LiveBall Sports

The quarterback carousel is in full swing.  And this trio of teams wasted no time in getting in on it.  A different post will be used to address the Kevin Kolb trade.

The first domino fell when Tarvaris Jackson agreed to terms with Seattle very shortly after the negotiating period opened on Tuesday.  Jackson followed the path first paved by offensive coordinator and Brett Favre BFF Darrell Bevell, moving from Minnesota to Seattle in the offseason.  For the Seahawks, this should have been really obvious after they didn’t select any quarterbacks in the draft.  The Hasselbeck era in Seattle gets to end amicably, and with no obvious solution to their quarterback situation, the quick add of Jackson gives them a player with a little bit of upside and starting experience on the salary of a backup who can play right away.  It’s everything that Seattle screwed up in the Charlie Whitehurst deal when they traded a third round pick for a player with no experience at the quarterback position, causing Hasselbeck to win a job that the Seahawks pretty clearly did not intend for him to win.

When you take a look at a situation like the Cincinnati Bengals have at their quarterback position (under the assumption that Carson Palmer is, in fact, a retired player), you can see what could have happened to the Seahawks if they weren’t judicious at this position.  The Bengals employ Bruce Gradkowski, Jordan Palmer, and Andy Dalton.  The Bengals have all year to try to develop Dalton, but it is quite clear, to me at least, that the Bengals best plan at the quarterback position for the future is for Palmer to have a change of heart.  Gradkowski isn’t anywhere near the player Jackson has been over his career, Jordan Palmer has failed to hold a job whenever there has been competition, and Dalton was pushed up into the second round by a ton of demand at the quarterback position.   The Seahawks were able to stay on pace in their rebuilding project while passing on mid-tier draft-eligible quarterbacks, and for their trouble, they might have picked up the highest upside player on either team (Jackson, if not Dalton), and won’t have to sit through the many moods of Bruce Gradkowski in the meantime.

Seattle opens itself up for criticism if and when the offense struggles behind Jackson, but then again, the offense struggled behind Hasselbeck last year, and they won the NFC West.  It would not be too strange an outcome to have predicted if they do so again.

Hasselbeck moves on and signs with the Tennessee Titans, which is not nearly as sound as a football move.  Tennessee was also pretty barren at the quarterback position after drafting Jake Locker with the 8th overall pick.  Hasselbeck comes in and is instantly the best quarterback on the Titan roster.  That also would have been true of most of the free agent market.  Tennessee just happened to settle on the player who is 35 years old.

Tennessee must have thought the world of him because they are still going to pay him like a top passer over the next three years at 7 million per year.  Hasselbeck was last a top passer in 2007.  Even if you believe he can sustain the gains he made in 2010 under Jeremy Bates (who was fired by the Seahawks, for reasons unknown to outsiders), Hasselbeck is still at the very, very end of his useful life, to the point where even getting 16 mildly effective games out of him is farfetched.  Hasselbeck already has an existing relationship with Locker from their days as residents of the state of Washington, but that seems like a silly thing to tack a couple extra million on there for.

My problem here is with the Tennessee Titans, not with Matt Hasselbeck, who is by all reports, a classy guy and the kind of face of an organization the Titans should want.  But the longer he remains the top QB on their roster, the more evident it will become that drafting Jake Locker was a mistake.  If Locker was going to blow us away this year, a Hasselbeck signing wouldn’t make any sense.  The Titans plan of succession is very obvious here, I’m just not sure it has any chance of working.

Tennessee’s Thursday release of former franchise quarterback and 2006 offensive rookie of the year Vince Young was a bad situation for everyone involved, including Young.  He landed a couple hours later on his feet in Philadelphia, filling the void created by the Kevin Kolb trade.  This is an obvious win for the Eagles, since Kolb and Young are pretty identical in their value to a team as backup quarterbacks.  Kolb got a monster deal from Arizona because of his projection as a starter, but for Philadelphia, there’s hardly any on-field loss.  Young is the biggest winner though: the Eagles organization is a value creating machine for quarterbacks.  He goes anywhere else, and he’s sink or swim for the rest of his career.  By going to the Eagles, he’s going to be in high demand at this point next year.  Only problem for the Eagles is that Young is on a one year deal, and if they’re going to get any value for him after the season, they can only do so by using the franchise tag on him, which will limit the return in any trade.

Then again, I’m not even convinced that Young will make it to the season there.  One unexpected injury to a QB in the preseason, and Young is going to be in demand yet again.  The fact that the Eagles hold his rights just gives the rest of the league the heads up that when you need a quarterback, you’re probably going to have to go through the Eagles to get it.

The shocking thing to me about the Nnamdi Asomugha surprise signing with the Philadelphia Eagles is how many different parties lost in this whole ordeal.

Start with Nnamdi Asomugha.  Asomugha is a west coast guy who, according to a report by Peter King, had his heart set on leaving Oakland to play on the east coast.  So, sure, Asomugha got what he wanted in Philadelphia, and I’m sure he’ll be quite satisfied playing for a class A organization into his early to mid thirties.

But this is not a good contract for Asomugha.  You can rest assured knowing the way the Eagles do business that if and when Asomugha is released by the Eagles, it will be at the nadir of his value as a player.  It’s more than possible that he’s good enough to play all five years of his contract with the Eagles and earn all $60 million in the contract, but he no longer holds that option to hit the market at the peak of his value like he did in Oakland.  Furthermore, it’s almost incomprable how much money Asomugha ended up leaving on the table to end up with the Eagles.

The best offers made by the Texans, Cowboys, 49ers, and Jets almost certainly exceeded this offer by the Eagles: 12 mil/year and 40% of the contract guaranteed.  The reason the Eagles were a surprise suitor is because those teams had better offers on the table, and eventually had to pull them, likely because of mismanagement by Asomugha’s agent.  By the time Philadelphia came in at the end, Asomugha was just taking the best available offer in a relatively weak market.  Conceivably, he could have used interest from all 30 teams to create a super market for himself.  But when it really just broke down into a five team race, Asomugha’s east coast demands made the New York Jets the only option; and then his contractual demands took them out of the picture.

The Jets are now in some kind of a bad scenario.  Asomugha would have been the icing on the cake in terms of a perfect week of free agents.  They had set their cap situation up to get him.  But the people on Asomugha’s end never pulled the trigger.  And because of that, the Jets will almost certainly enter 2011 older and with less firepower than they had in 2010.  They have some salary cap space necessary to go out and add a corner, but they were well set up to add Asomugha and trend towards the top of the NFL in defense next year.  Now, the Jets lost a couple of pieces: CB Drew Coleman, and probably WR Braylon Edwards among them.

ESPN’s John Clayton expects them to resign Antonio Cromartie, meaning their defense will look like it did last year, just older.  And that offense is in some sort of trouble, as its stable has been cut at the WR position, the teams right tackle, Damien Woody, announced his retirement, and Mark Sanchez has yet to show meaningful, measurable improvement in his NFL career to date.  We know the anvil falls on Sanchez if the Jets struggle this season, but it’s possible that this could have been avoided if the Jets never had gone after Asomugha…or had gotten him.  This is a big loss for Gang Green.

The winners, if there are any, are the Philadelphia Eagles, who get an elite player on a good contract for them and where they are as a team.  Here’s the problem: the on-field implications of Asomugha to the Eagles don’t make that much sense for the Eagles.  They traded for Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie two days ago, after their no. 2 CB hole was filled because they were poised to get Joselio Hanson back off of IR.  Now Asomugha comes in, and they still have Asante Samuel on the roster, who they might trade…or might not.

The book for beating the Eagles defense doesn’t change much with Asomugha in the fold.  Now if they keep Samuel and DRC and Hanson, this becomes a very interesting defense.  Not a great one, mind you.  But one where winning the match-up battle becomes less about spreading out the defense and throwing the ball vs trying to do everything out of your run-oriented formations.  If the Eagles opt to move Samuel for draft picks though, well, then this defense just looks a lot like the unit that the Eagles took into last year.

So I don’t see this as a super-awesome franchise defining moment for the Eagles.  Asomugha becomes the best player on that defense, but isn’t really a scheme fit, and the Eagles might have problems incorporating his skill set in a way that doesn’t make the guy playing opposite him an easy target for offenses.  Maybe they have that solved already.  It’s hard to say from the perspective of an outsider.  What is easy to say at this point is the Asomugha free agency saga had a bunch of twists and turns, and at the end of it all, I’m not convinced that any party or fanbase will leave satisfied.

As my first act after the lifting of the 2011 NFL Lockout, I am going to talk about the Buffalo Bills making the playoffs.

No, I am quite seriously about to do that.

Chan Gailey’s first season in Buffalo saw him overtake a bad team and lead them to as rough a start as any team has had in at least five years, a start which made Gailey make a rare admission just two months into the season: that he had picked the wrong quarterback by choosing Trent Edwards over Ryan Fitzpatrick as a week one starter.  Edwards was released after three weeks.  Then, of course, there was the case of the team’s new 3-4 defense under recycled coordinator George Edwards, which lasted exactly six weeks before they scrapped the shiny new defensive scheme, ranked 32nd overall at the time, and went back to the drawing board.

You’d probably have had cause there in just the first six weeks to fire the entire Bills coaching staff and start from scratch on both sides of the ball.  But in the absence of what could have happened at that point, we can only comment on what did happen: for the last ten weeks of the 2010, the Buffalo Bills were a pretty darn good team who went a hard luck 4-6 against probably the most difficult “last 10″ schedule in the league.  Ryan Fitzpatrick finished the season near the top of the league in touchdown passes per attempt (TD rate) and above the median in yards per attempt.

Still, for their troubles, the Bills were awarded with the last place schedule in 2011, and it was a pretty good year to get it, because it gave them the Titans and the Bengals, who both lost their quarterbacks for various reasons.  Not only that, but the travel schedule also ends up very favorable for them versus other AFC East teams.  The Patriots and Jets, for example, will head to Oakland and to Denver this season, at separate times.  The only time the Bills will have to cross more than one time zone comes late in the year against the Chargers, at which point it could already be apparent that they’re in it for the long haul.

The Bills have been a strong defense and special teams unit for years upon years, only departing from that last year under new leadership.  But in the time period of the most recent NFL offensive explosion: 2003-2009, the Bills had been bogged down by a lack of offense.  For the first time in eight years, the offense in 2010 looked to be an asset instead of a liability.  Buffalo is going to need to keep that momentum going into the 2011 season to have a realistic shot at contention, but assuming that Fitzpatrick’s gains were real and not imagined — whether they were a function of the unique Gailey offense isn’t relevant — the offense around him looks like a very good group.

So with expected defense/special teams regression, and perhaps the most optimistic expectation for their offense since Drew Bledsoe came aboard in 2002, the Buffalo Bills might end the season as the second best team in the AFC East.  Obviously, you have the Jets holding that position right now.  The Dolphins might have the best defense in all of football.  And the Patriots remain the Patriots.  But the Dolphins have failed to surround Chad Henne with enough dynamic weapons for him to improve his offensive numbers this year, and the Jets have question marks all over the field to settle in free agency…with not much salary cap space to work with.

The Bills have not done a good job drafting in the last five years, and that is something they will have to overcome to push for a playoff spot in 2011.  The roster is not overflowing with talent.  It never has been at any point in the recent past.  But the results on the point prevention side have always been there.  Buffalo may once again face a tough slate of defenses that depresses points (1/4 of their schedule played against the Jets and Dolphins), but they could also find themselves near the top of the AFC in scoring and total offense and no one would bat an eye at it.

The question is, and I’ll try to answer this question further in the Bills’ roster roundouts 2011 article, is why this new perception of being able to score added to the longstanding tradition of fundamental defense and explosive special teams isn’t going to result in a higher expectation of the Bills to win games in 2011.  I think, to an extent, there is still a perception out there that offensive totals can masquerade as “empty statistics” since the principals in the Bills offense aren’t big name talent.  Therefore, they might be able to put up stats, but they are stats that are “given” by the defense.  Such an approach may be intellectually dishonest, but it is perception nonetheless.

I’m not the biggest Ryan Fitzpatrick supporter, and perhaps Stevie Johnson gets a bit more credit than he deserves, but this team still has C.J. Spiller, Fred Jackson, and Lee Evans, and has well developed lineman on the interior that they spent high picks on in the 2009 draft, who have now matured.  With strong cover corners and a well-built defensive line, the Bills will only have to address in house players in free agency, and try to add some outside linebackers who can get after the passer.  That should streamline the free agency process, and help to make 2011 a continuation of the gains made in a “lost” 2010 season for the Buffalo Bills.  And despite problems I have with their recent draft history, the larger, more significant problems in the rest of the AFC East make the Bills a surprisingly good, if quiet, bet to finish in second place behind the Patriots.  And in a conference where the sixth seed hasn’t been nearly this wide open in years, that may make the most optimistic Bills fan giddy about a potential playoff run in 20-11.

To be clear and up front about it, I opted not to turn this into a statistically based study with a sample size that could answer the question above.  This is nothing more than a case study of the 2010 season.  I simply went to the 32 teams, and found former first rounders on each team that fit each of the following three criteria:

1. homegrown (with the team that drafted them)
2. developed into a starting level player (not simply by necessity)
3. played for team that drafted them in 2010

In other terms, there are a lot of free agents here who will play for other teams in 2011, but I was much more concerned with what an average team looks like, and what an average playoff team (or ten win team) looks like from the same perspective.  My belief going into this thing was that there wouldn’t be much of a difference between the success of playoff teams in the first round, and the success of other teams.  In part, this is because the teams picking at the top of the top of the draft have a better chance of success than the ones picking at the bottom of the round, even though typically, picking at the bottom of the first round is a much better predictor of making the playoffs in the next season.

128 first rounders subjectively “qualified” in my criteria, ranging back from Ray Lewis (1996) and Peyton Manning (1998) all the way up to Eric Berry, Devin McCourty, Sam Bradford, Trent Williams, Gerald McCoy, Ndamukong Suh, Russell Okung et al from 2010.  About a third of the 2010 first round ended up on this list.  The highest rated first rounder from 2010 who didn’t count towards this list was Rolando McClain of the Raiders, who has a really good chance of making it on to a list like this a year from now.  127 divided by 32 teams is exactly four developed first rounders per team.

Three teams had just two first rounders rate highly enough to be considered “developed, homegrown talent:” the Denver Broncos (DJ Williams (2004), Ryan Clady (2008)), the Cincinnati Bengals (Johnathon Joseph (2006), Leon Hall (2007)), and the Atlanta Falcons (Roddy White (2005), Matt Ryan (2008)).  You could make a good argument for Michael Jenkins to be included with the Falcons first round haul, but the early career struggles of LT Sam Baker, DT Peria Jerry, and mediocre rookie year of LB Sean Weatherspoon are too obvious to ignore.  Those three “talent deprived” teams combined for two playoff berths (though no wins) over the last two seasons.

On the other end were three teams who employed six or more developed first round picks.  The Kansas City Chiefs (Derrick Johnson (2005), Tamba Hali (2006), Dwayne Bowe (2007), Glenn Dorsey (2008), Branden Albert (2008), Eric Berry (2010)) had the youngest average contribution of any team on the list, while the Ravens have done it differently: by holding onto the first round picks that they built this defense around long ago: (Ray Lewis (1996), Todd Heap (2001), Ed Reed (2002), Terrell Suggs (2003), Haloti Ngata (2006), Ben Grubbs (2007), Michael Oher (2009)).  And of course, this blog has touched before on just how remarkable the Carolina Panthers have done at picking first rounders and keeping them in the fold.  Free agency will break that string this year, but still: (Jordan Gross (2003), Chris Gamble (2004), DeAngelo Williams (2006), Jon Beason (2007), Jeff Otah (2008), Jonathon Stewart (2008)).

I wanted to address the idea that teams that win are doing better in this measure than teams that don’t win.  If the NFL expectation for developing and retaining your own first rounders is four at any one time, then it’s worth pointing out that teams that won ten games last year averaged just a little under four and a half homegrown first rounders per team.  Playoff teams averaged four and one-third.  Maybe more significantly, only two teams made the postseason last year with fewer than average homegrown first round starters: Atlanta, and the Chicago Bears (Brian Urlacher (2000), Tommie Harris (2004), and Greg Olsen (2007)).

Selecting wisely and developing your first round picks is an important facet of building a strong organization, but it’s not impossible to overcome a lack of first round contribution, and there just isn’t that much leaguewide variance throughout the league (at least, there wasn’t in 2010).  Most teams have, at any point in time, four former first rounders on their roster who are centerpieces of their schemes.  Teams that tend to do worse by this measure also tend to use first round picks on receivers and quarterbacks, more so than what I predicted would be the most significant variable in play here: turnover in the coaching staff.  Having a long term, experienced personnel guy such as Ozzie Newsome, Carl Peterson, Marty Hurney, or Ted Thompson typically resulted in either successful drafting, or the extension of successful picks.  So limiting turnover does seem to matter, but the big thing is drafting good players each year, and keeping the scheme in place that allows them to receive extensions.

Still, the correlation between wins and retaining successful first rounders was positive, but not that strong in 2010.  For teams like the Chiefs, young first round talents have been the secrets to their success.  But even more successful teams like Chicago and Atlanta have done it differently from the get go.  As long as you end up drafting well on the whole, how you do in the first round does not apparently outweigh other factors in building a roster.

This is  a list of the recent drafting history of the Denver Broncos.  And it’s not pretty.

The Josh McDaniels era might be best defined by how he did in the draft.  And while the very nature of the development of young players means that the two McDaniels/Brian Xanders drafts in Denver is in the hands of Xanders and John Fox now, which is going to make the results look worse than they may have under McDaniels, only four players that McDaniels drafted started for him in the 2010 season: offensive lineman J.D. Walton, outside linebacker Robert Ayers (due to injury), cornerback Perrish Cox, and running back Knowshon Moreno.  Two starters per draft just isn’t that good to begin with.  For a rebuilding team, it’s inexcusable.

Now, to be fair to Denver, they invested their 2010 first rounders (plural, because they were able to capitalize on trades to have 4 first round picks in two years) in high upside players WR Demaryius Thomas and QB Tim Tebow, who could be staples of the Broncos offense over the next decade if they are so inclined.  But just a year later, those 2009 picks look awful.  Neither Robert Ayers nor Knowshon Moreno appear likely to amount to anything beyond role players in the pros.  And the other first round pick that McDaniels gave up, a 2010 first rounder for a high second rounder in 2009, which the Broncos used on CB Alphonso Smith.  Smith developed into a starting caliber cover corner, but he did so for the Detroit Lions, because the Broncos waived him after just one season.

The reasons surrounding the firing of Josh McDaniels are far more complicated than the fact that he might have really struggled at making draft picks.  Plenty of other teams have failed at the draft while retaining their head coaches over the years.  The move that may have done McDaniels in was his first pick: Moreno.  If nothing else, the inability to add defensive help via the draft simply upheld the status quo in Denver.  But the Moreno pick did multiple things: it took a really high pick that most observers assumed would be a centerpiece of the defensive rebuilding project, and used it on offense.  But worse, it was used previously on offense.

When you draft a running back in the top half of the first round, the player needs to be the kind of guy that makes so much sense in a teams offense that he starts from day one and is durable and challenges the league leaders in meaningful statistical categories for at least the first five years of their career.  The fatal flaw in the process was that the only defense of the Moreno pick, even at the time it was made, was that he was the highest player — and highest runner — on their board.  The expectations for Moreno were, had to be, that he would be the best player on the Denver offense in both 2009 and 2010.  He wasn’t even the best running back on the roster when Correll Buckhalter was healthy.

This sums up the underrated job McDaniels did of compiling talent.  The Broncos weren’t ever as bad a team as they were expected to be under Josh McDaniels.  Kyle Orton exceeded relative expectations in 2009, nearly lost his job, and then exceeded expectations again in 2010.  Buckhalter was a shrewd pickup.  The team was vindicated, to an extent, in it’s trades of Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall.  They took the focus off the offensive line after a strong OL had been a staple of Mike Shanahan’s tenure there.  Brandon Lloyd found relative success as a breakout player in his eighth year in the NFL: he had a better season in 2010 than Brandon Marshall ever had in his NFL career.

The defense was the same as it ever was without Elvis Dumerville in the lineup.  Champ Bailey really quietly enjoyed a great rebound 2010 season.  And the production around him was horrible.  That probably helped to do Josh McDaniels in.  But the big thing was the draft, and where those resources were allocated, and what the Broncos got out of those picks.  McDaniels’ first ever draft pick deviated from the rebuilding script.  And if judged by what Knowshon Moreno brought to the Denver Broncos, here’s the lasting effect of the 2009 draft: the Broncos drafted guys who need to be replaced by free agents in 2011.  That could be the biggest reason why Pat Bowlen and the Denver Bronco ownership group lost faith in Josh McDaniels as the organization’s head coach.

As an analyst, if not a football fan, my fear is that Tony Romo is never going to be remembered as a good quarterback.  Of course, if you look at the best passing seasons in Dallas Cowboys history, there’s a lot of Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman at the top of the list.  And there’s just not that much doubt that Tony Romo and Don Meredith are neck and neck as the third best quarterback in the history of the franchise.  Era adjusted metrics agree that Tony Romo had four of the strongest quarterback seasons in Cowboys history from 2006-2009.  And he was on that pace again in 2010 before a fractured collarbone ended his season.

The rise of Ben Roethlisberger and Aaron Rodgers to the game’s most elite level of performance over the last two years has combined with the aforementioned injury to hurt Tony Romo in the eyes of the fan.  He’s no longer believed to be a top five NFL quarterback despite no meaningful drop in his production at any point.  He’s just been passed by the players who have enjoyed playoff success as well as regular season success in 2009 and 2010.  Romo’s the same, top-tier player he has always been.

Or is he?  The numbers say: of course he is.  But Romo’s injury is responsible for obscuring the fact that he was 30 years old in 2010.  And while it’s undeniable that good players often have great quarterback seasons after the age of 30, the trend for players who excel between ages 26 and 30 is usually downward and can be quite sharp.

Many of the players most similar to Tony Romo are in the hall of fame or will be in the hall of fame, but it was because of accomplishments in their age 25 to 29 seasons much moreso than anything they did after that.  Take perhaps the most similar player to Tony Romo, Boomer Esiason.  Boomer was an elite performer for the late 80′s Bengals.  By the time he reached his 30′s, he was largely unwanted by the Bengals and was sent to the Jets for a third round pick.  Boomer continued to pile up accomplishments throughout the 90′s, but he only had one above average, pro-bowl season after leaving Cincinnati the first time.  I do not think Tony Romo is a bad season away from getting traded from the Cowboys, but it couldn’t be considered surprising if Tony Romo only had one more NFC pro bowl season in him, though plenty more personal accomplishments.  Boomer Esiason isn’t in the hall of fame, but his overall body of work is on par with guys who are in the hall, and that’s why I like him as such a good comparable for Romo.

Another guy on the Tony Romo comparable list is Brett Favre, who had already put together a nice hall of fame resume before the age of 30.  Favre, however, tacked on another ten years to his NFL career beyond that.  And unlike the late career resurgence of guys like Fran Tarkenton and others like him, this wasn’t anything close to a second hall of fame career tacked on to a hall of fame career.  Favre was elected to six pro bowls between ages 30 and 40, but was elected a lot based on reputation.  Favre was in decline from 2002 through 2006, and did happen to put together two nice seasons at the end of his career, but the fact that Favre was never really a legitimate MVP candidate after a strong 2001 is often obscured by the awards heaped on him during that timeframe.

Mark Rypien shows up on this list, and he was pretty much done as a player after his age 30 season.  To be fair to Romo, he’s already more or less buffered against a Rypien-type fade by his contract with the Cowboys: he’s not ten starts away from being kicked out of town.  But now we’ve already seen Esiason and Rypien at the point where Romo is in is career be less than a year away from a trade out of the city where he made his name.  And tack on another one: the Greatest Show on Turf era Kurt Warner.  Warner was the MVP at age 30.  At age 31 he lost is first four starts, got replaced in the starting lineup by Marc Bulger, then started (and lost) the season opener the year after that and was done for good.  Warner never won another game with the Rams following the 2001 NFC Championship.

Tony Romo’s decline — perhaps imminent decline — is worth wondering about.  He’s not in danger of being out of the league any time soon: pretty much every player with his brief statistical history was in the league eight years later if they so choose.  But even though these players were all perennial pro bowlers through age 30, it wasn’t uncommon to see a lot of below average seasons on the other side of 30 for these players.

Perhaps, then, that’s what we might expect out of Tony Romo.  He isn’t likely to play his whole career in Dallas.  In fact, the end in Dallas might come sooner than anyone realizes.  He’s likely to make another pro bowl, perhaps with the Cowboys, certainly within the next five years, but that season might be isolated in a group of very average ones.  By the standards that Tony Romo has set for himself, an average season is going to look very poor in comparison, and Romo might be peppered with questions about his future until a change of scenery becomes good for him.  The bottom line is that the expectation for Tony Romo’s performance will likely exceed his ability to perform to those expectations.  And the fallout from this likelihood is going to put stress on the Cowboys’ decision makers to either get behind Romo and go for it all, or make a move to send Tony Romo elsewhere.

When the NFL free agency period inevitably hits in the next week or two, about a third of the league’s kickers are going to be unrestricted free agents.  In a normal year, this wouldn’t be that cool.  Kickers aren’t particularly exciting players, and while they have a large effect on game outcomes and scoring environments in general, a good kicker often gets confused with a clutch kicker, and its just not clear how to evaluate stable skills for kickers.

One of the tried and true stable kicker skills is kickoff distance.  If nothing else, you could just select the kicker with the biggest leg and reap the special teams value.  Overall, a kicker who hits a low FG percentage is going to have a net negative effect on his team, even if he’s 2010 Billy Cundiff on kickoffs, but if anyone has developed a system for predicting FG percentage performance, I haven’t read their work, and they’re probably working for an NFL team.

But now, the NFL will kick off from the 35 yard line instead of the 30.  And the instant reaction to this rule, that I recall, was, “wow, career kick returners are not going to be able to have the same effect in a game where teams kick off from the 35.”  And my thought on this was that it missed the point.

If you view everything through the prism of compiling statistics, yes, kick return average, average starting field position, and total kick return touchdowns are going to be way down across the league.  Total touchbacks will be way, way up.  But the narrative that Devin Hester, Brandon Banks, and Josh Cribbs will no longer be able to have an impact on special teams isn’t the case at all.  When evaluating the effect of the top 3% of returners and their value to franchises, the concept we are dealing with is statistical variance: value over average.  The fact that the average return won’t go for as many yards, isn’t as likely to go for a touchdown, and isn’t likely to leave the end zone in general is all true, but what remains to be seen is what this will do to the top returners.

It may do nothing to the top returners except drop the expected level of performance, making these players: Cribbs, Hester, Banks, all the more devastating because they’re in rarefied air as players who can add value with the return.  Or not.  Maybe they drift towards league average and lose any value they might have added.  Either way, when we’re projecting the kind of seasons they will have, we’re dealing with statistical variance.  Not aggregate value.  The focus on the return game — which has for whatever reason ignored that punt returns will occur in the same environment it always has — is a case of misguided focus.

The guys who are really hurt by the rule change are the only guys on the kickoff team who don’t benefit from the new rule change: the kickers.  Because now with the kickoff line moved forward, it sure seems like the expectation for kickers is that every kickoff should land a couple of yards in the end zone, and force a touchback (because remember, the coverage teams are also starting five yards closer.  This is best conceptualized as “double counting.”  Five yards further and five yards sooner).

Billy Cundiff is a free agent, coming off one of the greatest kickoff seasons of all time.  I could make a very legitimate argument that Cundiff’s ability to punch the ball from the 35 yardline out the back of the end zone with regularity now offers nothing to teams.  Cundiff may not even get signed in the NFL this year.  Now, for him specifically, he’s been around that block before of needing to recreate himself as a kicker.  But we could be arriving at an NFL where there are only two “skills” a kicker can offer beyond generally being reliable on placekicks:

1. The ability to confidently hit 60+ yarders at the end of halves with regularity (the Sebastian Janikowski model)
2. The ability to execute the onside kick

If you’re the front office of the Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals, Oakland Athletics, or San Diego Padres, you may want to pull out your notebook, and start taking notes.  It’s the Pittsburgh Pirates who have become the example for winning baseball games on a budget.

Since its inception in 1994, the NL Central division has not been kind to the Pittsburgh Pirates.  This is remarkable, really.  We’re talking about the NL Central.  The Pirates were run into the ground for the first twelve years of the NL Central division, and it’s still incredible they didn’t make the postseason.  The freakin’ 1998 Cubs made the playoffs.  That wasn’t a good team at all.  The Pirates have been more than just a bad team, but they’ve failed to reach levels of hilarity that would have made watching their losses entertaining.  They’ve been an attraction best defined by their ballpark.

The fact that the NL Central has lined up in such a way that two of the six teams are among the worst in baseball is hardly surprising.  In fact, if you lent any credence to the preseason previews, it’s actually not that surprising that the Pirates aren’t at the bottom of the division this all star break.  However, any spectacular achievement in the first half driven by a quality, young offensive group was certain to be drowned out by a pitching staff which entered the season hoping to be just good enough to sell off a part or two at the trade deadline.  But at the all-star break, the Pirates pitchers have been worth so much more to them than that this season.

When you look at the teams that are truly struggling this year, listed in order above, but also including the Minnesota Twins, Houston Astros, and Chicago Cubs, bad teams have struggled on the run prevention side of the baseball equation.  This is where the Pirates were projected to struggle, but their 345 runs allowed is in the upper half of all of baseball and perfectly matches their much sustainable 345 runs scored this year.

If .500 is the true talent of the 2011 Pirates, then there’s reason to believe that they aren’t overachieving much.  The Pirates pitching rotation has been unable to find a true strikeout threat between Paul Maholm, Jeff Karstens, and Kevin Correia, but only Correia is truly struggling to strike out batters.  This is reflected in his results: a pedestrian 4.01 ERA at the all-star break.  Perhaps, though, the current depressed run environment actually favors the sustainability of the Pirates’ staff.  Their one below average starter is also the team’s strikeout leader, James McDonald.  McDonald struggles with putting too many guys on and had a flyball tendency.  Even in the current environment, his 4.42 ERA plays as a fifth starter.

If this was an article about how suprising the Pittsburgh Pirates are, I’d write about Charlie Morton here.  But this is an article about the chances that the Pirates push for first place deep into September, and I think that Morton best represents the amount of depth the Pirates have created themselves.  If this team actually does make the playoffs, Morton doesn’t figure to be part of the playoff rotation.  He lacks the raw power (and lack of command) of McDonald, and isn’t as well regarded as Correia, Maholm, or Karstens.  But his 5.3 K/9 rate could help him pass for other pitchers in the Pirates rotation.

The competitive advantage of this team is that it is deep for a low-budget operation.  The bullpen has six different guys having strong years — led by fireballing closer Joel Hanrahan — and can hope for a seventh when they get last year’s all-star Evan Meek back from the DL.  They can also go to that bullpen early in games because the arms are as young as they are talented, and they’ve been there for the Pirates as they’ve been needed.

The offense has not progressed according to plan, exactly.  The Pirates entered the season ahead of the game at catcher, but both Chris Snyder and Ryan Doumit have been hurt this year and neither has been much defensively when they’ve been behind the plate anyway.  Nobody in baseball likes homegrown Neil Walker’s defense at second base, but his 84 hits would lead a couple of teams at the break.  They don’t lead the Pirates, however, because the Pirates have Andrew McCutchen, a five tool prospect and budding superstar who is my pick for NL MVP at the midway point over Jose Reyes.  Opponents appear to be lost on this “McCutchen is the most dangerous player in the NL” thing because he’s been intentionally walked just once this season.  I suppose that’s understandable, because as much as teams should be fearing his bat, they are fearing what his speed on the basepaths can do to change a game.  McCutchen, who has reached base 149 times this year, has stolen 15 bases while being caught only five times.

The Pirates have issues they need to upgrade on the left side of the infield, where they’ve received sub-par performances from Ronny Cedeno as SS (which was expected) and the recently demoted Pedro Alvarez at 3B (they had hoped for better).  They have some options here on the trade market as buyers.  The Royals are looking to deal Wilson Betemit and have Mike Aviles sitting in AAA right now, and it wouldn’t be that hard for the Pirates to put together a package that lands both of them.  Even though the Indians are in the midst of a playoff run, they’d probably be willing to deal Jack Hannahan for a C+ pitching prospect.  Greg Dobbs of the Marlins could also be a target.

Unless they make a package deal with a team like the Royals, the Pirates are likely to simply sit on Ronny Cedeno at shortstop.  Cedeno isn’t a good player, but he has a strong defensive reputation, and UZR bears out his good glovework this season.  If the Bucs would consider moving Walker to third base for the rest of this season, Alexi Casilla of the Twins could be a smart pickup.  Problem there is you’re moving one of your lineup staples into a spot where he is blocking a top prospect (Alvarez).  Mark Teahen of the White Sox could be another solution.

The Pirates’ solutions to their problems could define their road to the playoffs because the main competition, the Milwaukee Brewers, have the same left side of infield needs.  The truth is though the wisest moves the Pirates could make is simply to focus on increasing the value of their roster taking advantage of a buyers market and trying to find good players at any position.  Really, in terms of building a team for the future, the only untouchable in terms of losing a job is McCutchen.  And that shouldn’t limit the Pirates options at all.

They shouldn’t be considered the favorites to win the NL Central because they simply won’t be able to match the Brewers pitching, but the Pirates could, very easily, enter 2012 as the favorite if the Brewers do not return Prince Fielder.  To do so, they will need to be smart and add value to their organization throughout July and August and into the offseason, but this shouldn’t be a problem.  After all, it’s how the Pirates got to this position in the first place.

Last week, I looked at NYPA progression over the post-merger era specifically as an indicator of the overall passing strength of a given era.  The interesting conclusion is that NYPA draws a completely different picture of the fertility of passing eras, lumping 1978-2006 as one era where NYPA = 5.8, up from the mid to lower fives of the depressed seventies, but completely missing the wide open-ness of passing in the eighties because sacks were up and interceptions were not down.  Clearly, a number of different measures can show us how different passing was in the mid eighties, even if the value metrics of record show that league-wide passing efficiency hadn’t gone anywhere.  Yards were just in greater supply, for a limited time, presumably until offensive coordinators realized that they were also inflating the opponents’ point totals as well as their own.

Well, my research also showed that while the average points per NFL game has generally increased since the madness of the 1980′s, there have been three one-or-multiple year dips in scoring over the last 25 years, at least dips not caused by factors such as lost games or replacement players.  Football scores and stats have been remarkably consistent in their general, “slightly upward” trend, which just makes me want to mess around and examine the exceptions to the rule.  This is my chance to do just that.

1991-1993

The average NFL quarterback in the late 80′s was a classic gunslinger, downfield throwing, play action based passer or maybe a run and shoot, high efficiency, high risk, throw to win kind of guy.  That was great and all, and average in any era had some sort of value to a franchise, but if the passing game was ever truly going to replace the running game as a viable means of moving the sticks, turnover rates could not be sustained as high as they were in the 1980′s.  To date, throwing the ball had always risked turnover rates in the 1-in-17 ish range based on sack-strip fumbles and interceptions.  But the forward pass got by for a long time as a high-risk, high-reward play because the status quo was the run the ball thirty or more times a game.  In the 80′s, rushing rates dropped and passing rates increased, which meant that teams were turning the ball over at really incredible rates.

Because scoring totals were high for both teams, this actually went on for years until coaches started to realize that offenses weren’t actually getting any more efficient.  They were making defenses more productive in the process by simply forcing a lot more high variance outcome via the pass.  Now, if you were the Houston Oilers or Washington Redskins, great, you weren’t an average team and defenses weren’t going to stop you an average amount of time, and the yards were there for your receivers, and you might as well use them.  But for the average team, gross efficiency wasn’t any different in 1988, 89, or 90 than it was in 1978, 79, or 80.  The secret for increased was thought to be superior offensive thinking and QB play when it was really just shorter fields and the slightly inflated value of a yard.

These three seasons saw a correction in that kind of thinking.  Scoring dipped below 19 PPG to about 18.7 for the first time since 1980.  Average yards per attempt dipped below 7 for the first time since about 82.  Adjusted net yards per attempt though actually increased.  Defenses weren’t more prepared to stop passing attacks in the early 90′s, despite the more cautious approach by offenses.  If defenses were better suited to stop passers, there wouldn’t have been a ANYPA increase.  But as the value of a sack and interception started to take root, players who had high interception and sack totals started to lose jobs to veterans who could get the ball out to the right team.

But completion percentage and yards were down, and since the conservative thinking of these years didn’t exactly result in coaches adopting an aggressive scoring strategy, scoring fell.  Beyond that, the “heroes” of the late 80′s started to lose their footing in the 90s.  Bernie Kosar was gravely affected by the shift.  Joe Montana took more negative plays (defined as sacks and INTs) in the final three years as a starter for the 49ers than he ever did during the height of the Bill Walsh era, expediting a switch.  Phil Simms was a sack taking machine who lost his job as a starter in, you guessed it, 1991.  Jim McMahon’s decline was more injury related, but as the guard changed, so did the structure of league-wide passing statistics.

Risk-averse players like early-career Rich Gannon, Erik Kramer, Scott Mitchell, Jeff Hostetler, and Neil O’Donnell were the most employable kind of quarterback of these seasons as passing in the NFL underwent a paradigm shift.  Other players like Warren Moon, Steve Deberg, and Randall Cunningham re-invented themselves and re-emerged as starters as offenses started to take off again in the mid/late 90′s.  Budding stars such as Young, Aikman, and Favre had no such issue beating the shift in the NFL (Aikman might not have had much of a career a decade earlier) and excelling in the new environment.  Passing wasn’t any harder, but point quotas weren’t all the rage anymore.  Teams were out to prove that passing to win was viable whereas in the 80′s, passing was all anyone did to try to catch the best, most balanced teams (Giants and Bears).

Unreal quarterback play bumped point totals for the 94 season, but even after that, defenses were helpless to slow down passing games which eventually (by the late 90′s) drove offensive yardage inflation back towards levels last seen in the 1980′s.  It’s no shock though that in an era defined by the risk-averse behavior of NFL teams, some of the great NFC powers (Redskins, 49ers, Cowboys) just dominated this world and every other team (for example, the American Football Conference) were just kind of there.

2001

Fact: in the era that gave us the 1985 Bears, scoring was inflated.  Also fact: the era that gave us the Greatest Show on Turf oddly depressed scoring.  Awesome.  This is why I love numbers.

Scoring has been higher in the last decade than at any point in the history of football since World War II when the NFL had 8 teams, and if two of them were 40 PPG teams, then you had an inflated league.  2001, however, didn’t get the memo.  In 16 games, the St. Louis Rams scored 503 points.  That’s a lot of points.  It’s deflated, however, if you consider that in 2000, St. Louis scored 540 points after scoring 526 in 1999.  Scoring this year was down about a half point per game.  Unlike the early nineties, the culprit here is probably not rampant conservatism.  And whatever the true problem was, it ended when the Texans were introduced into the NFL shark pool and started hemmorhaging points at a rate that hasn’t actually slowed since the team was created.

This specific year, 2001, seems like more of a fluke than anything.  Why were points depressed?  Well, one reasons was that returners had an incredibly limited impact this year.  This was just a bad year for returning punts especially.  Dante Hall would soon take the league by storm, but in 2001, if Troy Brown wasn’t doing it, no one cared.  Passing numbers weren’t down at all, they were actually up a small tick.  Rushing TD’s fell WAY down though, and first downs by defensive penalties also fell.  Defenses did a lot of the scoring this year as well, if only to make up for the suck of the red zone rushing attacks and special teams.  Special teams also sucked in one other way in 2001: kickers attempted 42 more field goals in 2001 than in 2000, no doubt a result of fewer rushing TDs.  They made just one more field goal in 2001 than in 2000, a remarkable feat.

Absolutely none of these point-depressing effects seemed sustainable, and none did sustain into 2002.  Well, except the kickers were still bad, but scoring soared in spite of them.

2009

2009 was a really high scoring year paced by the ridiculous off the chart offenses of the Saints and Colts.  It’s just become clear that for whatever reason, scoring and specifically scoring via the pass, has taken off since 2007 to the point where we are in uncharted NFL waters with the strength of offense.  And yet, 2009 just doesn’t fit neatly into the narrative.  The average passers and receivers were significantly limited in this one year compared to 2007, 2008, and 2010.  Especially 2008 and 2010.  Which means that some event that happened in 2009 dropped passing offense league-wide, and that corrected itself before 2010.

Before I get to 2009, I’m going to take a moment to explain why 2008 was the strongest offensive year anyone had ever seen at that time.  For one thing, quarterbacks have actually, for the first time in league history, started to adjust to getting sacks.  This was almost certainly a Manning family trend to begin with, but in the last four years alone, a select few quarterbacks have actually posted 16 game season sack rates below 2%.  In 2009, Peyton Manning was sacked just ten times.  Maybe not as impressive as Dan Marino’s 6-sack 1988 when he LED THE NFL IN PASSING ATTEMPTS, but it’s not just Peyton: Eli Manning is consistently under 3%, and Jay Cutler was at 1.5% in 2008.  It used to be relatively common to sack a QB, but the leaguewide rate now sits at 6%, and has been there consistently since 2007.

Turnovers dropped to near unsustainable rates in the last couple of years, eventually settling in at about a 3% interception rate league-wide.

Now, passing statistics have actually increased every year, culminating in this past season, the most efficient year of offensive football ever in 2010.  However, those same indicators would not have predicted a drop in scoring from 2008 to 2009.  The only thing that changed is the rate of interceptions thrown bumped up a fraction in 2009 without a proportional increase in thrown touchdowns (though those also increased, they just aren’t of equal weights).

In 2009, teams actually scored one more TD than they did in 2008.  So you could argue that the real point environment was identical in each of the last three years.  But 288 more points were scored in 2008 than 2009.  Here’s the reasons I collected for that:

• Occurrences of safeties fell
• Teams missed more extra points and converted fewer two point conversion opportunities
• Field goal kicking

Sometime later this week, hopefully occurring in conjunction with the lifting of the NFL lockout, I am going to release preliminary pre-free agency statistical season projections for the 2011 NFL season.  Before that happens, I want to talk about three teams that grade out really poorly by my projections.  Some of these outputs are easier to explain than others.

St. Louis Rams

The Rams have the lowest output amongst all NFL teams per my methodology.  25% of the weight  from the formula comes from past winning percentage of the prior three years.  The Rams won 1, 2, and 7 games over those seasons.  Only the Detroit Lions have a worse three year win average.  This is only a moderately predictive element, aimed at capturing the performance factors that more current measures (roster ability and schedule strength) may overlook.  But it dings the Rams pretty harshly.

And some may argue: rightly so.  This could be a breakout team, but breakout candidates are never “good” bets because they have a lot of poor performance in their recent history.  To go along with that, Sam Bradford doesn’t have a whole lot to work with.  Now, this can absolutely change come free agency, and it likely will.  But what “are” the Rams, really?  This is a two man offense: Bradford and Steven Jackson.  It’s a strong defensive line, lead by Fred Robbins and Chris Long, and now featuring Robert Quinn: the DL is the bellcow of the entire team.  But in the back seven, I like one corner: Ron Bartell.  The power on the DL is going to make the back seven of the team a lot better, and I think that’s going to lead to a groupthink projection that improved defense + improved offense means the Rams will be NFC West Champs.

That could be true.  But improved offense will rely on more than just personal improvement from Sam Bradford and natural regression in the ability of the receivers.  It’s going to rely on a full on rebound year from Steven Jackson.  Because at the end of the day, St. Louis is a team with just one above average unit, it’s defensive line.  That may be good enough in the NFC West if they add other pieces.  But until we see the offensive improvement, this team is still just not very good.  And I think the LiveBall projection equation captures that fear.

Atlanta Falcons

This may be the strongest case.  The biggest problem here for the Falcons is a team wide lack of depth, and the fact that their entire offensive line is up for free agency, and I simply didn’t count any teams unrestricted free agents in the roster projection, unless they were given the franchise tag.  Now, both Harvey Dahl and Tyson Clabo will be priorities for the Falcons when free agency hits, and Atlanta is expected to retain both.  I ran the numbers again, and Atlanta moves from a middling team into the upper third of the NFC if they resign both, but if you assume that Doug Free also re-ups with the Cowboys, I am not projecting the Falcons to be a playoff team.

Again, the Atlanta Falcons are expected to be major players in free agency, and they may look like one of the most talented rosters at the end of the period, assuming they aren’t already.  But I think the Falcons problems are two fold: 1) very few of their biggest contributors are in the prime of their careers, and 2) there is a staggering lack of depth on the offensive line and in the defensive back seven.  The latter was most apparent when Aaron Rodgers roasted the secondary in the NFC Divisional Round last year, the former was not apparent because everyone stayed healthy the whole year on the OL.  But OT Sam Baker just hasn’t been that good in his three years as a professional, and the line around him may bolt for best offer on the open market.  The Falcons do have inexperienced maulers filling out the roster, but none picked above the third round.  They could fill, at best, perhaps the LG spot in 2011 internally, though Justin Blalock would appear the least likely to leave via FA offer.

I agree wholeheartedly with the pessimistic Falcons projection, and not just because it figures to improve between now and the season.  There’s regression coming from the running backs and non-Roddy White receiving corps, and the offensive line is going to see an increase in injury and pressure allowed regardless of all potential outcomes outside of Sam Baker developing late as a top LT.  Even that assumes that the Falcons can re-sign three guys on their OL including two lucrative contracts.  The reality of the OL situation could be a lot worse than simply “worse off than last year.”

If Matt Ryan and Roddy White are great players, not just very good, but: “transcendental” NFL franchise players, it’s possible the Falcons can escape this with little to no passing game regression, and who knows, Julio Jones might even begin a nice little career as a niche receiver.  If so, they’ll probably win 9+ games again and return to the postseason for the second straight year.  But that looks unlikely to me.  Realistically, the Falcons have to spend big money on free agents in the prime of their career just to maintain the team’s gains from last year, and they have to do it under a salary cap that will make them fit in three offensive lineman critical to their success, also in their primes.

Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff is very good at his job, but if he flawlessly pulls himself out of this little roster mess he’s created without a downturn in wins, he’s better than anyone ever thought.  I am picking against him.

New York Jets

There’s a really important point to be made here, and it’s that when we get beyond the elite of the AFC: the Colts, Pats, Chargers, Ravens, and Steelers, the system sees the AFC’s sixth seed as really freakin wide open.  This is perhaps two spots if you happen to think that the Colts’ incredibly mediocre 2010 was a harbringer of late career struggles for Peyton Manning and more specifically, Peyton Manning’s defense.  My system sees the Colts as still a really unbeatable team because when you crunch the numbers, no team has won more games in the LAST THREE YEARS than the Indianapolis Colts, who have won 35, averaging just under 12 wins per season.  As I mentioned above, there is a lightly weighted component of my system that goes towards recent regular season win average, and no team has been better than Indianapolis* at winning football games.

*To digress from the Jets even further, I think it was Tom Curran on one of the NFL Networks’ top ten shows who tried to sum up the Brady-Manning debate as such (I am paraphrasing): “one player has stats and awards, while the other has wins and titles/playoff wins.”  As much of a horrible cliche as that is, it’s not really fair to Brady.  He’s got a bunch of wins to go along with his pretty numbers as well.  Just…not so much in the playoffs since the knee injury.

So while the AFC South appears to be a wide open division in 2011, my numbers expect the Colts to win 11 games pretty easily, and figure to be able to hold off the Texans once again.  That leaves just one spot in the AFC wide open, which is the spot that the Jets held last year.

You see, if Rex Ryan is truly right that this is the year that the Jets are going to the super bowl because they need to get a home playoff game, and this is the year that he’s got Bill Belichick, that he’s going to beat him twice and flip the entire AFC East on his head, then: great, Rex is probably going to beat my projection easily if that’s the case.  He’s also got to be the greatest coach ever because the Jets were a 9-7 team under Eric Mangini in 2008, and if you throw out the playoff victories, it’s hard to see where they’re really better under Ryan.

The Jets reached 11 wins last year, but it was a bit of a soft 11 wins.  Their team wasn’t really any stronger than when they won 9 games in 2009 after the playoff bound Colts and Bengals rolled over to get the 7-7 Jets into the playoffs.  They were a lot better on the offensive side of the ball in 2010, but just not sustainably so.  Mark Sanchez kind of sorta did not improve as a second year player.  Sure, his value stats went up thanks to a dropped interception rate that Chad Henne could really use, but that’s just the thing: in important predictive statistics that predict themselves, Sanchez stayed put (54.8% completion; 5.1% sack rate; 5.8 NYPA in 2010, following 53.8% completion; 6.7% sack rate; 5.8 NYPA in 2009).  He hasn’t been as bad as his detractors allege, and watching him play in the postseason helps us to understand why Mark Sanchez fosters a lot of hope for the future, but I just don’t think you can build an offense around the quarterback any better than the Jets have…and again, Sanchez did not improve in the regular season.  There’s no way to frame that as positive.

Here’s why I don’t like my projection on the Jets much: that offensive line is and has been the best in football since 2008, and isn’t due for much regression at all.  RT Damien Woody is a free agent and aging.  But at worst, you still will have a very darn good offensive line, even if Woody isn’t retained, or worse, if he is retained and cannot play at a high level anymore.  On the other hand, Rex Ryan’s defense continues to defy all odds for a unit that absolutely cannot rush the passer without bringing more than can be blocked.  I understand, but cannot possibly articulate, how masterful Ryan is at keeping his weaker defensive links away from being exposed for their incompetence.

The Jets are not a team of great depth.  They have a dime back named James Ihedigbo, a reserve corner Drew Coleman, reserve safety Eric Smith, an aging Jason Taylor, and a vastly overrated Antonio Cromartie.  Rex Ryan had a plan for the performance and contribution level of every last one of them.  Heck, freakin Vernon Gholston played in all 16 games last year as a package player, starting two, and wasn’t a liability.  Can Rex Ryan manage my baseball team.

The big point re: the Jets is that this remains one of the weaker overall rosters in the AFC.  Offensively, they have two above average units: a fantastic OL, and a receiver group that is comprised of players who will soon hit the market and be costly to retain.  This team will score points, and Rex Ryan has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that his unit can prevent points.  However, just because they have this history (average of 10 wins/year in the last three years), does not mean that they’ll be able to do it again.  The Jets defense has a LOT of weak players on it, and if coaching staffs in the NFC East and AFC West (the two divisions the Jets will play this year) come prepared to exploit and go directly at the Jets defense, it may become painfully apparent that the Jets have gotten by on a few key games and a mostly weak schedule the last two years.

Or maybe Rex can do it again with even less talent this year, and this really is a super year for the Jets.  I don’t have a good read on their ability to exceed my wildest expectations.  Basically, if the Jets have been a nine win team in true talent each of the past three years, the schedule is strict enough this year to make a seven win team out of them.  And that splits the AFC Wild Card spot wide open for a team like the Browns, Raiders, Texans, or Dolphins to come flying in and end up playing for the title in January.  But first things first, someone has to knock of the m-f’ing Jets.  And it’s just been a very long time since that was reality.