I posed the general question. Here is my answer Although I'd love to hear everyone else's selections.
My candidates for collapse and rise are respectively the Colts and the Jaguars.
Their Colts whole team and game planning is predicated on a Super Offense.
If that Offense recedes to merely pretty good, they fall far and hard. The Defense is only a half D, at most, players picked and selected and on their ability to play when up by three scores. That's why they field a "star" DE in 230# DE Robert Mathis. He is smaller than most LBs and an unheard of midget at DE, but he plalys because he can do but one thing, rush the passer. They ignore his inability to play the run. They can't stop the run and can only pass rush and play a complete pass oriented opponent who has abandoned the run in an attempt to play catch up.
Losing franchsie back Edge James is a loss of major proportions, but that is not the only problem. They have sacrificed all their depth to pay the big skill players. Over the last two years they have lost 5 veteran O linemen to FA, and substituted scrubs at Guard and at all the backup positions. While Tarik Glenn is good, and Saturday is a fine center, their right tackle Ryan Diem is only slightly better than averge. The remaining o-line and their starting interior line men are abominably bad; so bad that the Colts lost in the playoffs and to SD because in Manning's words "protection propblems". They have been playing against all odds and hoping that none of their three good olinemen get hurt and have been lucky for two years. The odds say thier luck should runout.
The Defense gets exposed as soon as it plays a club that they cannot jump out to a big lead. Then they get the ball run at them and run at them until they get runover. There is no one on the D that they can bring in to stifle an opponents combined Offensive game. Once again the team's D has been tailored to only be competent when nursing a big lead and playing pass. Even then they give up one of the highest completion percentages in football (67%) in spite of getting a high number of sacks. Why? Because their secondary is a bunch of undersized and under talented midgets. Some of their biggeat starters are 5-8 or LESS. With a tiny line, tiny safety sized LBs, and midget secondary they cna't defend very well.
All it takes is for the Offense to ONLY jump out to one or Two TD leads, for them to be in trouble. Opponents don't abandon their offense and grind their Defesne to death.
They have a tough schedule and more importantly their is now a rising competitor in their own Division. The Colts really haven't had any competion for three years as the Titans were collapsed by the cap, the Jags needed to rebuild, and theTexans were an expansion franchise.
The young Jags won 12 games last year and no one noticed. They are everything the Colts are not. A good Defense, and only a fair to poor Offense, with a young maturing franchise QB and only a few skill players. But they are maturing. For them to win the division, all they have to do is improve on offense to merely mediocre to go with their good D, and I think they have taken that step in the latter parts of last season.
i think they win their divsion outright, and withthe tougher scheduel that the AFCS sees thei year the WC will not cowm from the AFCS, so the Colts are locked out of the playoffs.
