The NFL season is over,
which means it’s time for me to begin the long process of preparing for the
draft. But before I move on to 2017, there is a little more business with 2016
to clean up.
Prior to the season I
made a lot of predictions, most of which didn’t amount to anything. Of course
all of you have forgotten these predictions, and it would be easy (and probably
smart) to let them stay forgotten. But where’s the fun in that. So, quickly,
here’s a run through of a handful of my predictions that worked out
particularly well or particularly poorly.
Divisions:
NFC East
“If Dak Prescott can do
in the regular season what he did in the preseason, they’ll pull this out in
the end. But I don’t have faith in fourth round rookie quarterbacks, so instead
I think it will be a dogfight between the Redskins and the Giants.”
I was skeptical of
Prescott, and boy was I wrong. Not only did the Cowboys pull it out in the end,
they ran away with the division and locked up the best record in the NFC. I
don’t feel particularly bad about this one, especially since I did correctly
write the Eagles off after sending Sam Bradford away. Prescott was better than
anyone could have imagined, and the Cowboys suffered virtually no dropoff after
Tony Romo went down.
NFC West
“After a surprising
division victory by the Cardinals last year, many people are calling them the
best team in the league and the Super Bowl favorites. I’m not as high on them
as most people. I don’t see much depth, and I see a lot of very fragile pieces holding
them together.”
Another success! Man, I
must really know what I’m talking about. The Cardinals were the hot team at the
beginning of the year, and I bought into the hype to some extent, predicting them to go
11-5 and claim a Wild Card spot. But my worries about the team proved
reasonable, and the tense division race between them and the Seahawks never
materialized as they fell back with San Francisco and Los Angeles in the
wasteland at the bottom of the NFC West.
NFC South
“[The Panthers] are still
the class of this division, and they’ll right the few bumps that appeared
against a quality Denver team.”
A miserable cold delayed
my preview, and I didn’t get it up until after Carolina’s opening night defeat
against Denver. But bold as ever, I decided to stick with my convictions and
keep them as the winners of the NFC South.
Whoops. Turns out I
should have been more skeptical of Carolina’s success, but after spending most
of 2015 doubting them I allowed myself to overlook the holes dotting their
offense and the decaying corpse of their secondary. They ended up finishing
with the worst record in the division, while their rival Falcons came as close
as humanly possible to winning the Super Bowl. But I’ll have more to say on the
Falcons below, so let’s just move on from one of my more embarrassing
predictions.
NFC North
“The Bears and the Lions
aren’t particularly inspiring, but they’re intriguing. Both have enough young
pieces on defense that they could pull things together this year, and anything
is possible with these quarterbacks.”
Hey, I was half right. Of
these two I was probably more optimistic about the Bears, but the Lions shocked
everyone by going on an insane stretch in close games, somehow making the
playoff despite trailing in the fourth quarter of all but one game. Matthew
Stafford had the best season of his career, repeatedly pulling out last minute
miracles to cover up for the fact that this team really wasn’t that good and
was always destined to get embarrassed in the first round of the playoffs.
AFC East
“[The Jets] will score
points, and they can count on their defense to be as competitive as ever to
give them a chance to make the playoffs and possibly even push the Patriots for
the division.”
In fairness, this was
written in my divisional preview where I looked at a “glass half full” scenario
for every team. I expected the Jets to be a quality team, if they weren’t held
back by their quarterback. Unfortunately, there was a lot more wrong with this
team than just the quarterback. Only the Browns and the Rams scored fewer
points than they did, and their defense regressed sharply, falling from 5th
to 21st in DVOA. In fact, I really can’t point to anything the Jets
did well. Even as a hypothetical, this badly missed the mark.
AFC West
“There’s the Raiders, a
young team that could explode or fall to pieces. There’s the Broncos, a
dominant defense trying to find an identity on offense. There’s the Chargers, a
mediocre squad dragged on by a superstar quarterback. And there’s the Chiefs, a
team that’s good at pretty much everything but not great at anything.”
I think I nailed these
descriptions, even if I erred in picking the Chargers as the division winners.
The Raiders exploded for the first chunk of the season, then fell to pieces
when their quarterback went down and their defense was exposed as a crime
against the game of football. The Broncos slipped back some on defense, but the
main problem was on offense, where they couldn’t run the ball and barely kept
Trevor Siemian upright long enough to throw to their talented receivers. The
Chargers were once again killed by injuries and bad luck at the end of games,
and the Chiefs ended up somehow coming out on top, despite still not being
above average in any facet of the game aside from protecting the ball and
forcing turnovers.
AFC South
“The injury to Andrew
Luck threw this division off a year ago, but I think it will get back to the
normal flow of things this year.”
Andrew Luck is really
freaking good, and everyone else on the Colts is really freaking bad. It is
incredible that a team with a quarterback this far ahead of everyone else in
the division wasn’t able to run away with things, but this team has been so
poorly managed that even an in his prime Peyton Manning wouldn’t be enough to
get them to the playoffs. This organization is toxic from the top down, and it
isn’t going to get better as long as Jim Irsay is calling the shots. It may
unfortunately be a long time before we get a chance to see how great Luck truly
is, and it may have to come somewhere other than Indianapolis.
AFC North
“[Cincinnati will]
regress some, while Pittsburgh will only get better as the young pieces on
their defense step in.”
The Bengals certainly
regressed, far more than even I expected. I had them making the postseason as a
Wild Card with an 11-5 record, and instead they find themselves picking in the
top ten of the draft. The team that ultimately pushed the Steelers for the
division was the Ravens, who I underestimated with only six wins. But as I
expected, the Steelers pulled it out after a shaky start, winning their last
seven thanks in large part to the entry of three defensive rookies into the
starting lineup.
Awards
Offensive Rookie of the Year
My Pick: Ezekiel Elliot
Actual Winner: Dak
Prescott
Screw it, I’m counting
this one as a victory. Elliot finished one vote short of proving me right, and
I still believe he was the more deserving winner. Prescott was great, and the
quarterback position is undeniably more valuable. But Elliot led the league in
rushing, and he deserves more credit than he’s getting for the work he put in.
Dallas’s offensive line is great, but Elliot’s speed and vision created just as
many yards. He was the best rookie in the league this year, as I expected.
Defensive Rookie of the Year
My Pick: Vernon
Hargreaves
Actual Winner: Joey Bosa
I loved Bosa coming into
the draft, and he probably would have been one of my favorites for this pick if
not for the holdout that was still ongoing when I wrote these predictions. I
knew Bosa was going to miss time, and I didn’t think he’d be good enough to
make up for that. I was wrong. Bosa was one of the best defensive players in
the league this year, and he ran away with this award despite only playing 12
games. The only real competitor was Jalen Ramsey, who I named but passed over
for Hargreaves because I thought the Buccaneers rookie would impress with more
interceptions. He only picked off one pass this year, but he was a major factor
for a Tampa Bay pass defense that really came together as the season went
along.
Coach of the Year
My Pick: Mike Zimmer
Actual Winner: Jason
Garrett
Early on this was looking
good, but it ended up going to a different coach who saw his starting
quarterback go down just before the season. I thought the Vikings would be good
enough to ride Sam Bradford into the playoffs, and they very nearly were. But
injuries and bad luck killed them down the stretch, and Zimmer was lucky to get
through the season without going completely blind in one of his eyes. Garrett
didn’t face anywhere near the same level of adversity, but the results are
impossible to argue against, as he took a team quarterbacked by a fourth round
rookie and led them to the best record in the league.
Comeback Player of the Year
My Pick: Andrew Luck
Actual Winner: Jordy
Nelson
I touched on Luck above. He was great this year, far better than Nelson in terms of individual
performance. But the Colts were disappointing, while Nelson rode the arm of
Aaron Rodgers to an impressive statistical season that covered up that he had
clearly lost a step. In many ways these two players had opposite seasons, with
Luck’s greatness hidden by his ghastly surroundings and Nelson’s mediocrity
covered by the brilliance of his quarterback.
Defensive Player of the Year
My Pick: JJ Watt
Actual Winner: Khalil
Mack
I picked Watt, and Watt
got hurt. I have no regrets. If Watt had been healthy and had played at even 80
percent of his normal level, he would have won this award in a landslide. Mack
had a good season, but he was an uninspiring choice in a field full of
uninspiring choices. This wasn’t a great year for dominant defensive players,
and the league definitely felt the absence of one of its all time greats.
MVP
My Pick: Aaron Rodgers
Actual Winner: Matt Ryan
Rodgers had an up and
down season that ended on a major up, and he probably would have been second on
my ballot if I had a vote and if NFL MVP voters were allowed to list multiple
names. He carried a subpar Green Bay team to a six game winning streak and a
division title, and he did it while inspiring fear of the sort that no one else
in the NFL can produce. He remains a much better quarterback than Ryan, but the
efficiency at which Ryan operated this year was too much to match, as he put
together a statistically dominant season without doing all that much to
actually impress.
Super Bowl
My Prediction: Seahawks over Steelers
Actual Outcome: Patriots over Falcons
I did pretty well with
this. Both of my Super Bowl participants were in the final eight, and the
Steelers made it to Championship weekend. This is an improvement over my last
couple years of predictions, as I saw each of my last two NFC Champions fail to
make the playoffs. Pittsburgh and Seattle weren’t particularly bold selections,
but neither turned out to be a complete disaster.
In both cases I fell
short on this one because I underestimated each team’s glaring flaw. I
neglected to make any mention of Seattle’s offensive line, a unit that was near
the bottom of the league in 2015 and somehow got even worse this year. The
Seahawks were a Super Bowl caliber team, outside of an offensive line that
didn’t boast a single NFL caliber player.
Pittsburgh is a more
interesting story, one I probably should have seen coming. I did hedge my bets
a little in the prediction, saying:
“Where the NFC has four
Super Bowl caliber teams fighting for a spot, the AFC has only two. This opens
things up for inferior squads like San Diego, Cincinnati, or Indianapolis to
sneak through in the playoffs, but I’m still going to stick with Pittsburgh or
New England. The Patriots will be at full strength by the time the playoffs
roll around, and they’re probably the smarter choice. But Pittsburgh’s offense
is just too devastating, and if they can make it through the season intact I
think they can outgun the Patriots in a shootout and make it to the Super Bowl.”
I nailed the final two
teams, but I failed to acknowledge how poorly the Steelers match up against the
Patriots. Their defense has been consistently picked to pieces by Tom Brady,
and it’s going to take more than an influx of youth to fix that.
The other conference is
more interesting. Not many people saw Atlanta coming, and I certainly won’t
claim I did. (I had them pegged as an 8 win team.) But I did find a few quotes that
are interesting in hindsight.
“I actually kind of like
Atlanta as a sneaky bounce back team, especially if their young defense can
pull together.”
“It’s still a decent hill
to climb, but if things come together for the Falcons they could be one of the
surprise teams of the season.”
“There are problems all over
Atlanta’s roster, from their age to their depth, but the biggest concern of all
has to be at the quarterback position.”
And I think that’s a good note to end on. On the whole, I
feel like I did a pretty good job with my predictions. But even so, I managed to squeeze at least one painfully boneheaded comment in there.
Can’t wait to do it again in 2017.
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