LiveBall Sports

I promise I’ll put something interesting up about what appears to be one of the better super bowl matchups.  Four in a row, now!  Today is about a college player.

It’s a simple question with a complicated answer: is Ryan Tannehill a good quarterback prospect worth drafting at the top of the first round?

There are two general truths about Ryan Tannehill that no scouts disagree on: he generally makes smart, quick decisions with the football, and he has a natural feel for the game.  What is the difference between having a natural feel and a great feel?  The level of experience.  Ryan Tannehill has just 20 college starts.  That’s five fewer than Tom Brady had.  It’s the same number as Tony Pike, and within the realm of Mark Sanchez, Alex Smith, and Aaron Rodgers.  We don’t actually know how great his feel for the game is, but it seems to be natural because there wasn’t an awful learning curve for Tannehill.  He pretty much picked up the offense immediately.

There are a number of other things that scouts like about Tannehill that are in dispute.  The first his his athleticism.  Athletic QBs are good, right?  I think that lies in a system to system thing.  If you put Tannehill in a downfield throwing offense, like the ones favored by the Redskins, Raiders, and Giants, it’s going to be an adventure to see how being fleet of foot affects him when he’s in an offense that requires time to set up routes down the field.  In an offense like the one run by the Packers or Seahawks, his athleticism would be a pretty big plus since the defense favored to defend those spread teams is two-man.  And having a quarterback who is a running threat limits two man coverage.  The second thing is his arm.  Tannehill spins a good ball from sideline to sideline and he has a quick release.  But driving the ball down the field into space is a big problem for Ryan Tannehill.  Too often, his throws hang or dive or sail going down the field.

Defenses seemed to learn that to take away Tannehill’s comfort level, you needed to get quick pressure on him, and you needed to take away his ability to get the ball out to his front side route combination.  In other words, defenses needed to play very active against Tannehill.  When they did this, he was a very pedestrian college quarterback.

Still, what the modern NFL game boils down to typically fits to Ryan Tannehill’s physical strengths.  There have been plenty of pro quarterbacks who can’t drive the football down the field who have enjoyed great success in the rhythm/timing west coast offenses.  Tannehill was as good completing passes behind the LOS and within 10 yards as anyone in the country.  At the end of the season, Tannehill missed some rhythm throws early in games.  That can probably be fixed by a strong support system at the next level.  Tannehill is tall, and he can hit receivers in stride so that they can run away from man defenders.  And ultimately, if you believe in athleticism in quarterbacks being the decisive measure of the modern game, Tannehill grades out quite well.

Look back at the 2005 draft.  Alex Smith was the first overall pick, and was a classic bust for the first four years of his career.  Aaron Rodgers fell in the draft.  Jason Campbell went the pick after him and didn’t even appear in the first 25 games of his pro career.  But the thing with those three guys is: they were all good athletes.  Jason Campbell throws the ball well, but probably isn’t still a starter in this league seven years into his career if he wasn’t a highly efficient runner against man coverages.  Alex Smith kept getting chances in part because he can extend plays with his legs.  And while Aaron Rodgers’ arm would have carried him at this level without his legs, Rodgers is an elite player because he’s as good running with the ball as he is as a passer.

The comparison that makes the most sense for Tannehill is almost certainly Alex Smith.  Smith was the first overall pick in 2005.  He’s just now finding his bearings in 2011.  Both are very good athletes for the position.  Both played for a QB guru in college (Urban Meyer at Utah, and Mike Sherman at Texas A&M).  Both have their accuracy issues throwing down the field, but both have ideal heights and build for pro players and are said to be incredibly bright.  Perseverance is an intangible that helped Alex Smith overcome criticism in San Francisco.  If Tannehill can show rare toughness and perseverence, he’s tall and desirable enough to get enough chances to succeed.

You can probably tell which way I’m leaning with regards to the question.  I think Ryan Tannehill is a good QB prospect who looks the part.  I don’t think he’s the kind of natural prospect that warrants consideration at the top of the draft.  In terms of natural QB talents, I prefer at least five guys to Tannehill: Stanford’s Andrew Luck, Boise State’s Kellen Moore, Baylor’s Robert Griffin III, Arizona’s Nick Foles, and Michigan State’s Kirk Cousins.  Beyond that, I think there’s no question that Arizona State’s Brock Osweiler is more physically gifted, and that Oklahoma State’s Brandon Weeden is more pro-ready.

Without being able to put a grade on the quality of Ryan Tannehill’s intangibles, I can’t say for myself how well-built he is to succeed in the NFL.  I think that any prospect who can stick with it long enough can make themselves successful for some coach (though whether they can achieve success before that coach is out of a job is always a race against the clock).  It just seems to me with the depth and quality of this draft, there is always someone who fits your system better than Ryan Tannehill who will be available.  Tannehill’s best chance to go in the Top 10 picks is to hope Luck and Griffin go off the board immediately, which would leave him as the most athletic talent high on the quarterback draft board.

The way the game is changing, I think that helps Ryan Tannehill’s quest to be drafted and ultimately succeed as an NFL quarterback.  Is Tannehill a prospect ahead of his time?  Or is he just a younger version of Alex Smith?  I don’t think a team is going to spend a first round draft pick for the right to answer that question, but that doesn’t mean Tannehill can’t find his way to the Pro Bowl eventually.  Provided there is even still a pro bowl for Ryan Tannehill to make.

Salary data in this post courtesy of Cot’s/Baseball Prospectus.

The big problem I had with the Albert Pujols deal the day it was signed is the nature of the contract.  The Angels were described as “having plenty of cable revenue” in order to execute such a deal with the game’s biggest star, which made sense.

What did not (and does not) support that notion is that this deal is very heavily backloaded.  The Angels have a ton of salary flexibility in 2012 and 2013, but after that, Pujols is to cost the Angels between 23 million and 30 million per season on an ascending basis for 8 years.  When you look at the Angels current payroll, you can see why they would do such a thing in terms of backloading Pujols’ money as they will free up plenty of salary each of the next three years.  But the only reason it makes sense is if you are skeptical that the Angels are currently awash in cash, or that this cash is burning a hole in their pockets.

There is no question the Angels are a large market team at this point, clearly the dominant franchise within their own locale, and just behind the Yankees in terms of total spending ability, but the payroll flexibility is an illusion.  You don’t need flexibility when you have Albert Pujols in his prime, but you most certainly will when you have Albert Pujols well past his prime.  It’s particularly disturbing when you look at some of the players the 2014 Angels may feature when you assume zero payroll flexibility (probably too tough an assumption, but still):

1. 34 year old Albert Pujols ($23 million)
2. 35 year old Vernon Wells ($21 million)
3. 31 year old Jared Weaver ($16 million)
4. 33 year old C.J. Wilson ($16 million)
5. 30 year old Howie Kendrick ($9.35 million)
6. Arb-eligible Peter Bourjos
7. Pre-arb Mike Trout
8. Arb-eligible Hank Conger
9. Arb-eligible Mark Trumbo?

A couple of those contracts look fine on their own merits (Jared Weaver’s contract still looks great and Howie Kendrick’s extension is a bargain if 2011 is a real glimpse of his talent).  But that list of nine players on the 2014 Angels exceeds $90 million in estimated salary, and simply won’t win a lot of games unless the Angels are able to add to it.  The Angels (I am guessing) will try to sit in the $150-$160 million range in payroll over the length of the Pujols deal, which means that they have enough flexibility to build a team around that core, but to stave off the effects of age, the core is almost going to have to be entirely drafted and developed.  It’s already 2012, so you might want to get started on that if you’re the Angels.

The Prince Fielder-Detroit Tigers deal makes a lot more sense for the Tigers.  The biggest argument against the deal, to me, is that it seems pretty frivolous.  The Tigers enter 2012 as a clear favorite in the AL Central, with the Royals and the Indians still about a year away from being true 90 win contenders, and needing the Tigers to decend to between 84-86 wins to be within the realm of contention.  The immediate reaction to the Fielder deal was that the Tigers accomplished this: with a Boesch-Fielder-Cabrera-Peralta-Avila middle of the order, there’s no team in the AL Central that can go blow for blow with that group, added to the fact that the Tigers were probably already going to enter the season with the most daunting rotation in the division.  But if you take Fielder out of that, you probably drop an estimated 3 or 4 wins off the Tigers total, yet, none of the things I wrote about the Tigers above are untrue.

But what I like about the Fielder deal is that it is in no way backloaded.  In the aggragate, the Tigers are going to end up raising payroll by about $15-$20 million over last season and are likely committing to hold payroll steady for the remainder of the tenure of Mike Illitch’s ownership.  They had planned to invest the money freed up by the expiration of Magglio Ordonez’ contract into arbitration raises and the backloaded portion of Justin Verlander’s contract.  The Fielder deal was most likely executed by ownership in an understanding that payroll would be raised over the life of the deal, obviously with the Franchises’ blessing.

The Tigers lose pretty much any payroll flexibility they might have had, but the first time this will even be a minor consideration for the Tigers is if/when Justin Verlander approaches free agency after the 2014 season.  The commitment by the franchise to stay in the $120-$130 million range in payroll for the forseeable future is as large a step forward as it was when they upped payroll in 2008.  But this time there is no Dontrelle Willis deal that will threaten the Tigers as AL Central favorites.  Only time can do that as the Royals and Indians attempt to join them as annual 90 win clubs.

In other words, the 2014 Tigers have more free money and overall better contracts than the 2014 Angels do.  Take a look:

As one of the minority to pick the New York Giants to win the NFC East (full disclosure: the LiveBall QDS projections had the Eagles (fractionally) ahead of the Giants; I only picked the Giants to win on tiebreaker), I thought that the way that the Giants frustrating ”off-season” got blown out of proportion had an effect on how the Giants were perceived heading into the season.  Injuries in the preseason ravaged the Giants defense, to the point where they weren’t right (relative to where they were in 2010) for the first 15 weeks of the regular season.

To recap: the Giants released 40% of their offensive line, could not agree to a contract with WR Steve Smith, did not reach a contract extension with Osi Umenyiora, and let TE Kevin Boss walk in free agency.  And a year later, we know the following: neither Rich Seubert or Shaun O’Hara was healthy enough to play in 2011, Smith did absolutely nothing as a Philadelphia Eagle and will hit the market at the low point of his value (where a Giants return is not out of the question), Kevin Boss had a decent year but didn’t even play a majority of Oakland’s offensive snaps, and the only move that had a detrimental effect on the Giants season was perhaps the lack of contractual security that may (or may not) have influenced Osi Umenyiora’s decision to sit inactive in seven games this season.  His return is one of the primary reasons the Giants defense has been very good in the playoffs after struggling in the regular season.

But the real job Jerry Reese has done in New York is more of a credit to how he approaches the task of season to season management of his roster.  The Giants won the super bowl behind the strength of Reese’s first draft class in his first season on the job, but that championship roster was built by Ernie Accorsi.  If the Giants win the super bowl this year, Reese will deserve all the credit (even though he’ll never get the credit for having Eli Manning on the roster — despite making the decision to extend him for 6 years – $100 million).  Sure, it’s easier to build around a quarterback then it is to find a quarterback while building, but we need to remember that when Jerry Reese took this job, Eli Manning was far closer to being let go by the Giants than he was to the contract Reese gave him.  And while the Giants SB championship in 2007 wouldn’t have been possible without a great contribution from Reese’s rookie class, you could have argued that up until now, that super bowl championship did more for Reese than Reese had done for the Giants.

But Reese did very unpopular things this summer.  And almost all those moves ended up being unconditionally right, only exception to the ones where we don’t know how they will end year.  We don’t know how Osi Umenyiora’s Giants contract will end yet.  But we know that the Giants have exceeded their expectations for this season, once again saving Tom Coughlin’s job in the process.  The term addition by subtraction doesn’t adequately describe how the Giants prepared for this season: they struggled for a lot of this year because of questionable additions (Antrel Rolle), and injuries (Terrell Thomas, Jon Goff).  But Eli Manning’s excellent season was fairly predictable (which I predicted here in explaining my reasoning for being higher on the Giants than the Eagles) despite the regression of his offensive line, and though we would have never known Victor Cruz (who I liked coming into this year) was going for 1,536 yards receiving, he essentially ended up playing the role it seemed like Mario Manningham would play.

The Giants were an above average team in the regular season, which is better than most people expected, and probably about what they deserved to be.  The team that is torching teams in the playoffs is a function of the design of Reese and his staff.  The Giants are not doing it with a great contribution from it’s 2011 draft class, where 6th round pick LB Jacquain Williams of USF is probably having the best rookie season of the group.  It’s a different model this year from the one they used in 2007.  Gameplans are much more Eli-centric now-a-days.  Victor Cruz is far more reliable than any receiver that played for the Giants in the past.  The offense around Manning is almost entirely comprised of Reese acquisitions (LT David Diehl, RG Chris Snee, RB Brandon Jacobs, and RT Kareem McKenzie, who are all having mediocre-at-best years, are the other exceptions), and it’s that offense that has kept the Giants in the hunt all season.  So has defensive coordinator Perry Fewell, another Reese move.

It doesn’t seem like Jerry Reese deserves so much credit because here we have Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning as the faces of the Giants, and they’ve been around since 2004.  But this team that’s winning now is winning entirely because of Reese’s organizational philosophy and because of his decisions made this summer.  And he deserves plenty of credit for their success.

The Denver Broncos accomplished far more this season than anyone could have imagined without some scenario where Kyle Orton would have challenged for pro-bowl consideration.  Not only did that not happen, but Orton actually BEAT the Denver Broncos this season as a member of the Kansas City Chiefs.  Despite that, the Broncos overcame everything including a 1-4 start to beat the odds and capture their first AFC West crown since 2005.  Not only that, but they went on to win their home playoff game against all odds, matching the accomplishments of the best post-Elway Broncos team in everything but total wins (Mike Shanahan won 11 games twice after Elway).

The Broncos season really can’t be viewed as anything but a massive success.  Sure, the ability to make the playoffs ended up coming entirely from out of their control after Week 14 (San Diego, Oakland a combined 3-3 in those must-win weeks), especially for the team that had by far the easiest schedule down the stretch of any AFC West team.  And had the Broncos missed the postseason, we would never have had the opportunity to use a playoff victory as a grounds for team success.  So yes, they got lucky along the way.  Plenty lucky, actually.

The Broncos-luck relationship often gets framed as a struggle between offense and defense, where Tebow and the Broncos offense is considered to be extremely fortunate to be playing for the win at the end of every week with a point total typically around 10.  And while there are individual examples of games the Broncos could not have won without exceptional defensive effort, they proved to be the exception, not the rule.

Statistically speaking, the Broncos defense finished 19th in total DVOA this year, 18th in weighted DVOA (which completely discounts the Kyle Orton games), and 24th against the pass despite a pass rush that improved over the course of the season.  On a down by down basis, the Denver Broncos actually had a worse defense against the pass than the putrid Oakland Raiders, who would have won the division with even a modicum of end-of-season defensive discretion.  This is a defense that was just bad on the back end most of the year.

How did the Broncos keep scoring defense under control in the regular season?  Look at their opponents.  In the NFL, points come out of the passing game.  That doesn’t mean all good offense comes out of the passing game (we’ll get to Tebow in a minute), but that’s how you score points.  The Broncos beat these teams this year: Andy Dalton’s Bengals, Matt Moore’s Dolphins, Carson Palmer’s Raiders, Matt Cassel’s Chiefs, Mark Sanchez’ Jets, Philip Rivers’ Chargers, Christian Ponder’s Vikings, and Caleb Hanie’s Bears.  They gave up points in excess of 20 in two wins, against the Raiders and Vikings.  That’s not exactly the record of a great passing defense.  Sure, the Chargers can go off against any team, and the Bengals had a decent year throwing the football, and the Raiders were at times this year a good passing offense, but that is an awful record.

And Tebow, with some timely special teams help, manged to win 2 of his 5 starts (plus 1 and 2 in the playoffs) in which the Broncos defense surrendered 24 or more points to the opponent.  If that’s what Tim Tebow actually was in year two, a 40% winner in games where everything else was equal, he’d be a strong candidate for a year 3 breakout.  But that’s not what Tebow actually was.  He was a 40% winner in starts where his defense got torched.  Tebow won six of his seven starts where the other team’s offense simply failed to perform at an adequate level for 4 quarters.

So yes, Tim Tebow had a lot of help all year long.  When he got it, he was practically unbeatable.  When he didn’t get it, he still won between 40-50% of his starts.  If the Broncos don’t improve as an organization (or a defense) heading into 2012, Tebow may struggle to produce another 8 win season.  He and the Broncos caught plenty of breaks this year, more perhaps than they deserved.  They weren’t great at any one thing.  They were consistently above average at running the football.  They made timely plays.  This was a much improved Broncos team.

But to perpetuate the myth that the Broncos were a great defensive team that kept their offense in the games all season would not be accurate.  They were a 4th place team playing a 4th place schedule in a league that believes any team can win 8 games in any year.  In 2011, the Denver Broncos did not feature a special defense.  They could be better described as the “any team” of 2011.

A thought exercise that I have been having with myself today: How would the NFL world be different if the 2011 CBA had not contained a salary cap.  We just had, in the character-limited words of Evan Silva:

2011 FA class was deepest, most talented in NFL history. 2012 class not far off. It’s loaded. Will post comprehensive list on Friday.

So with perhaps the deepest free agent class in memory, NFL teams went nuts in terms of adding contracts to their ledger.  Except, they didn’t really.   Two years after Albert Haynesworth landed a $100 total value contract, and one year after Julius Peppers signed a contract with total value in excess of $90 million, Nnamdi Asomugha (a player who might have had a better reputation than Haynesworth and Peppers) ended up going to the Philadelphia Eagles for…$60 million over five years.  Which is an annual value that exceeded teammate CB Asante Samuel’s 2008 contract with the Eagles by about $2 million a year.  And about $5 million less per year than Asomugha was getting from the Raiders.

The additional supply of players at need positions certainly affected the size of contracts: the Texans dropped out of the Asomugha sweepstakes to focus on a younger target: CB Johnathan Joseph (who signed for Samuel money).  But it came down to the Jets, Cowboys, and Eagles.  And before we credit the salary cap for doing it’s job, it’s worth pointing out that the Jets and Cowboys both had decisions to make on Antonio Cromartie and Terence Newman respectively.  The Jets opted to get out of the bidding and the Cowboys opted for Newman.  Asomugha became an Eagle.

The salary cap did its job to force teams to choose rather than opting to add Asomugha to an already existing roster.  Except, that is, once we look closer.  The Eagles got the dream team moniker in part because they took the 2010 Philadelphia Eagles secondary, and added Asomugha and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie to that group (while admittedly losing Quentin Mikell in free agency).  The functional purpose of the NFL’s salary cap is not to cap total spending on players (although the NFL Owners enjoy the security that it provides), but instead to foster player movement through termination of veteran contracts.  In context, the Cowboys’ decision to keep Newman was highly suspect even independent of the potential for an Asomugha deal.  At the time, an argument that the Cowboys would have been better off with Newman instead of Asomugha would have been laughed out of the room.  The Cowboys framed the events of the pursuit of Asomugha as a false premise.  It’s not that they couldn’t have used him.  It’s that he got paid more than the Cowboys estimated he was worth.

Fundamentally, the mechanics of free agency have nothing to do with a salary cap, and the NFL is great evidence of this.  The salary cap functions to limit teams that do not manage it very well, but does nothing to limit a team that knows how to manage a cap.  There are all sorts of cap exceptions in the NFL, and player salaries are non-guaranteed.  That is very significant because until contracts become fully guaranteed upon signing, the salary cap will never be a limiting factor in a sport which allows you to roster 53 players during the season and 80 during the offseason.  In fact, even teams that spend recklessly will never be limited by the salary cap so long as they don’t also recklessly guarantee a larger portion of the contracts they write than the rest of the market dictates.

And even should a team get into trouble, it has an endless supply of future years for which it can push cap dollars into if it needs to free up space.  To repeat, only through terrible, negligent management of the salary cap can a team reach a point at which they will be limited in what they can do in the future by what is currently on their books.  There have been a few of examples of this, such as the 2004 Titans, the 2004-2009 Redskins, and the Raiders twice, in 2003 and again right now.  But the reason that the salary cap is not a limiting factor on a team, in general, is because it is so gosh darn high.

On average, a team can put $10 million dollars to every position on the field under the salary cap, and they will not reach it.  It’s true that a lot of teams will exceed $10 million cap dollars at one position, most teams at least will do so at two or three positions.  But we can’t ignore the fact that a lot of really good teams have a high percentage of their roster well below it’s market value because it came through the draft.

The draft obscures everything here because very much like baseball, a vast majority of NFL players won’t even qualify for free agency until their athletic peaks.  So the teams that get their best years (and have things like the franchise tag to retain rights to those players’ best years if they manage the cap particularly well) will never, ever have to write a market value contract to a player to compete unless said player is a cornerstone of the franchise.  Teams like the Colts and Packers have been rather extreme about it, but for the most part, free agency doesn’t make a lot of sense for those teams.

In a sport where the best organizations have 75-85% of their roster under market value, what the heck is the point of a salary cap?  Well, it fosters player movement, and it protects small market owners against the Cowboys deciding to operate like the Yankees.  But for the 26 teams in the middle of the spectrum, it wouldn’t change a thing if the salary cap never existed.

Back to the thought exercise: what would have happened to the NFL over the last six months or so if the players and owners had agreed not to have a salary cap.  Would it have helped Nnamdi Asomugha?  Well, he probably would have grabbed a longer contract, but there would have been a lot of empty years on the back end.  If it helped him, it only would have been because the Raiders (who had capped themselves out of the Asomugha sweepstakes) could have given the Eagles a run for their money, but if the player wanted to leave, he would have left.  Would the Eagles have made it to the playoffs if there was no salary cap?  That’s really unlikely.  Would the Giants be any different?  Probably not.  Would the Bengals have ponied up the cash to keep Johnathan Joseph?  Unlikely.  Could Atlanta have been more aggressive?  Maybe, but this still would have been a transitional year for them, at least offensively.  The Lions?  They didn’t even spend up to the cap.  Chicago and Indianapolis are notoriously picky when it comes to player evaluation.  The Arizona Cardinals pinch pennies anyway.  The Rams opted for fiscal conservative policy, as did the Bucs.

Outside of the desperation of the Dallas Cowboys, it’s unlikely that the NFL would be any different if the salary cap didn’t exist.  There would not be as much player movement, and as a result, I think veteran players would get paid more under a non-salary cap system, but teams have much more flexibility under the current system of non-guaranteed contracts.  The cap sounds nice in theory, but has no actual practical application with regards to the majority of the teams in the NFL.

It would be easy and perhaps very acceptable as well to get caught up in the excitement of what Tim Tebow did yesterday for the Broncos in the Wild Card round against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and miss the fact that what Tebow accomplished, in the context of the weekend, wasn’t out of context at all.  Every one of the home teams in the four Wild Card Weekend playoff games covered the spread, and every team except New Orleans did so by more than a touchdown (and I thought New Orleans’ line was pretty high).  This was a sensational weekend for division winners and really just not a good effort at times by wild card teams.

I want to leave the discussion of whether 8 or 9 win division winners should continue to be awarded home playoff games in the first round for another day.  But I can’t ignore what the results of this weekend mean for the playoff picture in general.

There are only five or six (depending on how you have viewed the Texans after the Schaub injury) super bowl contenders remaining.  And after this weekend, I am no longer confident that a team like the Giants or the Broncos who won a weak division to get into the playoffs can not legitimately be considered a threat to make the super bowl.

Take the Giants, for instance.  Do they get into the postseason in a year where the other NFC East teams do not fall all over themselves in pursuit of higher draft position?  Probably not.  But the Falcons were one of the teams I had pegged as a darkhorse to come out of the NFC and — if not make it to the super bowl — at least bust some other more accomplished teams on the way.  And the Giants — who have not been strong at all at home this season — didn’t allow the Falcons offense to put up a single point, blowing out Atlanta by a margin of three touchdows.  That doesn’t mean that New York is a good bet to give Green Bay a game next week, but we’re at the point now where it is obvious to anyone that if the Giants can get by the Packers, they become a favorite to go to the super bowl.

Put another way, it does us no good to analyze the Giants as “not really a super bowl contender” because at this point, the only thing that can prevent the Giants from competing for the right to go to the super bowl either in New Orleans or San Francisco is a loss to the defending super bowl champion and obvious favorite to return to the Big Game.

Denver’s case is a bit more far fetched, and if you look at their team, even in the context of a great win yesterday, this doesn’t seem like a super bowl contender without projecting the accomplishments of it’s quarterback to the rest of the team.  Tim Tebow was a sensational college player for sure, one who helped win two national championships, but at the current moment he is merely a decent NFL quarterback who continues to defy that nasty thing that is the probability that a team that lacked the talent to win even 2 out of its first 5 games would be able to win 8 of its next 13.

What has people so enthralled in this Bronco-mania is the fact that the Denver Broncos have failed to make but one of their 8 Tebowian victories look deserved.  They pretty much had the Week 9 match-up at Oakland in hand by the four minute mark of the fourth quarter.  But beyond that, even the games that haven’t gone to overtime have been an adventure.

What has occurred with Tebow and the Broncos has been wired, but not unprecedentedly weird.  The 1970 Oakland Raiders essentially had the same kind of season, with George Blanda* playing the role of Tim Tebow.

*George Blanda completion percentage in 1970: 52.5%.  Tim Tebow 2011 completion percentage: 46.5%.

The Broncos have beaten a number of very good teams on their streak, but both the wins over the Jets and Steelers have come at home in exhilarating fashion.  It would be silly at this point to suggest the Broncos aren’t going to have a chance in New England next week, but at this point that would be no more silly than a direct comparison of the merits of the two teams.  One thing this Broncos’ run has done is it has resulted in a complete over-attribution of success in favor of the Broncos defense.  Von Miller, Elvis Dumerville, and Champ Bailey are all sensational players and there are plenty of quality role players on this defense, but it’s now one of the worst remaining defenses in the playoff.  The real attribution in the Broncos’ season — no different than the 1970 Raiders — is a true occurring of dumb luck.

Just like the 2011 Broncos failed to win more than one out of their first five games, the 2011 Raiders failed to win more than one out of their final five games, blowing a one game lead in the process to a team that couldn’t score for the final 10 quarters of it’s season.  The Broncos earned their eight wins.  It was dumb luck that that was enough to win a division which finished all of two games below .500.  The Broncos have also enjoyed plenty of instances of in-game luck.  But because football analysis hasn’t yet been able to totally and accurately define Tim Tebow as a player, a lot of credit is going to a defense that, overall, has been very average.

This is why you would expect New England and Green Bay to win in blowouts next week.  You saw how much homefield advantage this week to otherwise mediocre teams.  Why wouldn’t great offenses like NE and GB benefit in the same manner from all the advantage of playing at home, following a bye?  We could very easily get through two rounds of the playoffs without a road team pulling off a victory in the postseason.  It’s hard to see for sure, the way that New Orleans is playing right now, but New England, Baltimore, and Green Bay enter this week as heavy home favorites.

After what I felt was a lackluster season for premier bowl match-ups, the NFL has really offered its fans a lot of compelling match-ups in the NFL postseason through two weeks.  The actual games themseleves haven’t necessarily lived up to the excitement factor that the two teams playing in them provide, but its hard to complain about two young teams in Houston and Cincinnati (for example) playing a one-sided game with sensational plays by rookie DE JJ Watt and third year RB Arian Foster.  To see that team go against the (super bowl bound?) Baltimore Ravens?  That’s a lot better than drawing Cincinnati at New England next week.

If the home teams keep it up next week, chances are that there will be three more blowouts and a thrilling game between the 49ers and Saints.  That wouldn’t be surprising at all, given that Denver, Houston, and the Giants all managed to get by the first round.  It also wouldn’t be a bad thing for the NFL to have a year where the 1st and 2nd seeds in both conferences reached the Championship round.

But this is the NFL, and it’s likely that at least one team will get upset next week.  And while the focus will be on Tebow and the Broncos, I think the more interesting in-game matchup is how the Baltimore Ravens will handle Andre Johnson being back in the lineup for the Houston Texans.  The Ravens avoided Johnson in the regular season when he got hurt two week earlier.  In what will certainly be billed as the biggest game in Texans history, Johnson is the most important player in the NFL next week, as it is almost impossible for the Texans to advance past the Ravens unless he has a stellar game.

Finally, I offer the home/road splits for the eight remaining playoff teams:

• Baltimore (8-0 home)
• Green Bay (8-0 home)
• New England (7-1 home)
• San Francisco (7-1 home)
• Houston (5-3 road)
• New York Giants (5-3 road)
• Denver (5-3 road)
• New Orleans (5-3 road)

Just like Wild Card weekend, next week will not be a cake walk for any of the road teams.  But the only poor performing* road teams that made the postseason this year — Pittsburgh and Atlanta — are out.  There will be plenty of believers in New Orleans this week, bu their chances of advancing may not be much higher than those of Houston.  And if a number one seed happens to fall next weekend, the Super Bowl picture will change violently.

Twenty NFL teams are already out, with history suggesting that 12-14 of those 20 teams will also fail to make the playoffs next season as well.  The NFL may have great parity, but one-third of the NFL is blissfully unaware of it.  This article is not about those teams.

This article is about teams that saw their season end on Sunday, but already have a leg up on their competition and perhaps even including teams in the playoff field.  There are a couple teams on this list that are obvious, but a couple that you may not be considering as playoff contenders.

The problem with preseason projections at this early juncture is not their lack of accuracy, but that I’m regressing everything in my system so much that a vast majority of teams come out looking average.  Which is a perfect representation of how the NFL works: most of the league heads into the offseason projected for 7 or 8 wins and has to do stuff to separate themselves from the pack.  Again, this article is not about those teams.

San Diego Chargers/Philadelphia Eagles

I combined these two teams because there’s just not that much to say.  Both teams underachieved this year.  The Chargers, of all teams, actually won some games in September and October to obscure that things were going wrong behind the scenes, which became painfully obvious when they went on a six game losing streak that lasted from before Halloween until December.

The Eagles were a pretty good team this year.  They were a mistake prone team that struggled with turnover differential in the first half of the year.  They corrected those issues in the second half, just in time to lose Michael Vick to injury and trudge through a 1-2 record with Vince Young that dropped the Eagles to 4-8.  That season had anything and everything.

Philip Rivers (and his protectors and receivers) deserves plenty of blame for what went wrong this season, but he also conclusively proved at the end of the year that he’s one of the best quarterbacks in football and the Chargers can not win games without him.  Rivers played well enough down the stretch to save Norv Turner’s job and to save GM A.J. Smith’s job.  While that is enough to make some Chargers fans sick, the Chargers will open 2012 as the overwhelming favorite in the AFC West.  Again.

The Eagles will almost certainly open 2012 as the favorite in the NFC East.  They have quarterback questions: if it’s not Mike Vick’s health, it’s his abilities, but he does happen to be at the controls of the most dominant offense in his division.  This may not be a dream team, but it’s a team that has Michael Vick, LeSean McCoy, Brent Celek, Jason Peters, Todd Herremans, Evan Mathis, Cullen Jenkins, Trent Cole, Jason Babin, Nnamdi Asomugha, and Asante Samuel on the same roster.  That’s pretty good.

Seattle Seahawks

The Seahawks, not the 49ers, are the best bet for first place in the NFC West next year.

It starts at the quarterback position, where although it is unclear what the Seahawks will do to improve on Tarvaris Jackson (who had a pretty good season), it’s clear that so long as they have Jackson, I would expect them to be stronger at quarterback than the 49ers.  Alex Smith did have a great season.  He threw an interception once every 91 passes.  But with as stripped down to the basics as Jim Harbaugh’s offense was, there’s an element of beginners luck going against those teams that see him twice a year.  This is not a difficult offense to scheme for, and furthermore, the formula relies on dominant defense to be successful.

It’s a formula run by many coaches with limited passers over the years and any coach that had a defense that wasn’t one of the five best units in football hasn’t won many games and hasn’t been able to avoid turnovers.  There’s at least a decent chance that the Seahawks will have the best defense in the division next year as well.

Furthermore, the Seahawks are loaded with talent at receiver and have mastered Tom Cable’s zone blocking attack to become one of the most bruising, physical running games in football.  While it’s too early to discuss the rebuilding Seahawks as a super bowl contender, it’s not at all too early to project them as the favorite in the NFC West next season.

Kansas City Chiefs

This may be premature because of the quarterback questions on the Kansas City roster.  Matt Cassel?  Kyle Orton?  Someone else?  It’s not too early however to fire up the Jim Zorn redemption tour, the way he coached Orton down the stretch in Kansas City.

The Chiefs won seven games after losing all those players to injury.  Their defense probably had an overrated season, all things considered, but the unit was playing well at the end of the season (particularly against the run), and only the safety level remains a weakness.  Getting Eric Berry back next season will help.

But the biggest difference is that the Chiefs developed Dexter McCluster as an offensive weapon and they will be getting Jamaal Charles back from injury.  Charles’ effectiveness coming off an ACL injury is going to be a big story next year, but he will be just 26 years old next year, and he should be a quality runner throughout the duration of his extension with the Chiefs.

And obviously, the fact that the Chiefs and Chargers are going to be very good teams next year is really bad news for the Raiders and the Broncos.

Tennessee Titans

Whether the Titans go with Jake Locker next year at quarterback or go with Matt Hasselbeck again to open the season, they are a team that sets up nicely to make noise in the AFC South.  The Titans just barely missed the postseason and have only themselves to blame for dropping a game to the Colts.  The Titans actually went just 2-4 in division play, the same record posted by the 2-14 Colts.

Where they really proved that they had the answers this past season was on defense, with one of the better secondaries in all of football.  And while Locker remains unproven, we know how much Hasselbeck struggled to move the ball in Seattle before coming over and having a re-birth in Tennessee.  This offense is set up for the quarterback to succeed.

Somehow, someway, the Titans will need to answer questions about their running game.  This is a pass blocking line that doesn’t open up holes, and Chris Johnson is being paid a whole lot of money to tiptoe towards the sideline.  Locker’s mobility and ability to bring college spread plays to the Titans if they are so inclined could help to split the defense for Johnson in 2012.

Still whether by a small decline from the Texans or by seizing a wild card if/when the Steelers/Ravens/Bengals decline, the Titans should be back in the postseason in 2012.

Carolina Panthers

The scariest thing about Cam Newton is how mortal he actually was as a 22-year old rookie.  This wasn’t like Andy Dalton who spent half a season for the Bengals playing over his head.  Newton had some bad games along the way while putting together amazing accomplishments.  In 2012, Newton will try to prove he is a generational quarterback prospect in the way that his division competition (Matt Ryan and Josh Freeman) never were.

The Panthers will need to find some solution on defense to keep Newton in games.  They were ravaged by injury early last year, but Ron Rivera is not a lazy slouch of a head coach: he has long been able to identify defensive talent, and the Panthers went through a long rebuilding project on that side of the ball this past season.  They went through rebuilding on offense as well, but Newton was so sensational that the rebuilding didn’t last long.

There will still be challenges.  This team needs to get Newton some receivers.  And all-world offensive coordinator Rob Chudzynski was so good with Newton this year that he likely earned himself a look as a head coach elsewhere.  But the Panthers have the trifecta of: a great coaching staff, a sensational young quarterback, and a competent supporting cast for that quarterback.  Now they just need to get the defense.