I thought this article was pretty bad and overly biased, not to mention he contradicts himself with his logic.
He is obviously a Pats fan and does not hide his disdain for the Jets and Chargers.
Let's see, he has the Chargers going 9-7 against a schedule who's opponents have a 117 - 139 record, a .457 winning percentage. Uh, OK.
I also like how he uses an absolute worse case scenario for the Chargers' upcoming season.
But what if Merriman isn’t the force of nature he was before reconstructive knee surgery?
What if Cromartie isn’t really that good?
What if English is a bust?
What about the average offensive line?
The mediocre safeties?
What happens if Philip Rivers gets hurt?
Or thirty year-old LaDainian Tomlinson?
And contradictory logic. He expects Merriman to not be the same player he was before the injury, yet Osi Umeniyora is going to be comeback player of the year, when Osi had a much worse knee injury. Again, Uh, OK.
And he says the Saints eight games in '08 but six of them were close. Uh, the Chargers lost 8 games in '08, and all of them were close, none by more than 9 points. They also outscored their opponents by a combined 92 points, 7th best in the NFL, and better than the Saints' 70 points.
Seriously, if a guy is gonna make power rankings and season projections, I would think you wouldn't use hypothetical worst case scenarios for some teams and hypothetical best case scenarios for others, assume some teams are gonna be plagued with injuries while assuming others will be injury free.
And Norv Turner runs franchises into the ground? I didn't know that taking over a Redskins team that went 4-12 the year before and was in salary cap hell was driving a franchise into the ground. The Redskins have had exactly 2 10 win seasons since their last Superbowl victory in 1991. One of those was with Norv as coach in 1999. The next year Norv had the Skins at 6-3, and Brad Johnson got hurt, replaced by Jeff George, who went 1-3 before Daniel Snyder fired Norv. The team finished 8-8, Schottenheimer took over the team the next year, and went a remarkable 8-8.
Maybe he was referring to the how Norv ran the 4-12 Raiders team he inherited into the ground, going 5-11 and 4-12. Oh yeah, they haven't won more than 5 games since.
And while everyone knows the Pats are strong, they have more concerns than I can remember going into a season. Brady is Brady and one of the best ever, but he doesn't look all that comfortable yet in the pocket to me. And I know BB is a defensive mastermind (personally I think he is the best coach ever, ahead of Lombardi), but the Pats have lost a ton of important pieces on that D over the last two years. I still don't think the Pats have replaced Samuel, and I think it's a huge question mark as to whether or not they will adequately replace Harrison, Bruschi, Vrabel, and Seymour as stud starters, not to mention solid contributors such as Seau, Colvin, and Hobbs.
Not to mention the Pats are counting on a lot of guys who have never been able to stay healthy in their careers to suddenly play close to, if not all of, the whole season, and play major roles. Fred Taylor, Joey Galloway, Shawn Springs, Leigh Bodden, Tully Banta-Cain, and Derrick Burgess have always been injury prone.
I don't know, kind of a poor article IMO.
