Bad NFC predictions (not from me)!
Don’t let the experts fool you; this stuff isn’t happening.
With the NFL season ready to kick off, there are plenty of previews being offered up by various by all the different magazines, websites, etc., including this one. Everybody’s got their division winners pick out, their Super Bowl champions teed up, and their hot stories picked. But some of these predictions are worse than wrong; they’re conventional wisdom run amok, the end result of Peter King’s conversations with friends of friends of players or GMs regurgitated throw the grapevine and spit out as big time scoops and wisdom handed down from on high. These are the hunches that get repeated over and over by talking heads in print and on tv, and when they fall flat you never hear a ‘hey, I was wrong’. So what are this season’s phony nuggets of wisdom?
1. Favre makes the Vikings better.
No he doesn’t. The Vikings were 5-1 down the stretch last year; Tavaris Jackson played in three and a half of those and passed for 740 yards with a 64 percent completion percentage (57 for 89), eight touchowns, and just one interception. How was Favre during that same stretch? EPIC FAIL. Over the Jets last five games, he went 98 of 175 (56%) for 1,011 yards with two touchdowns and nine picks. The Jets lost four of those games and missed the playoffs. Now I know Favre had a torn bicep that he got surgically repaired this summer, but guess what folks? He’s 39 going on 40! Injuries are going to happen, especially since he didn’t do training camp again. I’m betting that we’ll see the same Favre this December that we saw last December. Now the Vikings have a better defense and Adrian Peterson, so they’ll win ten plus games and make the playoffs, but it won’t be because of Brett Favre.
2. The Eagles will be a force.
Not really. They’ll do well, but I have them as a borderline playoff team at best. If you look at last season you’ll see that they barely squeaked in the playoffs, beneficiaries of choke job losses by the Redskins and Buccaneers. The Bucs lost in week 17 to the abysmal Oakland Raiders, in overtime to the Falcons in week 15, and to the Brad Johnson-led Cowboys in week 8. You change any of those results and the Bucs make the playoffs over the Eagles. Likewise, the Redskins lost three games to the hapless Rams, Bengals, and 49ers; had they won two of those three games (which they should have) then the Eagles would have been watching on television. So what am I getting at? They weren’t that good last year, and they aren’t any better now. So don’t be surprised if they miss out this year. I don’t care what anyone says.
3. The Cardinals will fall back to Earth
OK, this isn’t entirely wrong. They’re not going back to the Super Bowl, but they’re not going back to 4-12 land either. Expect to hear a lot of noise about how seven out of the last eight Super Bowl losers missed the playoffs entirely the next year. But that’s not happening this time. For one, the Cardinals still play in the lousy NFC West, which they should be to win. They can go 6-0 in the division easy, and they have games against sad sack Detroit and Jacksonville. 8-8 is reachable from those games alone, and that should b e good enough to win the division. So the curse will be broken for at least a year.
so the redskins and the bucs will be better than the eagles……nah
I'm getting tired of all the c*** gobbling going on with, mainly, the Vikings and a little bit with the NFC North. I'm pretty sure the "experts" are going to predict that the Vikings, Bears, and Packers will all make it to the SB. And the annoying thing is it will only get worse since the Vikings should start the season 4-1, with a possibility of 5-0. I'm hoping they go 2-3.
I agree with 1 and 3. Not 2. And yeah, that's cause the Eagles are my team. But they will be better than they were last year, and if they make the playoffs, it won't be because of miraculous losses like last season. Media hyped controversies be damned, they are better than they were last year. I'm only worried about the defensive stability.