Bold and useless predictions: AFC edition

The CHFF crew has crunched all the numbers, not to mention a few dozen bags of nachos and potato chips, to compile our bold and useless predictions for 2009, complete with one nut-chilling Cold, Hard Football Fact for all 32 NFL teams.

 

Here's our AFC edition. The NFC Edition can be found here.

 

Bold prediction! The winner of the Baltimore at New England game on Oct. 4 will win the AFC's No. 1 seed.

 

Useless prediction! The Bills will hire Tenzing Norgay to help them overcome the statistical and psychological mountains they face this year.

If the NFC East is pro football's Glamour Division, the AFC East will do a fairly reasonable facsimile of it in the junior circuit this season. Sure, the division lost one of its biggest names in Brett Favre, but it picked up another in Terrell Owens. It's also the division that boasts the game's best coach in Bill Belichick, the game's best franchise builder in Bill Parcells, the game's best QB in Tom Brady, the game's top receivers in T.O. and Randy Moss, and one of the game's most high-profile rookies in Mark Sanchez.

 

That's a lot of star power. Toss in two of the nation's biggest media markets, and you got plenty of great storylines ready to roll out this year.

 

Let's start with New England. The story du offseason (that's French for "sh*t people repeated over and over") was fairly well documented: "Tom Brady is back, and he re-joins a team that went 11-5 last year with a quarterback who hadn't taken a snap in anger since his Pop Warner days. Brady is a good for another two or three wins, so the Patriots should roll through the division and into the Super Bowl."

 

We get the giddiness, New England, over the return of Brady. But no improvement on defense means no Super Bowl soup for you.

 

As we noted here and elsewhere, the Patriots still need vast improvement on their defense, or else not even a six-armed Brady-Montana-Starr hybrid of cool quarterbacking genius will lift this team to a Super Bowl. The line of demarcation in New England is simple:

The Patriots surrendered fewer than 300 points in 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007: they reached the Super Bowl in four of those years, winning three of them, and nearly won the AFC title game in the other year. In 2002, 2005 and 2008 they surrendered more than 300 points, and didn't win nuttin' – even with Brady at the helm in 2002 and 2005.

 

Montana himself is proof perfect of the importance of 300: from 1981 to 1991 – a stretch which includes all of Montana's seasons as the No. 1 starter in San Francisco – the 49ers defense NEVER surrendered more than 300 points in a season. Not once. So while Montana and the offense garnered all the headlines, it was a defense of remarkable consistency that helped lift Montana to his four Super Bowl titles. So there ya go.

 

The Jets story is nearly as well documented as New England's. You see, there was this gang in Manhattan, and they could dance really good and ...

 

Oh, wait, wrong Jets. Sorry.

 

These Jets live across the Hudson and traded in a 237-year-old quarterback last year for a rookie quarterback this year. That's not good a growth plan. Quarterbacks hit their sweet spot in their late 20s and early 30s, but apparently the Jets did not get the memo. However, at least this year they decided to plan for the future rather than relive some other team's glorious past, and traded up to get what they hope will be their first franchise quarterback since Joe Willie.

 

But the concern with the J-Men is pretty obvious: teams with rookie QBs and rookie coaches (Rex Ryan) rarely do anything.

 

Yes, we realize rookie QB-&-coach thing worked out last year in both Baltimore and Atlanta. But you won't get rich gambling on lightning to strike three times in the same place. Plus, the Jets still probably have holes in their pass defense (88.1 Defensive Passer Rating last year) – and we know that can spell trouble for any team.

 

However, the Jets looked fairly impressive in the preseason – at least statistically. As usual, we do NOT put much stock in the preseason. There's little to gain from these games as a predictive force. But in this case, the 2009 preseason looked a lot like the 2008 regular season – some big numbers, but a meager 2-2 record. Again, it may mean nothing, but it is consistent. And it leaves the Jets on the outside looking in at the playoffs once again.

 

We were intrigued by Miami's off-season moves. In our eyes, the Dolphins were a shaky 11-5 team last year (+28 in scoring differential) that still needed building-block players on the offensive line – their statistical weak link from 2008. GM Bill Parcells disagreed, and devoured offensive and defensive playmakers in the draft. Given the unprecedented turnaround the Tuna engineered in Miami last year, who are we to agree.

 

Miami's off-season acquisitions were highlighted by former West Virginia quarterback Pat White – one of the great runners in college football last year, even though the letters "QB" preceded his name in the program. (In fact, he set the NCAA record for rushing yards by a quarterback.) Given the success of the "wildcat" last year, White's selection in the draft was more than intriguing. After all, this is the offense that ended New England's record 21-game regular-season win streak last year and lifted the Dolphins to their shocking division title (they edged out the Patriots for the division title on tiebreakers).

 

A tough schedule featuring a brutal first three weeks (at Atlanta, vs. Indy, at San Diego) is the only thing that keeps us from predicting another 11-5 season in Land Shark Lager Land.

 

Buffalo is an intriguing story. We'd generally predict that the arrival of TO – arguably the greatest impact receiver in history – would lead to big improvements for the Buffalo offense in general and QB Trent Edwards in particular.

 

But the signs out of camp this year have not been good. In fact, we haven't seen this many heads roll since "A Tale of Two Cities" hit the silver screen. The Bills axed offensive coordinator Turk Schonert the day after the last game of their dreadful 1-4 preseason, a 17-6 loss to – ouch! – Detroit. They cut Dominic Rhodes, a free agent pick-up from Indy who was supposed to provide veteran leadership in the locker room, one day later. And then just this week they dumped 30-year-old left tackle Langston Walker, who has started the team's last 32 games. 

 

That's more than a shake up. That's a bloodletting. And it comes from a team that needs to climb more statistical mountains than Tenzing Norgay to reach the playoffs this year. The final standings last year say that the Bills finished 7-9, but they feasted on a weak schedule. They were 0-7 against Quality Teams and were outscored nearly 2-to-1 against these clubs. Only the Bungles and Cowardly Lions were worse in 2008 (0-9 each).

 

Division champ: New England

Wildcard: Miami

 

Bold prediction! The Ravens will prove a more solid all-around team than the Steelers this year and surpass their masters for the division title.

Useless prediction! Eric Mangini packs on another 25 pounds so that he's big enough to join the CHFF staff as a consultant after he gets fired in Cleveland.

The race for team-of-the-decade status between Pittsburgh and New England will be one of the red-hot storylines percolating beneath the story of the 2009 season – you know, like lava.

 

The Steelers can wrest control of that title – or at least grab a share of it – with another Super Bowl run here in 2009. They're certainly well equipped. The Patriots have the best QB in football, but an unproven and like undominant defense. Pittsburgh's QB is not far behind – but its defense is far ahead. The great unknown in the Steel City is the offensive line. It was a dreadful unit last year and it was something of a miracle the team was still good enough on defense and at QB to overcome this deficiency. We don't know if it will improve much this year. The Steelers themselves did no seem overly concerned by the issue.

In fact, as Mike Tomlin said late last season, "Each time I come to the office I walk by five Lombardi Trophies (now 6), not five rushing titles."

 

But the inability to run the ball was not the big problem with the OL. The big problem was the lack of protection of the quarterback. Lawyers can only do so much. The Steelers got away with it last year. But this year they face stronger foes in the rejuvenated-Tom-Brady Patriots and in the rock-tough Ravens, whose quarterback looks like he's about to emerge as the AFC's next big quarterbacking star.

 

Over in Baltimore, the fans are so giddy that we can hear them giggling in their nightgowns as they paint their toenails and make crank calls to the cutest guys on the offensive line.

 

Their mirth is understandable: the defense was dominant last year, it seems that Joe Flacco and not Homo Erectus is the great missing link, and the preseason has been nothing short of encouraging in the wake of the great 2008 regular season. The Ravens dominated their opponents in exhibition play this year – again, we don't want to overstate the importance of preseason games, but when it's consistent with other trend lines, we consider it evidence.

 

The loss of defensive coordinator Rex Ryan is a big one. His 10-year job as an assistant coincided with Baltimore's rise as the most consistently strong defensive club in pro football. But rarely do organizations live and die on the comings and goings of coordinators, and it seems Baltimore's defensive prowess is is no danger of dying anytime soon. The Ravens dominated our defensive indicators last year: No. 3 in Bendability, No. 3 in our Defensive Hog Index and No. 1 in Defensive Passer Rating, and also No. 1 in our Big Play Index.

 

Paired with an emerging-star quarterback, that's a dead combination.

Cleveland & Cincinnati? We'd love to spend a lot of time with these guys, but neither team has a shot in hell of climbing past both the Ravens and Steelers and reaching a spot in the playoffs.

 

Plus, we've said just about all there is to say about these guys here in the offseason.

 

The Bungles? Well, the only thing more shocking than the outfit that Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons wore on MTV in the 1980s is the fact that Marv Lewis still has a job as an NFL head coach (one winning season in six years at the helm, and that was back in 2005). Only in Bungle-ville will a 4-11-1 record save your job.

 

Meanwhile, across Ohioland, new Cleveland coach Eric Mangini is walking through a minefield this season and, at his weight, it's tough to crawl along softly, slowly and quietly. (Believe you us, we know a bit about weight problems and minefields ... just look at our past relationships.) Something is bound to blow up in his face.  

 

Division champ: Baltimore

Wildcard: Pittsburgh

 

Bold prediction! The new-look Colts will retake the division from the Titans in 2009 but yet again fail to win a single playoff game; Vince Young will replace Kerry Collins as Tennessee's quarterback sometime in October.      

Division champ: San Diego

Wildcard: none