Sour grapes

True Wins did okay over the weekend — predicting the 49ers and Patriots victories, but whiffing on the Ravens and Falcons. Picking the team with more True Wins so far has six correct and two wrong, while relying on actual wins to pick has just four right, two wrong, and makes no prediction on two games (same records for Pats-Texans and 49ers-Packers).

The True Wins king — Denver — is out! Over the last ten years, the top team in True Wins has won four Super Bowls, and the second ranked team has won two more. It’s up to the Patriots (#2) to carry on the tradition, even though the 13.5 True Win Broncos had the second highest total in the last ten years (behind another famous losing team that you may remember). That couldn’t save them from one very cold Manning flinching first in a stalemate and one very cold Champ Bailey getting toasted over and over again (not to mention one very cold referee blowing a couple video reviews and throwing a ton of flags on the Broncos). More on the playoffs later in the week, but for now, I want to go back to some old predictions and talk about this year’s playoff spectators.

The Sour Grapes Club

Last year, I broke the outsiders-looking-in into four groups (follow the link — the predictions are worth a read-through in their entirety):

• The Michael Vick Division (pretty good teams that had some bad luck): Eagles, Bears, Chargers, Cowboys
• The Cam Newton Division (mediocre teams with something to build on): Panthers, Titans, Seahawks, Dolphins, Vikings
• The Rex Ryan Division (overconfident teams that need to reassess their approach): Jets, Cardinals, Bills, Raiders, Chiefs
• The Sam Bradford Division (teams that need to start over completely): Redskins, Jaguars, Browns, Colts, Rams, Buccaneers

The first thing that has to change are the names. Cam Newton moves up a notch and replaces Vick, who unfortunately goes all the way around the horn to replace Bradford in the blow-it-up division. Rex Ryan, one of the most overconfident men in the world, is saved by Tony Romo and his buddy Troy Aikman — I can’t listen to Aikman defend Romo anymore. I’m sticking with my man Stafford and handing the “something to build on” division to him, even if my Lions regressed this year.

Here are the standings this year:

From the first group (I expected good things):

Trading Luck

If this is what the second pick is worth, I can only imagine what the first pick is worth.

Seriously, that is a lot of picks to give up for a college quarterback. The Browns made a similar offer, only to be outbid! Couldn’t the Redskins (or the Browns) have gotten an above average NFL QB for that price instead? What if Andrew Luck or Robert Griffin get hurt? What if they just aren’t any good? If I were the Colts, I would trade the first pick too and let someone else gamble on Luck.

Adam Schefter and coaches: doh!

Adam Schefter posted some thoughts on the NFL on Friday. He led off by arguing that today’s NFL teams tend to fire coaches too soon:

In a society that craves results now, in a world that demands excellence every day, head coaches rarely are allowed the time they need to grow into the job and master it. Reminders of it come every year at this time. Head coaches are fired, head coaches are hired and the coaching carousel spins without producing in the ways NFL owners had hoped.

. . .

In today’s world, everyone loves eating the turkey, but no one wants to wait around for it to cook. They’d rather microwave it. Unfortunately, it’s not as tasty or savory, much like the seasons some of these unstable NFL franchises continually experience.

This is a typical “back in the good old days” point of view.

As the dust settles: week 17 recap and playoff preview

The playoffs are set! I’ll give my thoughts on each match up in a moment, but let’s look at what happened in week 17 first. Seven teams were fighting for their playoff lives, and 7 out of 9 that had clinched were still playing for a higher seed. Like last week, let’s start with the teams that have a legitimate chance to win the Super Bowl (at least 10 True Wins and a stable quarterback situation; if you haven’t read about True Wins yet, what are you waiting for?):

All these teams got the job done in week 17. I was confident that the Steelers would win a defensive struggle against the Browns

NFL week 17: contenders and pretenders

Week 16 was huge. Fifteen teams entered the week with work to do to make the playoffs (7 more had already clinched). Ten of those 15 teams played another team within the same group. That meant 5 guaranteed wins for these teams; only the Titans got a win outside of the group.

Before I break down the carnage, let’s look at the real contenders. Here are the True Wins standings for the six teams that I think have a chance (you can learn about True Wins in my previous post, which are my quick and dirty luck-free measure of team quality):

Injured QBs

My Lions are finally having some “luck” in the QB department (Stafford is still healthy!). The same is not true for a number of teams. A quick rundown (roughly in order of their teams’ competitiveness):

• Matt Schaub (Texans) — out for season. He has a “Lisfranc injury” (i.e., he broke his foot). Their backup Matt (Matt Leinart) proceeded to injure his shoulder (out for the year) in his first game, but T.J. Yates has filled in decently, helped by a good defense.