2009 Anti-Prediction: Respect The Unexpected

August is when the disillusioned and the overpaid quietly agree on incorrect standings in the NFL. This year I hear praise for the usual suspects reassuring football fans that the season will be as boring as expected but “everyone has a chance”. Yet once again popular Super Bowl picks are New England and San Diego. Philadelphia and Arizona are the clique picks for the NFC and if you read closely every team is expected to win or lose one game more or less than last year.

We engage in the fine art of selective hearing as we scroll across blogs and sports writings this summer to find the glimmer of hope that our home team will be worth the off season wait.

In the city of brotherly love, chest beating is resounding through the streets.  Arizona fans are recruiting in Reno, Bakersfield, and El Paso and are finally getting signatures. The suicide rate in St. Louis is at an all time high.  Petty thieves and cheap hustlers are serving county time as stand in fans in Kansas City to turn up the crowd volume, make the television look good, and trim community service time.  T

he world according to football is, in all reality, still living in December of ’08. The sports journals and bookmakers will sell you the “we’re 0 and 0” story and cackle wildly at Oakland fans. Rumor is, Schwarzschild just finished the Patriot’s ’09 Super Bowl ring.

All is well in August and this is football for yet another year.  For those of us that have played the prediction game for years and have hung our heads or grinded like Joe Biden as our smack talk is vindicated or has publicly humiliated us know that the coin that falls has many faces. The blaring truth is, in August these humps all tell the same story and are guaranteed to get half of it wrong.

Lets cut to some numbers I’ve pulled up over the past five years:

For the past 5 years every team’s win loss record has varied by an average of 3 wins from one season to the next.

Only 6 times in the past 5 years (5% of the time) has a team had back to back win loss records.

From ’07 to ’08 5 teams turned a losing record into a winning record (3 of them went to the playoffs).  4 teams turned a winning record into a losing record. This has happened 39 times in the past 5 years.

In ’08 only 5 teams finished in the same divisional position as they did in ’07. Only 34 times has this happened in the past 5 years (24% of the time).

In ’08 7 teams in the playoffs were not in the playoffs the season before.

I know I’m not the only one with access to these numbers but the favorites remain the same in each division this year:  New England, Indy, San Diego, The Steelers, Arizona and The Eagles with the NFC North and South causing some debate.

Of course I already made my season predictions this year, but I was bothered by a series of questions when I was done. Why did all my win loss records look about the same as last year? What losing teams of last season will suddenly be winning teams and visa versa? Which teams will not playoff teams would not return this year?

The most important question was then, what will crash miserably that I’m not expecting and which will be the massive surprise? Last year Miami, Atlanta and Baltimore won more than 6 games than the previous year while considered “under construction” teams without a prayer.  Alternatively Green Bay, Seattle, Detroit, Jacksonville, New England, Cleveland, New Orleans, and Dallas pulled 180’s and cursed expectations.

This is football year in and year out. This is the truth that everyone is 0 and 0 and every team has the option of success. So, this has inspired me to write the 2009 anti-prediction that I expect to be just as reasonably possible as any paid professional’s opinion.

Go ahead and laugh, you’d have buried me in salt if I told you New England would miss the playoffs last August and the 1-15 Dolphins would win the AFC East.

AFC East

·         NE          10-6       You don’t have to drink any cool-aide to identify the roster depth in New England.  By the looks of it they could sub in their cheerleaders for the season and still pull off nine wins.

·         NYJ         5-11       he Jets are attractive to anyone that buys Rex Ryan but we’re forgetting that it’s a close QB race in NY and one of those QBs is the dim witted nine thumbed Kellen Clemens, which speaks poorly of Sanchez if he’s doing anything other than towering over Clemens.

·         MIA       4-12       There is no dynasty forming in Miami, just cheap shots and belly laughs that disgusted their opponents into giving up 11 wins in ‘08. By now, everyone has seen Scarface and Miami is going to snap under pressure to play some real football.

·         BUF        2-14       In Buffalo this team answered a series of restless question marks and long shot bets by pouring blood into the shark tank.  

AFC North

·         CLE         9-7          Cleveland may be in rough shape but Mangini turned the Jets around his first year and some fierce positional battles might have a few stars emerging.

·         PIT          8-8          The Steelers crumbled after their last Super Bowl win and Ben has a pretty nasty civil suit looming overhead.

·         CIN         8-8          The Bengals, with Palmer back, have every reason in the world to recreate the ’05 and ’06 season, or at least turn up the volume a bit.

·         BAL        6-10       Lets face it, the Ravens were a fluke last season but everyone is going to see them coming this year.  The Offense is going to be easy to dissect and the aging defense is learning a new system.

AFC South

·         IND        12-4       Indy has finished all but one season for the past five years with the same record, 12-4, and nothing makes me thing this will change by much.

·         HOU      11-5       Houston might just finally live up to expectations and swing this division around. The offense should be synced up after last year and a very young defense should know how to play some ball now.

·         JAX         9-7          Jacksonville is abandoned by all opponents as the “second bye week” this season and Del Rio will take advantage of this.

·         TEN        5-11       The Kerry Collins craze of ’08 was ten years in the making after Collins broke hearts and ruined lives on two coasts and left teams in need of years of repair. The Titans now have Faust on their hands and their only savior is terrifying.

AFC West

·         DEN       11-5       In Denver parents tell their children to eat their vegetables and brush their teeth or they’ll answer to Josh McDaniels. In the mountains he has the reputation of a childish Ross Perot who spends sleepless nights huffing glue and torturing water boys in the basement. There’s a chance that he’s an absolute genius and no one will see him coming. You could argue that McDaniels is doing exactly what his want to and that is calculated and sinister at best.

·         KC           9-7          Kansas City has been under construction for three years, with luck this team will almost touch the post season. There’s enough young talent is there to win if Herm wants to.

·         SD           8-8          San Diego’s time is slipping away, sure they could win the division again but last year they only won by a botched ref call.

·         OAK       4-12       The Raiders, unfortunately, are still doomed to be the surfs that service Al Davis and that is an ugly business even in Northern California.

NCF EAST

·         PHI         11-5       Philly has another deep roster this year that if healthy should pull this off with ease. Don’t get too excited, the ultra-conservative Reid will be burned in the post season.

·         WAS      8-8          The Skins are still shy an offense and the D has had a risky overhaul, .500 is the best they can hope for.

·         NYG       7-9          This offense will finally fall apart under a rough schedule, weak leadership, and minimal experience.

·         DAL        4-12       The Cowboys have made one bad move after another and Jones is mad with power envy after as many failures. The new stadium will house Caligula nicely as he hocks t-shirts and pretends to coach a football team.

 NFC North

·         MIN       13-3       The Vikings find more than they need in Sage Rosenfels and complete a Super Bowl bound team.

·         DET        10-6       Detroit somehow finds it’s grove with a solid O line, new QB, unknown RBs, and a serious receiving core. The defense does it’s job long enough to let the offence work like sweet smelling salts. 

·         GB          9-7          Green Bay struggles once again to lose by less than three points in most games.

·         CHI         5-11       Chicago is lost with no receivers, a priss quarterback, a second year RB with the weight of the world on his shoulders and the defense that has been plugging the leaks for years.

NFC South

·         TB           11-5       Rookie coaches and QBs are the story of ’08, so then there’s the Bucs with all the opportunity.

·         NO           8-8          New Orleans is doomed as their new defense doesn’t add up.

·         ATL          8-8          Atlanta has sixteen games on film and plenty of hungry opponents that see their game a mile away.

·         CAR        6-10       When Jake Delhomme’s  many troubled areas, including his pride, fail miserably the season is over while they scramble to find Vinnie Testiverde’s phone number.

NFC West

·         SEA        12-4       Everyone is healthy in Seattle and the new coach brings “W”s.

·         ARI         8-8          Arizona can’t figure out to run or to pass, who to play, or which direction to go.

·         SF           3-13       Singletary utilizes this season as a social experiment in SF.

·         STL         1-15       Lives still end in St. Louis when there’s hardly player on that team that would make most varsity high school cuts.

These are long shots at best but they’re what December is made of. All things considered we’ll see plenty of new faces in the NFC post season: Seattle, Tampa, Detroit and Green Bay will all be new this time around. In the AFC we’ll see the familiar Patriots and Colts, then we get Denver, Houston, Cleveland and Kansas City.

The point of this is to illustrate how dynamic the season really is. All of my reading this summer has identified the ’09 season as hopeless and tragically repetitive of the last. So pull the guns out of your mouths in Ohio and Missouri and get nervous in New York. Today, everyone really is 0 and 0.

Expected the unexpected and as a true Saints fan I’ll pass the word: keep the faith.