on the roster: Sam Bradford, Mark Sanchez, Matt Barkley, Tim Tebow and Terrelle Pryor. I know reports have just come out that Cleveland is the most likely candidate for this year’s HBO Hard Knocks, but wouldn’t the unintentional comedy be through the roof if we got to watch one hour every week of these five quarterbacks competing for a starting NFL job? Everyone loves a “open tryouts for a fan to win a roster spot” gimmick, and this doesn’t sound any different to me.
A Report came out that the Browns offered their 19th overall pick in the upcoming draft for Sam Bradford, which just goes to show you that NO ONE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO HAVE THE KEYS TO THE CAR IN CLEVELAND! In fact, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that Josh Gordon is hands down the best decision maker within the Cleveland Browns organization at this time.
The Colts waived Trent Richardson and five days later, the Raiders picked him up. So the big splashes Oakland made with all its cap room were Richardson and Christian Ponder? Got it. After the trade, Richard said, “The Raiders say if I come in and work, I can be the bell cow.” In the Raiders’ defense, their “bell cow” the last seven years has been a guy who averaged 606 rushing yards per season. If Richardson has a career year, he could totally hit that number.
Jameis Winston decided he will stay home on Draft night. When Roger Goodell finished off the blowjob he had been giving Peter King earlier this week, he told the longtime football reporter that he’s OK with Winston’s decision. Fine, but you just know the main circuit board in Goodell’s chest was overheating upon hearing this news. If Goodell stays consistent with how he handles discipline, Winston will be suspended for the first year of his career for such insubordination.
San Francisco linebacker Chris Borland abruptly retired, and while this stunning move has been attributed to his knowledge and fear of potential head injuries, it might just be that Borland looked around the 49ers’ roster and thought retiring’s what everyone does when your team goes from having Jim Harbaugh as its head coach to the football equivalent of Stan Van Gundy:
Collusion in sports is most often associated with teams conspiring to keep a player off their rosters (for instance, when Barry Bonds couldn’t get a job in 2008). But what are we supposed to think of the fact that literally every free agent or every major player that was traded found their new homes in the AFC East? Perhaps 31 teams are jealous of a certain team’s continued dominance and came up with a brilliant new plan to end that reign (since framing that team for low ball pressure doesn’t seem to have worked)?
The Pouncey brothers, Mike and Maurkice, ripped Mike Wallace’s character after the wide receiver was traded from Miami to Minnesota, calling him a coward…and if anyone is worthwhile to judge character, it’s these two high-character guys:
Yes, those are the Pounceys wearing “Free Hernandez” hats a couple years ago. As in, Aaron Hernandez, the most obviously guilty murderer in American History.
Bernard Pierce of the Baltimore Ravens was released after his DUI arrest last week, becoming the third player on the Ravens to be arrested and released this offseason. But I gotta assume this is just random coincidence and bad luck for the Ravens organization. There’s no way there’s a pattern of them having lots of criminals on their team year in and year out or anything. Wait, what’s that? Here’s a headline from the 2014 offseason: Ravens offseason arrests stick out like sore thumb on NFL’s improved hand. Hmm…Am I the type of person to go back through my Twitter account and find all the Ravens fans from January who were talking trash about the Patriots and how they once employed Aaron Hernandez? Depends on how many episodes of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt I have to get through today.
Philip Rivers doesn’t want to sign an extension until after the 2015 season when his contract expires. Part of the reason is the uncertainty around the Chargers possibly moving. He said it would be tough to move his wife and SEVEN children to a different city. Philip, I totally get it. I organize a reunion vacation with 10 of my college friends every year and it is HELL to find a house that big on VRBO or Airbnb. You’re preaching to the choir here.
NFL Owner Meetings are underway in Phoenix right now, and while there were a whopping 23 new rule proposals from different teams, this is really the only one worth talking about: The Colts are proposing that if a team successfully converts a two-point attempt following a touchdown, that team should be awarded a bonus point attempt in the form of a 50-yard field goal try. This would mean a team can potentially get nine points at the end of a touchdown drive! What this really means, and it’s probably why the Colts are wanting to implement it, is that instead of needing an additional five touchdowns plus a field goal to tie the Patriots in January’s AFC Championship Game, Indianapolis would have only needed four touchdowns plus four successful two-point conversions and four bonus point conversions plus a field goal to BEAT THE PATRIOTS BY ONE POINT IN THAT SAME GAME! If this rule was in place last year, oh man, the Colts would have been thisclose to finally beating New England.
The owners are making it sound like expanded playoffs are still happening, but it’s on the backburner for at least another year. Here’s my idea for expanded playoffs: Expand it to all 32 teams. Have each team play 16 games in the “playoffs” in a round-robin type format where they are broken out into eight separate “divisions.” Whichever teams have the best record after that, move on to the “Final 12” where those 12 teams play one-game playoffs against each other until there’s a lone Super Bowl Champion remaining. I know it’s a risky proposal, and I know it might take some getting used to, but I think it just might work.
The Bucs are stockpiling punters, adding a third one to their roster this weekend, which means they are finally embracing that role as the NFL’s version of your sad sack buddy in fantasy who always has a couple punters and defenses on his bench.
Matt Moore decided to stay with the Dolphins, noting that if any coach is going to randomly pull his starting QB who happens to be playing really well to insert the backup on a whim, it’s definitely Joe Philbin.
Darren Sharper, he of the rape charges in a handful of states, has apparently agreed to a global plea deal. This is the criminal’s equivalent to buying products at a wholesale price. By raping more women in more states, Sharper was able to package it all up into one neat little crime and could serve as few as nine years in prison instead of a life sentence. We should all be so lucky.
Adrian Peterson and his agent continue to try to get the Vikings to release the Pro Bowl running back, but the Vikings aren’t budging. It may come down to Vikings management telling Peterson he can either play for them this year, or he can retire. But it’s not quite checkmate yet because Peterson could respond by viciously beating one of his other children, which would almost definitely get him released. And who would be waiting with open arms to scoop him up?
The Steelers are mum on the status of veteran defensive back Troy Polamalu. Sources close to the team said Mike Tomlin “Harry and The Hendersons”-ed Polamalu last week but they’re concerned he’s going to make his way out of the forest and show up at Steelers training camp. And for those of you who don’t know that classic film reference, this is precisely what Tomlin did:
The NFL sent an investigator to the Jets’ facility earlier this month to investigate the charge that owner Woody Johnson was in violation of anti-tampering rules when he was on record earlier this year saying he’d love to bring Darrelle Revis back to the Jets. But in a shocking twist, the NFL has decided to punish the Patriots for reverse tampering. It’s a little known corollary in the NFL’s rulebook that states the following: “Any team that signs a player with the knowledge that the team’s biggest rival covets that player is in effect baiting that rival into tampering, which goes against the integrity of the game.” There’s another minor addendum to this rule that states, “This reverse tampering rule only pertains to teams located in the six states of New England.”
Quarterback Pat White, a former second round pick by the Dolphins, retired from football after spending one year with the Edmonton Eskimos of the CFL. In a press release, White said, “I’ll always cherish my time up in Edmonton with those guys. By the end of last season, it truly felt like we were a team of Eskimo Brothers, not just individual players.”
And finally, ESPN.com reported last night that Johnny Manziel is expected to check out of rehab and return to the Browns on April 20th to be part of their offseason workouts. Sounds like a plan to me. The worst thing that could have happened with Manziel’s reintroduction to the real world was for it to fall on a date famous for a dangerous substance, you know, like St. Patrick’s day on 3/17. What a disaster that would have been. But I’m certain there are no built-in temptations on the very innocuous date of 4/20. But just to be sure, let’s take a quick look at the google results when I search “4/20″…
Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Browns organization, when photos surface of Johnny Football hanging out with Josh Gordon, Michael Phelps, Woody Harrelson and myself after his workout on that date.
Thank you, all. You’ve been great. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.
The NHL started featuring at least one outdoor regular season game per year only at the beginning of 2008. For the first few years, they stuck to just one such game, the Winter Classic, played on New Year’s Day. In 2014, they created the Stadium Series, which allows them to host a handful of outdoor games each season. So the concept is still relatively new and a limited amount of fans have been able to catch one of these games in person.
This past Saturday night I became one of those fans. My brother was kind enough to take me with him to the Kings-Sharks game held at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.
Any sports fan should immediately say yes to an invite for an outdoor hockey game. It’s such a unique experience. For people in many parts of the United States and across all of Canada, the earliest memories of playing hockey revolve around a frozen pond, hand-me-down skates, makeshift goals and the biting winter wind attacking their faces. Playing outdoors in the elements feels right when it comes to hockey.
On top of that organic, back-to-its-roots feel that comes along with an outdoor game, there’s also something really exciting about being part of an audience that’s three or four times larger than the normal crowd at a hockey game. It just feels more important.
With only six weeks remaining until the NHL playoffs and the Sharks and Kings battling for the same playoff spot, this game actually was important. Throw in the recent history of the Kings winning two Stanley Cups in the last three years—including last season’s run that started when LA completed an historic comeback from a 3-0 series deficit in the 1st round against these same Sharks—and San Jose repeatedly underperforming in the playoffs, and suddenly we had a true rivalry game at a key point in the season with pond hockey at a state-of-the-art NFL facility as the backdrop.
This event was going to be awesome, right?
For the most part, yeah, it was fantastic. The Kings won 2-1 with a 3rd period goal being the difference. The game was pretty evenly played and both teams had plenty of great scoring chances. The weather was perfect: a little chilly so it felt like we were watching outdoor hockey, but not so cold to make it miserable for fans sitting in their seats for three hours.
But despite the good times and enjoyable experience, I was able to nitpick and find six legitimate complaints. I’m not sure if these things are the NHL’s fault, Levi’s Stadium’s fault or a combination. Here they are in no particular order:
1. Temporary Prohibition: At 6pm, about 75 minutes before the opening puck drop, some of the beer vendors ran out of beer. Look at all those sad empty boxes in the picture above. My brother and I were second in line at the time these workers announced they were all out of the only product they had for sale at their stand. They pointed out another beer stand but said that stand already borrowed from them earlier, so they were probably low or out too. In fact, these guys were so unsure of whether or not any more beer was coming, they started handing money back to customers. That’s gotta be a worst case scenario for a stadium and a greedy sports league, right? You give money back to your customers due to inept employees or logistics, and you block people from getting liquored up, which stops them from making drunk purchasing decisions (more beer, lots of food, spontaneous merchandise transactions). Who’s running this league anyway? Roger Goodell?
2. “Easy Listening” as the Music Choice: The NHL has this rare opportunity with every outdoor game to make it bigger than it really is. In terms of the theatrics and entertainment, they should treat these events like the Super Bowl. Blow it out. Make the entire experience memorable, not just the game itself. So who did they roll out to get the fans fired up for hockey? None other than Kris Allen for the opening song & the National Anthem and Melissa Etheridge for the 2nd intermission performance. Everyone knows Etheridge and her style. And I’m sure you’d agree that hockey doesn’t really scream for her type of music. As for Allen, he’s a former American Idol winner who seems to specialize in soft, easy-listening, Christian music. Again, I can’t see any natural link between this artist or his music and a live sporting event or the typical hockey fan. It’s beyond mind-boggling. It was infuriating to have to sit through that crap. In fact, these performances were so out of place, it made John Fogerty’s 1st intermission set seem like the perfect fit for a hockey game. Fogerty was actually awesome. He played the Creedence hits, rocked out as hard as I imagine he can rock out, and seemed like he was having a genuinely good time. But the rest of the music was just disappointing.
3. Piped-In Sound Effects: My brother said it sounded like Michael Bay had produced the sound effects that were coming through stadium speakers during the game. And I think that’s a spot-on comment. Think about how lame it would be if a stadium was playing the audio/natural sound from the game being played over their speaker system. It’s just corny, right? The natural noises of the game should sound natural, not extra loud or enhanced. Well imagine if they didn’t even play the natural sound (of shots being taken, pucks being blocked, skates scraping across the ice) but instead created their own exaggerated version of what those game sounds should be. It was like listening to a lightsaber battle in Star Wars combined with the noises from a pinball machine. It was laughable, considering they were trying to play it off like those sound effects were simply the natural noises of the hockey game. Corny, over-the-top and terrible.
4. Bandwidth Problems in the Valley: Speaking of technology, the fans were repeatedly beat over the head with messages saying to download the Levi’s App for a special interactive light show during the intermissions (where, presumably, everyone’s lights/flashes on their smartphones would blink in rhythm with the music). Except in the heart of Silicon Valley, apparently 70,000 people can’t be connected to the internet all at once, even on “the Nation’s #1 networks” or whatever the stupid cell companies say about their 4G capabilities. I could hardly get Twitter to load once every 25 minutes let alone download an app that could take control of my phone. Do you think by the year 2075 humans will have fixed this ongoing problem of not knowing how to make the internet work when more than five people are trying to access it at the same time from the same location?
5. A Showcase for Ugly Uniforms: Ugly, unimaginative jerseys for both teams The Sharks went with this:
Notice the size of the numbers (which was done on purpose so the fans up in the nosebleeds of this extra large stadium could see who was on the ice). Also notice that the Sharks’ base color, teal, is just ugly on a uniform of any sport. Unfortunately they don’t have too many variations to choose from in their short history: Sharks Jersey History. Looks like they need to finally put a buck or two into having someone redesign their look and brand.
The Kings, on the other hand, have a variety of yellows, purples, and blacks to choose from when looking back at their history. Instead, they went with the drabbest of drab:
This is supposed to be the NHL’s grand showcase. You think the NFL or MLB would have let a chance to roll out a classic or bold new uniform slip through their fingers on the National stage? This might seem like a minor detail, but I think it’s actually a pretty huge fail. So many more people would be interested in buying a commemorative Stadium Series jersey if, you know, there was something interesting and different about the jersey.
6. Fake Sharks: Again, this is supposed to be an event where even people who aren’t going to start watching a lot of hockey say to themselves every year, “I gotta see those outdoor games. They always do the coolest things during those.”
And you know what’s cool? Real sharks swimming around in the manmade shark tanks that surrounded the outer edges of the football field (right below the first rows of seats). I didn’t do a good job getting a picture of these pools, but if you look back at the very first picture at the top of this article, you can see right in front of the Stadium Series sign is a little bit of water. They had these large pools scattered throughout stadium.
Imagine a handful of great whites circling below everyone for the duration of the game? It would be a great feature, a rare thing to see, and an easy way to hold onto half your security budget because there’d be no need for people to monitor for fans running into the playing area (or other official on-field areas).
They didn’t even bother with complete fake sharks. They lazily placed a couple fake shark fins sticking out of each pool and called it a day. How could they have screwed this up so badly?
Here’s what I know: In 11 months, 100 million pairs of eyes will be on this same Bay Area stadium as the NFL hosts its 50th Super Bowl here. Of course the NFL has a much better handle on how to put on a show, so you can expect the music and the lack-of-real-sharks problem to be resolved. But Levi’s Stadium didn’t seem like a facility ready to host the world’s largest annual sporting event.
We’re talking about a major NFL milestone with the 50th Super Bowl, and we’re talking about history as Tom Brady will likely be going for Lombardi Trophy #5 in his own backyard. Don’t screw this up for us, Levi’s Stadium.
I decided on Sunday night that I wouldn’t stop celebrating the Patriots’ Super Bowl win until Gronk stopped. When I saw this tweet on Tuesday afternoon, I knew it was time to start writing.
The great thing about this fourth Super Bowl victory for the Brady/Belichick era Patriots is that there’s no need to debate things. I don’t want to write 1,500 words trying to argue about legacies, and you don’t want me to do that. It’s pretty clear-cut at this point:
Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback and greatest winner the NFL has ever seen.
Bill Belichick is the best football coach. Ever. Period.
There is no logical argument that can be made against either of those facts. Certainly bitter, unappreciative people from outside New England will look for arguments, but only the most insecure Patriots fans will even bother listening.
Chicago has Michael Jordan.
New York has Babe Ruth.
Edmonton / Los Angeles has Wayne Gretzky.
And now New England has Brady.
The greatest of all time.
And since Brady plans to play for another three or four years and the Patriots are the odds-on favorite to return to the Super Bowl for the AFC next year, let’s not use this fourth Lombardi Trophy as an end point in his career. Maybe he wins a fifth Championship. Maybe he makes it to two more Super Bowls but loses them both. It doesn’t matter. Nothing short of a Lance Armstrong-level doping scandal can knock Brady off the top of the QB perch (unless Eli Manning rattles off three straight Super Bowl wins starting next year, which would make the entire idea of ranking quarterbacks absurd).
Yes, I’m an unapologetic Patriots fan who will absolutely be annoying to talk to for the next couple months, but don’t you dare accuse me of being someone who can’t make light of things that happen to his hometown teams. I’m pretty sure what happened in the following Vine is that Jimmy Garoppolo jumps up & down like a normal human, but he immediately notices that Brady celebrates like a seven-year-old girl who had a few too many Pixie Stix, and so Garoppolo had to quickly adjust (because no one is allowed to look cooler than Brady at any given moment):
I totally understand the people who couldn’t bring themselves to root for either team in the Super Bowl and didn’t even want it to be a good game. I felt that way last year when Seattle trounced Denver. But after living through that relatively boring game and this past Sunday’s instantly-epic one, I gotta figure no one’s upset with the way this game went down no matter what your feelings are on either of the teams.
On the surface it appears as though the Patriots were the winners on Sunday, but of course the NFL won in a big way too. They got a record-breaking audience watching a game that immediately vaulted into the “Top three Super Bowls of all time” conversation as soon as the fourth quarter clock struck 00:00. And maybe most importantly, the NFL got a nearly flawless game from the referees.
Here’s the tweet of the week, courtesy of Michael David Smith (@MichaelDavSmith), managing editor of Pro Football Talk: “The six most-watched American TV shows of all time were the last six Super Bowls. No. 7 is the MASH finale.”
And yes, Super Bowl XLIX was the most-watched TV show ever.
I’ll reiterate something I’ve been writing in this space with regularity this season: The NFL has us…BY. THE. BALLS.
As far as betting on the game went, I didn’t have an awesome outcome on my Prop Bets. I won four of them (Brady over 1.5 TD passes, Russell Wilson under 42.5 rushing yards, Al Michaels did mention the point-spread, and Belichick wore a blue hoodie). But I lost about 15 of them.
Hopefully you made an extremely large, totally irresponsible bet on the Patriots to win just like I did about 30 minutes before kickoff.
If you did that, then you’ve definitely got a bunch of money in your Bovada account. One recommendation before you cash out for the season: Take a look at the Super Bowl odds for next year and find a couple longshots that you like. Throw a few bucks on a few teams to win Super Bowl 50, and then request payment for the rest of your balance. This will help you avoid stupidly betting on the NBA, NHL or college basketball when you have no business doing that.
Here are the handful of teams I’m throwing money on today before I cash out:
Green Bay (8/1 odds): OK, it turns out I took one non-longshot. The Packers might be the only NFC team that can challenge the Seahawks next year. And there’s a chance Seattle’s schedule is difficult enough that the Packers finally get that critical #1 seed.
Baltimore (33/1): Because they’re definitely the only team that can challenge New England in the AFC. As long as Baltimore makes the playoffs, it doesn’t matter if they dominate and go 14-2, or they back into the postseason with nine wins and some good luck, they have a reasonable shot to get back to the Super Bowl.
Atlanta (40/1): Because Dan Quinn’s defensive chops and just his fresh blood at head coach could get these guys back to the playoffs. Remember how horrible the NFC South was this past year. I’d much rather have Atlanta at 40/1 than New Orleans at 25/1.
Houston (40/1): This is purely based on my guess that Bill O’Brien will go out and find a decent quarterback either through trade or free agent signing. O’Brien did a fine job in his first season as Houston’s coach. The AFC South was almost as weak as its NFC counterpart in 2014. And who wouldn’t want to have a lottery ticket like this if it means rooting for J.J. Watt in meaningful January football games?
NY Giants (40/1): Just like a Presidential Election…every four years.
On that final bet, yes, I’m fully prepared for the Patriots to lose Super Bowl 50 to the Giants. It’ll strengthen a really weird historical footnote in Brady’s career that he did everything you could ever ask the G.O.A.T. to do except beat Eli Manning in a big game.
It’s that sort of crazy randomness that keeps more and more fans tuning into NFL games even as the people running the league continue to one-up themselves in the broad category known as “ineptitude.”
This was a fun season to write about the NFL twice a week. I hope everyone enjoyed reading this column as much as I enjoyed writing it. Of course I’ll be back for next season, and you can expect some columns every now and then during the offseason whenever there’s something newsworthy to discuss.
Enjoy patching things up with all the family members you’ve neglected over the past 22 weeks!
Six months after posting my first NFL preview column for the 2014 season, I’m still worrying about the same exact thing as I was on that August day: the Seattle Seahawks.
During the preseason, the regular season and even the early part of the playoffs, I was praying someone else would knock the Seahawks off. As a sports fan, you’re always going to appreciate your team beating the toughest possible competition on its way to a Championship, but as a Patriots fan, I’ll take Super Bowl #4 any way I can get it. So if someone wanted to do New England a big favor and knock off the champs before a possible Super Bowl matchup, that was fine by me.
But it didn’t happen. It seems that in 2014, the Manning brothers ended their automatically-renewing deal with the devil and the Seahawks swooped in to take their place.
OK, everyone else in the country, your team couldn’t knock off Seattle so we’ll step up and do your dirty work. After all, I can’t imagine any impartial fans would be rooting for the Seahawks over the Patriots? That would be lunacy…unless the NFL fabricated a cheating scandal to purposely unite the nation in its hatred for a common enemy. But what league that claims any sort of legitimacy would get up to those types of shenanigans?
Oh.
For better or worse, we’re looking at one of the most anticipated Super Bowls in recent memory. We thought we had a similar game on tap last year only for the Broncos to no-show in the most important moment of their collective lives. Let’s hope Seattle doesn’t get scared of the Patriots and go down that same path.
At this point in the week it seems silly to go too deep into the matchups and analytics so let’s just tackle the pick for this game through a smorgasbord of random thoughts & stories.
A stupid cliche that won’t die
First thing’s first. Throughout this past week, I’ve heard a number of analysts and former players making their pick for Seattle based on that old cliche “defense wins championships.” I’ve heard it phrased a million different ways, but the bottom line is that people seem to think the better defense almost always wins out in the Super Bowl. As usual, I decided to do the research on my own. Here is the list of the past 13 Super Bowls with each team’s regular season defensive ranking (according to FootballOutsiders.com) in parentheses:
Super Bowl 48: Seattle (1st) over Denver (15th)
Super Bowl 47: Baltimore (19th) over San Francisco (3rd)
Super Bowl 46: Giants (19th) over New England (30th)
Super Bowl 45: Green Bay (2nd) over Pittsburgh (1st)
Super Bowl 44: New Orleans (17th) over Indianapolis (16th)
Super Bowl 43: Pittsburgh (1st) over Arizona (21st)
Super Bowl 42: Giants (13th) over New England (11th)
Super Bowl 41: Indianapolis (25th) over Chicago (2nd)
Super Bowl 40: Pittsburgh (3rd) over Seattle (16th)
Super Bowl 39: New England (7th) over Philadelphia (16th)
Super Bowl 38: New England (2nd) over Carolina (10th)
Super Bowl 37: Tampa Bay (1st) over Oakland (7th)
Super Bowl 36: New England (13th) over St. Louis (5th)
Out of these 13 Super Bowls, the better defense won the game seven times (54% of the time). And in five of those seven games where the better defense actually did win, it was by less than a touchdown. So there’s really no truth to this cliche, and Seattle’s #1 defense shouldn’t automatically intimidate the Patriots or the people who want to bet on the Patriots.
Two small items to consider before you pick
From a statistical standpoint, the number-crunchers at FootballOutsiders.com are calling this the closest Super Bowl matchup in history. While it’s fun to consider an alternate point spread prop bet that has one of these teams winning by 10+ and paying you off in a major way, it’s highly unlikely. Over & over this week I’ve wanted to make a case for why the Patriots will win in a blowout. I just don’t see it. Both teams are great at staying in games and making the right decisions and tweaks. Rarely do either of these teams suffer a true meltdown.
From an anecdotal standpoint, I’m assuming this is going to essentially be a home game for Seattle, right? It’s not that I don’t have faith in my fellow New Englanders..it’s just, well, no I don’t actually have any faith in them. That Seattle fan base seems much more likely to take a city over. They’re loud, proud & obnoxious in a way most cities could only dream of. They have a shorter & cheaper flight to Arizona. They didn’t suffer a blizzard earlier in the week that could have messed with their travel plans. They haven’t been to as many Super Bowls in the past 15 years and therefore probably have more fans clamoring to spend their kids’ college tuitions on a two-night trip to the Phoenix area. Let’s not fight it. The villain Patriots are playing in hostile territory on Sunday.
The head vs the heart
When thinking about this game on & off for the past 10 days, I kept coming back to one thing: Do I want to make this pick with my head or with my heart?
Picking from my heart obviously means I’m going with the Patriots. The heart says the Patriots are finally getting that jolt of Eff You motivation at the right time. In 2007, the SpyGate Eff You mode wore that team down by December. New England started playing angry in week 2 of that season and couldn’t sustain it for the next 20 weeks. But this year’s Patriots got screwed by the league at just the right time. They’ve had two weeks to get pissed off at all the irresponsible accusations. They’ve been thrown under the bus repeatedly and the drivers of those buses have made sure to back up and run the bodies over a second time. (We can refer to this as “pulling a Suge Knight” now, right?)
The heart also says that Tom Brady & Bill Belichick finally get Super Bowl win #4 and stand alone at the top of their respective quarterbacking and coaching mountains. The heart says they deserve this reward for continually building a championship contender the right way, for being the only team that you can consistently say year in & year out will almost definitely be one of the final four teams standing, and for handling more off-field adversity than any other team over the past two years (beginning with the Aaron Hernandez murder charge right before the start of 2013 training camp and extending through this past week with that goddamn football inflation garbage).
The heart says Brady has a game for the ages…perhaps something similar to his surgical dissection of the Jaguars in a 2008 playoff game where he went 26-of-28 for 262 yards and three touchdown passes.
The head doesn’t necessarily agree with all this. Ten days ago the head was telling me the Seahawks should be the pick. First of all, anyone with even a small amount of football & gambling knowledge should have predicted Seattle would be a two or three-point favorite over New England. But with the way the Patriots demolished Indy last Sunday night, coming on the heels of Russell Wilson’s worst game as a professional QB, the money immediately poured in for New England and we got this still-current line of New England favored by two points. So the head is definitely worried about the amount of money that came in on the Patriots early.
The head also knows that the current “Eff You motivation” could just as easily be a distraction. The entire team—especially the head coach and starting quarterback—have had to spend some time on the deflated footballs accusation since last Monday. Even if it’s not a lot of time, they still had to break from routine for a little bit. My guess is that there’s probably more examples in professional sports of a distracted team underperforming than of them banding together and overcoming the adversity.
But it’s not quite as simple as my head knowing the Seahawks should be the pick. My head also thinks the Patriots can win if they play a nearly perfect game.
It’s been pretty predictable for New England in the playoffs so far: Whatever aspect of their game seems like the obvious one that needs to be successful in order for them to win has indeed been the critical piece in advancing. Against Baltimore we knew they had to keep Brady upright and contain the pass rush. They did that exceptionally well compared to their last few games against the Ravens. And when facing the Colts, of course establishing the run is key to getting a win. They did that and then some.
So what’s the obvious key for the Patriots in the Super Bowl? I think it’s two-fold.
No turnovers. Believe it or not, Brady has thrown at least one interception in eight of his last 11 playoff games. Turnovers are always a recipe for losing, but against this very fast and athletic Seattle defense, it’s even more crucial. You want to make the Seahawks’ offense earn every single yard & point, so a Pick-Six would be devastating (as would any turnover that leads to a short field for Seattle).
Make Russell Wilson’s legs a non-factor. If Marshawn Lynch gains 150 rushing yards on 30 carries, so be it. The Patriots have allowed big days to many running backs over the years and have lived to talk about it because they almost never give up long runs. If a team wants to methodically chip away with four & five-yard runs all game, that’s fine by the Patriots. But if Wilson starts making plays by running, that’s going to open up the whole defense and the odds of Lynch ripping off those huge runs increase exponentially. The Patriots can handle one guy having a good running day, but not two.
Another thing I keep turning over in my head is that if one of these teams gets to 27 points, the game’s over. It sounds like a lot of predictions coming in from the experts have this being a particularly low-scoring game. I don’t see it being super low-scoring and I don’t see it being a battle of both teams reaching the 30’s. But I could see something like 28-24.
And this ties back to where New England has struggled in its past two Super Bowl appearances. This franchise has averaged 31 points per game in the regular season since the start of 2007. But in their two Super Bowls since then, they’ve combined for exactly 31 points. You can’t win many games when being held to 14 or 17 points.
Unfortunately none of this matters one bit
What we need to be doing is looking at this game from the standpoint of what the NFL most wants to see happen. Let’s face it, the NFL—and the NFL alone—is going to determine the outcome of the Super Bowl.
The league has done a fantastic job over the years of building the Patriots up as the ultimate villain, but is it as simple as creating a monster so a record-breaking audience tunes in and then the good guys vanquish the bad guys? If it’s that simple, then the NFL isn’t really milking this for all it’s worth. And we all know the NFL will milk something way past the point of that thing being dried up.
I think the best case for the NFL is for New England to win, but not in a tidy sort of “oh, turns out they can still win when they don’t cheat” way. It’ll be in an overtly controversial way. This allows the rest of the country to still be angry at the Patriots, and it provides a built-in villain for the 2015 season.
And what’s the NFL’s go-to blueprint for controversy? Letting the referees get involved and bungle an important call.
My head and my heart are telling me this game swings on a controversial play that will throw the refs into the spotlight and allow people to question yet another Patriots Super Bowl win. Gun to my head, I’d pick a phantom roughing the passer call against Seattle on a crucial 4th quarter New England drive.
For many different reasons, I’m picking the Patriots to win 27-24.
The Patriots get that elusive 4th ring. We all finally get to pop that bottle of champagne that’s been sitting in our fridge since February 2008. And hopefully the New England fans I’m with will be OK with an emotional embrace like this lasting image of Belichick and his coordinators from the Patriots’ last Super Bowl victory:
A collective groan from the league’s other 30 fan bases
If we can look ahead to the 2015 season for just a second, I have some bad news for a lot of you football fans out there. The Patriots & Seahawks are going to be the odds-on favorites to be right back in this spot one year from now. And how can anyone try to argue against that? The Patriots are kind of a no-brainer considering their biggest rival, Denver, is on life support. The Colts, Bengals, Steelers and Chargers can’t be taken seriously. That leaves only the Ravens once again standing in New England’s way going into the 2015 season.
Over in the NFC, the Seahawks won’t have to worry about San Francisco for a little while, and Detroit/Dallas/Philly can’t be relied on for continued success. That leaves Green Bay. Having the best QB in football, the Packers are certainly a lot more threatening to Seattle than anyone in the AFC is to New England.
I’m already looking forward to the New England-Seattle rematch next year in San Francisco. And I’m sure there will be a fresh batch of controversies and off-the-field bullshit that the NFL will create just to keep itself in the news. Can’t wait!
Counterpoint from a Seattle fan
I promised to devote equal time in this column to both teams and that was clearly a lie. But here are the opinions of my buddy Brad, a Seattle fan whose sports expertise began and ended with the 1995 Mariners up until the Seahawks won the Super Bowl last year:
I think the Seahawks are going to win the game for the following reasons:
The Seahawks have enough great athletes to pressure Brady with four and double Gronk. Unless Edelman goes off from the slot, Brady will struggle.
Bobby Wagner is a beast. So is Kam Chancellor. They will destroy whoever Belichick runs out there as running back of the week.
Marshawn Lynch is awesome. The Seahawks’ line will be healthier than they were against Green Bay and the Pats aren’t very good against good running backs.
Wilson will come back from his worst game since Pop Warner and keep them in the game while the defense and Lynch wear the Pats down.
Also, there is this: When the public is betting on your team in Vegas, you’d better run for the hills: “Vegas, fans favoring Patriots.”
The best part about there being only three more days until the Super Bowl is that the media only has three more days of overblown and made-up stories to shove down our throats. It feels so good to type those words.
As predicted by anyone with a brain, the deflated footballs non-story finally died down, even with some last ditch efforts to reignite the outrage (he went into a bathroom before going out on the field! the NFL is naming people of interest!…which is almost as cute as when me and my brothers would play “lawyers” growing up. We liked pretending we were adults with important jobs and actual authority too!)
And the media tried so hard on Tuesday and Wednesday to get all the idiots in America to be outraged over Marshawn Lynch’s refusal to speak, but that was to no avail. It turns out if it’s not about Bill Belichick and the Patriots cheating outsmarting everyone else, it’s not juicy enough.
It feels like we’re finally entering the phase where the upcoming game is being talked about. But don’t bet against Roger Goodell saying something at his “State of the NFL” address on Friday that puts controversy right back into the spotlight.
I promise to stay controversy-free for the rest of this Props column, but I can’t promise the same for Friday’s column that’ll be dedicated to picking the winner of the game (with some brand new conspiracy theories as a side dish).
While many of my readers have bit the bullet and signed up for an online gambling account at this point, I realize there are some who would love to play along with prop bets but still don’t want to truly gamble. Well the Super Bowl party I attended last year had a fun way to make this happen for all of the fake bettors. Below is a picture of the prop bets game they had everyone play. Each person at the party would write down an answer for each bet on the list, and then the winner was simply the person who got the most correct. I think the creator of this forgot to include a legit prize last year, but you can make it anything. A $20 gift card to Amazon or something simple. If nothing more, it’s a nice complement to the traditional Super Bowl squares since it causes people to pay attention to other things going on in the game. And you can obviously create whatever questions you want.
But if you need more than that $20 Amazon card, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve been on fire during the playoffs with my prop bets (where “fire” = “probably hovering just above 50% but I try to make it sound like I haven’t lost a singlet bet”).
So let’s ignore the point spread and the over/under game total for today and focus solely on the props. There are over 500 prop bets available, most of which you can see HERE on Bovada’s website. And let’s get a little wild here. Usually I stick to 5-7 prop bets per weekend, but what’s the point of the Super Bowl if it’s not for me to empty my entire Bovada account on these ludicrous bets? I’m giving you 19 picks for the Super Bowl!
Here they are:
How long will it take Idina Menzel to sing the US National Anthem?
This is the first of three bets I’m making that don’t really have anything to do with the actual game. For this prop, I’m going big on Under 2 minutes 1 second (-120 odds) for the National Anthem. I don’t know much about this woman who’s singing, but I know what the numbers say…
Menzel has only two prior National Anthem performances that are available on video. This past summer she performed at the MLB All-Star game and clocked in at 1 minute 58 seconds. And in December 2007, she sang in the Giants/Patriots week 17 game and finished in 1 minute 34 seconds. I went back and watched those performances (and clocked them myself), and let me tell ya, that 1:58 rendition felt like the slowest singing of the Anthem possible. I can’t imagine her singing anything more slowly than that.
The other piece of data is that apparently in the last nine Super Bowls, the average Anthem length was 1 minute 56 seconds. Put it all on the under!
Will Al Michaels refer to the point spread, total, odds on who wins the game or any prop bet during the game?
I love Yes (+170) as the bet here. In a game this big, where everyone in the world has already heard who’s favored by how many, the announcer is almost always going to casually mention who that favorite is or something to that effect. But for the uninitiated, you should know that Al Michaels almost always finds a way to work in the spread or the point total into his broadcasts. This is like stealing.
What color will Bill Belichick’s hoodie be?
I like Blue (even money). The other options are Grey (-120) and Red (+750). If memory serves, Belichick wore red and grey in the Super Bowl losses to the Giants. I think he remembers that and has the same stupid superstitions that I do. Also, he’s been known to wear the track suit/warm-up suit in warm weather and domes. If he doesn’t wear a hoodie at all, the bet is off and you get your money back.
Player to score the first Patriots touchdown in the game
Rob Gronkowski (13/4), LeGarrette Blount (9/2), Shane Vereen (8/1)
I’m betting all three of those guys knowing my profit will be smaller on the winner because I have to lose the other two. Barring a rare long touchdown, the Patriots score almost exclusively by throwing to Gronk or running the ball (at least that’s the recent trend). Gronk & Blount are the odds-on favorites to win this prop, but I don’t think getting cute is the right move here. Just pick those guys and move on. And because the Pats might choose to go more with a pass-catching running back at times, I’m putting Vereen into the mix just in case.
Player to score the first Seahawks touchdown in the game
Jermaine Kearse (7/1), Luke Willson (8/1)
Here’s where we want to go down the longshot path. And these two guys aren’t even that big of longshots. While Lynch, Russell Wilson and Doug Baldwin are the three favorites for Seattle’s first touchdown, the Patriots simply don’t give up touchdowns to running backs, quarterbacks or #1 wide receivers these days. It seems like the opponent’s second or third receiving options, or its tight end, are the ones putting up points on the Patriots. That’s why I like Kearse and Willson.
Player to score the first touchdown in the game
Rob Gronkowski (13/2). If you feel good about the Patriots, then it’s not a terrible thing to double down on Gronk in this case. Now we’re saying he’s scoring the first touchdown among either team, not just New England. You can probably guess that a few bets from now, I’m going to be promoting Gronk as a possible MVP candidate.
Total touchdown passes – Tom Brady
I’m taking Over 1.5 (-180) for two reasons. One is because the Seahawks don’t let up many rushing touchdowns (less than half a touchdown on the ground per game allowed). And two because Brady is only two touchdowns shy of tying Joe Montana’s career record of 11 total touchdowns in the Super Bowl. The Patriots aren’t going to game plan for this, but if it’s within reach and it’s a coin flip of a decision on running or throwing, he’s throwing.
Total rushing yards – Tom Brady
Let’s go Over 2.5 (even money) with this one. Yes, it does feel a little pathetic to be betting on a person to gain three total yards. But those of us who have been paying attention can take advantage. When I thought about Brady’s recent games, I immediately sensed that he’s been scrambling a bit more. And it turns out I was right. In five of the past six games, Brady has gone over the 2.5 line for rushing yards. In fact, in each of those five games, he finished with seven or more yards. So it’s not like he’s just barely breaking that mark. He’s obliterating it.
Total rushing yards – Russell Wilson
It seems counterintuitive to pick Brady for an “over” bet on rushing yards and Wilson for an “under” bet in the same category, but Wilson’s total is 42.5. I’m going Under 42.5 rushing yards for Wilson (-115). The Patriots under Belichick have never been the type of team that gives up a lot of yards on the ground to the quarterback. I also think New England has enough confidence in its secondary that it’ll put extra attention on stopping the run, from Lynch and Wilson.
Total receptions – Jermaine Kearse
It’s probably clear from the bets above that I’m leaning towards New England having a good offensive game, but that doesn’t mean I’m expecting every Seattle player to suck. The yards have to be gained and the passes have to be caught by someone. I like the #2 receiver in a game against the Patriots. I say Kearse will have 5 or more receptions (7/1). It’s a great longshot.
How many successful field goals will be kicked in the game by the Seahawks?
The answer is Over 1.5 (-150). Even though Seattle has only made one field goal in its first two playoff games, I’m not worried. This is a pretty conservative offense, especially when it’s going up against a formidable defense. I don’t think Seattle expects to put up four touchdowns in this game, but rather chip away on offense while their defense does the rest. Pete Carroll tends to be a pretty conservative coach on 4th downs, and the Seahawks weren’t a great 3rd down team in 2014 either.
Will both teams have the lead during the 1st half?
Yes (+130). Mostly because I’m getting an extra 30% on my bet for a very typical scenario to play out: Team A goes up 3-0 on a field goal, Team B answers with a touchdown. Done and done.
Will there be a punt return for a touchdown in the game?
Did you know that there has been a safety in each of the past three Super Bowls and four of the last six. For whatever reason, this keeps happening. I was going to put some money on there being a safety this year too (+550), but that’s such an anomaly. There’s no way we’re going to keep seeing a safety scored in every Super Bowl.
So instead I’m taking that money and putting it on Yes (+750) for whether or not there will be a punt return touchdown. Julian Edelman happens to be a fantastic punt returner. Also, this Patriots season has mimicked the 2001-2004 Patriots teams pretty closely, and those teams could always be counted on for an incredible special teams play in the biggest moments.
Will a 2-point conversion be attempted in the game?
Yes (+195). You’re giving me nearly 2-to-1 odds on something that happens with regularity in the NFL. It’s also something that has happened in each of the last five Super Bowls.
Will the game go to overtime?
Yes (7/1). I get roped into this bet every year under the premise of “hey, it has to happen eventually.” I swore I wouldn’t bite on it this year, but then I noticed the odds are +700. This same bet last year was only +550 for “yes”. If they’re going to keep increasing the odds on this prop, then they have a customer for life.
MVP Bets
Rob Gronkowski (9/1): Because if any Patriots player would win it besides Brady, it would be Gronk. A great game by #87 could get voters to choose him with the reasoning of “Hey, Gronk, you had an awesome season. Sorry we couldn’t put you in the regular season MVP discussion, but just know that you’re the greatest.” But I still don’t love this because if the Patriots don’t win the game by running, then they’re probably spreading the ball around and then we’re back at Brady for MVP.
Jermaine Kearse (50/1): Something about that #2 wide receiver randomly going off for a huge game or making an iconic catch…Santonio Holmes was #2 behind Hines Wards when he won the MVP in Super Bowl XLIII, and Deion Branch was the #2 guy behind David Givens (in fact, Branch was kind of #3 behind David Patten too) when he won the MVP in Super Bowl XXXIX. Call it a hunch.
Marshawn Lynch (5/1): STAY AWAY. I may not know who is winning the MVP, but I know who isn’t. You know who gets to decide the MVP of this game for the most part? The media (they account for 80% of the vote). You know which group has collectively decided over the past few months—and especially the last few days—that they hate Marshawn Lynch? The media. Is there a bet somewhere that just says “Marshawn Lynch will NOT win the MVP?” Even if the odds are -3000, I’d make that bet.
There you have it. You can spread some money across all 19 of those bets, or put all your money on one or two that you love, or bet the opposite of everything I picked because you know my track record. There are limitless possibilities.
Whatever you do, just have fun with it and don’t be afraid to be that guy at the Super Bowl party who screams wildly after a 3-yard QB sneak by Tom Brady from his own 20 yard line in the 1st quarter. Everyone’s going to think you’re crazy, but crazy is OK if you’re also rich.
My pick for the winner of Super Bowl XLIX is coming up on Friday.
A quick note before I dive into my column: If you really want to read my thoughts on the deflated football confusion going on with the Patriots, please scroll all the way to the bottom of this post. I’m not going to dignify the ridiculousness of that story by leading with it. I’ve never had more people reach out to me begging for a blog than over the last few days with this non-story, so that’s the only reason I’m even mentioning it at all. I suspect that when the dust settles around this and the Patriots aren’t punished even one penny, all of you fools will think to yourselves, “Wow, we just wasted a week of our lives FREAKING OUT over whether the Patriots purposely made some footballs just a tiny bit softer.” And you’ll all feel pretty stupid, but none of you will admit it. You’ll just fall back on your irrational hatred for New England’s continued success. The funniest part about all this is that almost the entire football world, past players and present, has voiced its opinions that A) This really isn’t a big deal because in no way does it give a team an unfair advantage, and B) They have all doctored the balls themselves or have been with other players who have done so. Like I said, scroll to the bottom if you want more on this.
On To Seattle
There’s this game that’s going to be played in just 10 days. It’s called the Super Bowl. The two best teams in the NFL are facing off to decide the league’s champion. Do you guys wanna talk about that at all? Or should we switch gears from deflated footballs to Seattle’s illegal six-man formation on the game-changing onside kick from the NFC Championship?
OK, I’ll decide for you. The Super Bowl it is.
So the Patriots and Seahawks come into this game having split 16 games against one another in their history. Wow. So on top of it being the Super Bowl, we also have the rubber match in this long, storied rivalry? Too much!
While the current coaches and players had nothing to do with most of those games, there is a regular season matchup between these two teams from week six of the 2012 season that can teach us a few things. I went back and watched the highlightsand read through the game storyso you wouldn’t have to. Here’s what you need to know:
Russell Wilson was a rookie quarterback who was already putting together a nice little resume.
Seattle’s 24-23 win at home against New England would get them off to a 4-2 start while the Patriots would fall to 3-3.
The problem is that one of those wins for Seattle was the Fail Mary game where they “beat” Green Bay on a botched game-ending catch/interception call by the replacement referees in week 3 (the NFL Network person doing the highlights in that link above makes sure to tell us that Golden Tate’s 4th quarter catch against the Patriots was not a controversial catch).
Tom Brady threw the ball 58 times, the Patriots racked up 85 total plays and held the ball for 36 minutes. But Brady threw two back-breaking interceptions on Seattle’s side of the field to take sure-thing points off the board.
There was also some end-of-1st-half mismanagement by New England that cost them three points. They tried to throw one more time with six seconds left (setting up for a field goal if they didn’t get a touchdown), but Brady was flagged for intentional grounding and the 10-second runoff ended the half. So even 27 months ago, Brady was starting to throw stupid interceptions at the wrong time and the Patriots were becoming sketchy in clock management situations at the end of the 2nd quarter.
Aaron Hernandez and Wes Welker were Brady’s top receivers in this game.
Sidney Rice and Braylon Edwards each caught a touchdown for Seattle.
The Patriots held Marshawn Lynch to 41 rushing yards somehow.
The legend of Wilson gained momentum when he led Seattle back from a 13-point 4th quarter deficit to knock off a Super Bowl contender.
Rice’s game-winning 46-yard touchdown catch came with Patriots defenders Nate Ebner and Tavon Wilson giving chase. This is potentially the biggest change since these two teams last met. While Ebner and Wilson are still on New England’s roster, they play sparingly and will not be responsible for covering Seattle’s top receivers with the game on the line next Sunday.
Of all the changes that have happened to both teams since this game, New England’s improved secondary is the X factor.
What hasn’t changed much is that New England entered that 2012 game with the league’s top offense and Seattle came into it with the best defense in the NFL. We’re still going to see that exact matchup at the Super Bowl. One of the most efficient offenses versus the best defense.
I’m fully expecting the Super Bowl to be similarly close as that 2012 matchup. And what’s really encouraging is that both teams seem to be healthy. Brian Stork, the Patriots’ rookie center, returned to practice on Thursday, and the banged up guys in Seattle (Sherman, Thomas) are seemingly on track to play. That’s all we can ask for. All hands on deck.
I’m still a long ways off from making my official predictions and handing out prop bet winners, but if I was forced to pick right now, I’d be going with the Patriots. The line is New England -2.
Considering I’m a Patriots fan and will probably find a reason to pick them no matter what, I’ll try to get the one Seattle fan I know to chime in with his justification for picking his team, just so my readers have contrasting takes on this game.
This really is going to be an outstanding football game. It just sucks that we have to wait another 10 days.
For now I’ll leave you with just a few prop bet notes that caught my eye so far:
If you want to see just how crazy betting websites get when it comes to Super Bowl props, check out Bovada’s special props page: HERE. We’re talking bets like “Which coach will be mentioned first by name on TV after kickoff” and “What color will Katy Perry’s hair be when she begins the halftime show”.
Actually, here’s the craziest one I’ve ever seen, and it’s live right now: “What will be higher – Russell Wilson Passing Yards or the US National Average Gas Price (in cents) on Monday, February 2nd?” Seriously. You can bet on that.
One piece of advice that a wise gambling friend of mine always adheres to is this: If a bet on Bovada has the fine print of “Book Manager’s decision is final,” DO NOT WAGER ON THAT PROP. This is because those particular bets are subjective. They aren’t things that the boxscore or play on the field will tell you. Some guy gets to decide. For example, a current prop bet out there on Bovada states, “Will Bill Belichick smile during the game on camera?” Are you really going to make that bet and put your money in the hands of someone whose best interest is having the Bovada site win more money? You’re going to be pissed when you think you’ve seen a smile but they determine it was “only a smirk.”
And finally, here is something I’ve never EVER seen in all my years of online gambling. In every prop that involves either both coaches or just Belichick, there is fine print that says, “Belichick must be coaching in the game.” That means if Belichick isn’t coaching, the bet is off and you get your money back. I have never seen a casino have to hedge by saying “only if the coach is coaching.” I guess they’re waiting to see if he gets suspended?
And that’s a perfect segue for my final thoughts about the accidental under-inflation of the footballs in New England.
So I’ve already established that this air-in-the-football thing is a lot of panicking about nothing. Every quarterback and kicker wants the football to be a certain way. It sounds like the majority of quarterbacks, current and former, do what they need to do to feel comfortable gripping the ball without giving a single thought to the NFL’s exact rules.
I have plenty of friends who aren’t New England fans, and in fact, hate the Patriots. What’s most telling to me over the last few days is that not one of them has come out of the woodwork to throw jabs at me about the Patriots or their cheating ways. Interestingly enough, none of them are Colts fans, Ravens fans or Jets fans. This is very telling. It seems like the people making a huge stink over all this are the fans of teams that the Patriots have consistently beaten each and every year for the past 14 years.
I get it. I’d do the same thing. But unfortunately for a completely innocent man like Bill Belichick, this forces him to be a “defendant” in a case where he hasn’t been charged with anything.
It’s also complete and utter bullshit that 53 players who have worked their asses off all year to get to this point are being dismissed in favor of “the Patriots only won because they cheated.” Picture yourself in that situation. You work harder and compete better than every opponent you face for a full year and then some jealous assholes chalk up your success to a cheating scandal that isn’t even a cheating scandal.
But let’s take a look at this story from a different angle before I retire these thoughts for good:
For the 14th consecutive season, there is a two-week break in the NFL’s schedule between Conference Championship Sunday and Super Bowl Sunday. And for the 14th consecutive season, the lead-up to the big game will be excruciating. It’s especially bad in the Twitter era where all media types, TV personalities and bloggers need something to talk about 24 hours a day.
This also happens to be the time of year where the NBA, NHL, and most importantly, college basketball are all hitting their late-season strides and fans start to really care.
Do you think the NFL wants to be relegated to third or fourth priority in the news cycles for the next five or six days? No way. They are a machine. And they stop at nothing to lead the sporting news daily.
So tell me…knowing the integrity of the NFL’s decision-makers and that money makes every decision for them, would you really put it past them to use a harmless inquiry by a team on ball inflation rules as a lightning rod for a huge controversy?
I’ve heard anecdotally in the past about lots of different requests/petitions/inquiries every team sends to the league office after certain games. (“We don’t think [fill in the blank] should be allowed and would like to see it addressed by the rules committee.”)
This ball deflation issue probably started out the same way. But what does the NFL want? Headlines! Controversy! A better reason to watch the Super Bowl! A villain everyone can root against!
And, boy, was that ever easy. Just leak out enough information that Indy doesn’t think the Patriots’ win was on the up & up, and boom, you have your scandal.
The NFL has literally said nothing about this investigation for close to 100 hours. Don’t you think if they wanted it to go away they would have come out with more information, assigned blame to someone, or handed down their punishment for those responsible? You don’t accidentally let a topic like this sit out there unattended unless you want it to.
Remember the Ray Lewis Deer Antler Spray in the weeks leading up to Baltimore vs San Francisco in Super Bowl XLVII? That’s what this is all over again. Some stupid nugget of information that shouldn’t be at all scandalous or newsworthy but suddenly is because the timing of when it first came up (and, let’s face it, because everyone wants to peg the Patriots as true cheaters because their teams almost never win against them).
And I think New England should do the same thing Ray Lewis did leading up to the Super Bowl (twice, actually. He also had the murder allegations swirling around him at the Super Bowl in 2001). Say nothing. Give it no attention. Don’t answer questions about it. You only know about the Seattle Seahawks because that’s all you’re focusing on/thinking about this week.
And when the NFL decides that the Super Bowl is close enough for people to be talking a lot about the actual game, they will quietly rule that no one in the Patriots organization was found of any wrongdoing, but they will be overhauling the procedures around how the footballs are handled in the hours leading up to each game going forward.
If you know the NFL at all, you know this is exactly what they wanted and what I just said is exactly how it’s going to play out.
This Patriots fan will not be dragged into another discussion about something as bogus as air pressure inside a fucking football.
Please excuse my tardiness on this recap as Monday was a tough day. I was still feeling the effects of a six-hour drive back to LA from San Francisco on Sunday night after the Patriots game ended. My saint of a fiancee volunteered to drive my drunk ass home so we wouldn’t have to waste our holiday on Monday driving all day.
In 2005, while driving with my brother from Massachusetts to San Francisco to start our post-college lives, I would smoke Phillies Blunt cigars just to stay awake. No one smokes those awful cigars. They buy them to gut them and stuff ’em with weed. But I smoked the cigars just to keep me awake. Fast forward nearly 10 years and my new distraction of choice was to eat an aggressive amount of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets to stay awake so my fiancee would have some company.
I got the sense that she would have rathered me be sleep anyway. A lack of sleep and a clogging up of the plumbing from all those McNuggets led to a very useless Monday after all.
So excuse the lateness of this post. We still have 12 days until the Super Bowl so there will be plenty of time to write thousands upon thousands of words about the Patriots and the Seahawks.
Here is me emptying out my fictitious notebook from the weekend:
After the dust settled on that NFC Championship Game—one of the most bizarre, poorly-played games in football history—the group of guys I was with had a long debate about who ultimately deserves responsibility for the Packers blowing that game. Was it solely on Brandon Bostick, the Green Bay tight end who botched the onside kick recovery? Absolutely not. But now I think people are swinging too far the other way and assigning him almost no blame. I think he gets 35% of the blame because that was just such a huge moment, and it was a situation where simply catching a football, which he’s probably done 90,000 times in his life, is all he has to do.
I’m putting 15% of the blame on Ha Ha Clinton-Dix because he played the poorest single snap of defense in the history of football on that critical two-point conversion:
And that leaves 40% of blame to assign to this Packers loss. That 40% is specially reserved for Mike McCarthy. The group I was watching the game with was screaming at him on his first two field goal attempts in the 1st quarter, when he decided 4th & goal from the 1 yard line was the wrong time to get aggressive. We weren’t screaming, but probably should have been, when McCarthy went to a Mike Smith level of conservative in the 3rd & 4th quarters to protect his precious lead. He caused the most damage out of anyone, even if it was more subtle than the failed kick recovery or two-point conversion defense.
What’s great is that no one can accuse me of jumping on the “McCarthy sucks” bandwagon. It’s been over-documented on this very website how bad of a coach I think he is. There was my first accusation in October 2012 of McCarthy outcoaching himself and being in over his head. In January 2013, I picked the 49ers to beat the Packers almost purely due to McCarthy being a bad coach who will eventually ruin his team’s chances. And then there were repeated shots taken at McCarthy by me throughout the course of the 2014 season, which you can find here, here, hereand here.
Aaron Rodgers is 31 and just completed his seventh season as a starter. In that time, here is where he’s finished each season in passer rating rankings among all players: 6th, 4th, 3rd, 1st, 1st, 5th, 2nd. He has a .700 win percentage in the regular season, but played in a conference championship game for just the second time on Sunday. He gets injured much more than the Hall-of-Famers-in-waiting that he’s compared to (Brady, Manning, Brees) so a sense of urgency on his career is probably the right move. It might be time to try out a coach who can give Rodgers and the Packers that final push they need to be taken seriously every January.
And if Green Bay won’t move on from McCarthy, they might as well spare everyone involved and just decline any future dates with the Seahawks in Seattle. They just had their best shot and vomited all over it.
It’s a much cleaner narrative of who blew the game if Seattle would have lost. It would have been almost entirely on Russell Wilson, with a small assist from Jermaine Kearse. Wilson played so horribly and uncharacteristically that I was positive we were witnessing a game fixing scandal right before our very eyes.
Wait, what’s that? America is going to jump on Seattle’s side in this who-do-we-hate-less debate? Oh, that’s right. People don’t like the Seahawks, its fans or seeing a team start a mini-dynasty…but they absolutely despise the Patriots, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. It’s getting so bad that respected journalists and other media types have resorted to 5th grade tattle tale/sore sport tactics to justify their teams’ embarrassing losses to New England.
So the Patriots once again are playing the role of the villain in the Super Bowl. And the Seahawks are apparently the blessed team. Russell Wilson is doing everything short of saying that Jesus personally visits him before each game and talks about how god made Wilson to be the greatest QB in NFL history and to carry the teachings of god to all the common folk, and when his work is done, god will allow Wilson to ascend directly to heaven.
To work off some nervous energy before the games began on Sunday, my brother and I went for a long run. And during that run, we tried to think of the last time there were consecutive years of the #1 seeds from each conference facing each other in the Super Bowl (with the Patriots and Seahawks advancing, we finally have that scenario happening). We got as far back as 30 years just off the top of our heads without finding another such instance.
More importantly, this trip down Super Bowl memory lane led to a discovery that makes me feel bad for all of us who were watching football in the 80s and 90s. Did you know that starting with the Super Bowl that ended the 1983 season, 13 of the next 16 Super Bowls were decided by 10 or more points? And most of them were true blowouts…games decided by 14 points or more. That sucks.
Compare that to recent history, where 10 of the past 15 Super Bowls could be considered close, good games. I don’t really have a point here except to say that we’re currently spoiled and my brain does weird things when it has nervous energy and needs to waste time.
Anyone still focusing on the absurd deflated ball accusations against the Patriots is a loser and needs to get a life. The only thing I I want to say is look at this exchange between Jim Nantz and Phil Simms regarding Aaron Rodgers’ comments in November about doctoring the football. If the Patriots are cheaters, then Rodgers is as big of a cheater, and as soon as you’re done putting sanctions on him, you might as well do the same for every other team in the league because I’m sure everyone approaches it the same way: “Let’s try to get the balls exactly how we want them, and if the refs decide the balls aren’t fair to play with, they’ll remove them and swap in new ones.”
But, hey, at least we weren’t talking about John Harbaugh and his team choking away a playoff game a week ago, and now we’re not talking about Chuck Pagano’s laughable inability to force the Patriots to at least beat his team in a new way on Sunday night.
Speaking of the Colts, maybe they can take solace in the fact that in five years or so, the Brady/Belichick combination will be finished and maybe just maybe Indy will finally be able to beat New England.
For the people who followed along on Twitter to see my Draft Kings lineup with a shot at Super Bowl tickets on the line, you already know I didn’t win. But did you know I came in 35th place out of 350 entries? top 10%!! The combination of Brandon LaFell, Donte Montcrief and Coby Fleener was my ultimate downfall. Marshawn Lynch, LeGarrette Blount, Doug Baldwin, Russell Wilson and Gronk all put up fine days. But they couldn’t make up for those three no-shows.
A quick note on my prop bets: I still nailed a couple over the weekend, but the net result was a loss of a few bucks this time around. I was correct on Julian Edelman to have more than 6.5 receptions and the first score of the NFC game to be a Green Bay field goal, but I was wrong on everything else. The one that hurt the most was the weekend’s passing yardage leader. I picked Wilson at 7/1 odds, and he ended his day with 209 total passing yards. Amazingly, into the 4th quarter of the AFC game, I still had a chance to win this prop. But Brady’s final two completions, each for eight yards, gave him 16 more passing yards than Wilson. Sigh. I always hated those cheating Patriots and how they run up the score, but this time it cost me money!
It’ll be a while before Bovada has the Super Bowl prop bets, but I’ll finish this stream of consciousness column with two fake Super Bowl prop bets I wish I could take right now:
Tom Brady will throw 1 or more interceptions in the 2nd quarter by severely underthrowing a pass up the middle to Rob Gronkowski while the Patriots are driving for an important score. (8/1 odds)
Number of times Richard Sherman taunts a Patriots offensive player and doesn’t get a penalty called – More than 3. (7/2 odds)
Later this week and all of next week we’ll be focusing on the Super Bowl teams, the prop bets, the best way to enjoy the Super Bowl and much more.
And don’t forget, we’re only 12 days away from seeing the very “talented” Katy Perry perform:
This is part two of the Conference Championship picks. You can check out part one, where I go through all the best prop bets and some general NFL news, HERE.
Actually, there was an interesting piece of news that came out after yesterday’s column. You might have heard that the NFL has decided to have a Veterans Combinefor the first time ever this year. It’ll be held in Arizona in March. It sounds very similar to the Rookie Combine, except it’ll be for any veteran free agents. Obviously a large portion of free agents don’t need to go through this (think Ndamukong Suh, Demaryius Thomas, etc), but the lesser players might find it a valuable forum to show off their skills.
I’m all for it. If this leads to Tim Tebow showing up and somehow impressing a few teams, I’m all for it! If this leads to Mark Sanchez looking so good that several teams get into a bidding war for his services, I’m all for it!
I’ve actually been googling around to see if fans can buy tickets to watch. And if they can, I promise you I will be there and blog the entire thing.
Now onto the final four…
With both lines for this weekend’s games coming in at a touchdown or larger, I determined that eight of the 10 games in the playoffs so far have had a point-spread of six or more. That seems like a lot of games with a heavy favorite for what’s supposed to be a great playoff system.
In the six games that have been completed with the large spread, the favorites are only 2-4. But the underdog has only won a single game outright in those scenarios. Favorites aren’t covering, but they’re advancing.
Actually, that’s the NFL’s favorite formula, right? It’s gotta be because that means the games are close, exciting, fantastic TV, but the best teams are still advancing to make the final games full of potential.
And that’s what we’ve got once again this weekend, a lot of potential. Let’s dive into the picks.
Green Bay @ Seattle (-7.5)
The Pick: Seattle
The Score: Seattle 30, Green Bay 20
These picks have caused me much anxiety over the past few days. To be completely honest, I’m probably staying far away from betting either of the two games’ point-spreads because these are four good teams who could play amazing on any given day. It’s very dangerous to make assumptions or expect history to repeat itself. My money is going mostly on prop bets this weekend, and once again, you can find my bets HERE.
There was a time earlier in the week where I had talked myself into Green Bay. It went something like this: The more I look into the details of Seattle’s win over Carolina last week, the less impressed I am. They were playing an 8-8-1 team at home, and they were only able to score 24 offensive points, including one touchdown that was essentially handed to them when Cam Newton fumbled and gave Seattle the ball on the Carolina 28 yard line. It wasn’t as dominating of a win as the final score would have you believe. The Panthers hung around even though they had four 3-and-out drives and one more that lasted only five plays. All of those drives lasted two minutes or less, which should have been extremely taxing on their defense. And yet, the Seahawks didn’t really take advantage.
Furthermore, Carolina and Green Bay’s defenses finished the season with almost identical FootballOutsiders.com rankings, and of course the Packers offense is light years ahead of the Panthers.
So that’s the case for a close game.
Oh, and the Packers have the best quarterback in football. That helps too.
But then there’s that little matter of the calf muscle of the best QB in the game. And if I’m going to make the case that Seattle was unimpressive last week, I’ve gotta say the same for Green Bay. They beat Dallas by five at home. Dallas completely bungled the end of the 1st half, and it directly led to a six-point swing. And if the Cowboys’ final offensive play of the game goes for a 31-yard catch down to the goal line instead of an incompletion, we’re talking about a Dallas-Seattle NFC Championship.
The Seahawks have the better defense (by far), the better running game, the better coach (again, by far), and maybe for one week only, the better quarterback.
With Green Bay getting embarrassed by the legs of Colin Kaepernick the past two years in the playoffs, they should probably gear up to stop Russell Wilson from scrambling a ton. If they do, Wilson can make all the throws he needs to make. Pick your poison with this Seattle team.
Green Bay comes up short once again.
(Gambling side note: On many betting websites, you’re allowed to “buy a half point” when the line is 7.5 or 3.5. So you can pay the extra juice to make this Seattle -7 if you’re a little nervous that it’s going to be a one-touchdown win for the ‘Hawks. That’s what I plan to do.)
Indianapolis @ New England (-7)
The Pick: New England
The Score: New England 37, Indianapolis 24
I’m taking the Patriots knowing a few things to be true:
New England is only 3-11 against the spread in their last 14 playoff games.
11 underdogs have won outright in the Conference Championship round in the past 15 seasons and obviously I’m not picking the underdog in the NFC game.
Everyone & their mother says the Colts are a much better team—especially at stopping the run—than they were when the Patriots dusted them earlier this season.
I’m usually good for putting a major jinx on my Patriots at least once a year.
It’s that second-to-last point that is giving me the final nudge of confidence to roll with New England. I was waiting all week to hear what all the experts and non-experts would be saying about this game. I dreaded the possibility of the entire world predicting the Patriots to win in a blowout. That’s usually the death knell for a team. But people have really talked themselves into the Colts…if not to win outright, at least to make it a close game.
To my fellow Patriots fans, don’t worry about me taking this game lightly. I’m not. That same hyperventilating I was doing for the Ravens game starting last Friday and not ending until the final whistle has started once again today. I’m nervous as hell, but I have to make a pick here. And it feels like the Patriots to me.
I give the Colts all the credit in the world for making it this far. Teams don’t completely luck into the Conference Championship game. But can’t they a little bit luck into it? The Colts hosted the Bengals in the Wildcard Round and then beat a Broncos team in the 2nd Round that was essentially playing the game without a quarterback.
Those of us who bet on Denver last week grabbed onto the narrative that Indianapolis played poorly against good teams this year. (They beat Cincy twice, including that playoff win, and they beat Baltimore back in week 5. And that’s it. They lost to Denver, Philly, Pittsburgh, New England and Dallas.)
Even now I’m not upset about that pick for the Broncos because no one could have known what Peyton Manning was dealing with. Remember all those awful overthrows Manning had to his receivers on downfield passes last week? His receivers were always open! Tim Tebow connects on plenty of those throws I’m betting.
You also have to wonder the mentality of Denver going into that game. Remember, that defense, the receivers, everyone, they all knew how hurt Manning was. They had to since they practice with him. Doesn’t that short-circuit you mentally? Knowing your leader, the guy who has this entire game on his shoulders, can’t possibly play at even an average level? I just think Denver was doomed before the game even began.
Not taking anything away from the Colts because they still had to make the plays, but the playoff schedule up until now has broken perfectly for them.
Just like in the NFC game, the home team in this matchup is better in almost every respect: Coaching, defense, offense, special teams, and yes, quarterback (at least for now).
You can have a close game and still cover a seven-point spread.
Oh, and for you Patriots fans who have been following me for a few years and remember that I usually jinx our team by buying my flight up to San Francisco for Super Bowl weekend for the purpose of “watching the Patriots win it with my friends”, rest assured I haven’t done that this year. And there are two reasons for that:
I refuse to jinx that once again. I will gladly pay hundreds of dollars more if that’s what it means to wait until they are officially in the Super Bowl (as opposed to buying a roundtrip flight weeks ago for $150 or less).
BarstoolSports got together with Draft Kings to run a daily fantasy contest where the winner gets two tickets to the Super Bowl, three nights’ stay in a hotel near the Super Bowl, airfare to Arizona, a party bus situation on the Friday night before the game, and some other stuff. It’s a $100 buy-in and you simply construct the best fantasy team from all the players in this weekend’s games within a certain salary cap. I got another Pats fan to split that entry with me, and I have enough irrational confidence to think I might be going to the Super Bowl. We haven’t finalized our roster yet, but when we do, I’ll put it up on Twitter so you all can root along with us or laugh at us (@rossgariepy for the Twitter follow).
Have I jinxed New England enough yet? OK, then here’s my counter-jinx:
Welcome to Conference Championship weekend. We have a very deserving final four battling for one of those elusive golden tickets to play in the 49th Super Bowl.
I always like to pause right here to have a moment of silence for the 28 teams who could not navigate their way through the grueling NFL season successfully. More importantly, let’s hang our heads in disappointment for just a second as we realize there are only three meaningful games left on the football calendar.
OK, blog resumed.
As usual, I’ve got plenty to say about this upcoming weekend so I’m going with two columns. Today’s is the general NFL news & tidbits along with everything I love from a prop bets perspective. Check back Friday for my game picks.
Going into the Divisional Round, most objective football fans would have picked three of these conference finalists as the ideal teams to advance to a final four. Of course we would have swapped Denver in for Indianapolis, but after seeing Peyton Manning’s corpse last Sunday, we now know that Andrew Luck and the Colts are a much better candidate to put up a fight in Foxboro.
And really, you can’t go wrong with the eventual Super Bowl matchup. This weekend we’ll see four very marketable teams led by four of the league’s marquee quarterbacks.
Incredibly, these four teams have only missed the playoffs three combined times in the past six seasons. Green Bay and New England have been in the postseason every year since 2009. The Colts have been in for five of the six years (their only miss was the year Manning was out). And Seattle’s added four years of playoffs in that timeframe. That is a TON of playoff experience and public exposure (which translates to popularity across the country).
The Super Bowl is going to be fun. It’s nice having that guarantee more than two weeks before the actual game.
After all, when’s the last time we had two of the best regular season teams facing each other in the Super Bowl and it didn’t turn out to be a great game?
Oh…just one year ago, huh? OK, nevermind. Let’s just move on.
General NFL News
Coaching changes dominated the headlines this week. The most surprising development was the Broncos firing John Fox after he had an extremely successful four-year run that saw his team put up a combined 46-18 record, win the AFC West all four years, make one Super Bowl appearance, but lose in the Divisional Round the other three seasons. Was that what ultimately doomed him? Because if so, the Broncos management must have a very different definition of success than a team like the Bengals. Fox won three playoff games in that time. That would be cause for a parade in Cincy (or Chicago, where Fox is presumably heading).
The Denver and San Francisco head coaching situations seemed very similar once Fox was let go. These were two teams that were legitimate Super Bowl contenders every year Jim Harbaugh and Fox were at the helm (not counting the Tebow year in Denver). My thoughts on Tuesday were that these teams better have damn good plans in terms of a replacement.
And then the 49ers announced on Wednesday that incumbent defensive line coach Jim Tomsula was being promoted to head coach. San Francisco and its fans can spin it whatever way they want, but my thoughts immediately went to the last time a team hired a head coach who didn’t even have coordinator experience. Washington fans will be happy to tell you how well that went.
I’m also a little dubious at how well a defensive line coach will help Colin Kaepernick develop, and that’s clearly this team’s biggest question mark.
Hey, congrats to Jason Garrett on his 5-year, $30 million contract extension. I do speak for all non-Cowboys fans when I say I can’t wait to see this team back at 8-8 next year with Garrett bungling game management decisions like usual (after all, he got started in last week’s loss to Green Bay with his atrocious decisions at the end of the 1st half).
So George R.R. Martin, author of the famous Game of Thrones books, hates Bill Belichick and the Patriots. And he totally seems like a true sports fan we should all be listening to considering he likes the Ravens because their mascot reminds him of Edgar Allen Poe. That’s how I choose my teams too, Georgey. Anyway, I fully expect that his next installment of the GoT series will have a character named Bill of House Belaryan who wears his cloak with the sleeves cut off and video tapes all the Small Council meetings in King’s Landing. Sure, it might be really jarring to be reading this story and all of the sudden electronics have been invented, but Martin seems pretty fixated on this hatred.
Earlier this week I wondered which incompetent officiating crew would be assigned to the Super Bowl, and yesterday we got our answer. It will be Bill Vinovich and his crew. They were assigned to the Patriots-Ravens game last weekend. We should probably brace ourselves now for zero consistency on pass interference and defensive holding calls. And if the Patriots make it, then at least they know this crew already defers to Belichick’s expertise in terms of the rulebook.
Last Week’s Gambling in Review
I once again did very well with my prop bets during the Divisional Round, but you probably wouldn’t think that just by reading last week’s post with my favorite bets. The problem for my readers was that I changed/added a few things after I submitted that post.
I told you to bet on Andrew Luck and Aaron Rodgers for the most passing yards of the weekend, but neither of them was the winner. But if you read closely, I also said “If you’re feeling lucky, put some money on Tom Brady.” I did put money on Brady and he ultimately won the week with 367 passing yards.
I lost outright with my over bet on Andrew Luck’s passing yards total of 310.5. What can I say? I didn’t expect the Colts to dominate so thoroughly that Luck would spend most of the 4th quarter handing off to his running backs.
I won on the over of Justin Forsett’s rushing total, which was set at 66.5 yards. I think he locked this one up by midway through the 2nd quarter.
Hopefully you skipped out on my longshot bet of “Yes, there will be a game-winning field goal or touchdown as time expires in one of the four games.” But I’m a little pissed off because I said the Dallas-Green Bay game had the best chance for that..and if they had ruled Dez Bryant’s efforts to be a catch, there’s a very decent chance Green Bay would have driven into field goal range and won the game on a last-second kick.
And finally, I threw money down on a prop bet just before kickoff of the Denver-Indy game. It was the over on the longest field goal in the game, which was set at 44.5 yards. I figured it was a gimme in the thin Denver air. I won the bet, but not quite the gimme I expected as Denver’s Connor Barth snuck in a 45-yarder, which was the only one of that length.
So while I’m not exactly on fire with the prop bets, I am turning a profit and you might say I’m “heating up.”
Also, I went 3-1 against the point spreads. It was a huge bounceback after the Wildcard debacle.
This Weekend’s Prop Bets
As we wind down here in the playoffs, I like to ramp up my gambling. After all, in 17 short days, there won’t be any football to bet on for a while. So this week I’m rolling out six prop bets I feel confident about and one that I’m not touching (you’ll see why), but maybe you should. Here we go.
The first score of the Green Bay @ Seattle game – Exact Outcome
I’m rolling with Green Bay field goal (9/2) and Seattle field goal (11/4). This is another situation where I’m perfectly happy betting two scenarios knowing I can only win one because I’ll make a profit as long as one of these hits. And if you’re like me and expect a relatively low-scoring game with both offenses struggling, then this feels like a great bet.
Who will record the most passing yards in the Conference Championships?
While the conservative play would be to grab Luck (5/4) and Brady (2/1) and turn a very small profit if one of them wins, I’m going with a bit of a hail mary here. (get it?) I like Russell Wilson at 7/1 odds. While the Packers’ run defense is much worse than its pass defense and you’d expect the Seahawks to want to run a ton, I think Green Bay might do everything in its power to force Wilson to throw a bunch. Green Bay’s season the last two years ended because Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers were able to run wild on them to the tune of 490 yards in two playoff games. We know this Seattle offense is very similar to those 9ers teams, and the Packers should be prepared to make Wilson beat them with his arm. Call me crazy, but you’ll be kicking yourself at about 10PM eastern time on Sunday if you don’t make this bet.
Total Receiving Yards – Randall Cobb – Over/Under 72.5
I like the over here (-115). Cobb may be second banana to Jordy Nelson on this receiving corps, but with all the attention paid to Nelson and the likelihood that Nelson sees a lot of Richard Sherman in coverage, I think Cobb is freed up for a good day. Also, Cobb has topped this number in nine of 17 games this year, and he ended a 10th game with exactly 72 yards.
Total Receiving Yards – Luke Willson – Over/Under 29.5
Who? Luke Willson, star tight end for the Seahawks, that’s who. OK, he may not be a star, but the Wilson-to-Willson connection has been happening a lot more in the second half of the season. The lesser-known Willson has cracked this 29.5 total in his last three games and five of the past eight when he’s caught at least one pass. I love the over (-115). After all, how hard is it to get 30 yards in the NFL. I could do that.
Total Receptions – Julian Edelman – Over/Under 6.5
I’m going over and gladly paying the juice (-130) on this bet. Edelman is a targets and receptions machine right now. He’s only come in under that number once in his past seven games. He’s had 10 or more targets in six consecutive games. I’m not confident enough to project his receiving yards or say he’ll definitely have a touchdown, but he’s Brady’s most reliable receiver at the moment.
Player to score the first Colts TD in the game
These bets are always a crapshoot, but I’m taking Dwayne Allen (7/1), who has supplanted Coby Fleener as the Colts’ most reliable tight end. Allen has scored touchdowns in nine of Indy’s games this year. And the Patriots are particularly generous to tight ends. It seems like they’re either giving up a touchdown or huge yardage totals every game to this position. I like Allen a lot, especially in the red zone.
Indianapolis @ New England – Margin of Victory
Here’s the one I wouldn’t touch with a 500-foot pole because I’m a Pats fan and I already hate myself for even suggesting this. But if you’re pretty confident that Patriots are going to do to Indy what they’ve done the past three meetings with them, then you should bet on both of these results: New England to win by 13 to 18 points (5/1) and New England to win by 19 to 24 points (8/1). The Patriots’ margins of victory in the three games they’ve played vs Indy since Luck came into the league are: 35, 21 and 22 points.
Be sure to check back on Friday for my picks against the spread for the two games.
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