2017 Prediction Review

We’ve nearly reached the end of the 2017 season, and now seems like a good time to take a look back. Before the year I made a lot of predictions about what was going to happen, and as I do every year I feel obligated to look back and point out what I did or did not get right. Predictions are inherently flawed, and it’s always more fun to point out the mistakes I made than it is to call attention to the (usually pretty obvious) stuff I got right. But looking back I feel pretty good about the calls I made, even if there were a few glaring errors.

The Super Bowl

We’ll start in the most obvious place, the two teams that are going to be facing each other next weekend in the Super Bowl. I actually went one for two in predicting the teams to make this game, not that I deserve much credit for calling the Patriots. They were the obvious choice to come out of the AFC, and I made that clear in my prediction, writing that “the only real chance of the Patriots failing to reach the Super Bowl is if Brady suffers a sudden (and very possible) dropoff in the level of his performance.”

Obviously that didn’t happen, and New England will be once again representing the AFC in the Super Bowl. The NFC side was a bit more wide open, and I can’t say I saw the Eagles coming. I predicted them to go 9-7 and finish a game out of a playoff spot, largely because of concerns about the quarterback position. I loved their defense, but I wasn’t sold on Carson Wentz coming into the year. I thought that with an average performance from the quarterback they could be a playoff team, and I certainly didn’t expect Wentz to put up MVP numbers.

The team I did pick to represent the NFC was the Packers, and it’s clear what happened there. “Aaron Rodgers is enough to carry Green Bay to the playoffs under any circumstances. As long as he stays healthy, Green Bay will be playing in January.” Maybe I should have been more cautious about picking a team I knew was one injury away from falling to pieces, but the truth was the NFC seemed wide open at the beginning of the year, and that’s where it ended up by season’s end.

Award Races

Injuries killed me here. I mentioned above how Rodgers’s injury ruined my prediction of the Packers making the Super Bowl, and it obviously ended my prediction that he would be the MVP as well. When healthy he is the best player in football, just as when healthy JJ Watt is the best defensive player in the league. I should have been more cautious picking him to win Defensive Player of the Year coming off of a serious injury, but I don’t really regret either of these selections.

And to my credit, the two most deserving winners this year were the first two names on my list of other contenders. On the topic of MVP I wrote, “If Rodgers doesn’t win, the next most likely candidate is (Tom) Brady.” On Defensive Player of the Year I called Aaron Donald, “about the only player in the league who can come close to replicating what Watt does.” The awards haven’t been announced yet, so it remains to be seen if these were the right calls. I think that ultimately Brady will win MVP while DPOY goes to Calais Campbell, who surprised me by putting up career best numbers in his first year in Jacksonville.

My pick for Defensive Rookie of the Year was Myles Garrett, but his season was also sunk by injuries. When he was on the field he was every bit as good as I expected him to be, but he played less than half of Cleveland’s snaps this year, which wasn’t enough to overcome the sensational performance by Marshon Lattimore (who I loved coming into the draft but for some reason never mentioned in my predictions).

I can’t use injuries as an excuse for Offensive Rookie of the Year. I just straight up whiffed on that one. I predicted Christian McCaffrey to win the award, thinking that an innovative role as a running back/receiver hybrid would help carry the Panthers to an NFC South title. Most of that was right, I just picked the wrong player and team. Alvin Kamara was the exact player I expected McCaffrey to be, and I’m a little annoyed he wasn’t the one I predicted to win this award. I had him higher on my draft board than I did McCaffrey, marking him as a first round talent. I even loved him before the season. Here’s what I wrote  when breaking down the Saints prior to the season:

The talent he displayed at Tennessee is bound to show through somewhere. As a kick returner, as a slot receiver, as anything that gets the ball in his hands, I still have faith that Sean Payton can use this unique weapon. Kamara still has a lot of work to do to learn how to fit into a normal offensive scheme. But in space he is a rare weapon, combining raw speed, animal strength, and impossible balance to dance his way forward through defenses.

Every word of that ended up being correct. I was worried about his playing time on a team with Adrian Peterson and Mark Ingram, but I should have known he would find his way onto the field.

Coach of the Year is always a weird award to predict before the season, but I have to admit that I really, really whiffed on this one. I predicted Mike Mularkey, expecting a breakout season from Tennessee to get him undeserved love at the end of the year. That breakout kind of happened (they did make the playoffs), but Mularkey received more blame than credit, and he no longer has a job.

Team I Was Too Low On: Jacksonville Jaguars

This was a year with a lot of teams jumping from the bottom to the top, and there are plenty of options for me to choose from in this category. Obviously I discussed Philadelphia above, though I did have them as at least a playoff contender. The same can’t be said about the Saints or the Rams, both of which won their divisions. But for both of them I at least offered some hope, pointing to the young talent on New Orleans’s defense and the additions Los Angeles had made on offense.

I offered no such optimism about the Jaguars. To pull some of my favorite quotes from that section:

“The best case for the Jaguars is pretty dour, and the worst case is pretty much the same.”

“In theory I could throw in an “if he can put things together” sort of scenario, but at this point with (Blake) Bortles I don’t see that as likely enough to bother considering.”

“The Jaguars aren’t going to make the playoffs this year.”

Oops. Not only did the Jaguars make the playoffs, they came within a couple minutes of a trip to the Super Bowl. I knew their defense was loaded with young talent, and even though I underestimated the impacts of adding Calais Campbell and AJ Bouye, it wasn’t a shock when they fielded a top three defense in the league. Most of my concern was at the quarterback position, where I assumed the presence of Blake Bortles would doom any hope they had.

I missed a couple things. First, I didn’t count on second round pick Cam Robinson stepping in and instantly becoming an above average left tackle. Second, I expected the promotion of Doug Marrone to be more of the same, after he spent the past two years as assistant head coach. But contrary to my expectations, Marrone made major changes to the offensive system, and Robinson stabilized the offensive line that was as big a weakness as their quarterback in past seasons.

In 2016 the Jaguars passed the ball on 63% of their offensive plays, the seventh most of any team in the league. This past year that number fell to 51%, the lowest out of the entire NFL. Part of this is situational, being behind less often and not having to throw to catch up. But it was just as much philosophical, a realization that the one piece holding their team back was their quarterback, and that they had a chance to succeed if they could find a way to minimize Bortles’s impact on their offense.

Team I Was Too High On: Dallas Cowboys

There were a lot of options to choose from among the teams I was too low on, yet strangely very few for teams I was too high on. A number of the teams that fell off like Green Bay and Indianapolis did so because of injuries. Seattle was similarly bothered by injuries on the defensive side, and I pointed out repeatedly prior to the season that their offensive line was a ticking time bomb. I considered listing a team I didn’t pick to make the playoffs that ended up being far worse than I expected—Chicago, the Giants, and Cleveland all fit the bill—but in the end I had to go with the team I picked to repeat as champions of the NFC East.

I expected Dallas’s offense to regress from their remarkable 2016 performnce, but I underestimated how drastic this dropoff would be. The suspension of Ezekiel Elliott has gotten most of the blame for their failure to make the playoffs, but even if he had played a full sixteen games I doubt their record would have ended up any different. They went 3-3 in the six games he was out, and all three losses were by more than 20 points, a gap that even a player of Elliott’s caliber probably wouldn’t be able to do anything about.

The issues with Dallas’s offense were about more than just their running game. The offensive line was the most dominant in the league in 2016, and I assumed this would be the case in 2017 as well. They lost a couple starters in Ronald Leary and Doug Free, but they kept the three most important pieces, and I thought La’el Collins would be able to slide seamlessly into the starting lineup. This didn’t turn out to be the case, as their line was hampered by a sudden lack of depth and injury concerns, with Tyron Smith going in and out of the lineup with lingering back issues.

The passing game suffered as well in ways that have to leave the Cowboys very concerned for the future. Dez Bryant looks like he has clearly lost a step, and defenders are able to play him tight without fear of being beaten over the top. And I may have placed too much faith in Dak Prescott to be able to carry this offense without a dominant running game. He was solid in his second season, but he didn’t take any clear steps forward, and he struggled to make the sort of plays down the field that I believed he was capable of. Dallas enters 2018 with a lot of new questions they didn’t face coming into 2017, and it’s very likely that I won’t be nearly as high on them when I do these predictions again in a few months.

Team I Absolutely Nailed: Cincinnati Bengals

There were surprisingly quite a few options in this category as well. Obviously I was right about the Patriots, and I did a good job picking the Steelers as a team that would run away with the AFC North but come up short in the playoffs. I predicted the Panthers to bounce back and the Vikings to emerge as an NFC contender, and I made good calls on the Lions, Raiders, and Dolphins to fall from playoff teams to middle of the pack squads. But there was no team that I hit every beat of quite like the Bengals.

The Bengals were a regular in the playoffs for several years, but they have let their roster fall to pieces since then. The amount of talent that has walked out that door over the past several years is staggering, and they have brought in very little to replace it. They let two of their top three receivers leave after the 2015 season and saw their best two offensive linemen sign with other teams last offseason. In my predictions I knew this would come back to bite them, expressing skepticism about the ability of Cedric Ogbuehi and Jake Fisher to fill their shoes.

I did call out a couple of interesting young players that could shine during an otherwise miserable year, and for the most part this worked out as I expected. Joe Mixon’s numbers weren’t great, but watching him carry the ball it was clear that he has the talent to be a star. Carl Lawson impressed with 8.5 sacks, and I should have mentioned William Jackson, one of my favorite players from the 2016 draft who played extremely well in his first real season after missing his rookie year with a torn pectoral.

There is one major mistake I made when forecasting the Bengals. I ended my preview by saying, “While we should no longer be shocked by Marvin Lewis’s survival skills, I have to believe this is his last year in Cincinnati.” I came so close to getting this one right as well, but somehow the Bengals are even more committed to mediocrity than I gave them credit for.

Miscellaneous Predictions Presented Without Comment

“Health is obviously always a concern, but if (Keenan Allen) stays healthy he’s a top five receiver in the league.”

“If Houston gets off to a rough start and (Deshaun) Watson comes in just as they start a run towards the playoffs, he could win the popular support (for Offensive Rookie of the Year) on the back of a “quarterback who led his team to the playoffs” argument.”

“It is extremely difficult to go an entire season without winning a game, but the Jets could pull it off.”

“Of the teams in the NFC South, the Panthers are the ones I see with the best chance to push Atlanta for the division crown. But I think chances are just as good that they round out the bottom of the division.”

“Outside of the quarterback position (the Colts) have by far the worst roster in the division. But their quarterback is so much better than every other team’s that they are going to at least have a chance to compete.”

“The question isn’t whether the Steelers can win this division. The question is whether they can knock off the Patriots when the two teams inevitably meet in the playoffs.”

“In the long run (Chicago) is set up great, and a bad year might actually be for the best if it gets John Fox out of there and lets them build around something new.”

“It’s become customary to watch the Buccaneers disappoint in the face of a potential breakout, and it could very easily happen again in 2017.”

“If (Nelson Agholor) can develop into the player people thought he was coming out of USC, he could be the depth weapon the Eagles desperately need on their offense.”

“Atlanta’s run last year depended on excellence from the very top of their roster, and if they can’t sustain that they could see a fall similar to Carolina’s from a year ago.”

“The Bills are clearly not committed to (Tyrod) Taylor at quarterback, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they benched him at some point to give Nathan Peterman a look. This will undoubtedly go poorly for them.”

“Somebody should probably check to make sure I’m okay, but I think the Browns have a chance to make the playoffs this year.”