Well as you might know, I thought my predictions weren’t bad for college football, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. My Stassen score was better than last year’s so that meant I was closer in my conference predictions than I was the previous season. Problem is, compared to the magazines and websites that actually do this thing for a living, I was almost dead last. Now I turn my attention to the NFL predictions I made. I am sure this will work out better right? I’m not holding my breath. Same way as the past two seasons: I will take snippets of my NFL predictions post and put them here and see if I was right or if I might have been drunk when I made that prediction. Let us begin.
I can see a fair amount of parity this season. There are always candidates to win more than 12 games this season but I could see it where one or even no teams hit the 13-win mark. The best candidates are the LA Rams, New England, Philadelphia and Jacksonville.
I got the Rams right! Thirteen wins on the nose. And the Patriots were close with 11. There was actually a decent amount of parity this season so I wasn’t totally wrong with that. A bit of a miss on the Eagles but that was more due to their slow start than anything. Then there’s the Jaguars. Ho boy. Talk about bottoming out. They were an unmitigated disaster. This coincides with the end of the Blake Bortles era and the start of the (pick one out of) Kyler Murray/Dwayne Haskins/Drew Lock era. So in the end, this prediction wasn’t too bad but not fantastic.
I see some great races happening in both South divisions, along with the NFC West and North. The others won’t be near as competitive with the Patriots easily steamrolling to yet another AFC East crown. Also, and let’s be honest here, the LA Chargers will win the AFC West because the rest of the teams just aren’t that good and probably will all be under .500.
Well I was half-correct about the South divisions. The Saints were seriously good and ran away with the NFC version. The AFC South was fun though. The Texans, Colts and Titans came down to the wire in the best divisional race in the league. I was almost right with the other divisions but the AFC North was also a barrel of fun. That’s partly because the Ravens and Steelers seemed to one-up each other in trying NOT to win the division and the fact that the CLEVELAND F’N BROWNS were almost .500! And my apologies to the Kansas City Chiefs, the most exciting team in god-knows-how-long.
The NFL Wild Card race should be pretty something. I have the Packers and Falcons getting those two spots but the Niners, Lions and even perhaps the Giants and Cowboys will have something to say about that.
Good lord what in the hell? What do I make of all this? Well the Cowboys won the NFC East! But that only happened because the rest of the division was garbage most of the season. The rest of the teams I listed were awful. I get a pass for the Niners since they would have been much better if Jimmy Garoppolo hadn’t been injured. The Packers and Falcons might have to actually rebuild after their shitty seasons. Yet another Bill Belichick disciple failed as a head coach. Go figure. And finally the Giants…well they have Saquon Barkley. That’s good right?
In the AFC, it almost feels like a race to get over .500 to get into the playoffs. Or maybe just to .500. I think the Texans and Titans will be the two Wild Card choices and to be honest, do any of the other non-qualifying AFC teams deserve to make it? Probably not.
The Titans were close, at 9-7. The Steelers were even closer at 9-6-1. But yeah, other than those two teams, every other AFC team that missed the playoffs was under .500. But Indy was surely better than I figured they’d be but that sounds like something most experts would be saying right now.
Should be a three-team race for the bottom with Tampa Bay, Indianapolis and Washington vying for that #1 overall pick. Buffalo and Cleveland should be juuuuuuuuuuuuuust good enough to not be lumped in with those three teams which is an improvement for the Browns and a bit of a disaster for the Bills (who fully look like they are attempting to tank this season).
Buffalo wasn’t good but Cleveland was fun to watch. And Indy, as I said before, was damn good. At one point it looked like the Redskins would actually win the horrifically bad NFC East but tailed off down the stretch. Tampa Bay was awful though so that’s close. No, it was San Francisco (who shouldn’t have been this bad but Jimmy G) and the Cardinals who were the dirt worst. Oh and the Jets. The fact I didn’t include them in this part baffles me even to this day.
Last year I said Jameis Winston would win the MVP. Good fucking lord. This year I will select Jared Goff. Sorry Jared.
Goff was good. Quite good. But Patrick Mahomes had a season for the ages. And so did Drew Brees. So there was no way Jared was getting into that MVP race despite the fact the Rams were the second-best regular season team this year.
I am not even going to pick a Rookie of the Year. No point. I’ll just be wrong.
I honestly would have picked Saquon Barkley as the Rookie of the Year. He was…the offensive ROY. The defensive ROY was Darius Leonard who I never would have picked to win that award. So I would have been half-right.
And now my playoffs preview. Let’s see how good/awful I did:
- I had the Rams winning the Super Bowl and the Patriots losing in the Conference Championship. Not bad.
- I did have Pittsburgh winning the AFC though so that wasn’t so good of a prediction.
- Get this: I had the Rams beating New Orleans in the NFC Championship. Wow! I am pretty damn proud of myself for that.
- The team I whiffed on the most was easily Jacksonville. Who knew that 2017 would be an anomaly? I also had Atlanta and Green Bay in and they were pretty bad.
All in all, I had a pretty good year with my NFL predictions. Which is stunning to be honest with you.
For the most part, we are into the third year of no offseason realignment news right after the college football season has finished. There will always be rumblings but nothing serious since the Big XII did their disastrous look into expanding. I still think we will see major happenings on that front but we are at least a year or two away from that.
The next post will be the conference tournament schedule and it’s a while away from now. The conference tournaments don’t officially start until March 4th. As has been the case the past few years, the Atlantic Sun is the first conference to start the fun. But we won’t see any of that. As per usual, the first conference tournament action we will see will be on the Friday night (March 8th) when the Ohio Valley Conference has their second semi-final matchup. Things are kind of slow through that first weekend, then everything goes crazy the following Monday with a string of days containing a ton of games to watch. I still wonder if the NCAA Tournament would be better if it was done FA Cup-style. So that we would be bound to see a team in like the SWAC or WAC or Metro Atlantic go on a crazy run through the first few rounds. Then their fifth-round matchup would be again Duke and Zion Williamson would pour in 65 points and the Blue Devils would win by 80. Good times.
Anyway, enjoy your week everyone.
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