2020 NFC South Preview

It’s that time of year again (maybe). We are thirty days away from the kickoff of the NFL season, if there is a season that is going to kick off. From there thirty-two teams (hopefully) will play sixteen games (unlikely), and then fourteen (remember they added two more wild card teams this year?) will advance into the playoffs. And in the end only one of these teams will emerge as Super Bowl champions. If the season makes it to the Super Bowl.

I’m one paragraph in, and I’m already exhausted with this. Clearly COVID is going to be the driving story in the NFL this year, and there is so much uncertainty that comes along with it. How far will we make it into the season before games start being cancelled? What happens if a team has a major outbreak? What if a team loses its star quarterback to a quarantine for a couple of weeks? We don’t know the answer to any of these questions, so right now any sort of prediction is even more fraught than normal.

So here is what I’m going to do: I’m going to ignore all of that shit. I am going to write my previews about football only. I might occasionally touch on players who have opted out from the season, because we know they won’t be available. But other than that, I’m not going to go speculating about any of the scenarios that could occur.

As in the past, my previews will go division-by-division through the league, starting today with the NFC South. For each division I will list the teams in order of how I expect them to finish (though I retain the right to change these orders by the time my actual prediction pieces come around). For each team I will lay out a best-case scenario, a worst-case scenario, and one player you should keep your eye on. This player may be an emerging star, a veteran who may or may not have juice left in the tank, or a player who fills a crucial position on this roster. Or it may just be a player I want to write about.

New Orleans Saints

Best Case Scenario

The Saints likely have the best top-to-bottom roster in the NFL. Looking at this team, it is hard to find any clear weaknesses. They have a pair of elite tackles and a solid young interior of the line. They have a superstar wide receiver, a veteran second receiving option, and a dynamic threat out of the backfield. They have proven veterans in their front seven and emerging stars on the back end of their defense. And of course, a Hall of Fame quarterback.

It’s honestly extraordinary that this team hasn’t won a Super Bowl in the past decade, and even more extraordinary how they’ve gone out of the playoffs the past three years. At this point it’s almost as if some force is karmically punishing them for some past misdeeds (I wonder what those could be). The only real thing holding this team back is whether this force is satisfied at this point, or if it will take a fourth straight inexplicable playoff defeat to stop this team from a deep postseason run.

Worst Case Scenario

There’s only one real thing to focus on here. This team can handle injuries at just about any position. If Terron Armstead goes down, they have other Pro-Bowl caliber players on the line who can pick up the slack. If they lose Cameron Jordan, they can hope that players like Marcus Davenport and Sheldon Rankins can finally find consistency to go along with their flashes. Losing Michael Thomas might be a bigger deal, but Drew Brees has dealt with worse receiving groups than one led by Emmanuel Sanders.

The only downside for this team is Brees himself. Last season he missed five games, and they won all five, thanks to steady play from Teddy Bridgewater and some excellent defensive performances. They lost Bridgewater this offseason, but they somehow managed to bring in Jameis Winston, who probably jumps to the top of the list as the best backup quarterback in the NFL. They can afford to miss a couple games from Brees. They can’t afford him to hit the cliff. The same cliff I’ve talked about for aging quarterbacks for years, the same cliff I’ll cover in even more detail below. Brees was clearly not at the top of his game last year, but as long as he stays at about 80% of his peak, this team can beat anyone. But older quarterbacks can fall fast and fall hard, and if that happens the Saints will have a much tougher road to pulling off what Denver did five years back and winning with a lesser version of their Hall of Fame passer.

Player to Watch – Marcus Williams, S

I want to talk about Williams because he’s one of the best safeties in the league, and because he has had some of the worst luck of any player I can remember. He is an excellent defender who has solidified the back end of the Saints defense since entering the league in 2017. More often than not, he is making exactly the play his team needs him to make. The problem is that on the two biggest plays of his career, he has been utterly humiliated.

You probably remember Williams whiffing on the tackle on Stefon Diggs that cost the Saints a trip to the NFC Championship three years ago. You may also remember him from last year’s regular season game against San Francisco, when he tried to tackle George Kittle and only managed to get dragged for ten yards and commit a facemask penalty. The former ended their season. The latter cost them home-field through the playoffs and forced them to play Minnesota in the first round, ending in defeat once again.

It’s unfortunate that one player, and a good player at that, can be on the wrong end of two such moments. But do you know the crazy thing? He’s only 23 years old. He still has a long career ahead of him, and he is only going to get better over the next couple years. We will never forget these two plays, but hopefully when all is said and done, we will remember Williams for quite a bit else as well.

Atlanta Falcons

Best Case Scenario

I picked this team to win the Super Bowl a year ago, and even though they clearly didn’t live up to that, I think they might still have the potential to be a championship team. They won six of their last eight after a 1-7 start, and even though there is typically no relationship between a hot finish and performance the next year, I think the strong finish is more representative of what this team is. They still have too much talent on offense to not be excellent on that side of the ball.

I’ve been waiting years for this defense to finally round into the unit their talent should be, though they are going to be different from what they've been the past couple seasons. Vic Beasley and De’Vondre Campbell are gone. They are going to need Takk McKinley to finally develop, and they need Dante Fowler and Charles Harris to offer edge pass rush as offseason additions. It’s a steeper hill to climb than it’s looked in the past, and I think it’s probably more reasonable to expect the Falcons to top out as a wild card team who could make some noise in the playoffs with a veteran roster.

Worst Case Scenario

Matt Ryan and Julio Jones are both great, and I think both should find their way to the Hall of Fame someday. But they are also both getting up there, and last year they showed signs of age, even while still being reasonably productive. Jones failed to eclipse 1400 yards for the first time since 2013, and while Ryan was still an efficient passer, he led the league in sacks taken and was overall less dangerous than he’s been in the past.

If their stars on offense slip to even merely human, this team is in trouble. They have decent depth at wide receiver, but their offensive line didn’t show much from the two first round selections they spent there a year ago, and they have basically no reliable running game. Less life from their offense means more pressure on their defense, and so far they’ve shown no signs of being able to bear that. This team failed to make the postseason a year ago, and that could just be the first step of a longer decline.

Player to Watch – Dante Fowler, EDGE

Atlanta reconstructed their defense this offseason, and they’re going all in on attacking the passing game. They’ve invested heavily in pass rushers in recent years, with first round picks spent on Beasley and McKinley that didn’t pan out (apart from one season by Beasley that stands out as one of the biggest outliers in recent memory). But the strength of their defense has primarily been up the middle, from Grady Jarrett at the front to Deion Jones in the middle to Keanu Neal on the back end.

This offseason they spent their first round selection on cornerback AJ Terrell, and they took a high upside gamble on Dolphins washout Harris. But the most immediate impact will come from Fowler. Fowler has had an interesting career since being the first non-quarterback drafted in 2015. He missed his entire rookie season with a torn ACL, and by the time he was healthy the Jaguars already had two elite pass rushers. He never really had a chance to develop in Jacksonville, but his first full season away from them was impressive, with 11.5 sacks as a Ram. He is still only 25 years old, and now he has a chance to be the premier edge rusher on a team that desperately needs contributions from that position.

 

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

 

Best Case Scenario

This team is puzzling to predict, because I have no idea what to expect from Tom Brady, or what their offense is going to look like with him in charge. But it’s possible to construct a dream scenario of an offense spreading the field with elite weapons and a Hall of Fame quarterback at the helm racing up and down the field led by a coach who got the best years out of another aging quarterback in Carson Palmer with Arizona.

Whatever they get from their offense, I think the defense will be more key to their success, and they have the pieces in place to be one of the surprises of the league this year. Vita Vea has shown flashes of dominance in his young career. Shaq Barrett led the league in sacks a year ago. Devin White and Lavonte David give them a pair of electric athletes at linebacker, one with the explosive potential of youth and the other with veteran savvy. And in the secondary Carlton Davis is turning into a physical terror on the outside. This defense has the potential to take a major leap forward, and that could be enough by itself to push them into the playoffs, whatever becomes of their offense.

Worst Case Scenario

The pieces of this offense are fascinating, but I’m not sure how they really fit together. Chris Godwin and Mike Evans are likely the best receiving duo in the league, but they are both better suited for the down the field assault of someone like Jameis Winston than the precise machinations of Brady. The combination of Rob Gronkowski and OJ Howard could be perfect for Brady after spending the past decade eating defenses alive with his tight ends, yet Bruce Arians is notorious for minimizing the position in his scheme.

And of course, if Brady isn’t Brady, then what is this offense going to be? Brady fell off sharply a year ago—not quite as sharply as someone like Peyton Manning or Brett Favre in their final years, but still a pretty dramatic departure from the performance we’ve been used to seeing from him. Does the new setting with better weapons on offense revitalize him? Or is he really just a 43 year old man standing on a football field, a place no 43 year old man should ever be?

Player to Watch – Ronald Jones, RB

From Kevin Faulk to James White, Brady has always leaned heavily on the running back as a weapon in the passing game. While he certainly has a lot of talent around him to attack down the field, he’s still going to need someone to bail him out underneath. The Buccaneers have put together an intriguing collection of talent in the backfield—including rookie Ke’Shawn Vaughn and veteran LeSean McCoy—but the highest upside still belongs to Jones.

Jones was a second round pick in 2018, and he was almost invisible his rookie season. He bounced back with a solid 2019 that showed flashes of his exciting ability, but it’s clear heading into 2020 that this is the year for him to prove himself in Tampa Bay. He put up solidly unspectacular numbers as a receiver a year ago, but aside from that he has very little experience catching the football in either pros or in college. But his speed and quickness are truly special, and if he can figure that part of the game out, he’ll become a crucial weapon for Tampa Bay’s offensive growth.

 

Carolina Panthers

Best Case Scenario

Carolina is taking a long-term approach to rebuilding this team. They attacked the defensive side of the ball in the draft, and they left the offense mostly alone in the offseason, aside from one big change. Cam Newton is out, and Teddy Bridgewater is in. Bridgewater will be an upgrade over what they had for most of 2019, but he won’t be as dynamic as Newton was the last time we saw him at full health. The best hope for this offense is that their young weapons step forward, Bridgewater can get the ball into their hands in space, and they can minimize the pressure on what will likely be a porous offensive line.

The offense will likely top out as interesting-but-average. The question is whether the defense can leap forward with their young talent as quickly as they would like. Can Derrick Brown be a disruptor on the interior, or will he start as mostly a part-time player as they develop his physical tools? Can Yetur Gross-Matos be the supplementary pass rusher they need across from Brian Burns, or will he struggle with the physicality of the NFL game? There are a lot of questions in this defense. In the long run the answers to all of them could be yes, but this feels like a team still a couple years away from where they’re trying to get.

Worst Case Scenario

I’ve loved Bridgewater since his time at Louisville, and I’m thrilled to see him get another chance to run an offense. In the two years he started for Minnesota he was a slightly cautious quarterback who showed flashes of poise and pinpoint accuracy. He wasn’t a star by any means, but he showed the potential to step his game forward before a knee injury cost him the final two years of his rookie contract and sent him journeying around the league. The question becomes, how much did that stifle his development? A year ago in New Orleans he looked much as he did in Minnesota—capable, competent, and thoroughly unspectacular.

A year ago this offense was Christian McCaffrey and pretty much nothing else. DJ Moore quietly put up very nice numbers, but their offense relied way too much on their running back/slot receiver hybrid. They can’t expect him to bear that same load this year. If they try to do so, this offense will fall to pieces the moment something goes wrong. If McCaffrey gets hurt, Bridgewater’s safety valve is gone. They traded a competent guard this offseason for a below average tackle, and pass rushes will tear this offensive line to pieces if given the chance. Bridgewater could find himself running for his life in this offense, with few weapons he can trust to shoulder the load and a coaching staff and front office who seem content to let this season tick away while they try to build for 2022 or 2023.

Player to Watch – Taylor Moton, OT

Moton has been solidly plugging away on the right side of Carolina’s offensive line for a few years now, but he’s going to face more pressure this year than he’s ever had before. When he first stepped on the field he was part of a veteran offensive line alongside players like Ryan Kalil, Trai Turner, Daryl Williams, and Andrew Norwell. Those pieces have slowly chipped away, and now Moton is expected to be the foundation of their offensive line.

I’m going to be honest here, I don’t understand at all what Carolina is doing with this line. They traded Turner to the Chargers in exchange for Russell Okung, an objectively worse player to lock down the quarterback’s blind side. And then on draft night, when things fell about as perfectly as they could have hoped, with only one of the top four tackles off the board by the time they came to select, they decided to take a run-stuffing defensive tackle instead. Their offensive line is going to be a mess this year. The only thing stopping it from being a complete catastrophe is Moton, and that’s if he can maintain his solid level of play without the help around him that he’s had in the past.