The 2012 Pro Football Hall of Fame class isn’t going to be known as an all-time great class.  It did not elect a first ballot player, though two players who were overlooked with last year’s class will be receiving their Hall Calls rather shortly.  Which is nice.

What follows is a quick, dirty analysis of the job the Hall voters did this year.  It’s not really meant to pass judgement on the careers of some players I have little memory of.  But the Hall of Fame should have standards, and it’s those standards that will be in the crosshairs of this article.

Chris Doleman

Doleman has been eligible since 2005, and really should have been a first ballot hall of famer.  It did not help that he was a bit of a mercinary, playing for three different teams in the last five years of his career.  Of Doleman’s 150 career sacks, he didn’t quite get 100 with the Minnesota Vikings, and split 44 sacks between the 49ers and Falcons.

What often gets lost is Doleman was a long time centerpiece on some really excellent defensive units, whether those be San Francisco’s, or Atlanta’s, or Minnesota’s.  Wherever he went, great defense followed.  And that’s a better framing of his career than his 150 career sacks which by no means should be an automatic number.  Doleman was almost certainly a better player than contemporary Mark Gastineau, who may have played home games in New York.

Doleman’s career was longer, though as is the nature of pass rushing, the sack totals weren’t always consistent.  There are probably too many pass rushing ends in the hall of fame already, but that doesn’t mean that Doleman having to wait seven years to get into Canton wasn’t a huge oversight.

Willie Roaf

Willie Roaf is somewhat fortunate his credentials in a relatively short Hall of Fame career met minimum standards for a left tackle because if he had played a little longer at a declining rate, Roaf could have easily gotten backlogged with guys like Walter Jones and Orlando Pace who have changed the standards for induction as we know it for OTs.  Roaf’s career was closer to Gary Zimmerman’s than it was to Jones or Pace.  Remember that when trying to figure out why exactly Jason Whitlock accused Peter King of irritating Jason Whitlock racism or whatever that was.

Roaf had a hall of fame level career, at least by the established standards, but we should remember his election in eight years when we’re complaining about how there were too many pedestrian offensive tackles in the Hall of Fame.  Roaf’s career was anything but pedestrian, but by becoming the 26th offensive tackle in the Hall — a number that can reach 30 within four years — he is a nice reminder that the easiest way to be remembered as an all time great football player between 1952 and 2002 was to have played the selfless position of offensive tackle.

Curtis Martin

I guess what I don’t understand is who could have possibly bumped Curtis Martin from last year’s ballot.  Martin retired with 14,101 rushing yards, and it’s not like he did something like hanging on too long in order to get there.  He pretty much lit it up into his mid thirties, then left the game with his best days not all that far in the rear view mirror.  He retired with more rushing yards than all but three players in NFL history.  He played part of his career in Boston, the rest of his career in New York.  This was an easy election.

The electorate has always had high standards for running backs, or at least they did until they elected Floyd Little — who was the Terrell Davis of his day, except was not nearly as good as TD.  What’s interesting now is whether or not Tiki Barber, who had pretty much the same career as Martin, will get enough support to get in.  He played in New York, which always helps, but a lot of his career value is more hidden in terms of receiving yards than Martin, who was the more obvious pick of the two.  Tiki was eligible this season, but I have no doubt that because he unofficially un-retired before the vote, he probably hurt his hall of fame chances significantly by doing so.

Cortez Kennedy

The Hall of Fame now has two…Seahawks?!  Yes!

Cortez Kennedy was going to need a year on the ballot like this in order to get in.  John Randle getting in really helped Kennedy because Randle was a much better player.  Furthermore, Kennedy needed to get in this time around because a year from now, Warren Sapp becomes eligible and if there was any doubt about Warren Sapp’s hall of fame credentials, this election should end that.

The far more interesting case is how much this benefits Bryant Young.  Young will also be eligible next year and while he’s certainly not going to go in front of Sapp, he’s arguably has the best career of all non-Sapp eligible defensive tackles, and pretty in-arguably has the best remaining case among DTs who aren’t eligible to be elected by the veteran’s committee, this side of Warren Sapp.  Also eligible in 2013: Ted Washington.  I don’t know if anyone thinks of Ted Washington as a Hall of Famer, but his case looks a lot better with Cortez Kennedy in.

Jack Butler

Was a defensive back for the horrid Steeler teams of the fifties.  At the end of his career, he performed a minor miracle and helped the Steelers achieve winning records in back to back seasons.  As far as typically questionable veteran committee picks go, Butler is actually a departure from the norm.  He was by all accounts a really good defensive player on an awful team.  His career ended prematurely because of a knee injury, or he probably would have been elected a lot sooner.

The discussion about Butler really can’t be separated at this point from the final member of the class, so I’ll end it here and move on to…

Dermontti Dawson

Do you remember when electing lineman for the pro bowl became an exercise in taking the starter from last year, and electing him again the following year?  That trend was started by Dermontti Dawson.

That may sound harsh, but it is not intended to be.  When you speak of great interior offensive lineman of the 1990′s you can’t forget Dermontti Dawson.  But this is not as small of a group as maybe it sounds like.  Dawson is the third interior offensive lineman elected to Canton from this group.  Dawson did not get the call as quickly as either Bruce Matthews or Randall McDaniel.  The reason for this?  Matthews and McDaniel were much better players.

But the thing that really makes Al Davis turn in his grave is that one of his own players — who no one really ever made a public hall of fame case for — likely had a better career than Dermontti Dawson.  I’m talking about Steve Wisnewski.  You could make the argument either way as to who had the greater career, but as much as Davis’ rants about how ridiculous it is that Cliff Branch and Ray Guy are continually overlooked by the voters, but at least he’s not going to have to wake up tomorrow in a world where Dermontti Dawson is a Hall of Famer.

The bigger issue here is that Dawson’s election does nothing to dispel the notion that the simplest way to get elected to Canton and Hall of Fame immortality is to at some point have played football for the Pittsburgh Steelers.  This is why the discussion of Jack Butler, Hall of Famer, is unavoidable considering that 1/3 of this class played every snap in their career for the Steelers.  Furthermore, if you selected an all-NFL team from only the 1990′s, I’m pretty sure Dawson would have been at best second team.  I mean, at the risk of being crass on an analysis blog, you might want to start fitting Maurkice Pouncey for that gold jacket right now.  After all, it’s tough to find stuff in his size.

The only proposed solution I have to the inherent biases in the voting process would be to turn over the entire electorate every four to six years or so.  It’s not to slight the current electorate or to say they don’t generally take their job seriously enough (they do), but there’s no valor in having a single member of the committee vote for 18 straight years.

Other Complaints

The other issue is clearly, we have to figure out what the standards of a hall of fame receiver are.  Since the 1980′s, passing stats have exploded.  And since 2004, the voters have inducted just three receivers, somehow: Michael Irvin, Art Monk, and Jerry Rice.  Cris Carter, Andre Reed, and Tim Brown apparently do not make the cut, but thankfully we have decided that Dermontti Dawson, Floyd Little, and Charlie Sanders are all worthy of induction.  Turning over the electorate is a very simple solution and would justify a decision to be made on a guy like Cris Carter one year, and then have the complete opposite decision made the next year and put in a worthy Hall of Famer.

Overall, this was a class without a slam dunk inductee, and the electorate and veterans committee put in some of the better players in pro football history.  There’s not too much to complain about, and I’ve said my peace.  Hopefully we’ll get Sapp, Carter, Brown, and Reed in next year so we can finally move past this silly standard with wide receivers that no one can understand.

This Super Bowl 46 edition of Friday Night Quarterback focuses on the Hall of Fame standard for quarterbacks.  There are 25 quarterbacks in the Hall of Fame.  I made an off-handed remark the other day that Eli Manning is certainly going to end his career as one of the 25 greatest quarterbacks of all time if only because there are fewer all-time great quarterbacks than it seems like.  When I have done some deeper digging, that may not be entirely accurate.

Eli Manning is certainly a better quarterback than some who are in the Hall of Fame already, but to be one of the 25 best ever to play the game, Eli might need to rank better than some of his peers in the modern game.  Ben Roethlisberger is not going to retire as one of the 25 best ever to play.  There’s an argument to be made for Eli over Big Ben, but not such a convincing one that Eli Manning can easily be placed among the top 25 QBs of all time, while Roethlisberger is given no chance to someday make that list.

Quickly now, I want to sort out the already Hall-of-Famers to determine the quickest path into the brotherhood of hall of fame passers:

The Group of Peyton Manning/Tom Brady comparables is as follows: Otto Graham, Sammy Baugh, Dan Marino, Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana.  It seems for certain that at the end of their careers, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady will make this a list of seven (maybe eight, when Drew Brees is done) of the greatest passers of all time.

The top half Hall-of-Famers is a group that really isn’t realistically in the conversation of “greatest to ever play”, but clearly is a step above the rest.  Dan Fouts and Steve Young are right at the top: they could go in the next group up if they had any case — beyond the outdated passer rating statistic — of being the G.O.A.T.  Then after that, Norm Van Brocklin and John Elway come up, along with Sonny Jurgensen, Sid Luckman, Roger Staubach, and Fran Tarkenton.  Finally, I’ll put Len Dawson here because he doesn’t fit neatly into any classification with other Hall of Fame quarterbacks.  Brett Favre, when he is finally eligible, belongs in this group.  Philip Rivers will likely someday belong with this group as well.  To make a case for a non-active player in the Hall of Fame, they really have to be able to neatly fit in this group to be considered a true “oversight.”  Kenny Anderson is close to this group, but hasn’t been able to get in.

The legacy picks might be the easiest way for a guy like Big Ben Roethlisberger or Eli Manning to get into the Hall of Fame: win multiple super bowls.  It worked for Terry Bradshaw and for Troy Aikman, who headline this group, though Jim Plunkett is still waiting on his hall-call.  Joe Namath belongs in this group.  Bart Starr belongs here.  Y.A. Tittle was good at football for a very long time, and should get the nod here.  And Bob Griese definitely belongs with this group, though he might have been the best quarterback of the four.  Bob Waterfield belongs here because of the era he played in: he was no better a quarterback than Daryle Lamonica was 20 years later, but helped revolutionize the position.  The fifth and final member of the legacy picks class is Warren Moon, the most recent inductee of the group.  Warren’s statistical totals at the end of his career were largely unmatched, as is Warren Moon, nine-time pro bowler.  Moon’s rate stats though say “consistently above average for the better part of 20 years.”  I don’t see how that is any different from Namath though.  This is the group where Donovan McNabb or Kurt Warner has their best case for the Hall of Fame.

Timing picks: Bobby Layne and Jim Kelly strike me as two guys who made it into the Pro Football Hall of Fame because of fortunate timing.  Both were excellent players in their time, and multiple time pro bowlers, but I think if they had come eligible in other years, they easily could have been subjected to more of a debate, and then who knows what would have happened to their cases.  Kelly went in on the first ballot.  Len Dawson was on the ballot for seven years before he got in.   Then there is the case of George Blanda, who is by far the least qualified quarterback in the Hall of Fame.  If he had come eligible this year, he’s not even a finalist.

So the breakdown of 25 HoF quartebacks is as such, according to me: 5 in the discussion for greatest ever, 9 in the “top-half”, 8 in perhaps more on their historical legacies than their statistical accomplishments or performance levels, and 3 who might not have been famous or accomplished enough to make it in in a present day vote.  Not a perfectly normal distribution, but it is close.

And while Brady ranks first or second on anyone’s active QB list (for career value), Eli Manning doesn’t rank higher than fifth or sixth on most people’s lists of active players with Hall of Fame cases.  In fact, there are people who — if he fails to win on Sunday — would put him behind guys with no legitimate case such as Donovan McNabb, Matt Hasselbeck, and Tony Romo.  To make the Hall of Fame, Eli is going to have to separate from guys like Ben Roethlisberger, Matt Schaub, and maybe Aaron Rodgers, and spend the next three years along with Philip Rivers and Drew Brees and Brady as the game’s elite quarterbacks.  If Eli can retire a top ten quarterback in some meaningful statistical categories, then two (or even one) super bowl titles is enough to give him a solid Hall of Fame case.

This post is more concerned with him as one of the 20 to 25 greatest quarterbacks ever.  There are 18 quarterbacks, either active or recently retired, who would qualify as all-time greats, a distinction that separates quarterbacks from merely being Hall of Famers or many-time super bowl winners.  John Elway and Brett Favre are considered by the authorities of this blog to be all-time greats.  Terry Bradshaw and Troy Aikman are hall-of-fame greats, at least in part to the seasons they had that resulted in titles.  There is a distinction to be made.

Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, and Aaron Rodgers are clearly not yet all-time greats of the game the way Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, and Tom Brady already are.  But can the be considered among the greatest 25 quarterbacks in the history of the NFL?  That is a little bit hazier.  Let’s continue this activity with a couple of blind resumes.  In all cases, the comparison is between one of the group of four quarterbacks above, and someone from the list of Hall of Fame quarterbacks.

Parenthesis represent a figure relative to league average

Group 1

Player A 7 twenty TD seasons, 58.4% career completion percentage, 5.9 career adjusted net yards per attempt, 4.7% career sack rate, 2 years QB rating > 90, 4 years QB rating > 80

Player B 6 twenty TD seasons, 56.9% career completion percentage, 5.6 career adjusted net yards per attempt, 6.6% career sack rate, 2 years QB Rating> 90, 7 years QB rating > 80

Group 2

Player C 7 twenty TD seasons, 60.1% career completion percentage, 5.9 career adjusted net yards per attempt, 6.3% career sack rate, 2 years QB rating > 90, 8 years QB rating > 80

Player D 3 twenty TD seasons, 63.1% career completion percentage, 6.4 career adjusted net yards per attempt, 8.7% career sack rate, 6 years QB rating > 90, 7 years QB rating > 80

Group 3

Player F 4 twenty TD seasons, 65.4% career completion percentage, 7.6 career adjusted net yards per attempt, 7.0% career sack rate,  4 years QB rating > 90

Player G 3 twenty TD seasons, 57.0% career completion percentage, 5.7 career adjusted net yards per attempt, 9.6% career sack rate, 3 years QB rating > 90, 5 years QB rating > 80

Group 4

Player H 6 twenty TD seasons, 63.5% career completion percentage, 7.2 career adjusted net yards per attempt, 5.3% career sack rate,  4 seasons QB rating > 90, 6 seasons QB rating > 80

Player J 1 twenty TD season, 61.5% career completion percentage, 5.7 career adjusted net yards per attempt, 5.2% career sack rate, 2 seasons QB rating > 90, 8 seasons QB rating > 80

***answers below the jump***

Group 1: Eli Manning (A) and John Elway (B)
Group 2: Jim Kelly (C) and Ben Roethlisberger (D)
Group 3: Aaron Rodgers (F) and Roger Staubach (G)
Group 4: Philip Rivers (H) and Troy Aikman (J)

****

The point of that blind resume exercise is not to show in no uncertain terms the difference between passing statistics in the modern game vs passing statistics in the past, which is why I gave both counting stats and rate stats.  It was to justify the idea that we have an unprecedented amount of Hall of Fame level players playing in the current game.  The fourth through seventh most accomplished quarterbacks are all playing at Hall of Fame caliber levels and an eight (Tony Romo) is more accomplished at this point in his career than prospective Hall of Famer Kurt Warner was upon leaving St. Louis.

I happen to prefer a lot of the modern quarterbacks to guys like Bradshaw, Namath, Moon, and Aikman when talking about quarterback accomplishments.  Norv Turner, who coached Aikman for years, is going to admit someday that Philip Rivers is the greatest quarterback he ever coached.  That’s obvious.  Aikman was a six time pro bowler.  Rivers, who has been in the same conference as Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and Ben Roethlisberger his entire career is at four pro bowls and counting.

Terry Bradshaw is still the greatest quarterback in Steelers history as this blog goes to press, but Ben Roethlisberger sits about two great seasons away from surpassing Bradshaw, and isn’t yet 30 years old.  Roethlisberger will — barring something off the field — retire as the greatest quarterback in Steelers history, which is the automatic Hall of Fame ticket his two super bowl titles aren’t.

On Rodgers, it’s just too early to put his career in historical context.  Rodgers, on the strength of a Super Bowl Title and (presumptively) a league MVP award in 2011 has been the most valuable quarterback in the league since replacing Brett Favre in 2008 because he has started all but one game and has played at such a high level three out of the four seasons.  It’s the next four years that will determine Rodgers’ career path.

But this is an Eli/Brady post in anticipation of an offense-laden super bowl, and you could argue that Eli is going to need this super bowl more than someone like Rodgers will need his second, because Eli’s other historical measures (such as pro bowls) in a relatively weak NFC quarterback field aren’t there.  In fact, there’s a significant number of fans who believe that Eli shouldn’t have gotten in this year over Matthew Stafford.  If Eli is going to make his case to be considered one of the top twenty five quarterbacks of all time over the next five or six years, this second super bowl is incredibly important for justifying the first half of his career as ‘elite’ as he moves into the second half of his career.

But even if Eli can’t separate himself from Roethlisberger et al, I still think he has to be judged as one of the 25 best quarterbacks in the history of the game, so long as he continues the production level he has set over the last three years.  As Brady has catapulted himself into the top five or ten names in NFL history on the back of leading his team through unprecedented offensive levels in the last three seasons, Eli Manning has also reached levels where few have been before.  The only reason that it took this playoff run for everyone to see that is because it is so easy to have extraordinary performances obscured by the current passing landscape which features Brady and Manning above all.

That is the reason why Drew Brees continues to be highly underrated as he enjoys an all-time great career.  It is the reason why Philip Rivers doesn’t consistently get mentioned with the top five quarterbacks in the game despite being a guy who would be a top three quarterback in any year except perhaps 2011.

The truth is that all these guys are among the best 25 quarterbacks of all-time.  They just happen to play at the same time.  There’s no reason to penalize Eli Manning for that.  And if someday, we get a debate about who had the greater career, Brady or Manning — Eli Manning — then it will seem silly that there was ever a question whether there was a spot in the hierarchy of all-time great quarterbacks for the youngest Manning.  After all, didn’t we have the same questions with Tom Brady five years ago?

Perhaps it would be an understatement to say that the city of Indianapolis is ready to host this year’s super bowl.  It makes sense to put the game in cold weather cities.  The idea should be to have a week where the players, coaches, and game is the center of the entire week, and while you generally get this in San Diego or Tampa, having the game in Indianapolis, Detroit, or even Cleveland makes a lot of sense.  The problem is that the smaller the town and the colder the climate for the super bowl, the more resistance it meets in the voting stage.

I am not particularly against the idea of the super bowl being hosted by New York/East Rutherford, and I even understand the allure for the NFL league offices to be able to stay at home when planning events for the big game.  But the problem with New York as a hosting site (and to a lesser extent, someplace like Chicago) is that the focal point for most of the week will drift away from the two teams it belongs on, and to the venue.  Indianapolis really is the neutral site for a football game, and the idea that the Super Bowl is “too big” to bring to a climate such as Indianapolis is not a line of thinking I agree with.

With that out of the way, I want to examine the profile of the two teams who will compete for the 46th version of the Lombardi Trophy.  There’s something to be said that New York and Boston having once again put teams in the big game.

The New England Patriots

The Patriots spent all year playing second fiddle to the Green Bay Packers.  If you get caught up in the moment, it would be easy to forget how long the Patriots have been this good.  With the exception of about the first nine or so Matt Cassel starts, the Patriots have pretty much been the same team for three and a half years now.  And it’s somewhat remarkable that they have only been to one super bowl over that timeframe.

This Patriots team is not quite what the 2010 Pats were, and they sit alongside the 2009 Pats as maybe the fifth or sixth best Pats team of the last decade.  Worse Pats teams have won the super bowl (2001), but better Pats teams (2010) have lost in the first round of the playoffs.  The formula to beat the Patriots was exposed around midseason, but unlike last season, the Patriots saved their best performances for the New York Jets, got themselves deep into the playoffs, and were able to leverage homefield advantage, which they had earned to get to the super bowl when they were very questionably the best team in the AFC.

The Patriots still have those questions to answer as we head into Super Bowl Weekend.  It says a lot about Bill Belichick and Tom Brady if a Patriots team that is perhaps not among the five best of the last decade proves itself to be the best in the NFL this season.  But if the Patriots drop the Super Bowl by 10 points, then we’re looking at a very different legacy.  While talk radio personalities might be quick to try to make it a referendum on the Hall of Fame careers of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.  It should not be.  But through the prism of a second Super Bowl loss to the New York Giants, a lot of things would make more sense.

Since Brady emerged as the franchise quarterback of the Patriots late in the 2003 season — basically, when it became clear that the Pats were set at QB for the next ten years — the Patriots followed a very similar path to the championship.  They were the best team in football in 2003 and 2004 with an emerging if perhaps a bit overrated offense to support an excellent year in and year out defense.  The Pats were the class of the AFC back when the NFC was incredibly weak.  The true super bowls in those days came down to Colts vs. Patriots, match-ups that were always won by the team playing at home.  Those were great Patriots teams that had blowout wins over other great teams, maybe none more impressive than their two touchdown victory over the Steelers on the road in the 2004 AFC Championship.

But there is a difference between playing the 2003 Panthers and 2004 Eagles in the super bowl, and playing the New York Giants.  And if the Giants win again, it adds a pretty big “yeah, but” to the Patriots super bowl victories.  Yeah, the Patriots were a great team back in the day, but as soon as the NFC started bringing elite teams to the party, the Patriots didn’t fare so great.  A victory on Sunday kills that line of thinking: the Patriots can handle elite teams in big games still.  Their ability to do so may not have died in 2004.

This game means hardly anything for the legacies of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.  That story would be different if the Patriots had lost in 2001.  If Brady and Belichick were simply two time super bowl champs, and hadn’t won it all in seven years, they would be facing a coach-quarterback duo in Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin who would be seen as the greatest coach-QB duo of their generation if they could just win this game over the other great coach-QB duo.  As it is, Brady and Belichick have little to lose in this game because they have both already achieved success unparalleled in the history of the NFL.  In fact, that past success may be one of the only reasons people expect the Patriots to find a way to pull this game out.

The New York Giants

There is a lot more at stake here for the leaders of the New York Giants — Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin — than there is at stake for the rest of the team.  Both Manning and Coughlin are at an age where a trip back to another super bowl is unlikely.  Manning will likely play for six to seven more years, and will likely win the NFC East one, two, or maybe even three more times in his career.  But when you look at how loaded the NFC North and NFC South are with young quarterback talent (where everyone has one), the days of the NFC East sending two teams to the playoffs consistently (or three teams to the playoffs ever) are in the past.  As talented as Eli Manning is, he is not Peyton Manning, and the Giants are more likely to miss the playoffs in any given year than they are to make them.

By winning this game, Manning and Coughlin, even if they are not ever back in another super bowl as a coach-quarterback tandem, put them in position to be judged among the highest rated of their peers, even if they can’t compete with Brady and Belichick over the remainder of their careers.  For Manning and Coughlin, their entire case to be considered all-time greats comes down to this one game.  For the rest of the Giants, what they already accomplished in 2007 (for those who were there in 2007 at least) already speaks for itself.  This is the difference between being one-time and two-time super bowl champions.  Significant, sure.  But no more significant than the simple idea that when you’ve managed to keep your season alive for 22 weeks, it becomes your only goal to pay off your efforts with a super bowl title.  There is no historical context to this game as far as Osi Umenyiora, Justin Tuck, or Victor Cruz are concerned: just a ring.

The bigger issue for the Giants is how to win this one game and pay off their super bowl run.  The Giants slammed both Green Bay and Atlanta and looked great in doing so.  But against San Francisco in the NFC Championship game, they played like a team that would have gotten killed by the Patriots in the super bowl.  The Patriots don’t have the 49ers defense to frustrate Eli Manning, but they can use a lot of similar techniques if Giant first downs are going to be so few and far between.  And after that game, I’m not sure the Giants are a great bet to put up even 20 points against the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.

I think, in defense of the Giants, that the chances that Brady struggles against the Giants defense are every bit as good as the chances that the Pats defense can handle Eli Manning.  And all the numbers and trends from both sides push towards an offensive explosion in the super bowl.  It only the nature of the super bowl game itself that makes me hesitant to pick the over.

I am not hesitant to pick the Patriots to win though.  The Giants looked like one team during the entire regular season, and then we saw that same team rear its head last week against the 49ers.  Those wins against the Cowboys, Falcons, and Packers were great wins and are a significant part of the story of the 2011 NFL season.  But even in Week 9 when the Patriots were struggling to score as much as any team, the Giants needed a last second drive to win the game.  I think the Patriots will be up one more score in the fourth quarter of this one, and a ten point lead with four minutes to go should be enough to hold against the Giants.

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.