Prediction Review: What I Got Right

It is still another twelve days before the Super Bowl, and I’ve got more time to kill than I have stuff to write about. So I figured this would be a good time to look backwards rather than forwards and to wrap up the season. Before the year I made a number of predictions about the upcoming season—playoff teams, award winners, anything I could really think of to write down. Because I have still not yet mastered time travel, many of my predictions did not come true. I’ll get to those later this week—they’re more fun to write about anyway—but for now here is the short list of things that actually went as I predicted.

Playoff Picture

I’ll start with the NFC, because this will be pretty quick. I correctly pegged the Packers as the two seed, but the only other playoff team I predicted was Seattle, who I had as the third seed. Neither of these division winners was a surprise to anyone, though Seattle came on stronger than I expected as the year went along, after struggling some early on as I predicted.

I did better on the AFC side of things. While I didn’t get any specific seed right, I did have both Denver and New England earning first round byes. I also had Pittsburgh and Indianapolis as the other two division winners and Baltimore as a wild card team. Picking the Broncos, Patriots, and Colts to win their division was fairly easy, but the Steelers were a bit of a stretch prior to the season and even as the year went on. I called them to win a tight three way race in the AFC North, which is exactly what happened. Though I probably still should have put Cincinnati into the playoffs as the second wild card team. But this is about what I got right. I’ll have a lot more to say about the other things in my next piece.

Guarantees

I made a lot of predictions, but there was only one place where I used the word “guarantee”. I chose three teams from each conference and guaranteed they would not make the playoffs. The year has come and gone, and let’s see how I did with these predictions.

The first team I predicted wouldn’t make the playoffs was the easiest. The Oakland Raiders were bad at the beginning of the year, and they were bad at the end of the year. At no point did they have any hope of making the postseason. The other two AFC teams gave me a bit of a run for my money. Buffalo surprised everyone by going 9-7, and Kansas City did enough that they would have made the postseason if Baltimore and Houston had each lost just one more game. But both teams were ultimately limited by mediocre quarterbacking, as I predicted.

In the NFC, I made what in retrospect seems like an obvious choice in Tampa Bay. But at the beginning of the year this was the toughest of my guarantees, and I stand by my uncertainty. They have several very interesting pieces on offense, and it is still a mystery how their defense can be so terrible with Gerald McCoy and Lavonte David playing under Lovie Smith. Their quarterback and offensive line were every bit as bad as I expected, but they still shouldn’t have been bad enough to get the first overall pick.

St Louis was exactly what I thought they’d be, which wasn’t that much of a stretch considering it’s the same exact thing every Jeff Fisher coached team is. And since they’re bringing Fisher back next year, I’ll give you an extra early 2015 prediction by saying that St Louis will miss the playoffs while winning six, seven, or eight games. Enjoy stagnation, St Louis. Still better than what you’ll have once the Rams move to LA.

The final guarantee was one I got wrong, but I’m still going to count it as a win. The Carolina Panthers lost more games than they won this year, and under normal circumstances they wouldn’t have even sniffed the playoffs. No one could have predicted that the NFC South would be this bad, and even though they mildly exceeded my expectations I’m not going to say that I was wrong about the Panthers.

Coach Firings

I predicted eight coach firings. I got three or four right, depending on your definition of a firing. I called Mike Smith in Atlanta and Rex Ryan in New York, as did everyone. Dennis Allen in Oakland didn’t even last half a season.

A couple I took risks on didn’t go my way. Tom Coughlin and Marvin Lewis are two of the longer tenured coaches in the league, and I thought another year of failure might convince their teams to move on. The Giants were certainly a disappointment, and there were more than a few people calling for Coughlin to retire as I said he would. The Bengals surprised me by making the playoffs, but a first round exit shouldn’t be that different from a narrow miss. It’s probably time for Lewis to move on, but it looks like they’re giving him another year of mediocrity.

There is one other that I’m not sure whether to count as a success or a failure. Doug Marrone wasn’t fired, but he isn’t going to be the head coach of the Bills next year either. He made use of an opt out clause in his contract to escape after a surprisingly good season, when the Bills would have been happy to retain him. I based my prediction before the season on reports of conflict between him and the front office of the team, the conflict that ultimately led to his departure. Even though the end came from a different direction, I think predicting the dissolution of this partnership needs to be considered a success for me.

Awards

Yeah…I think I’m just going to come back to this one when I cover the things I got wrong later in the week.

Team Specific

Prior to the season I also broke down every division team by team. For each team I listed a thing to be excited about, a thing to be nervous about, a rookie to watch, a veteran to keep your eye on, and an overall prediction. I’m not going to break down each and every thing I wrote for each and every team, but here are some of the things that stood out as I was looking over my predictions.

Atlanta: “Cornerback may be the most difficult position to transition from college to the NFL, and even with (Desmond) Trufant’s success as a rookie he likely still has a lot of room to improve this year.”

Trufant was one of the best rookie cornerbacks in the league in 2013. In 2014 he was one of the best cornerbacks in the league period. On the rare occasion Atlanta’s defense found success, they did it because Trufant was locking down the receiver across from him. He was the best player on their defense, and sometimes it seemed like he was the only player on their defense. He should probably be a Pro Bowler this season, but that isn’t a big deal. He will have plenty of opportunities over the next ten years.

Minnesota: “They have enough talent that they can weather one bust, but anything more than that will cripple this team’s future.”

When writing about the Vikings I focused almost all my attention on the seven players selected in the first round over the past three years. These were the reason to be excited for the season, and many lived up to expectations. Harrison Smith continued his development into one of the best safeties in the league. Anthony Barr and Teddy Bridgewater put together fantastic rookie years. Most significantly, Sharrif Floyd and Xavier Rhodes developed from questionmarks into legitimate stars. But the other two remain concerns. Both Matt Kalil and Cordarrelle Patterson regressed this year, and they are both one bad season away from being declared busts. Losing out on these investments would do serious damage to Minnesota’s future, and they have to hope that 2015 works out better for these high picks than 2014.

Denver: “Even if their offense doesn’t perform at the same absurd level this season, their defense is good enough to carry them deep into the playoffs on its own.”

This isn’t my best prediction given how the season ended, but I think the performance of Denver’s defense over the course of the regular season speaks for itself. After a record breaking offensive performance in 2013, Denver completely overhauled their defense and put together a defensive unit that was actually better than the offensive. Free agents like Aqib Talib and DeMarcus Ware played a role, but the biggest factors were actually the players who got healthy, Von Miller and Chris Harris returning from devastating injuries to put together All Pro seasons.

San Francisco: “They still have the talent to go deep into the playoffs, but they are going to need Kaepernick to live up to the promise he has showed in his early career.”

I won’t claim I saw San Francisco’s collapse coming, but there were plenty of concerning signs prior to the year. Their defense was going to spend much of the season missing Navarro Bowman and Aldon Smith. Justin Smith was getting up there in years, as was Frank Gore on the offensive side. I thought that any success they had would be due to the development of Kaepernick, development that I wasn’t confident would happen. If anything Kaepernick regressed, which along with injuries and poor offensive line play led to the disaster of a season that befell them.

St Louis: “I would be stunned to see (Aaron Donald) finish with fewer than seven sacks, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he reached double digits.”

Donald finished with nine sacks, one short of double digits. He led all rookies in sacks, and you can make a strong case that he was the best defensive tackle in the league over the second half of the season. He will be in tight contention for Defensive Rookie of the Year, and there are plenty of people making strong cases that he should have been the first overall selection last year. Donald was every bit as good as I expected, and with him next to Robert Quinn the Rams may actually have something to be excited about once they drop Jeff Fisher.

Dallas: “An offensive lineman will never win Rookie of the Year, but I think by the end of the year there is a good chance that (Zack) Martin will deserve to be in that conversation.”

I didn’t expect Martin to be this good, but no one did. He was the first offensive guard to be selected as an All Pro player since 1934, and he performed well enough that he will probably end up receiving a couple votes for Offensive Rookie of the Year even in a stacked season. The transition from college tackle to NFL guard can be a challenge, but Martin did well enough that I expect several similar players like Brandon Scherff and La’el Collins to make the same transition next year.