AFC Teams Squarely In The Playoff Picture (11 teams): New England Patriots (9-3), Miami Dolphins (6-5), Buffalo Bills (6-5), Cincinnati Bengals (7-3-1), Pittsburgh Steelers, (7-4), Cleveland Browns (7-4), Baltimore Ravens (7-4), Indianapolis Colts (7-4), Denver Broncos (8-3), Kansas City Chiefs (7-4), San Diego Chargers (7-4)
AFC Teams Out Of The Playoff Picture (5 teams): New York Jets (2-9), Houston Texans (5-6), Tennessee Titans (2-9), Jacksonville Jaguars (1-10), Oakland Raiders (1-10)
NFC Teams Still In The Playoff Picture (10 teams): Philadelphia Eagles (8-3), Dallas Cowboys (8-3), Green Bay Packers (8-3), Detroit Lions (7-4), New Orleans Saints (4-7), Atlanta Falcons (4-7), Carolina Panthers (3-7-1), Arizona Cardinals (9-2), Seattle Seahawks (7-4), San Francisco 49ers (7-4)
NFC Teams Out Of The Playoff Picture (6 teams): New York Giants (3-8), Washington Redskins (3-8), Chicago Bears (5-6), Minnesota Vikings (4-7), Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2-9), St. Louis Rams (4-7)
Clearly, there is still a whole lot to be determined in the NFL despite nearly three quarters of the season having already been played. Here are some quick thoughts through week 12 of the NFL year:
The New England Patriots Are Really Hot:
In the Patriots 42-20 victory over the Indianapolis Colts in week 11, undrafted third year running back Jonas Gray, who never even started at Notre Dame in four years and did not have a single rushing touchdown in his career, rushed for 201 yards and 4 touchdowns. Granted, Gray ran against a Colts defense that has been susceptible to the running game for seemingly 15 years since the days of Peyton Manning (remember that in the playoff game between these two teams last year, the Pats rattled off 234 yards and 6 touchdowns on the ground to advance to the AFC Championship Game). Nonetheless, out of seemingly nowhere, Gray became the third Patriot to run for 200 yards in a game, joining only Jim Nance and Tony Collins, who did so in 1966 against the Raiders and 1983 versus the Jets respectively, became the 5th running back in the last 45 years to have 200 rushing yards and 4 touchdowns in a game along with Barry Sanders in 1991, Corey Dillion in 1997, Mike Anderson in 2000, Doug Martin in 2008, and the first player to score his first four touchdowns all in one game since Herb Henderson in 1921. So what did Belichick and the Patriots do in week 12, they benched Gray after he was late to practice and then proceeded to pound on the once NFC North leading Detroit Lions, who have one of the best defenses in all of football, 34-9 in Foxborough. The Patriots, who are riding a 7-game winning streak since they were plumbed by the Chiefs on Monday Night Football on September 29th, could do anything right now and it would work out perfectly because that is how things are going in New England. Now, let's get one thing straight. I'm sure Belichick loved to show the world that he can do anything he wants and still get a victory, and simultaneously making thousands of fantasy owners thoroughly upset while he was at it must have been a nice added bonus for the smug coach. However, if the Pats thought that they absolutely needed Gray to win the game, he would have been on the field regardless of any internal disciplinary protocol. For example, Darrelle Revis was late to practice on October 21st, but Revis was out there on the following Sunday because they needed him to match up against Alshon Jeffery and Brandon Marshall. The Pats were fine without Gray playing after their acquisition of power back LeGarrette Blount, who ran for 78 yards and 2 touchdowns against Detroit, and Shane Vereen catching the ball out of the backfield. The Patriots are one of those teams where the system is bigger than a majority of its parts. With Gray coming back into the fold next week against the Packers, the Patriots should continue their dominance running the football.
The change in the play of the Patriots has been striking. At one time, New England was a very unconvincing 5-2 heading into a stretch at home against Chicago and Denver, at Indy, home against Detroit, on the road at Green Bay and San Diego, and then home against Miami (teams at this point that have a combined record of 48-29 and five of which are in position to be in the playoffs). Many Pats fans would have taken a record of 9-5 after that brutal stretch, one of the toughest in the NFL this year, and yet New England has played its best football since its Super Bowl run in 2011 with four straight 21 point victories against the Bears, Broncos, Colts, and Lions, matching a record they set back in 2007. The Patriots are now sitting at 9-2 as they head into the tail end of their difficult schedule, and laughable articles about Jimmy Garappolo replacing Brady and there being friction in the Pats front office about Garappolo taking over the starting job can be put to bed forever. Rob Gronkowski returning to full health and looking like the Gronk from 2011 has been a major factor, if not the main reason, behind the Pats return to dominance on the offensive side of the football. The Gronk that is just punishing teams over the middle of the field with seam routes and blocking guys out of bounds with no regard for humanity and not looking limited coming off his ACL/MCL right knee injury has finally returned to New England over the past couple of weeks. After understandably not getting too many reps in the early part of the season and not having a game with at least 45 yards in the Pats 3-2 start, Gronk had 100 yards and a touchdown against the Bengals, 149 and 3 touchdowns versus the Bears (the first tight end with those numbers since Shannon Sharpe in 1996), 105 and a touchdown against the Broncos, and 71 and a touchdown against the Colts.
This is what I wrote about Gronk before the season. "Gronk has been limited in practice and will likely take some time to come back and return to his normal self, but the Pats really need the big tight end for the stretch run and the postseason more than anything else. His addition to New England's offense is so important and cannot be understated because of his value to Brady in unlocking defenses over the middle and in the red zone especially. At 6-6, Gronk is such a big body that it is almost impossible to get in front of him when he runs those inside seam routes and crossing routes over the center of the field, and with the new NFL rules, you also can't hit him up high to jar the ball loose (if you can't hit high, you have to hit low and remember T.J. Ward, now of the Denver Broncos, cost Gronk the end of his season last year when he got him down in the knees, the only spot you can hit now without getting flagged for unnecessary contact; thanks Roger Goodell). New England had a 58.11 red zone touchdown percentage in 2013-2014, which was still good enough for 8th in the NFL, but with Tom Brady at QB, only in 2009 did they have a lower touchdown success rate between the 20 and the goal line in the last 10 years and that had a lot to do with Gronk's absence. Clearly, in the red zone everything is compressed, so it is harder for smaller guys like Edelman and Amendola to find space and open field because everything is so clustered, and the two combined for just 8 touchdowns last season. New England dearly missed having the big body of Gronk to throw to up high in the red zone when things got tight and there were not as many open windows to throw to underneath. With Gronk returning, it gives Brady a dynamic option in the red zone and when he is under pressure and needs to get rid of the ball because of Gronk's ability to out muscle any defender whether it be a bigger but slower linebacker or a quicker but smaller safety (unless it is Kam Chancellor because he is just huge). It will also create more room for guys like Amendola, Dobson, and Thompkins to go down the field with all of the attention that Gronk's presence down the middle of the field deservedly creates (his presence off the field also seemingly creates a lot of notice amongst people, but that is for another time)."
If you look at the presence that Gronk has had for New England over their winning streak, he is as big a reason as any for why Tom Brady has suddenly played so much better since some of his struggles in the beginning of the year. The Patriots lead the NFL in red zone touchdown scores per game because of just how good Gronk and his big body is between the 20 and the goal line. Not only can Gronk box guys out because of his superior size and make plays in the red zone, but he commands so much attention and double teams from opposing defenses that it allows other guys to get free for Brady. For example, in the game against the Lions this past weekend, Tim Wright was able to catch two wide open touchdowns because Detroit put so many bodies on Gronk and the Pats used him as a decoy for Brady. The Pats have also begun to welcome opposing wide receivers to Revis island, which is now looking like one of the best signings of the off-season because he looks like the shutdown Revis from back in 2010 and 2011 (other great NFL off-season signings have been Golden Tate for Detroit, Emmanuel Sanders for the Broncos, Henry Melton for Dallas, Brandon Flowers for San Diego, and Branden Albert to sure up the offensive line in Miami). New England has shown that they can run the football (week two against the Vikings, week 5 against the Benglas, week 11 versus the Colts), throw the football (week 6 versus the Bills, week 8 against the Bears, week 12 versus the Lions), and shut teams down when their offense isn't clicking (week 3 against the Raiders), but like all Patriots teams since their dynasty began in 2001, it is all about the postseason. As long as Gronk stays healthy, this is as dangerous as we have seen the Pats in a couple of years.
The NFC South Is Really Bad and the AFC North Is Really Good:
Remember when we thought the 2010 NFC West was bad? The NFC South makes that division look like the 2000-2001 NBA Western Conference because the Saints, Falcons, Panthers, and Buccaneers are all really bad teams. The NFC South is so bad that the Bucs, who are 2-9, second to last in the NFC in points scored, tied for second to last in the conference in points against, and lost 56-14 to the Atlanta Falcons in week 3, are just two games behind the 4-7 Saints and Falcons in the division (the Jets are 2-9 and mathematically eliminated from the playoffs and the Bucs are actually right there in the playoff hunt somehow). The NFC South is so bad that the the Saints are tied for the division lead and have only had a worse 11 game start to a season when they were 3-8 back in 2005 in the Katrina year on their way to a 3-13 season. The NFC South is so bad that the Atlanta Falcons are 4-0 in divisional games (beat the Saints, Bucs twice, and Panthers) and 0-7 against all other teams in the NFL (loss to the Bengals, Vikings, Giants, Bears, Ravens, Lions, and Browns). The NFC south is so bad that the Panthers have not had a victory in their last 6 games (tie against the Bengals and losses to the Packers, Seahawks, Saints, Eagles, and Falcons), their longest such streak since they lost 7 in a row in their 2-14 year in 2010, and are just a game and a half out of the division lead. The NFC South is 1-10-1 against the AFC North, the AFC division that each of their teams are playing, and 4-7 against the NFC North, the NFC division that each of their teams are playing. Overall, the putrid division is 6-23-1 in out of divisional games, which is on pace to set the mark for the second worst out of division record behind the 2008 NFC West. Hopefully, the horrible NFC South winner will show the NFL that each of the divisional winners should not be guaranteed to host a playoff game, especially when a possible 6-10 Saints or Falcons is hosting a 11-5 Cowboys or Seahawks.
As their records would indicate, the Saints, Falcons, Panthers, and Buccaneers have each run into some very significant problems this season. New Orleans, which cut defensive end Will Smith and cornerback Jabari Greer, let linebacker Jonathan Vilma go, and lost safeties Malcom Jenkins and Roman Harper to the Eagles and Panthers respectively in the-offseason, is 27th in the league in opponents passing yards per game. In a Rob Ryan defense that loves to blitz five or six guys and keep their corners and safeties in single coverage, the Saints have not gotten the secondary play from Keenan Lewis, Corey White, Kenny Vaccaro, and Jamarca Sanford to substantiate their blitz heavy scheme. Drew Bress has also thrown 11 interceptions through 11 games, which has put the Saints in the bottom 5 of the NFL in turnover differential at -9 with the Redskins, Jaguars, Jets, and Raiders, all of whom are terrible teams. The Falcons have played exactly as you would expect from a Mike Smith coached team and found more ways to lose close games than most people would think is humanly possible. In their loss to the Browns this past week, Mike Smith inexplicably stopped the clock by calling a timeout with 55 seconds left before a third down play, which allowed the Browns to keep all three of their timeouts and mount a drive to set up a Billy Cundiff game-winning field goal as time expired. When Smith was asked about calling the timeout he said, "They [Cleveland] would have used the timeout if we hadn't," so why not save Cleveland and Mike Pettine the trouble and take the timeout for them right? In Carolina, meanwhile, Cam Newton is getting hit as we speak, as the former Auburn quarterback seems to be consistently under more pressure than anybody not named RGIII. Newton has been sacked 33 times this season, which is tied for the 5th most in the NFL, and was highlighted when the Eagles got to Cam 9 times on Monday Night Football back in week 10. The Panthers have used so many different offensive line combinations this year with injuries to left guard Amini Silatolu, left tackle Byron Bell, and right guard Trai Turner that it has killed Newton. Finally, the Bucs have been a complete mess on both sides of the football from the beginning of the season and have had few bright spots outside of dynamic rookie wide receiver Mike Evans. Can things get any worse for this disaster of a division? Well, Mike Smith could continue to mess up late game situations with his horrid clock management, Lovie Smith could keep on relying on the Tampa 2 defense, the Panthers could continue to allow Cam Newton to get beat up, and the Saints could continue to lose games at home (they have lost three in a row after not losing in New Orleans in a year), which means they wouldn't be able to get any victories at all with their road history.
Meanwhile, the AFC North is the exact opposite of the NFC South, and is reminiscent of the rugged 2013 NFC West. All four of the teams in the North are at least three games above .500 and while the Ravens, Steelers, and Bengals have been three of NFL's most consistent teams over the past decade, the emergence of the Cleveland Browns has made the AFC North really solid from top to bottom. The AFC North is the first division since the 1935 Western Division with the Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bears, and Chicago Cardinals to have a point in the season where all four of the teams are at least two games above .500. The Bengals, Steelers, Ravens, and Browns are an incredible 20-7-1 in out of division games, and all have positive point differentials, which only the 2007 NFC East and 2008 NFC South have accomplished for an entire season over the past 13 years. In fact, the AFC North's out of division winning percentage above .700 has only been done by seven divisions since the merger back in 1970, which is such an impressive mark. While none of the four teams in the AFC North are as imposing as the Patriots, Broncos, and likely even the Colts, it has the most depth of any division in recent NFL history with all their teams at 7 victories on the season through 12 weeks.
For the fourth straight year with Andy Dalton at quarterback, the Bengals have been able to rack up a lot of wins in the regular season. Cincinnati, who has not won a playoff game since they beat the old Houston Oilers in 1990, are really balanced on offense and are pretty sound on defense although they could use a better pass rush from players other than Carlos Dunlap (the Bengals have 14 sacks through 12 games, which is tied for 30th in the NFL and only ahead of the deplorable Raiders). Highlighted by right tackle Andre Smith, the Bengals rock solid offensive line has prevented Dalton from getting pressured on more passes than any other quarterback in the league and has helped their power running game with Jeremy Hill and the more shifty Giovani Bernard. The reason why a really average quarterback like Dalton has been able to be so successful in the regular season and a QB like Cam Newton has struggled so mightily is that Dalton's weapons, specifically his line and athletic wide receivers A.J. Green and Mohamed Sanu, are at the top of the entire NFL. Meanwhile, Cleveland, who are off to their best start since 2007, have looked nothing like the Browns of old, which is a very good thing, because of their great secondary play. Joe Haden is one of the best four cornerbacks in the league with Patrick Peterson, Revis, and Richard Sherman, and Buster Skrine has really come along despite teams throwing at him so often because of their fear of Haden. The Browns acquisition of big hitting safety Donte Whitner, has also allowed Tashaun Gipson the freedom to roam the field and follow the quarterbacks eyes on passing plays, which is why he leads the NFL in interceptions (the last safety to lead the NFL in picks outright was Ed Reed back in 2010). The Ravens have gotten through the entire Ray Rice mess that was brought about by the despicable actions of Rice himself, but also the incompetence of Roger Goodell and preserved to a 7-4 start to the season (I'm holding back on any Goodell hate although it is so tempting). Baltimore has not really excelled in any one facet of the game, but they have been above average on both offense and defense and are 5-0 against teams that are under .500. Steve Smith seems to be revitalized in his move to Baltimore despite changing teams for the first time after 13 years with Carolina, and has already had four games with at least 85 yards and a touchdown. Smith may not have the explosiveness he once did back in 2005 when he led the league in receptions, receiving touchdowns, and receiving yards, but he is still as tough and feisty as any player in the NFL. Elvis Dumervil's 10.5 sacks are the third most in the NFL and Will Hill, who endured so many off the field problems while with the Giants, has been a nice addition to a Ravens secondary that lost Aaron Ross for the season to a torn Achilles and Jimmy Smith to foot surgery. Finally, the Steelers have been really tough to figure out this year, as they demolished the Colts and Ravens in back-to-back weeks but have also suffered losses to the Bucs and Jets. They also were caught falling a little too in love with the passing game, which is justifiable when Big Ben throws for 12 touchdown passes in 2 weeks and Antonio Brown is second in the league in receiving yards, but they remembered in the second half against the Titans that their true identity is running the football (Le'Veon Bell finished that game with 204 yards and a touchdown).
The Dallas Cowboys Have By Far The Best Offensive Line In Football:
With the best tackle in football in Joe Thomas on their offensive line, the Browns have provided some really nice protection in the pocket for Brian Hoyer, which has allowed him to step up in the pocket and make some big throws down the field to streaking receivers. In Baltimore, with two of the best guards in football in Marshal Yanda and Kelechi Osemele and the quick Eugene Monroe at left tackle, Joe Flacco has been sacked just 14 times in 12 games for the Ravens, which is tied for the 4th fewest in the NFL, because of team's inability to get interior pressure on him (that says something because Flacco is possibly the slowest quarterback in the NFL aside from Tom Brady and the Manning brothers). The Seahawks offensive line highlighted by Max Unger and Russell Okung has opened up huge holes for Marshawn Lynch to run through in Seattle, which is why the Seahawks lead the NFL in rushing yards and rushing yards per carry. Phillip Rivers is third in the NFL in completion percentage in large part because of the time that his tackles D.J. Fluker and King Dunlap have given him to pick out Antonio Gates, Keenan Allen, and Malcolm Floyd, and Eddie Royal. Finally, there has been a resurgence in New England because of the consistency of their offensive line to give Brady time in the pocket to pick out his receivers down the field, which has been. However, the Dallas Cowboys offensive line of Tyron Smith at left tackle, Ronald Leary at left guard, Travis Frederick at center, Zack Martin at right guard, and Doug Free at left tackle is by far the best offensive line in the NFL, which is something we never thought we would have said about the Cowboys a few years ago when Romo was getting hit on almost every dropback and they couldn't get a running game going.
Obviously, having a great quarterback is the biggest factor in the success of a team because you almost always need a great QB to win a Super Bowl (I understand that Brad Johnson, Jeff Hostetler, Trent Dilfer, and Mark Rypien won Super Bowls, but you almost always need a top quarterback to get through the grind of the playoffs). However, the quarterback is the most dependent position in sports, and offensive lines in football are typically the strongest determinant of a team's ability to move the ball down the field because games are played from the inside-out starting in the trenches. Having an extra second to throw the ball in the pocket or going 3.5 yards before contact on running plays rather than 2.2 yards is often the difference between a playoff club and a team that is watching in January. The improvement in the offensive line of the Dallas Cowboys has enabled them more than anything else to a mark of 8-3 through 12 weeks, and a win away from not finishing at .500 for the fourth straight season since 2011 (last season, the Cowboys joined the 1983-1985 Green Bay Packers and the 1996-1998 Houston Oilers as the only team's to have three straight seasons with the same number of wins and losses). The dominance of the Cowboys offensive line has allowed DeMarco Murray to lead the league in running yards per game (123.1), first down runs (65), and rushing yards (1,354), and has put him on pace to pass Eric Dickerson in terms of total yards in a season. Tony Romo has only been sacked 21 times through 12 games, which is the 4th fewest in the NFC, and the Cowboys have only allowed more than two sacks once in their last 9 games (in comparison, Matthew Stafford has been sacked 33 times this season). When the Cowboys were trailing 28-24 with 3 minutes left in the fourth quarter and went down the field on their game-winning touchdown drive, Tony Romo was literally given all day to stand in the pocket and pick out his receivers. Granted, what was once a real strong point for the Giants defense during their two Super Bowl runs has turned into a major weakness, as New York has the 4th worst pass rush in the NFL in terms of sack numbers. However, what Dallas's offensive line did to the Giants was so impressive nonetheless, especially on the touchdown throw to Dez Bryant when Romo was allowed to survey the field for 7 or 8 seconds, grab dinner, date Candice Crawford, Jessica Simpson, and Carrie Underwood, and then toss the TD.
The centerpiece of the Cowboys offensive line is left tackle Tyron Smith, who is the best tackle in the NFL not named Joe Thomas. Taken with the 9th pick in the loaded 2011 draft out of USC (the Cowboys highest pick for an offensive lineman since they took John Niland with the fifth overall selection back in 1966), Smith is a monster in pass protection with his good hands and in run blocking for DeMarco Murray. He dominated Jason-Pierre Paul a few nights ago and held Robert Quinn, Chris Clemons, and Cliff Avril without a sack against the Rams, Jaguars, and Seahawks respectively. In the 2014 NFL Draft, as enticing as it would have been if the Cowboys selected Johnny Manziel with Tony Romo coming off back surgery, Jerry Jones did the prudent thing (who would ever thought we would say that) and took offensive guard Zack Martin out of Notre Dame to solidify the final piece of their ascending offensive line. It was just the third time since 1967 that the Cowboys had taken an offensive lineman in the first round with Howard Richards in 1981 and Smith in 2011 being the others (in comparison, the Rams have used the same number of first round picks on offensive linemen since 2005 alone with Alex Barron, Jason Smith, and Greg Robinson and the Packers and Bears have used 11 first rounders on the O-line since 1967). The Cowboys pick of Martin showed their shrewd emphasis on creating a dominant offensive line, which has paid off in the form of 8 wins and 3 losses through 12 weeks.
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Monday, November 24, 2014
Friday, November 7, 2014
Really Early Season NBA Quick Thoughts
We are a little more than a week and a half into a 24 week NBA season, so what better time to overreact and dissect what we have seen so far from the league. Some things in the association have looked a lot different through the first 6 games or so of the year like James Harden actually playing some defense (take that 11 minute long YouTube video), the Pelicans not getting scoring off their bench after ranking 8th in the category last season, LeBron James struggling to finish in the paint, and Deron Williams looking much quicker off the bounce after his off-season ankle surgeries. A lot of things, however, have remained the same in the NBA through the opening slate of games like Derrick Rose missing time with injuries, Kobe Bryant shooting on seemingly every other offensive possession, J.R. Smith getting suspended, James Harden using the euro-step on every fast-break opportunity (we seriously need a Harden-Ginobilli euro-step battle), DeMarcus Cousins just beating up on people inside, Kyle Lowry showing he is one of the best eight point guards in the league (the guys I would rank ahead of him would be Paul, Westbrook, Curry, Parker, Kyrie, and Lillard with Dragic right there with him), and the Philadelphia 76ers putting out a team that has maybe three NBA caliber rotation guys because of the NBA system that empowers teams to bottom out to get top draft picks (apologizes to Brandon Davies, Alexey Shved, J.J. McDaniels, Hollis Thompson, Henry Sims, and Chris Johnson in Philly, but not even Chip Kelly and his offensive genius could turn the 76ers into a winning team).
I certainly recognize that the NBA season is a very long marathon and not a sprint, unless you are like David Rudisha and everything in life is like a sprint. The Wizards, for example, started last season 16-19 and still finished with the 5 seed in the East and made the Eastern Conference Semifinals, which was partly due to the 2013-2014 East being the one of the worst single conferences in NBA history, but also because the season is so long that you can stumble for portions of the year and recover very easily. On the other end of the spectrum, the Golden State Warriors started the 2007-2008 season 32-20 and didn't even end up making the playoffs out in the West that year (granted the West was stacked that season, but they still finished the campaign just 18-14). With that being said, the beginning of the season can set the tone for a team for the entirety of the year and it can still be quite an uphill battle when trying to overcome a difficult start. Of course, looking at teams a little more than a week and a half into the season is much, much different than after two months when they have played a quarter of their regular season games, but we can still tell a lot about teams from early on in the year. Take the biggest surprise from the NBA last season, the Phoenix Suns. The Suns clearly had one of the best backcourts in the league with Dragic and Eric Bledsoe (the only other backcourts I would take before them would be Curry and Thompson in Golden State and Wall and Beal in Washington with Kyle Lowry and DeMar Derozan and whoever plays alongside Russell Westbrook and Chris Paul right with them), but if Phoenix didn't gain the confidence that it needed early in the season from winning 9 of its 12 of games in December, it may have never won 48 games, its most in 4 years.
So, here are some quick thoughts on the very, very, very early NBA season (never too early though for analysis):
Kobe Bryant is back, and he is shooting a ton, almost as if he is trying to make up for all the jump shots he wasn't able to jack up last season because of his Achilles injury and left knee problem. Kobe took 17 shots against the Rockets, a total of 25 versus the Suns, 15 against the Clippers, 29 versus Golden State, and a whopping 37 against Phoenix on Tuesday. Even for Kobe 37 field goal attempts is a ridiculous amount in one game, which he has only eclipsed once in the last 5 years of his career in a single game (he took 41 shots in December of 2012 against the Warriors). In Kobe's defense, the Lakers are terrible on both ends of the floor, have an incompetent coach with Byron Scott who doesn't value the three ball, which is absurd in today's NBA with the statistical analysis we have that supports layups and threes, and have very little to go to on offense outside of his isolations from the elbow or down in the post. With Julius Randle out for the entire season after breaking his right leg in the opener against Houston, the Lakers have had to turn to 32-year old Carlos Boozer to be their secondary scoring option on offense, which always spells major, major problems. Although Ed Davis has started out the season putting in some quality minutes off the bench as the only positive out of LA, this could be the worst Lakers team since they were still back in Minneapolis. Kobe is going to keep on shooting at unfathomably rates because LA just doesn't have that much else to go to on offense, especially if they want to get some wins and not fall completely out of the playoff race before December even comes around (they are currently 0-5 and with road games left against Memphis, New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and home games against the Spurs and Warriors before November 22nd - all playoff teams from a year ago except the Pelicans, who have Anthony Davis - they better beat the Hornets on Sunday night or they may start the season something like 1-13 or 2-12). At age 36, I wouldn't put it past Kobe to become the oldest scoring champion in NBA history (Jordan currently holds the mark when he won it at age 35 in 1997-1998), but it might come at the peril of the Lakers with him taking somewhere around 23 to 25 shots per game. (A dream scenario of mine would be to stick Kobe, Carmelo, and Chris Copeland on the floor together at one time to see how the shots would be distributed between them and the number of passes to one another, which is how you know I'm a basketball nerd). The ultra competitiveness that has defined Kobe's entire career will certainly make it very difficult for him to cope with that fact that the Lakers are going to struggle so much that they will finish with their worst record with a healthy Kobe since 2004-2005, which will only mean more field goal attempts from the Black Mamba. Also, don't buy the Kobe trade rumors, unless he demands one very adamantly, because the Lakers want him to finish his career in LA and they couldn't get a significant enough return for a player with his massive, and I do mean massive, salary to make dealing him worth it for the franchise at this point. Kobe is going to try to shoot the Lakers to some victories on his own, he is going to have to shoot a ton because of LA's limited offensive options, and he is going to continue to keep on shooting and shooting.
The most impressive team though the opening couple of games of the NBA season has been the Houston Rockets, who have started the season with six consecutive double-digit victories against the Lakers, Jazz, Celtics, 76ers, Heat, and defending champion Spurs (the only other team to start a season in such a fashion was the 1985-1986 Denver Nuggets with Alex English and Fat Lever). Coming into the season, I was pegging the Rockets as a team that would have a slight regression from 2013-2014 in a brutal Western Conference. The always forward thinking Daryl Morey declined Chandler Parsons' fourth-year option at under a merger one million dollars so that he had the ability to match any offers on the small forward going forward, but more importantly, go after a big name free agent like Chris Bosh, which everybody thought would be a successful play after LeBron left for Cleveland, but didn't turn out to work of course. Morey let Parsons go to the Mavericks as a restricted free agent when the team decided not to match the Mavs 3-year, 46 million dollar offer sheet because it would hamper their flexibility going forward to bring in another big named player, even despite the new NBA TV deal probably increasing the salary cap significantly next year. Morey then brought in Trevor Ariza, a player that is not as good as Parsons and only seems to play well in his contract years when he wants to get paid (2009 playoffs with the Lakers and last year with the Wizards as examples). Then there was the whole James Harden and Dwight Howard don't eat with the rest of the team talk (never trust Lithuanian media Donatas Montiejunas) and the whole James Harden doesn't think his teammates matter thing when he said, "Dwight and I are the cornerstones to the Rockets. The rest of the guys are role players or pieces that complete our team. We've lost some pieces [Parsons, Asik, and Lin] and added some pieces [Ariza and Jason Terry]. I think we'll be fine." So, the Rockets off-season included a perceived downgrade at the small forward position, missing out on all their big name free agent targets, and an apparent team divide. Nonetheless, the Rockets have looked so great early on this season, which has a lot to do with Dwight Howard asserting himself in the post every night, which he failed to do in his adjustment to the Rockets last year. Dwight is such a physical specimen that he when he is demanding the ball down low and staying active on offense, he can take over a game like few other big men in the NBA. James Harden, who is a player that can always dominate a game on his own, has also been playing much better on the defensive end of the floor (a sentence no human thought they would ever write), which the team has needed with Patrick Beverley out with a hamstring problem. Even Trevor Ariza has been exceedingly efficient, and in a non-contract year nonetheless.
WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS? In the words of LeBron James, who took the words of Aaron Rodgers (how meta is that), everybody needs to seriously relax because we are just four games into a very long season. The Cavs, however, have shown some real worrying signs early on in the year that need to be addressed. First, it is hard to put your exact finger on it, but LeBron has not looked like himself in the Cavaliers 1-3 start. For one thing, he seems to be less powerful when going to the bucket and is getting his shot blocked at the rim a little more often than normal through four games. LBJ, though, is the best player in the world, and I don't think that has suddenly changed over one summer, so LeBron himself is not the main concern as much as the Cavaliers team dynamic. The Cavs have played a lot of individual rather than team basketball early on, which shouldn't come as too much of a surprise because anybody who watched the Cavs last year knows that Kyrie and Dion Waiters love, and I do mean love, to dribble the basketball. In 45 minutes against the Utah Jazz, Kyrie took 23 shots and had 0 assists. Meanwhile, Dion Waiters, who has been dropped to the bench for Shawn Marion and has been passed over in late game situations in favor of Matthew Dellavedova, passed the ball a total of 5 times in 28 minutes against the Trail Blazers (Kobe is nodding in approval somewhere). Also, Kevin Love, who got a good amount of touches in the post in Cleveland's first game against the Knicks, has mainly been playing around the three-point line on offense since the opener. While Love is stroking it from deep and shooting 40 percent from behind the arc, he needs to get his touches inside so that the Cavs can have an interior scoring threat. With all that being said, the Cavs were always going to have some growing pains and difficulties coming together as a team (remember that the Heat started 9-8 in 2010-2011), so lets hold off on any talk of this team not being good enough to make it out of an already weak an Eastern Conference. As much as it is surprising that a team with the offensive potential of the Cavs is struggling on that side of the ball very early on the season, they are an entirely new unit with a new head coach. Cleveland just needs some time to adjust to working together, and most importantly, playing as a team with better ball movement, but don't think for a second with their offensive firepower they are going to struggle all season long.
So those thoughts weren't exactly quick. So here are some real, short quick thoughts.
The Pacers are in big trouble (as well as he played against the Wizards and John Wall, Donald Sloan is their go to guy so enough said). The Thunder are also in trouble (Serge Ibaka is a great complimentary piece to a star player or two and the Thunder missed his rim protection so much against the Spurs in the playoffs last year, but he can't take over a game without Westbrook and Durant). The Toronto Raptors are my sleeper pick for a surprise playoff run because I love the Lowry-DeRozan combination. This could be the first time since 2005-2006 that the Kings finally get to the 40-win plateau and the first time since 2006-2007 that the Atlanta Hawks don't make the playoffs and then subsequently get bounced in the first round. Klay Thompson got a 4-year, 70 million dollar max contract from the Warriors and has looked fantastic in the early going, as has Stephen Curry of course. Finally, my NBA Finals prediction that will be wrong in June: Cleveland Cavaliers vs Los Angeles Clippers. Let the fun continue.
I certainly recognize that the NBA season is a very long marathon and not a sprint, unless you are like David Rudisha and everything in life is like a sprint. The Wizards, for example, started last season 16-19 and still finished with the 5 seed in the East and made the Eastern Conference Semifinals, which was partly due to the 2013-2014 East being the one of the worst single conferences in NBA history, but also because the season is so long that you can stumble for portions of the year and recover very easily. On the other end of the spectrum, the Golden State Warriors started the 2007-2008 season 32-20 and didn't even end up making the playoffs out in the West that year (granted the West was stacked that season, but they still finished the campaign just 18-14). With that being said, the beginning of the season can set the tone for a team for the entirety of the year and it can still be quite an uphill battle when trying to overcome a difficult start. Of course, looking at teams a little more than a week and a half into the season is much, much different than after two months when they have played a quarter of their regular season games, but we can still tell a lot about teams from early on in the year. Take the biggest surprise from the NBA last season, the Phoenix Suns. The Suns clearly had one of the best backcourts in the league with Dragic and Eric Bledsoe (the only other backcourts I would take before them would be Curry and Thompson in Golden State and Wall and Beal in Washington with Kyle Lowry and DeMar Derozan and whoever plays alongside Russell Westbrook and Chris Paul right with them), but if Phoenix didn't gain the confidence that it needed early in the season from winning 9 of its 12 of games in December, it may have never won 48 games, its most in 4 years.
So, here are some quick thoughts on the very, very, very early NBA season (never too early though for analysis):
Kobe Bryant is back, and he is shooting a ton, almost as if he is trying to make up for all the jump shots he wasn't able to jack up last season because of his Achilles injury and left knee problem. Kobe took 17 shots against the Rockets, a total of 25 versus the Suns, 15 against the Clippers, 29 versus Golden State, and a whopping 37 against Phoenix on Tuesday. Even for Kobe 37 field goal attempts is a ridiculous amount in one game, which he has only eclipsed once in the last 5 years of his career in a single game (he took 41 shots in December of 2012 against the Warriors). In Kobe's defense, the Lakers are terrible on both ends of the floor, have an incompetent coach with Byron Scott who doesn't value the three ball, which is absurd in today's NBA with the statistical analysis we have that supports layups and threes, and have very little to go to on offense outside of his isolations from the elbow or down in the post. With Julius Randle out for the entire season after breaking his right leg in the opener against Houston, the Lakers have had to turn to 32-year old Carlos Boozer to be their secondary scoring option on offense, which always spells major, major problems. Although Ed Davis has started out the season putting in some quality minutes off the bench as the only positive out of LA, this could be the worst Lakers team since they were still back in Minneapolis. Kobe is going to keep on shooting at unfathomably rates because LA just doesn't have that much else to go to on offense, especially if they want to get some wins and not fall completely out of the playoff race before December even comes around (they are currently 0-5 and with road games left against Memphis, New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and home games against the Spurs and Warriors before November 22nd - all playoff teams from a year ago except the Pelicans, who have Anthony Davis - they better beat the Hornets on Sunday night or they may start the season something like 1-13 or 2-12). At age 36, I wouldn't put it past Kobe to become the oldest scoring champion in NBA history (Jordan currently holds the mark when he won it at age 35 in 1997-1998), but it might come at the peril of the Lakers with him taking somewhere around 23 to 25 shots per game. (A dream scenario of mine would be to stick Kobe, Carmelo, and Chris Copeland on the floor together at one time to see how the shots would be distributed between them and the number of passes to one another, which is how you know I'm a basketball nerd). The ultra competitiveness that has defined Kobe's entire career will certainly make it very difficult for him to cope with that fact that the Lakers are going to struggle so much that they will finish with their worst record with a healthy Kobe since 2004-2005, which will only mean more field goal attempts from the Black Mamba. Also, don't buy the Kobe trade rumors, unless he demands one very adamantly, because the Lakers want him to finish his career in LA and they couldn't get a significant enough return for a player with his massive, and I do mean massive, salary to make dealing him worth it for the franchise at this point. Kobe is going to try to shoot the Lakers to some victories on his own, he is going to have to shoot a ton because of LA's limited offensive options, and he is going to continue to keep on shooting and shooting.
The most impressive team though the opening couple of games of the NBA season has been the Houston Rockets, who have started the season with six consecutive double-digit victories against the Lakers, Jazz, Celtics, 76ers, Heat, and defending champion Spurs (the only other team to start a season in such a fashion was the 1985-1986 Denver Nuggets with Alex English and Fat Lever). Coming into the season, I was pegging the Rockets as a team that would have a slight regression from 2013-2014 in a brutal Western Conference. The always forward thinking Daryl Morey declined Chandler Parsons' fourth-year option at under a merger one million dollars so that he had the ability to match any offers on the small forward going forward, but more importantly, go after a big name free agent like Chris Bosh, which everybody thought would be a successful play after LeBron left for Cleveland, but didn't turn out to work of course. Morey let Parsons go to the Mavericks as a restricted free agent when the team decided not to match the Mavs 3-year, 46 million dollar offer sheet because it would hamper their flexibility going forward to bring in another big named player, even despite the new NBA TV deal probably increasing the salary cap significantly next year. Morey then brought in Trevor Ariza, a player that is not as good as Parsons and only seems to play well in his contract years when he wants to get paid (2009 playoffs with the Lakers and last year with the Wizards as examples). Then there was the whole James Harden and Dwight Howard don't eat with the rest of the team talk (never trust Lithuanian media Donatas Montiejunas) and the whole James Harden doesn't think his teammates matter thing when he said, "Dwight and I are the cornerstones to the Rockets. The rest of the guys are role players or pieces that complete our team. We've lost some pieces [Parsons, Asik, and Lin] and added some pieces [Ariza and Jason Terry]. I think we'll be fine." So, the Rockets off-season included a perceived downgrade at the small forward position, missing out on all their big name free agent targets, and an apparent team divide. Nonetheless, the Rockets have looked so great early on this season, which has a lot to do with Dwight Howard asserting himself in the post every night, which he failed to do in his adjustment to the Rockets last year. Dwight is such a physical specimen that he when he is demanding the ball down low and staying active on offense, he can take over a game like few other big men in the NBA. James Harden, who is a player that can always dominate a game on his own, has also been playing much better on the defensive end of the floor (a sentence no human thought they would ever write), which the team has needed with Patrick Beverley out with a hamstring problem. Even Trevor Ariza has been exceedingly efficient, and in a non-contract year nonetheless.
WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS? In the words of LeBron James, who took the words of Aaron Rodgers (how meta is that), everybody needs to seriously relax because we are just four games into a very long season. The Cavs, however, have shown some real worrying signs early on in the year that need to be addressed. First, it is hard to put your exact finger on it, but LeBron has not looked like himself in the Cavaliers 1-3 start. For one thing, he seems to be less powerful when going to the bucket and is getting his shot blocked at the rim a little more often than normal through four games. LBJ, though, is the best player in the world, and I don't think that has suddenly changed over one summer, so LeBron himself is not the main concern as much as the Cavaliers team dynamic. The Cavs have played a lot of individual rather than team basketball early on, which shouldn't come as too much of a surprise because anybody who watched the Cavs last year knows that Kyrie and Dion Waiters love, and I do mean love, to dribble the basketball. In 45 minutes against the Utah Jazz, Kyrie took 23 shots and had 0 assists. Meanwhile, Dion Waiters, who has been dropped to the bench for Shawn Marion and has been passed over in late game situations in favor of Matthew Dellavedova, passed the ball a total of 5 times in 28 minutes against the Trail Blazers (Kobe is nodding in approval somewhere). Also, Kevin Love, who got a good amount of touches in the post in Cleveland's first game against the Knicks, has mainly been playing around the three-point line on offense since the opener. While Love is stroking it from deep and shooting 40 percent from behind the arc, he needs to get his touches inside so that the Cavs can have an interior scoring threat. With all that being said, the Cavs were always going to have some growing pains and difficulties coming together as a team (remember that the Heat started 9-8 in 2010-2011), so lets hold off on any talk of this team not being good enough to make it out of an already weak an Eastern Conference. As much as it is surprising that a team with the offensive potential of the Cavs is struggling on that side of the ball very early on the season, they are an entirely new unit with a new head coach. Cleveland just needs some time to adjust to working together, and most importantly, playing as a team with better ball movement, but don't think for a second with their offensive firepower they are going to struggle all season long.
So those thoughts weren't exactly quick. So here are some real, short quick thoughts.
The Pacers are in big trouble (as well as he played against the Wizards and John Wall, Donald Sloan is their go to guy so enough said). The Thunder are also in trouble (Serge Ibaka is a great complimentary piece to a star player or two and the Thunder missed his rim protection so much against the Spurs in the playoffs last year, but he can't take over a game without Westbrook and Durant). The Toronto Raptors are my sleeper pick for a surprise playoff run because I love the Lowry-DeRozan combination. This could be the first time since 2005-2006 that the Kings finally get to the 40-win plateau and the first time since 2006-2007 that the Atlanta Hawks don't make the playoffs and then subsequently get bounced in the first round. Klay Thompson got a 4-year, 70 million dollar max contract from the Warriors and has looked fantastic in the early going, as has Stephen Curry of course. Finally, my NBA Finals prediction that will be wrong in June: Cleveland Cavaliers vs Los Angeles Clippers. Let the fun continue.
Friday, October 31, 2014
College Football Playoffs Are Finally Here
Much is the same this year in college football. From a team and individual player perspective, a club that was overlooked in the pre-season and was not even ranked until the 5th week of the year in #1 Mississippi St. is suddenly in a position to make a run to the National Championship, following in the footsteps of Auburn in 2010, Notre Dame in 2012, and Auburn in 2013. The SEC is once again the most dominant conference in the land, regardless of any perceived SEC bias from the nation, as any team in the SEC West outside of Arkansas could practically give the Jets a fight at this point (with the quarterback play of Geno Smith, Roger Goodell and his entire NFL staff of people "that never saw any Ray Rice video" could give the Jets a game). The Big 12 has continued to play about as much defense as the Tampa Bay Bucs with Baylor and TCU being able to score at will against anybody in conference play (top-10 games in the Big 12 that end up 61-58 with 1,267 total yards and 38 fourth quarter points don't even surprise people anymore). A surprise candidate has come out of mere obscurity to take hold of the Heisman Trophy race in Mississippi St. quarterback/pseudo-Tim Tebow playmaker Dak Prescott, mimicking the path of Cam Newton and Johnny Manziel. One of college football's most noticeable and dynamic players has been suspended because of violating NCAA rules in signing autographs for payments in Georgia tailback Todd Gurley (as much as it is ridiculous that players cannot make any money off their own likeness, Gurley was just as foolish to risk the Bulldogs season and ruin his Heisman chances knowing perfectly well the rules currently in place). We will likely have our 5th straight quarterback Heisman winner and our 13th in the last 15 years - including Reggie Bush's vacated Heisman from 2005 - with Gurley falling out the Heisman lead and Prescott and Marcus Mariota asserting themselves at the top of the list. #18 Oklahoma has maintained its place as college football's annual title favorite that will certainly let you down before season's end. And finally, Jameis "humble pie" Winston has remained the most polarizing figure in college football, and possibly all of sports, with some of his farcical off-field antics, but his ability to muster through it all for the Seminoles and keep on winning when it matters most.
In terms of coaching, Lane Kiffin has retained his spot as college football's most hated coach, and he isn't even a head coach anymore. Nick Saban, Bobby Petrino, and Bret Bielema also have to be on the most hated short-list (A quick tangent on Arkansas that shows just how difficult it is to play in the SEC. The Razorbacks finish up the season against Mississippi St., LSU, Ole Miss, and Missouri, and assuming they lose all four games, as they should, Arkansas would be 0-19 in conference game dating back to 2012 with an incredible 13 of those losses coming against teams in the AP top 15. I'd rather play in the NBA Eastern Conference). Will Muschamp is still losing games to teams that rack up less than 120 yards (in the last 10 years, Muschamp's Gators have twice lost games without giving up 120 yards, which no other FBS team has done once over that span). Will Muschamp is still struggling to realize that Jeff Driskel is incapable of playing the quarterback position. Brady Hoke continues to suggest that Will Muschamp just needs more time and patience to turn his program around (there will likely be major head coach openings at Michigan and Florida this off-season, so let the coaching carousel begin). Last but not least, Bill Synder has had so much sustained success at Kansas St. that I'm convinced he is a one-half wizard-Dumbledore figure and one-half head football coach.
For as much as college football is the same once again this year, the landscape of the sport could not be any different because of one reason, which is that a college football playoff has finally, and I do mean finally, arrived. It has taken a few decades, but college football now has a system in place that is no longer controlled by computers and the ever so mysterious BCS poll calculations, and is now reliant upon actual human beings, who are typically more trustworthy than machines (apart from Roger Goodell of course). Now, I am not somebody that comes down on the BCS as if it was the worst thing since Aliens versus Predator 2. More often then not, after all the commotion and controversy over the system settled down amongst fans, the two most deserving teams would end up squaring off in the National Championship Game. Although USC in 2004, Auburn in 2005, Michigan in 2007, Texas in 2009, and TCU in 2011 may have had legitimate claims to being in the title game, the system was certainly not so egregious that it needed congress to step in as some claimed over the years (although congress probably doesn't have much else to do with their time anyway). However, the BCS was a really reactive system - kinda like the NFL's policies on domestic abuse. For example, it put into place the "Kansas St. Rule" making sure that any team in the top 4 of the rankings would receive a BCS bid only after the 1998 K-State team wasn't invited to a BCS bowl despite finishing 11-1 with their only defeat being a double overtime loss in their final game of the regular season to Texas A&M. The BCS also excluded undefeated teams from playing in the title game on many occasions (see Utah in 2004), and also arbitrarily eliminated teams beside upon the recency of their loss in relation to the end of the season. For example, to this day I will never understand how Florida St. was given the opportunity to play an undefeated Oklahoma in the National Championship in 2000 just because their loss to Miami came earlier in the season than Virginia Tech's same one loss to Miami.
It is much nicer knowing that things will be decided on the field, or so we hope, in years to come with the four team playoff (debate won't end, though, with teams fighting over that final playoff spot). Many people thought that the college football playoff would diminish the regular season, as the BCS made every week a do-or-die scenario since one loss could effectively eliminate most teams from championship game contention (10 of the 16 BCS National Champions went undefeated). However, the college football regular season has been even better under the new playoff format with each week still greatly magnified for its importance to the title picture. In fact, it keeps more teams in the playoff hunt for longer into the season so that more games have championship implications each week. Take a very solid Michigan St. team from last year for example. The Spartans lost in the 4th week of the season to a sub-par Notre Dame team without Everett Golson and were pretty much out of the National Championship picture from earlier on in the season playing in the relatively weak Big Ten. If you take Michigan St. this year, though, despite their early loss on the road to Oregon in Eugene, they still have a chance to make the playoff because of an additional two teams being awarded a title game opportunity, which gives more importance to the entirety of their season and more interest to their games on a weekly basis. The regular season is still so important in college football, but it keeps teams around for just a little bit longer to add another layer of drama to the sport. Anybody who watched the Florida St.-Notre Dame game can tell you that the regular season in college football is still the most intense and important regular season in all of sports, and that is undeniable, especially when you watch the regular season in the NBA on some random night in February.
Each week the newly installed college football playoff committee, which is composed of 6 current or former athletic directors and 6 former school administrators, head coaches, reporters, NCAA executives, or Secretary of States (not including Archie Manning, who is taking a leave from the committee to deal with health issues), will release a top 25 rankings to give the public an insight into their thinking and let teams know where they stand in the playoff picture. The committee will have to come together and form some sort of consensus on the four most deserving college football teams to go into the playoff by season's end, a group's whose power can only be matched by the Bilderberg Group (too far I'm sure). Luckily, for the constant detractors and critics out there (and there are a lot of them), it looks as if the committee is going to have an exceedingly difficult decision this year because the one word to describe college football through nine weeks of the season is muddled (other words that could have been applied would have been crab legs and Mississippi). Clearly, an undefeated #1 Mississippi St. and the defending National Champion/survival masters #2 Florida St. are at the top of the rankings, but there are then 16 teams from the power 5 conferences that have just one loss and are aiming for the 3rd and 4th playoff spots as of now (there were only 8 teams that were undefeated or had one loss through 9 weeks in 2009 from the power 5 conferences and just 11 such clubs in 2011).
Despite their propensity to get into some very close and testy contests and rely on some late game magic and help from the opposition (or from a Notre Dame perspective, the refs), as they did against Oklahoma St. to an extent and certainly against #21 Clemson (would have lost if Clemson didn't Clemson), #10 Notre Dame (it was offensive pass interference on the Irish, so stop arguing about it), and #25 Louisville (just go down after a big interception), Florida St. looks as if it they have the best chance of making the playoffs. The Seminoles are currently at 8-0 with their only regular season games remaining against unranked Virginia, Miami (FL), Boston College, and Florida (Will Muschamp will get a friendly goodbye from the Noles) before an ACC title game against #24 Duke or somebody else from the abyss that is the ACC Coastal Division. The Seminoles do have to find a more consistent running game from Karlos Williams and Dalvin Cook and sure some things up in the secondary, but Jameis Winston has been able to cover up for a lot of the club's deficiencies so far and should be able to lead the Noles to the inaugural playoff. #1 Mississippi St. has a much tougher road to go in the treacherous SEC West with big games left against #6 Alabama in Tuscollosa and #4 Ole Miss in Oxford in the biggest Egg Bowl since FDR was still President in 1940. The Bulldogs running game is so difficult to stop because of the power of Dak Prescott running from the quarterback position, and their defensive line, highlighted by Preston Smith, is the best front four in the country. The Bulldogs could likely afford one loss as long as they go on to play in the SEC Championship game and win it in Atlanta, which is certainty not a guarantee in the west. The Seminoles, on the other hand, will probably have to go the rest of the season undefeated if they want to be in the final four because their win against Notre Dame is their only high quality opponent all season long.
In the SEC, #3 Auburn, #4 Ole Miss, #6 Alabama, and #11 Georgia each have only one loss on the season. The entire Bama fan base was sent into such a crazed panic after being ranked behind #3 Auburn, #4 Ole Miss, and #5 Oregon in the first college football playoff rankings that they thought about succeeding from the system (way too far civil war joke). Alabama has looked really good the last two weeks with their demolition of Texas A&M 59-0 and their slapping of Tennessee in Knockville 34-20, which should teach them that they should just throw the ball anywhere near Amari Cooper and he will catch it. Nonetheless, they lost to #3 Ole Miss in their head-to-head game on October 4th, so I don't understand the argument that Bama should be ranked ahead of the Rebels. In fact, Alabama's best win this season is against #20 West Virginia while Auburn has a win over #9 Kansas St. on the road in Manhattan and #5 Oregon beat Big Ten favorite #8 Michigan St., so #6 Alabama is in the rankings right where they should be based on their resume. However, like every other team in the deadly SEC, the Tide have a chance to get into the playoff picture because of the games they have remaining on their schedule against other top teams in the country, which could produce some SEC cannibalism. Alabama still has to play at #19 LSU in Death Valley, and then host #1 Mississippi St. and #3 Auburn, #3 Auburn has #4 Ole Miss, #11 Georgia, and #6 Alabama on the road, #4 Ole Miss has #3 Auburn and #1 Mississippi St. both at home, and #11 Georgia still has to play #3 Auburn, a game Todd Gurley will be eligible to play in. After all those games are played, we will then have one of Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi St., or Ole Miss likely playing Georgia in the SEC Championship Game. In other words, it is very possible that the SEC teams could beat up on each other so much that they all end up with one or two losses. However, considering the grave difficulty of the SEC West, whichever team wins the conference championship should be in the playoffs barring some unforeseen circumstance. Just looking at the schedules, Auburn has the toughest slate with three really difficult road trips remaining. The Tigers, which rely so much on their read option running game with Nick Marshall and Cameron Artis-Payne, could face some difficulties going up against Alabama, who allow the least rushing yards per game in the nation, Georgia, who are 10th in the category, and Ole Miss, who are 25th in the statistic. The game that I would circle in the SEC would be #1 Mississippi St. at #6 Alabama on November 15th, which will have huge playoff implications.
The Big Ten is the simplest conference to figure out at this point. On November 8th, #8 Michigan St. plays #16 Ohio St. in a massive Big Ten game in East Lansing with the winner having the inside track on playing #15 Nebraska in the conference championship game in Indianapolis. If I were Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, I would be rooting for the Spartans to win that game against the Buckeyes because it gives the conference the best chance at a team in the final four. Ohio State's only loss to the Hokies is a really poor one at this point because Virginia Tech is just not a very good team. Meanwhile, Michigan State's only loss is to a playoff quality Oregon team on the road, which the team could easily recuperate from and make the playoffs with just a little bit of help in front of them, much less than the Buckeyes need to overcome their terrible loss early in the season. The Spartans are really balanced with Connor Cook at quarterback and Jeremy Langford in the backfield, and certainly have a good enough defense to play with any team in the country. While the Buckeyes have started to improve on offense with J.T. Barrett becoming more comfortable behind center and Urban Meyer putting more emphasis on the running game (if that is even possible), the Spartans are a much better team on both sides of the ball and should win that game next weekend. However, no matter what happens, the Big Ten will likely need some help around them to get a team into the playoffs.
The Pac-12 has been impossible to predict so far, which should continue right on through the end of the season. #5 Oregon, #12 Arizona, #14 Arizona St., and #17 Utah each have one loss with games to play against each other while UCLA, Stanford, and USC are all pretty good teams that could easily spoil the party for one of the clubs ahead of them. If Oregon can finally overcome the physicality of Stanford, which they have not been able to do since 2011 and has ruined their BCS title game chances each of the last two seasons, they will have the best chance of taking over one of the final four playoff spots from the SEC cannibalism that is going to occur. The Ducks offensive line has been very shaky this season in front of Heisman candidate and future Jets quarterback Marcus Mariota. Oregon has allowed 2.6 sacks per game, which ranks 91st in the nation, and could be much worse if Mariota didn't have the pocket awareness or the mobility of a top flight college quarterback. Stanford is 13th in the country in sacks per game at 3.3 per contest, so Oregon will have to do a better job of protecting Mariota and giving him more time in the pocket than they have been able to over the past several weeks. Since Mariota will be throwing into some real tight windows against a solid Cardinals defense, he will need more time to survey the field. If Oregon can get past Stanford and a tough road test at #17 Utah, they should be looking at a Pac-12 Championship game for a shot at a playoff birth. Meanwhile, Utah, Arizona, and Arizona St. all still have to play one another in Pac-12 South games, and Arizona still has an additional game against Washington, Utah still has to play Oregon, and Arizona St. still has to play Notre Dame aside from their divisional games. Freshman quarterback Anu Solomon has been racking up huge numbers against Pac-12 defenses, and unlike Connor Halliday, has actually been winning games in the process. Arizona is going to spread teams out and constantly attack them horizontally along the edge and also vertically down the field, which should give them a very good chance at winning the South and possibly meeting Oregon again in a Pac-12 Championship Game with major playoff implications.
Finally, in the Big 12, #7 TCU, #9 Kansas St., and #13 Baylor each have one loss on the season, and could make a run towards a final four spot with some SEC and Pac-12 losses ahead of them. TCU has to play #20 West Virginia in Morgantown before playing host to Kansas St. in a game that will likely decide the Big 12 race. Kansas St. also has difficult tests against Oklahoma St. and then really tough road games at West Virginia, and then Baylor to finish off the season in Waco. The Bears still have to go to Norman to play #18 Oklahoma on November 8th as well. Trevone Boykin has been terrific for the Horned Frogs this season in leading the nation's highest scoring offense at more than 50 points per game. Boykin can make a lot of plays with his feet, but his accuracy has greatly improved from last season, which has allowed TCU to put up some record breaking offensive numbers, including a 82 point mashing of Texas Tech last weekend. If TCU want to win the Big 12, however, and have a chance at a playoff spot, they will have to sure up their secondary, particularly when they play West Virginia's Kevin White and Kansas State's dynamic wide out Tyler Lockett, two of the best receivers in the country.
With only five weeks left in the season before Championship Weekend, or as the Big 12 calls it "just another weekend," a lot still has to be decided before the selection committee officially announces the four teams that will be going off to the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl on January 1st with the winners playing in Jerry's World on January 12th for the National Championship. From a two-loss team becoming the first club to win a title since LSU in 2007 to the SEC being left out of the playoff completely to Oregon actually beating Stanford for once and making the playoffs to Roger Goodell suddenly becoming a competent commissioner (I can have a dream can't I) we could see anything happen from now until January 12th. In the words of Kevin Garnett, "anything is possible" when it comes to college football.
In terms of coaching, Lane Kiffin has retained his spot as college football's most hated coach, and he isn't even a head coach anymore. Nick Saban, Bobby Petrino, and Bret Bielema also have to be on the most hated short-list (A quick tangent on Arkansas that shows just how difficult it is to play in the SEC. The Razorbacks finish up the season against Mississippi St., LSU, Ole Miss, and Missouri, and assuming they lose all four games, as they should, Arkansas would be 0-19 in conference game dating back to 2012 with an incredible 13 of those losses coming against teams in the AP top 15. I'd rather play in the NBA Eastern Conference). Will Muschamp is still losing games to teams that rack up less than 120 yards (in the last 10 years, Muschamp's Gators have twice lost games without giving up 120 yards, which no other FBS team has done once over that span). Will Muschamp is still struggling to realize that Jeff Driskel is incapable of playing the quarterback position. Brady Hoke continues to suggest that Will Muschamp just needs more time and patience to turn his program around (there will likely be major head coach openings at Michigan and Florida this off-season, so let the coaching carousel begin). Last but not least, Bill Synder has had so much sustained success at Kansas St. that I'm convinced he is a one-half wizard-Dumbledore figure and one-half head football coach.
For as much as college football is the same once again this year, the landscape of the sport could not be any different because of one reason, which is that a college football playoff has finally, and I do mean finally, arrived. It has taken a few decades, but college football now has a system in place that is no longer controlled by computers and the ever so mysterious BCS poll calculations, and is now reliant upon actual human beings, who are typically more trustworthy than machines (apart from Roger Goodell of course). Now, I am not somebody that comes down on the BCS as if it was the worst thing since Aliens versus Predator 2. More often then not, after all the commotion and controversy over the system settled down amongst fans, the two most deserving teams would end up squaring off in the National Championship Game. Although USC in 2004, Auburn in 2005, Michigan in 2007, Texas in 2009, and TCU in 2011 may have had legitimate claims to being in the title game, the system was certainly not so egregious that it needed congress to step in as some claimed over the years (although congress probably doesn't have much else to do with their time anyway). However, the BCS was a really reactive system - kinda like the NFL's policies on domestic abuse. For example, it put into place the "Kansas St. Rule" making sure that any team in the top 4 of the rankings would receive a BCS bid only after the 1998 K-State team wasn't invited to a BCS bowl despite finishing 11-1 with their only defeat being a double overtime loss in their final game of the regular season to Texas A&M. The BCS also excluded undefeated teams from playing in the title game on many occasions (see Utah in 2004), and also arbitrarily eliminated teams beside upon the recency of their loss in relation to the end of the season. For example, to this day I will never understand how Florida St. was given the opportunity to play an undefeated Oklahoma in the National Championship in 2000 just because their loss to Miami came earlier in the season than Virginia Tech's same one loss to Miami.
It is much nicer knowing that things will be decided on the field, or so we hope, in years to come with the four team playoff (debate won't end, though, with teams fighting over that final playoff spot). Many people thought that the college football playoff would diminish the regular season, as the BCS made every week a do-or-die scenario since one loss could effectively eliminate most teams from championship game contention (10 of the 16 BCS National Champions went undefeated). However, the college football regular season has been even better under the new playoff format with each week still greatly magnified for its importance to the title picture. In fact, it keeps more teams in the playoff hunt for longer into the season so that more games have championship implications each week. Take a very solid Michigan St. team from last year for example. The Spartans lost in the 4th week of the season to a sub-par Notre Dame team without Everett Golson and were pretty much out of the National Championship picture from earlier on in the season playing in the relatively weak Big Ten. If you take Michigan St. this year, though, despite their early loss on the road to Oregon in Eugene, they still have a chance to make the playoff because of an additional two teams being awarded a title game opportunity, which gives more importance to the entirety of their season and more interest to their games on a weekly basis. The regular season is still so important in college football, but it keeps teams around for just a little bit longer to add another layer of drama to the sport. Anybody who watched the Florida St.-Notre Dame game can tell you that the regular season in college football is still the most intense and important regular season in all of sports, and that is undeniable, especially when you watch the regular season in the NBA on some random night in February.
Each week the newly installed college football playoff committee, which is composed of 6 current or former athletic directors and 6 former school administrators, head coaches, reporters, NCAA executives, or Secretary of States (not including Archie Manning, who is taking a leave from the committee to deal with health issues), will release a top 25 rankings to give the public an insight into their thinking and let teams know where they stand in the playoff picture. The committee will have to come together and form some sort of consensus on the four most deserving college football teams to go into the playoff by season's end, a group's whose power can only be matched by the Bilderberg Group (too far I'm sure). Luckily, for the constant detractors and critics out there (and there are a lot of them), it looks as if the committee is going to have an exceedingly difficult decision this year because the one word to describe college football through nine weeks of the season is muddled (other words that could have been applied would have been crab legs and Mississippi). Clearly, an undefeated #1 Mississippi St. and the defending National Champion/survival masters #2 Florida St. are at the top of the rankings, but there are then 16 teams from the power 5 conferences that have just one loss and are aiming for the 3rd and 4th playoff spots as of now (there were only 8 teams that were undefeated or had one loss through 9 weeks in 2009 from the power 5 conferences and just 11 such clubs in 2011).
Despite their propensity to get into some very close and testy contests and rely on some late game magic and help from the opposition (or from a Notre Dame perspective, the refs), as they did against Oklahoma St. to an extent and certainly against #21 Clemson (would have lost if Clemson didn't Clemson), #10 Notre Dame (it was offensive pass interference on the Irish, so stop arguing about it), and #25 Louisville (just go down after a big interception), Florida St. looks as if it they have the best chance of making the playoffs. The Seminoles are currently at 8-0 with their only regular season games remaining against unranked Virginia, Miami (FL), Boston College, and Florida (Will Muschamp will get a friendly goodbye from the Noles) before an ACC title game against #24 Duke or somebody else from the abyss that is the ACC Coastal Division. The Seminoles do have to find a more consistent running game from Karlos Williams and Dalvin Cook and sure some things up in the secondary, but Jameis Winston has been able to cover up for a lot of the club's deficiencies so far and should be able to lead the Noles to the inaugural playoff. #1 Mississippi St. has a much tougher road to go in the treacherous SEC West with big games left against #6 Alabama in Tuscollosa and #4 Ole Miss in Oxford in the biggest Egg Bowl since FDR was still President in 1940. The Bulldogs running game is so difficult to stop because of the power of Dak Prescott running from the quarterback position, and their defensive line, highlighted by Preston Smith, is the best front four in the country. The Bulldogs could likely afford one loss as long as they go on to play in the SEC Championship game and win it in Atlanta, which is certainty not a guarantee in the west. The Seminoles, on the other hand, will probably have to go the rest of the season undefeated if they want to be in the final four because their win against Notre Dame is their only high quality opponent all season long.
In the SEC, #3 Auburn, #4 Ole Miss, #6 Alabama, and #11 Georgia each have only one loss on the season. The entire Bama fan base was sent into such a crazed panic after being ranked behind #3 Auburn, #4 Ole Miss, and #5 Oregon in the first college football playoff rankings that they thought about succeeding from the system (way too far civil war joke). Alabama has looked really good the last two weeks with their demolition of Texas A&M 59-0 and their slapping of Tennessee in Knockville 34-20, which should teach them that they should just throw the ball anywhere near Amari Cooper and he will catch it. Nonetheless, they lost to #3 Ole Miss in their head-to-head game on October 4th, so I don't understand the argument that Bama should be ranked ahead of the Rebels. In fact, Alabama's best win this season is against #20 West Virginia while Auburn has a win over #9 Kansas St. on the road in Manhattan and #5 Oregon beat Big Ten favorite #8 Michigan St., so #6 Alabama is in the rankings right where they should be based on their resume. However, like every other team in the deadly SEC, the Tide have a chance to get into the playoff picture because of the games they have remaining on their schedule against other top teams in the country, which could produce some SEC cannibalism. Alabama still has to play at #19 LSU in Death Valley, and then host #1 Mississippi St. and #3 Auburn, #3 Auburn has #4 Ole Miss, #11 Georgia, and #6 Alabama on the road, #4 Ole Miss has #3 Auburn and #1 Mississippi St. both at home, and #11 Georgia still has to play #3 Auburn, a game Todd Gurley will be eligible to play in. After all those games are played, we will then have one of Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi St., or Ole Miss likely playing Georgia in the SEC Championship Game. In other words, it is very possible that the SEC teams could beat up on each other so much that they all end up with one or two losses. However, considering the grave difficulty of the SEC West, whichever team wins the conference championship should be in the playoffs barring some unforeseen circumstance. Just looking at the schedules, Auburn has the toughest slate with three really difficult road trips remaining. The Tigers, which rely so much on their read option running game with Nick Marshall and Cameron Artis-Payne, could face some difficulties going up against Alabama, who allow the least rushing yards per game in the nation, Georgia, who are 10th in the category, and Ole Miss, who are 25th in the statistic. The game that I would circle in the SEC would be #1 Mississippi St. at #6 Alabama on November 15th, which will have huge playoff implications.
The Big Ten is the simplest conference to figure out at this point. On November 8th, #8 Michigan St. plays #16 Ohio St. in a massive Big Ten game in East Lansing with the winner having the inside track on playing #15 Nebraska in the conference championship game in Indianapolis. If I were Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, I would be rooting for the Spartans to win that game against the Buckeyes because it gives the conference the best chance at a team in the final four. Ohio State's only loss to the Hokies is a really poor one at this point because Virginia Tech is just not a very good team. Meanwhile, Michigan State's only loss is to a playoff quality Oregon team on the road, which the team could easily recuperate from and make the playoffs with just a little bit of help in front of them, much less than the Buckeyes need to overcome their terrible loss early in the season. The Spartans are really balanced with Connor Cook at quarterback and Jeremy Langford in the backfield, and certainly have a good enough defense to play with any team in the country. While the Buckeyes have started to improve on offense with J.T. Barrett becoming more comfortable behind center and Urban Meyer putting more emphasis on the running game (if that is even possible), the Spartans are a much better team on both sides of the ball and should win that game next weekend. However, no matter what happens, the Big Ten will likely need some help around them to get a team into the playoffs.
The Pac-12 has been impossible to predict so far, which should continue right on through the end of the season. #5 Oregon, #12 Arizona, #14 Arizona St., and #17 Utah each have one loss with games to play against each other while UCLA, Stanford, and USC are all pretty good teams that could easily spoil the party for one of the clubs ahead of them. If Oregon can finally overcome the physicality of Stanford, which they have not been able to do since 2011 and has ruined their BCS title game chances each of the last two seasons, they will have the best chance of taking over one of the final four playoff spots from the SEC cannibalism that is going to occur. The Ducks offensive line has been very shaky this season in front of Heisman candidate and future Jets quarterback Marcus Mariota. Oregon has allowed 2.6 sacks per game, which ranks 91st in the nation, and could be much worse if Mariota didn't have the pocket awareness or the mobility of a top flight college quarterback. Stanford is 13th in the country in sacks per game at 3.3 per contest, so Oregon will have to do a better job of protecting Mariota and giving him more time in the pocket than they have been able to over the past several weeks. Since Mariota will be throwing into some real tight windows against a solid Cardinals defense, he will need more time to survey the field. If Oregon can get past Stanford and a tough road test at #17 Utah, they should be looking at a Pac-12 Championship game for a shot at a playoff birth. Meanwhile, Utah, Arizona, and Arizona St. all still have to play one another in Pac-12 South games, and Arizona still has an additional game against Washington, Utah still has to play Oregon, and Arizona St. still has to play Notre Dame aside from their divisional games. Freshman quarterback Anu Solomon has been racking up huge numbers against Pac-12 defenses, and unlike Connor Halliday, has actually been winning games in the process. Arizona is going to spread teams out and constantly attack them horizontally along the edge and also vertically down the field, which should give them a very good chance at winning the South and possibly meeting Oregon again in a Pac-12 Championship Game with major playoff implications.
Finally, in the Big 12, #7 TCU, #9 Kansas St., and #13 Baylor each have one loss on the season, and could make a run towards a final four spot with some SEC and Pac-12 losses ahead of them. TCU has to play #20 West Virginia in Morgantown before playing host to Kansas St. in a game that will likely decide the Big 12 race. Kansas St. also has difficult tests against Oklahoma St. and then really tough road games at West Virginia, and then Baylor to finish off the season in Waco. The Bears still have to go to Norman to play #18 Oklahoma on November 8th as well. Trevone Boykin has been terrific for the Horned Frogs this season in leading the nation's highest scoring offense at more than 50 points per game. Boykin can make a lot of plays with his feet, but his accuracy has greatly improved from last season, which has allowed TCU to put up some record breaking offensive numbers, including a 82 point mashing of Texas Tech last weekend. If TCU want to win the Big 12, however, and have a chance at a playoff spot, they will have to sure up their secondary, particularly when they play West Virginia's Kevin White and Kansas State's dynamic wide out Tyler Lockett, two of the best receivers in the country.
With only five weeks left in the season before Championship Weekend, or as the Big 12 calls it "just another weekend," a lot still has to be decided before the selection committee officially announces the four teams that will be going off to the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl on January 1st with the winners playing in Jerry's World on January 12th for the National Championship. From a two-loss team becoming the first club to win a title since LSU in 2007 to the SEC being left out of the playoff completely to Oregon actually beating Stanford for once and making the playoffs to Roger Goodell suddenly becoming a competent commissioner (I can have a dream can't I) we could see anything happen from now until January 12th. In the words of Kevin Garnett, "anything is possible" when it comes to college football.
Friday, September 12, 2014
The Crushing Loss Of Giancarlo Stanton To Baseball
For as much as the retiring MLB Commissioner Bud Selig loves to remind us that baseball attendance is at an all-time high and that the game has "never been more popular" than it is across the country today, there is really no refuting that the MLB is not nearly as widely followed or prominent as it once was in the American sporting world. Of course, the beginning of baseball in the spring and the excitement of a new season with new players in different cities - whether it be a Tanaka in New York or a Abreu in Chicago - and new possibilities - unless you are a Mets fan where the only possibility is more misery and looking like a little league team - always brings a certain sense of intrigue for a while, but from late May to early September over the past decade, there has been a sort of lull amongst fans about the game and interest in the sport in the dog days of the year. Baseball may be our national pastime as was coined in the 1800's, but to many it is just that, a great historic relic that has lost a lot of its luster from the golden days. It is a game that so many people have castigated for its slow pace and ridiculous rule changes such as the transfer rule and the confounding blocking home-plate regulation to prevent those phantom collisions from happening.
In contrast, despite some of its ludicrous policies and fundamentally flawed hierarchy of decision-makers from the NFL office, which has rightfully been exploited in the news over the past week with the Ray Rice and Greg Hardy domestic violence incidents and the NFL's really poor handling of the cases thanks to the always incompetent Roger Goodell, people are still craving their football every week because the sport has never been more popular amongst its fans (they play games now on Thursdays, Sundays, and Mondays because people can't get enough). Fantasy football is such a big draw for the borderline league watchers because they are now dialed in on every game to see how their players are performing. Furthermore, as painful as it is to sometimes watch games where every time a defensive player touches a wide receiver it is a flag, people love to see offense and points. The fact that the league average per team for points per game last year was 23.4, the highest ever in a single-season, only draws more people into each and every back-and-forth contest. With the NFL rules constituted in such a way that the offensive side of the ball is so heavily favored with holding, pass interference, and personal foul penalties, no lead in a game is truly safe because of just how quickly offensives can rack up points (Andrew Luck led 8 fourth quarter comebacks in just his first two years in the league alone).
Even basketball, a sport many people honestly maintained was saved from the depths of the sporting world just 35 years ago by the enthralling rivalry between Magic Johnson and his Lakers and Larry Bird and his Celtics (one of which was in the NBA Finals every year in the 1980's) has caught up to baseball, and possibly surpassed the game, in terms of its popularity and truly devoted fan-base. Additionally, the NBA has more global ties than any other American sport even despite the fact that their game in Mexico City got cancelled last season because of a fire in the generator room (there are technological issues at places outside of the Superdome too folks), as basketball has substantial roots in China and throughout a very prosperous Asian market. It also helps your game when you can boast a lineup of LeBron James, arguably the greatest player in the game that we have ever seen aside from Jordan, Kevin Durant, who is with guys like Jordan, Kobe, and Wiklins as the best pure scorer in NBA history, the emerging Anthony Davis and possibly Andre Drummond, the deadly three-point shooting combination of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson in Golden State, the equally lethal combinations in LA of Blake Griffin and Chris Paul, Portland with Lillard and Aldridge, and Houston with Dwight and Harden (and their role players who Harden doesn't really recognize), and hopefully a resurgent Derrick Rose and Paul George when they can both return from serious knee injuries (Rose this year and George next season).
Aside from the obvious issue of baseball games just taking way too much time in between pitches when batters are adjusting their gloves, stepping out of the box, and calling time, and pitchers like Matt Garza and Clay Buchholz aimlessly standing on the mound for 20 to 30 seconds, not everybody can be Mark Buehrle I guess, the MLB just doesn't have the star power that it once did in the game. (I'm not sure baseball games take too long because football games are now going on for 4 hours, but there is just way too much dead time where nothing is happening on the field. I don't mean to be a contrarian, but soccer games have 80 minutes of constant, fast-paced action along with 10 minutes of players rolling around in deep pain over a touch of their body, guys arguing with the referees and other coaches if its Diego Simeone, and having wild over-the-top goal celebrations while baseball games are just much too slow moving after each and every pitch). In decades past, a majority of the sporting world's biggest stars and attractions came from baseball rather than football, basketball, major college sports, or hockey and while these are all obviously team sports, they do rely on star power to captivate many interested fans.
After the dead ball era, the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's had baseball icons and legends like Ruth, Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott, Lefty Grove, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio, and Bob Feller, who seem so amazing with their above .400 batting averages and 60 home run seasons in a time when everybody else was hitting in the 20's or 30's, that they are almost mystical or made up. The 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's brought to the world the likes of bigger than life personalities and stars from Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Warren Spahn, Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, Frank Robinson, and Bob Gibson to Juan Marichal, Roberto Clemente, Johnny Bench, Tom Seaver, Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, Reggie Jackson, and Jim Palmer. If you were walking down the street, you would instantly know if you saw Hank Aaron or Pete Rose, but nowadays, if you were sitting right next to some of the games top players like Josh Donaldson, Corey Kluber, or Chris Sale, it may not strike you right away that they are biggest names in baseball because the sport just doesn't have that same familiarity and big star presence that it once did. In the 1980's and 1990's, if George Brett, Ken Griffey Jr., or Mike Schmidt came to the plate or Nolan Ryan or Greg Maddux came to the mound, you would stop what you were doing and watch them at work. In baseball today, Edwin Encarnacion and Adam Jones are two of the best hitters in the game, but nobody is going to completely forget everything around them and take in their at-bat. In the past, the best athletes and the biggest names all came from the baseball diamond, but that is just no longer the case.
Baseball has been in this waiting period/limbo over the past several years about some of the guys that would step up and be their biggest stars to infatuate fans to the point where they needed to come to the ballpark to see them play or keep a chuck of their day open to watching them on television. Derek Jeter has been the face of baseball for such a long time, but with his impending retirement, the game is in need of some fresh superstars across the sport. Some pitchers have filled that void like Clayton Kershaw, based off the pure fact that his 1.67 ERA through September is just plain scary, especially after he posted a seemingly absurd but now less ridiculous 1.83 ERA last season, as well as Felix Hernandez with his King's Court in Seattle, but guys who only throw once out of every five days are hard to promote your entire sport around (come to the ballpark once every week to catch Kershaw is not exactly what you are looking for despite the amount of pull that has on an exclusive day when they are on the mound). We thought that Jason Hayward, Hanley Ramirez, a young Alex Gordon, Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Domonic Brown, Jesus Montero, or Justin Upton may be the next group of young stars, but they have all struggled much more than expected with all their collective talent. Clearly, there has been some more clarity over the past two years around the guys baseball fans would gravitate towards with star players emerging like Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, Buster Posey, and Yasiel Puig. However, there was still some disconnect in the game, and that was the big-time power guy that everybody was missing out on and so desperate to see back in the sport.
In the interim, there is no way of disputing that the steroid era was good for the overall landscape of baseball. Following some rough times in the early 1990's with the MLB strike-shortened season in 1994, the first year that didn't feature a World Series in America since 1904 - they played the World Series in the middle of World War I and II, so that shows you how disconcerting that strike must have been to the game - baseball needed a quick restoration and revival, and performance-enhancing drugs, as much as I am against players using them to gain an unfair competitive advantage and changing the entire dynamic of the sport, provided that for baseball. Offense was at a never before seen level with runs, hits, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage going at all-time high rates, and the home run battles between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire in 1998 and 1999 were unlike anything that baseball had ever seen before in terms of following and interest amongst fans. However, the short-term gains of the steroid era came at the peril of the long-term growth of the sport, and not just in terms of every story over the last ten years involving baseball being about A-Rod or Ryan Braun getting caught for using performance-enhancing drugs. Actually, more precisely in the case of Braun, getting caught, lying about not using the drugs, getting off on a minuscule technicality while ruining the reputation of another person, and then getting caught again, which is basically the Lance Armstrong in a nutshell. However, what the steroid era also did is that it inflated run scoring and home run numbers to a ridiculous degree, where teams and players now have a nearly impossible task of matching or even coming near the offensive numbers of a generation in which so many players were juicing. People became so accustomed to seeing a lot of runs scored and multiple long balls every game that they are disappointed that today's baseball has so little of that going on with pitchers being much more dominant than ever before. For example, in 2000 when Jason Giambi was knocking out 43 home runs like it was nothing, there were 1.172 home runs per game and 10.280 runs per contest, and in 2011 those number were all the way down to 0.937 home runs per contest and 8.567 runs per game, the lowest for a single-season since all the way back in 1993 and 1992 for those two categories respectively, which were both before the steroid era really kicked off. In an era of baseball when the Richie Sexson's of the world are no longer hitting 45 homers in a season, the MLB was looking for somebody to take up the reins of the game's next best power hitter and real big slugger.
Insert the monster that baseball has so desperately needed in Giancarlo Stanton. If you just look at the 6-6, 240 pound frame of the jacked Stanton, he is about as intimidating and striking as any baseball player you will ever see because he doesn't even need a wooden bat to look imposing. Some questions in life are very difficult to answer such as should we cut government spending, does nature or nurture determine our make-up, or is the NFL a corrupt business just looking to cover their own backs all the time (that one is actually easy to answer), but there is no question who is the most powerful hitter in baseball because that title goes easily to Giancarlo Stanton. Nothing against guys like Nelson Cruz, Miguel Cabrera, Jose Abreu, Jose Bautista, David Ortiz, Paul Goldschmidt, and Jay Bruce, but Giancarlo's swing has the most pure power since a younger Albert Pujols or Mike Schmidt. Watching the 2014 Home Run Derby, I have never been more impressed with a guy that would go on to not hit a single home run in one of his later rounds because some of Stanton's bombs in the first round just came off his bat like a missile. His natural power is one of those things where you just can't help but stare and watch because the ball just cannons off his bat anytime he gets a hold of a pitch in or even out of the strike zone. You just have to watch some of his home runs that Stanton has roped this season off pitchers, many of which are just line drive bullets that leave the ball park in mere seconds before you can think about anything, to truly comprehend the raw power that this guy possess in his bat. Here is Giancarlo's 484-foot shot against poor Eric Stults of the San Diego Padres, the longest ever in the three years of Marlins Park. Here is another Stanton mash, this time against Jonathan Pettibone of the Philadelphia Phillies, which went 470-feet and made Sergio Ramos's penalty kick look like it didn't go that far. Here is Giancarlo just reaching out to right field and knocking a pitch out of the ball park like he was just trying to tap it into fair territory off of Jason Hammel when he was still with the Cubs. At this point, I'm so enamored by Stanton's unreal and almost superhuman power that I'm just going to link all his home runs from 2012, 2013, and the first half of this year with some Fall Out Boy music in the background to satisfy everybody. His ability to just shoot through the ball and power through anything on the inner or outer half with his quick hip turn and torque is just incredible and unmatched right now in the baseball world.
Some of the power numbers that Stanton has put up over the past five years, at just the current age of 24, is staggering to say the least, especially considering that he still has time to mature as he enters his prime major league years in his late 20's and early 30's. Since 2010, Stanton's 154 home runs are the most in the National League and only behind Jose Bautista and Miguel Cabrera among all batters in baseball over that time span (Stanton was not called up until mid-June of his rookie season, so he could be averaging even more than his 30 home run per season rate over the past 5 years if he came up from triple-A New Orleans Zephyrs, one of the best minor league baseball team names along with the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, Toledo Mud Hens, and the Albuquerque Isotopes, a little earlier). His isolated power of .269 since 2010 is once again the best in the NL and only behind Joey Bats over the last five seasons in the majors (Stanton's .318 isolated power in 2012 was the 3rd best in a single-season in the MLB over the past seven years behind only Bautista in 2010 and Pujols in 2009 with a minimum of 500 plate appearances). Giancarlo's .549 slugging percentage since 2011 is only bettered by Ryan Braun and Troy Tulowitzki in the NL, who has 548 less plate appearances than Stanton over that span, and David Ortiz and Miguel Cabrera in the AL. Stanton is also on his way to leading the National League in slugging for the second time in three seasons, which only Johnny Mize (1938-1940), Stan Musial (1943-1944, 1946, 1948, 1950, 1952), Ralph Kiner (1947, 1949, 1951), Willie Mays (1954-1955, 1957; 1964-1965), Frank Robinson (1960-1962), Willie McCovey (1968-1970), Mike Schmidt (1980-1982), Dale Murphy (1983-1984), Barry Bonds (1990, 1992-1993; 2001-2004), Larry Walker (1997, 1999), and Albert Pujols (2008-2009) have done in the league in the last 80 years. Stanton's 25.0 home run to fly ball ratio is also the best in the majors since his debut in 2010, displaying the power and unprecedented strength that he has to get a quarter of his fly balls out of the ball park. After hitting 34 home runs in 2011 and popping 37 this season for Miami, Stanton joins just Mel Ott (1929, 1932), Eddie Mathews (1953-1956), Willie Mays (1954-1955), Frank Robinson (1956, 1959), Orlando Cepeda (1961-1962), Johnny Bench (1970, 1972), Vladimir Guerrero (1998-1999), Andruw Jones (2000-2001), Albert Pujols (2001-2004), Prince Fielder (2007-2008) as the only players to have two seasons with at least 34 home runs before the age of 25.
The first thing with Stanton that jumps out to you is undoubtedly his conspicuous power. He has that kind of truly remarkable and unrivaled force through the ball that it makes fans look upon him with awe, and opposing pitchers look upon him only with delight when they get to give him the free pass down to first base (his 24 intentional walks are the most in the NL), because of his unfair physical tools. Stanton, though, has evolved into a much more well rounded player than you would normally assume about a big, power-hitting slugger in the middle of a lineup that is there for power but not much else like a Jay Bruce, or a Chris Davis, or an Adam Dunn, who is on his way to becoming the worst ever 500-home hitter by a mile and a half and is going to awkwardly stand out more in that group than a father that doesn't know how to use twitter or an unknown Billy Campbell amongst the cast of The Rocketeer. While Stanton has his most power when he is pulling through the ball with his hips and driving the ball out to left field, his developing ability to hit the ball the other way has allowed him to get on base much more often than a typical slugger that hits a lot of home runs. The only players in the MLB this season with a batting average of .285 or above and at least 25 home runs are Victor Martinez (.333 batting average and 30 home runs), Jose Abreu (.317 batting average and 33 home runs), Jose Bautista (.286 batting average and 32 home runs), Adam Jones (.286 batting average and 25 home runs), Mike Trout (.285 batting average and 32 home runs), and of course Giancarlo (.288 batting average and 37 home runs). Even more impressive is the fact that Stanton has become much more patient at the plate and is really looking to zero in on pitches high in the strike zone and not chase off-speed stuff in the dirt, which has allowed him to go from an above average .350 to .360 on-base percentage guy to a .395 OBP batter this season, which is the 5th highest in the majors behind only Victor Martinez, Andrew McCutchen, Jose Bautista, and Paul Goldschmidt. It is also very helpful when you are so strong that you can hit righties, lefties, with runners in scoring position (.316 batting average with RISP in 2014), and just casually poke a ball out over the fence with ease. Stanton's defense could still improve out there in right field, but he does have an above average arm, and no team is going to complain about a solid defensive right fielder who just so happens to be having a year with an OPS of .950, 299 total bases, 105 runs batted in, and is leading the National League in virtually every offensive statistical category.
Despite all of his outstanding tools on the field, which are readily apparent to anybody that watches a single Marlins game, the real moment in which Stanton resonated with me and so many other fans were his comments about his Miami organization earlier this summer. Stanton said, "Five months [of good baseball with the Marlins playoff push this year] doesn't change five years [of losing season]... The way I felt last year, with the whole situation of losing and not play my best [he was still 4th in the NL in at-bats per home run], that was one of the worst feelings I ever had. I put it as a waste of time. I spent all that time in the offseason. To lose 100 games and to not do my best? It was like, 'What I do all that in the offseason for?'" At the same time, we're still not where we need to be to keep playing beyond the designed schedule... I want to be the only game on TV at the end of the day... That's still a long ways to go to be in the same conversation with the best of the best. I'm hungry for that." I don't think a fan or a front-office looking to build around a guy that will do anything to win could craft a much more perfect quote than that one from Stanton. So often in sports nowadays, we feel like the athletes are just going through the motions and making their money (Robinson Cano, for example, fielding a ground ball at second or running to first base looks like he is taking a leisurely stroll in the park and he is making 240 million dollars over the next 10 years in Seattle). Sports, after all, are a business, as so many people love to point out, and it is the way these athletes make a living, so I have no problem with them trying to make as much cash as they can attempt to do in their very short careers. With that being said, it just seems like in the sporting world today, some athletes do not live and die with the result on the field and it isn't a 'if I don't win this game, I'm going to have nightmares for the rest of my life about it and it will stick with me forever, so I'm going to do absolutely after I can to win this game' kind of proposition (remember when Gronk was partying just hours after the Pats lost in the Super Bowl to the Giants in 2011-2012). Obviously, life is bigger than sports, but it is sometimes refreshing to hear an athlete that is fed up with losing, showing everybody that he deeply cares about the results on the field and will do anything to change them. The Marlins have not made the playoffs since they beat the Yankees in the World Series in 2003 and they have finished under .500 for four straight seasons. In light of that, to hear their franchise player want to be around people who want to win as badly as he does, is exactly the type of desire that you can only dream a guy with the physical tools of Stanton would have about his team.
However, so much changed for the worse on Thursday night for the entire baseball world in the middle of Stanton's unparalleled season for a player at just the age of 24, heck, for any player regardless of age or league. It was the top of the 5th inning between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Miami Marlins from Miller Park with the Brew Crew up 4-0 and Mike Fiers on the mound for Milwaukee. Fiers threw a strike that Stanton took on the first pitch and the count moved to 0-1 (don't worry, though, because Stanton has a .364 career batting average on pitches coming from a 0-1 count, so he was still really looking to hit). The next pitch then resulted in something so devastating that only a few players in baseball history like Tony Conigliaro, Kirby Puckett, and Dickie Thon can truly relate to the feeling of the guy at the plate. Jonathan Lucroy was setting up over the middle part of the plate when Fiers completely missed the spot and his pitch went wildly sailing inside right towards Stanton in the batters box. Giancarlo, who was totally unsuspecting anything on the inner half of the plate, squared around like he was about to swing and saw the ball flying right at his helmet and he went tumbling down to the ground real hard after the fastball nailed right off the center of his face around his mouth area. Giancarlo was down in a heap, and blood was pouring everywhere onto the field from the slugger's face. I'm not sure which of these were the most horrifying sight about that hit-by-pitch: Stanton's legs swarming on the ground in miserable pain after getting plunked and needing to be taken off by a stretcher, seeing all the blood just dripping from his face and the grounds crew actually needing to delay the game to clean all the blood from the plate area, or the terrible sound that the ball made when it struck Stanton's face, which was just so painfully loud that you knew right away that Stanton caught one really badly.
Let's get this out of the way first: Fiers in absolutely no way, shape, or form was trying to intentionally hit Stanton. He had been pitching a very nice game up until the 5th inning with just spreading out 3 hits and striking-out 7 Marlins batters (Miami has struck out more than any other team aside from the Cubs this season), so there would be no reason for him to go after a guy and ruin one of the best starts he had put together all season long in Milwaukee. The Brewers were also absolutely desperate for a win after losing 16 of their last 20 games and going from a 2.5 lead over the Cardinals and a 7 game advantage over the Pirates in the NL Central to trailing the Cards by 4 games and even falling behind Pittsburgh by 1.5 games in the division. In other words, Fiers would not be foolish enough to recklessly put guys on base in such an important game for a slumping team in September that needs to gain back the significant ground that it lost with its huge losing streak in August. You can just see on the replay that Lucroy was setting up over the middle of the plate with his mitt low in the zone, so it is plain and simple that Fiers just missed his location and lost total control of the pitch, and it was hard for Stanton to see the ball with his unique over the top delivery. Furthermore, it is not like the Brewers or Marlins, two teams in different divisions that have not exactly both been competing for the NL playoff spots over the years (they have made the postseason a combined 6 times out of the last 67 opportunities), have some bad blood that Fiers was trying to heat up or resolve in baseball's odd unwritten rules (that being said, everybody in the league does have some sort of bad blood with the always fiery Carlos Gomez). As if all of that wasn't enough, Fiers was so distraught over nailing Stanton and causing him a bad looking injury, that he plunked the next Marlins batter on the first pitch of his at-bat, clearly still shaken up and in complete shock over what had just transpired with Stanton. He seemed very remorseful after the game as well, profusely apologizing to Stanton and the Marlins in his interviews with the media and over twitter (speaking of remorse, do you know who isn't remorseful or contrite, Roger Goodell). However, none of that takes away from the unfortunate fact that for anybody that enjoys watching the game of baseball, Stanton is likely going to be out for the duration of the season with some serious facial fractures and month injuries.
The frightening injury to Stanton could also not have come at a worse time for a team like the Marlins, a club that has been trending upwards and has gotten itself back into the National League playoff race against all the odds and their 47 million dollar opening day payroll, the second lowest in the MLB (quite ironically, the Phillies, who are in dead last in the NL East, are paying more money to Ryan Howard and Cliff Lee alone than the entire Marlins roster). Despite the Nationals running away with the division, mainly due to their stretch of 10 consecutive victories in August that included 5 walk-off wins, unlike the Rangers, Twins, Red Sox, Astros, White Sox, Rays, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Cubs, Phillies, Padres, Reds, and Mets, Miami was still on the periphery of the hunt for October. Going into last night's contest at 71-73, Miami was 4.5 games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates for the second wild card spot in the NL, which is certainly not an insurmountable margin with a little less than a month still to play in the season if the right things go your way and you start to get really hot with 9 games left against the abysmal Phillies and Mets (trust me, as a Red Sox fan I know about teams coming back from big deficits in the wild card). In large part because of Stanton's hitting, the Marlins were able to climb their way back from a 44-52 start to the season with a very solid stretch of 27-21 baseball since July 20th to put them in striking distance of a playoff spot. They did all that with a pitching staff of five guys that nobody has ever heard of after the season-ending injury to stud Jose Fernandez, who was coming off one of the best seasons ever for a rookie pitcher with a 2.19 ERA, 2.73 FIP, and 0.979 WHIP, and actually having to play Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Garrrett Jones everyday and watch them strike out over and over again. Stanton was one of just two players on Miami with at least 15 home runs and an offensive WAR of at least 3.0 along with center fielder Marcell Ozuna, so I don't think it's a stretch to say Miami's season is all about over with at this point.
We are entering a new age of baseball right now in a post-steriod era with pitchers dominating the game at their best rate since the 1970's when the MLB likely had their best ever iteration of hurlers with several all-time greats like Bob Gibson, Gaylord Perry, Fergie Jenkins, Jim Palmer, Tom Seaver, Vida Blue, Bert Blyleven, Don Sutton, Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan, Luis Tiant, Phil Nierko, Goose Gossage, and Dennis Eckersley (the league average ERA of 3.26 in 1972 is the second lowest behind only 1968 in the last 95 years of the category). Not too far behind, however, is 2014, where the 3.75 league average ERA to this point in the season is the lowest the MLB has seen in 22 years since 1992, the year that seven pitchers all had ERA's under 2.50 including Greg Maddux (2.18), Curt Schilling (2.35), and Roger Clemens (2.41). As if that wasn't enough, the K% (20.3%) along with the K/9 (7.72) and K/BB (2.65) rates are all respectively the highest they have ever been for a single-season in baseball history, the 3.76 FIP mark is the second lowest the majors has seen over the past 25 years, and hitters .247 batting average and pitchers 1.28 WHIP are the lowest they have been in 42 years since 1972. If those statistics didn't make it clear enough, the MLB needs guys like to Stanton to entertain everybody with their hitting prowess and big time power ability, which is becoming few and far between in this age of baseball.
All of those factors prompted Mike Redmond to say, "It was very scary. We're hoping he is going to be all right... It's devastating for us. Devastating. For his season to end like that, I mean, that's not good." But Redmond was wrong about that, however, because it is not just a devastating blow for the Miami Marlins, but it is a terrible loss for the entire sport of baseball, which was reliant on a guy like Stanton to take the reins as one of the MLB's next great stars. Now, Giancarlo is out for an extended period of time, and baseball loses one of its biggest names and driving forces behind getting people really invested in the game again. Without Stanton playing every day, it is like the NBA losing Durant or the NHL losing Crosby. As unfortunate as it is for the Marlins to lose their MVP star and likely fall out of the playoff picture, it is even worse for a sport like baseball that has been yearning for years for a transcendent power hitting star like Stanton to take shape. In echoing the words of Mike Redmond, 'It's devastating for the entire game' is what baseball leaders are probably saying right about now.
In contrast, despite some of its ludicrous policies and fundamentally flawed hierarchy of decision-makers from the NFL office, which has rightfully been exploited in the news over the past week with the Ray Rice and Greg Hardy domestic violence incidents and the NFL's really poor handling of the cases thanks to the always incompetent Roger Goodell, people are still craving their football every week because the sport has never been more popular amongst its fans (they play games now on Thursdays, Sundays, and Mondays because people can't get enough). Fantasy football is such a big draw for the borderline league watchers because they are now dialed in on every game to see how their players are performing. Furthermore, as painful as it is to sometimes watch games where every time a defensive player touches a wide receiver it is a flag, people love to see offense and points. The fact that the league average per team for points per game last year was 23.4, the highest ever in a single-season, only draws more people into each and every back-and-forth contest. With the NFL rules constituted in such a way that the offensive side of the ball is so heavily favored with holding, pass interference, and personal foul penalties, no lead in a game is truly safe because of just how quickly offensives can rack up points (Andrew Luck led 8 fourth quarter comebacks in just his first two years in the league alone).
Even basketball, a sport many people honestly maintained was saved from the depths of the sporting world just 35 years ago by the enthralling rivalry between Magic Johnson and his Lakers and Larry Bird and his Celtics (one of which was in the NBA Finals every year in the 1980's) has caught up to baseball, and possibly surpassed the game, in terms of its popularity and truly devoted fan-base. Additionally, the NBA has more global ties than any other American sport even despite the fact that their game in Mexico City got cancelled last season because of a fire in the generator room (there are technological issues at places outside of the Superdome too folks), as basketball has substantial roots in China and throughout a very prosperous Asian market. It also helps your game when you can boast a lineup of LeBron James, arguably the greatest player in the game that we have ever seen aside from Jordan, Kevin Durant, who is with guys like Jordan, Kobe, and Wiklins as the best pure scorer in NBA history, the emerging Anthony Davis and possibly Andre Drummond, the deadly three-point shooting combination of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson in Golden State, the equally lethal combinations in LA of Blake Griffin and Chris Paul, Portland with Lillard and Aldridge, and Houston with Dwight and Harden (and their role players who Harden doesn't really recognize), and hopefully a resurgent Derrick Rose and Paul George when they can both return from serious knee injuries (Rose this year and George next season).
Aside from the obvious issue of baseball games just taking way too much time in between pitches when batters are adjusting their gloves, stepping out of the box, and calling time, and pitchers like Matt Garza and Clay Buchholz aimlessly standing on the mound for 20 to 30 seconds, not everybody can be Mark Buehrle I guess, the MLB just doesn't have the star power that it once did in the game. (I'm not sure baseball games take too long because football games are now going on for 4 hours, but there is just way too much dead time where nothing is happening on the field. I don't mean to be a contrarian, but soccer games have 80 minutes of constant, fast-paced action along with 10 minutes of players rolling around in deep pain over a touch of their body, guys arguing with the referees and other coaches if its Diego Simeone, and having wild over-the-top goal celebrations while baseball games are just much too slow moving after each and every pitch). In decades past, a majority of the sporting world's biggest stars and attractions came from baseball rather than football, basketball, major college sports, or hockey and while these are all obviously team sports, they do rely on star power to captivate many interested fans.
After the dead ball era, the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's had baseball icons and legends like Ruth, Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott, Lefty Grove, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio, and Bob Feller, who seem so amazing with their above .400 batting averages and 60 home run seasons in a time when everybody else was hitting in the 20's or 30's, that they are almost mystical or made up. The 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's brought to the world the likes of bigger than life personalities and stars from Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Warren Spahn, Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, Frank Robinson, and Bob Gibson to Juan Marichal, Roberto Clemente, Johnny Bench, Tom Seaver, Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, Reggie Jackson, and Jim Palmer. If you were walking down the street, you would instantly know if you saw Hank Aaron or Pete Rose, but nowadays, if you were sitting right next to some of the games top players like Josh Donaldson, Corey Kluber, or Chris Sale, it may not strike you right away that they are biggest names in baseball because the sport just doesn't have that same familiarity and big star presence that it once did. In the 1980's and 1990's, if George Brett, Ken Griffey Jr., or Mike Schmidt came to the plate or Nolan Ryan or Greg Maddux came to the mound, you would stop what you were doing and watch them at work. In baseball today, Edwin Encarnacion and Adam Jones are two of the best hitters in the game, but nobody is going to completely forget everything around them and take in their at-bat. In the past, the best athletes and the biggest names all came from the baseball diamond, but that is just no longer the case.
Baseball has been in this waiting period/limbo over the past several years about some of the guys that would step up and be their biggest stars to infatuate fans to the point where they needed to come to the ballpark to see them play or keep a chuck of their day open to watching them on television. Derek Jeter has been the face of baseball for such a long time, but with his impending retirement, the game is in need of some fresh superstars across the sport. Some pitchers have filled that void like Clayton Kershaw, based off the pure fact that his 1.67 ERA through September is just plain scary, especially after he posted a seemingly absurd but now less ridiculous 1.83 ERA last season, as well as Felix Hernandez with his King's Court in Seattle, but guys who only throw once out of every five days are hard to promote your entire sport around (come to the ballpark once every week to catch Kershaw is not exactly what you are looking for despite the amount of pull that has on an exclusive day when they are on the mound). We thought that Jason Hayward, Hanley Ramirez, a young Alex Gordon, Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Domonic Brown, Jesus Montero, or Justin Upton may be the next group of young stars, but they have all struggled much more than expected with all their collective talent. Clearly, there has been some more clarity over the past two years around the guys baseball fans would gravitate towards with star players emerging like Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, Buster Posey, and Yasiel Puig. However, there was still some disconnect in the game, and that was the big-time power guy that everybody was missing out on and so desperate to see back in the sport.
In the interim, there is no way of disputing that the steroid era was good for the overall landscape of baseball. Following some rough times in the early 1990's with the MLB strike-shortened season in 1994, the first year that didn't feature a World Series in America since 1904 - they played the World Series in the middle of World War I and II, so that shows you how disconcerting that strike must have been to the game - baseball needed a quick restoration and revival, and performance-enhancing drugs, as much as I am against players using them to gain an unfair competitive advantage and changing the entire dynamic of the sport, provided that for baseball. Offense was at a never before seen level with runs, hits, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage going at all-time high rates, and the home run battles between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire in 1998 and 1999 were unlike anything that baseball had ever seen before in terms of following and interest amongst fans. However, the short-term gains of the steroid era came at the peril of the long-term growth of the sport, and not just in terms of every story over the last ten years involving baseball being about A-Rod or Ryan Braun getting caught for using performance-enhancing drugs. Actually, more precisely in the case of Braun, getting caught, lying about not using the drugs, getting off on a minuscule technicality while ruining the reputation of another person, and then getting caught again, which is basically the Lance Armstrong in a nutshell. However, what the steroid era also did is that it inflated run scoring and home run numbers to a ridiculous degree, where teams and players now have a nearly impossible task of matching or even coming near the offensive numbers of a generation in which so many players were juicing. People became so accustomed to seeing a lot of runs scored and multiple long balls every game that they are disappointed that today's baseball has so little of that going on with pitchers being much more dominant than ever before. For example, in 2000 when Jason Giambi was knocking out 43 home runs like it was nothing, there were 1.172 home runs per game and 10.280 runs per contest, and in 2011 those number were all the way down to 0.937 home runs per contest and 8.567 runs per game, the lowest for a single-season since all the way back in 1993 and 1992 for those two categories respectively, which were both before the steroid era really kicked off. In an era of baseball when the Richie Sexson's of the world are no longer hitting 45 homers in a season, the MLB was looking for somebody to take up the reins of the game's next best power hitter and real big slugger.
Insert the monster that baseball has so desperately needed in Giancarlo Stanton. If you just look at the 6-6, 240 pound frame of the jacked Stanton, he is about as intimidating and striking as any baseball player you will ever see because he doesn't even need a wooden bat to look imposing. Some questions in life are very difficult to answer such as should we cut government spending, does nature or nurture determine our make-up, or is the NFL a corrupt business just looking to cover their own backs all the time (that one is actually easy to answer), but there is no question who is the most powerful hitter in baseball because that title goes easily to Giancarlo Stanton. Nothing against guys like Nelson Cruz, Miguel Cabrera, Jose Abreu, Jose Bautista, David Ortiz, Paul Goldschmidt, and Jay Bruce, but Giancarlo's swing has the most pure power since a younger Albert Pujols or Mike Schmidt. Watching the 2014 Home Run Derby, I have never been more impressed with a guy that would go on to not hit a single home run in one of his later rounds because some of Stanton's bombs in the first round just came off his bat like a missile. His natural power is one of those things where you just can't help but stare and watch because the ball just cannons off his bat anytime he gets a hold of a pitch in or even out of the strike zone. You just have to watch some of his home runs that Stanton has roped this season off pitchers, many of which are just line drive bullets that leave the ball park in mere seconds before you can think about anything, to truly comprehend the raw power that this guy possess in his bat. Here is Giancarlo's 484-foot shot against poor Eric Stults of the San Diego Padres, the longest ever in the three years of Marlins Park. Here is another Stanton mash, this time against Jonathan Pettibone of the Philadelphia Phillies, which went 470-feet and made Sergio Ramos's penalty kick look like it didn't go that far. Here is Giancarlo just reaching out to right field and knocking a pitch out of the ball park like he was just trying to tap it into fair territory off of Jason Hammel when he was still with the Cubs. At this point, I'm so enamored by Stanton's unreal and almost superhuman power that I'm just going to link all his home runs from 2012, 2013, and the first half of this year with some Fall Out Boy music in the background to satisfy everybody. His ability to just shoot through the ball and power through anything on the inner or outer half with his quick hip turn and torque is just incredible and unmatched right now in the baseball world.
Some of the power numbers that Stanton has put up over the past five years, at just the current age of 24, is staggering to say the least, especially considering that he still has time to mature as he enters his prime major league years in his late 20's and early 30's. Since 2010, Stanton's 154 home runs are the most in the National League and only behind Jose Bautista and Miguel Cabrera among all batters in baseball over that time span (Stanton was not called up until mid-June of his rookie season, so he could be averaging even more than his 30 home run per season rate over the past 5 years if he came up from triple-A New Orleans Zephyrs, one of the best minor league baseball team names along with the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, Toledo Mud Hens, and the Albuquerque Isotopes, a little earlier). His isolated power of .269 since 2010 is once again the best in the NL and only behind Joey Bats over the last five seasons in the majors (Stanton's .318 isolated power in 2012 was the 3rd best in a single-season in the MLB over the past seven years behind only Bautista in 2010 and Pujols in 2009 with a minimum of 500 plate appearances). Giancarlo's .549 slugging percentage since 2011 is only bettered by Ryan Braun and Troy Tulowitzki in the NL, who has 548 less plate appearances than Stanton over that span, and David Ortiz and Miguel Cabrera in the AL. Stanton is also on his way to leading the National League in slugging for the second time in three seasons, which only Johnny Mize (1938-1940), Stan Musial (1943-1944, 1946, 1948, 1950, 1952), Ralph Kiner (1947, 1949, 1951), Willie Mays (1954-1955, 1957; 1964-1965), Frank Robinson (1960-1962), Willie McCovey (1968-1970), Mike Schmidt (1980-1982), Dale Murphy (1983-1984), Barry Bonds (1990, 1992-1993; 2001-2004), Larry Walker (1997, 1999), and Albert Pujols (2008-2009) have done in the league in the last 80 years. Stanton's 25.0 home run to fly ball ratio is also the best in the majors since his debut in 2010, displaying the power and unprecedented strength that he has to get a quarter of his fly balls out of the ball park. After hitting 34 home runs in 2011 and popping 37 this season for Miami, Stanton joins just Mel Ott (1929, 1932), Eddie Mathews (1953-1956), Willie Mays (1954-1955), Frank Robinson (1956, 1959), Orlando Cepeda (1961-1962), Johnny Bench (1970, 1972), Vladimir Guerrero (1998-1999), Andruw Jones (2000-2001), Albert Pujols (2001-2004), Prince Fielder (2007-2008) as the only players to have two seasons with at least 34 home runs before the age of 25.
The first thing with Stanton that jumps out to you is undoubtedly his conspicuous power. He has that kind of truly remarkable and unrivaled force through the ball that it makes fans look upon him with awe, and opposing pitchers look upon him only with delight when they get to give him the free pass down to first base (his 24 intentional walks are the most in the NL), because of his unfair physical tools. Stanton, though, has evolved into a much more well rounded player than you would normally assume about a big, power-hitting slugger in the middle of a lineup that is there for power but not much else like a Jay Bruce, or a Chris Davis, or an Adam Dunn, who is on his way to becoming the worst ever 500-home hitter by a mile and a half and is going to awkwardly stand out more in that group than a father that doesn't know how to use twitter or an unknown Billy Campbell amongst the cast of The Rocketeer. While Stanton has his most power when he is pulling through the ball with his hips and driving the ball out to left field, his developing ability to hit the ball the other way has allowed him to get on base much more often than a typical slugger that hits a lot of home runs. The only players in the MLB this season with a batting average of .285 or above and at least 25 home runs are Victor Martinez (.333 batting average and 30 home runs), Jose Abreu (.317 batting average and 33 home runs), Jose Bautista (.286 batting average and 32 home runs), Adam Jones (.286 batting average and 25 home runs), Mike Trout (.285 batting average and 32 home runs), and of course Giancarlo (.288 batting average and 37 home runs). Even more impressive is the fact that Stanton has become much more patient at the plate and is really looking to zero in on pitches high in the strike zone and not chase off-speed stuff in the dirt, which has allowed him to go from an above average .350 to .360 on-base percentage guy to a .395 OBP batter this season, which is the 5th highest in the majors behind only Victor Martinez, Andrew McCutchen, Jose Bautista, and Paul Goldschmidt. It is also very helpful when you are so strong that you can hit righties, lefties, with runners in scoring position (.316 batting average with RISP in 2014), and just casually poke a ball out over the fence with ease. Stanton's defense could still improve out there in right field, but he does have an above average arm, and no team is going to complain about a solid defensive right fielder who just so happens to be having a year with an OPS of .950, 299 total bases, 105 runs batted in, and is leading the National League in virtually every offensive statistical category.
Despite all of his outstanding tools on the field, which are readily apparent to anybody that watches a single Marlins game, the real moment in which Stanton resonated with me and so many other fans were his comments about his Miami organization earlier this summer. Stanton said, "Five months [of good baseball with the Marlins playoff push this year] doesn't change five years [of losing season]... The way I felt last year, with the whole situation of losing and not play my best [he was still 4th in the NL in at-bats per home run], that was one of the worst feelings I ever had. I put it as a waste of time. I spent all that time in the offseason. To lose 100 games and to not do my best? It was like, 'What I do all that in the offseason for?'" At the same time, we're still not where we need to be to keep playing beyond the designed schedule... I want to be the only game on TV at the end of the day... That's still a long ways to go to be in the same conversation with the best of the best. I'm hungry for that." I don't think a fan or a front-office looking to build around a guy that will do anything to win could craft a much more perfect quote than that one from Stanton. So often in sports nowadays, we feel like the athletes are just going through the motions and making their money (Robinson Cano, for example, fielding a ground ball at second or running to first base looks like he is taking a leisurely stroll in the park and he is making 240 million dollars over the next 10 years in Seattle). Sports, after all, are a business, as so many people love to point out, and it is the way these athletes make a living, so I have no problem with them trying to make as much cash as they can attempt to do in their very short careers. With that being said, it just seems like in the sporting world today, some athletes do not live and die with the result on the field and it isn't a 'if I don't win this game, I'm going to have nightmares for the rest of my life about it and it will stick with me forever, so I'm going to do absolutely after I can to win this game' kind of proposition (remember when Gronk was partying just hours after the Pats lost in the Super Bowl to the Giants in 2011-2012). Obviously, life is bigger than sports, but it is sometimes refreshing to hear an athlete that is fed up with losing, showing everybody that he deeply cares about the results on the field and will do anything to change them. The Marlins have not made the playoffs since they beat the Yankees in the World Series in 2003 and they have finished under .500 for four straight seasons. In light of that, to hear their franchise player want to be around people who want to win as badly as he does, is exactly the type of desire that you can only dream a guy with the physical tools of Stanton would have about his team.
However, so much changed for the worse on Thursday night for the entire baseball world in the middle of Stanton's unparalleled season for a player at just the age of 24, heck, for any player regardless of age or league. It was the top of the 5th inning between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Miami Marlins from Miller Park with the Brew Crew up 4-0 and Mike Fiers on the mound for Milwaukee. Fiers threw a strike that Stanton took on the first pitch and the count moved to 0-1 (don't worry, though, because Stanton has a .364 career batting average on pitches coming from a 0-1 count, so he was still really looking to hit). The next pitch then resulted in something so devastating that only a few players in baseball history like Tony Conigliaro, Kirby Puckett, and Dickie Thon can truly relate to the feeling of the guy at the plate. Jonathan Lucroy was setting up over the middle part of the plate when Fiers completely missed the spot and his pitch went wildly sailing inside right towards Stanton in the batters box. Giancarlo, who was totally unsuspecting anything on the inner half of the plate, squared around like he was about to swing and saw the ball flying right at his helmet and he went tumbling down to the ground real hard after the fastball nailed right off the center of his face around his mouth area. Giancarlo was down in a heap, and blood was pouring everywhere onto the field from the slugger's face. I'm not sure which of these were the most horrifying sight about that hit-by-pitch: Stanton's legs swarming on the ground in miserable pain after getting plunked and needing to be taken off by a stretcher, seeing all the blood just dripping from his face and the grounds crew actually needing to delay the game to clean all the blood from the plate area, or the terrible sound that the ball made when it struck Stanton's face, which was just so painfully loud that you knew right away that Stanton caught one really badly.
Stanton's scary hit-by-pitch video
Let's get this out of the way first: Fiers in absolutely no way, shape, or form was trying to intentionally hit Stanton. He had been pitching a very nice game up until the 5th inning with just spreading out 3 hits and striking-out 7 Marlins batters (Miami has struck out more than any other team aside from the Cubs this season), so there would be no reason for him to go after a guy and ruin one of the best starts he had put together all season long in Milwaukee. The Brewers were also absolutely desperate for a win after losing 16 of their last 20 games and going from a 2.5 lead over the Cardinals and a 7 game advantage over the Pirates in the NL Central to trailing the Cards by 4 games and even falling behind Pittsburgh by 1.5 games in the division. In other words, Fiers would not be foolish enough to recklessly put guys on base in such an important game for a slumping team in September that needs to gain back the significant ground that it lost with its huge losing streak in August. You can just see on the replay that Lucroy was setting up over the middle of the plate with his mitt low in the zone, so it is plain and simple that Fiers just missed his location and lost total control of the pitch, and it was hard for Stanton to see the ball with his unique over the top delivery. Furthermore, it is not like the Brewers or Marlins, two teams in different divisions that have not exactly both been competing for the NL playoff spots over the years (they have made the postseason a combined 6 times out of the last 67 opportunities), have some bad blood that Fiers was trying to heat up or resolve in baseball's odd unwritten rules (that being said, everybody in the league does have some sort of bad blood with the always fiery Carlos Gomez). As if all of that wasn't enough, Fiers was so distraught over nailing Stanton and causing him a bad looking injury, that he plunked the next Marlins batter on the first pitch of his at-bat, clearly still shaken up and in complete shock over what had just transpired with Stanton. He seemed very remorseful after the game as well, profusely apologizing to Stanton and the Marlins in his interviews with the media and over twitter (speaking of remorse, do you know who isn't remorseful or contrite, Roger Goodell). However, none of that takes away from the unfortunate fact that for anybody that enjoys watching the game of baseball, Stanton is likely going to be out for the duration of the season with some serious facial fractures and month injuries.
The frightening injury to Stanton could also not have come at a worse time for a team like the Marlins, a club that has been trending upwards and has gotten itself back into the National League playoff race against all the odds and their 47 million dollar opening day payroll, the second lowest in the MLB (quite ironically, the Phillies, who are in dead last in the NL East, are paying more money to Ryan Howard and Cliff Lee alone than the entire Marlins roster). Despite the Nationals running away with the division, mainly due to their stretch of 10 consecutive victories in August that included 5 walk-off wins, unlike the Rangers, Twins, Red Sox, Astros, White Sox, Rays, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Cubs, Phillies, Padres, Reds, and Mets, Miami was still on the periphery of the hunt for October. Going into last night's contest at 71-73, Miami was 4.5 games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates for the second wild card spot in the NL, which is certainly not an insurmountable margin with a little less than a month still to play in the season if the right things go your way and you start to get really hot with 9 games left against the abysmal Phillies and Mets (trust me, as a Red Sox fan I know about teams coming back from big deficits in the wild card). In large part because of Stanton's hitting, the Marlins were able to climb their way back from a 44-52 start to the season with a very solid stretch of 27-21 baseball since July 20th to put them in striking distance of a playoff spot. They did all that with a pitching staff of five guys that nobody has ever heard of after the season-ending injury to stud Jose Fernandez, who was coming off one of the best seasons ever for a rookie pitcher with a 2.19 ERA, 2.73 FIP, and 0.979 WHIP, and actually having to play Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Garrrett Jones everyday and watch them strike out over and over again. Stanton was one of just two players on Miami with at least 15 home runs and an offensive WAR of at least 3.0 along with center fielder Marcell Ozuna, so I don't think it's a stretch to say Miami's season is all about over with at this point.
We are entering a new age of baseball right now in a post-steriod era with pitchers dominating the game at their best rate since the 1970's when the MLB likely had their best ever iteration of hurlers with several all-time greats like Bob Gibson, Gaylord Perry, Fergie Jenkins, Jim Palmer, Tom Seaver, Vida Blue, Bert Blyleven, Don Sutton, Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan, Luis Tiant, Phil Nierko, Goose Gossage, and Dennis Eckersley (the league average ERA of 3.26 in 1972 is the second lowest behind only 1968 in the last 95 years of the category). Not too far behind, however, is 2014, where the 3.75 league average ERA to this point in the season is the lowest the MLB has seen in 22 years since 1992, the year that seven pitchers all had ERA's under 2.50 including Greg Maddux (2.18), Curt Schilling (2.35), and Roger Clemens (2.41). As if that wasn't enough, the K% (20.3%) along with the K/9 (7.72) and K/BB (2.65) rates are all respectively the highest they have ever been for a single-season in baseball history, the 3.76 FIP mark is the second lowest the majors has seen over the past 25 years, and hitters .247 batting average and pitchers 1.28 WHIP are the lowest they have been in 42 years since 1972. If those statistics didn't make it clear enough, the MLB needs guys like to Stanton to entertain everybody with their hitting prowess and big time power ability, which is becoming few and far between in this age of baseball.
All of those factors prompted Mike Redmond to say, "It was very scary. We're hoping he is going to be all right... It's devastating for us. Devastating. For his season to end like that, I mean, that's not good." But Redmond was wrong about that, however, because it is not just a devastating blow for the Miami Marlins, but it is a terrible loss for the entire sport of baseball, which was reliant on a guy like Stanton to take the reins as one of the MLB's next great stars. Now, Giancarlo is out for an extended period of time, and baseball loses one of its biggest names and driving forces behind getting people really invested in the game again. Without Stanton playing every day, it is like the NBA losing Durant or the NHL losing Crosby. As unfortunate as it is for the Marlins to lose their MVP star and likely fall out of the playoff picture, it is even worse for a sport like baseball that has been yearning for years for a transcendent power hitting star like Stanton to take shape. In echoing the words of Mike Redmond, 'It's devastating for the entire game' is what baseball leaders are probably saying right about now.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
2014-2015 AFC East Predictions
AFC East:
The New England Patriots have dominated the AFC East unlike any other team in a single division in all of sports (basically, they have been the Microsoft of the AFC East). The Pats have won the division 11 of the past 13 years with the only exceptions being in 2002 when they went 9-7 with a second year Tom Brady - the last time they didn't have double-digit wins in a season - and in 2008 when they joined the 1985 Denver Broncos as the only teams to not make the playoffs despite winning at least 11 games in a season (the Seahawks won the NFC West with 7 wins in 2010 for perspective) after they went 11-5 with a Belichick is the true genius inspired Matt Cassel replacing an injured Tom Brady at quarterback for the entire season (ironically, the next year in 1986 the Broncos and John Elway had the same record in the AFC West and were actually the 2 seed in the conference, the same season they beat the Browns in "The Drive"). The Patriots have had an unprecedented run of success since Belichick ditched the Jets for New England in 2000 in a move somebody with true integrity like Jason Kidd would never do, as a 158-50 record over the past 11 years with 8 AFC Championship Game appearances, 5 Super Bowl appearances, and 3 Super Bowls is something that Browns and Lions fans wouldn't even be able to dream about because it seems so distant and fanciful to their doormat franchises. Tom Brady is one of the top 4 quarterbacks of all-time along with Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana, and Peyton Manning (apologizes to Otto Graham, John Elway, and Dan Marino) and Belichick is one of the top 8 greatest coaches ever along with legends Vince Lombardi, Paul Brown, George Halas, Tom Landry, Bill Walsh, Chuck Noll, and Don Shula (sorry Joe Gibbs, Curly Lambeau, and Bill Parcells).
However, it is a lot easier to be the class of your division when everybody around you is about as incompetent as Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell in The Other Guys. The Bills have not made the playoffs since they fatally lost the Music City Miracle to Frank Wycheck, Kevin Dyson, and Tennessee Titans all the way back in the 1999-2000 season. Over the past 14 years, the Bills have been 88-136 with 8 seasons of double-digit losses, have trotted out the likes of Alex Van Pely, Rob Johnson, J.P. Losman, Kelly Holcomb, Trent Edwards, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Brian Brohm, Jeff Tuel, Thad Lewis, and now EJ Manuel to play quarterback, seen a variety of their top picks excel on other teams whether it be Willis McGahee in Baltimore, Donte Whitner in San Francisco, Marshawn Lynch in Seattle, or Paul Posluszny in Jacksonville, and had Donald Trump and Bon Jovi make runs at buying the team (the only thing worse that could happen to the Bills is if they moved to Toronto and had Rob Ford replace Doug Marrone as head coach and Doug Whaley as general manager. On second thought, no longer having Doug Marrone patrolling the sidelines wouldn't be the worst of things for Buffalo). It has not been much better in Miami despite their owner Stephen Ross spending huge chucks of money on big name free agents to try and make the team relevant down in South Beach, as they have brought in guys like wide receiver Mike Wallace, left tackle Branden Albert, cornerbacks Brent Grimes and Cortland Finnegan, and defensive tackles Randy Starks and Earl Mitchell over the past two free agencies. The Fins have not won a playoff game since they beat the Colts in the 2000 Wild Card round with Jay Fiedler playing QB - their defense with Trace Armstrong, Jason Taylor, Zach Thomas, Larry Izzo, Sam Madison, and Brock Marion was ferocious - and unlike the Packers, who went from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers, the Colts who went from Peyton Manning to Andrew Luck, or the Oilers/Titans who went from Warren Moon to Steve McNair, they have still not found a reliable starter since Dan Marino retired in 1999, playing everybody from Sage Rosenfels to Tyler Thigpen over that time span. Finally, outside of the two seasons in which they somehow made back-to-back AFC Championship Game appearances in 2009 and 2010, the Jets have been full of drama and juicy story lines whether it be Tebow or Sanchez or Revis, but have not done all that much to challenge the Pats in the East. New York has not had a winning season in each of the past three years, the only other teams with that unfortunate mark are the Dolphins, Bills, Jaguars, Raiders, Bucs, and Rams, and Rex Ryan's time at MetLife Stadium may be running on thin ice.
New England Patriots:
Before any sentence can even be muttered about the Patriots offense in 2013-2014, it has come as a prerequisite to say, "Tom Brady had limited pass catching weapons," or "Tom Brady had a depleted receiving core," or "the Patriots lacked the options on the exterior to exploit a defense down the field," and that may be fair to say about the team (they did have the second most drops and second worst drops percentage in the NFL last season, only behind the Detroit Lions). Rob Gronkowski had two different surgeries on his forearm and then back surgery in the off-season, which caused him to miss the team's first 6 games, and then tore his ACL and MCL, which caused him to miss the club's last 3 games and the postseason. Aaron Hernandez went from 910 yards and 7 touchdowns in 2011 to being indicted for murder by 2013 and became the biggest criminal the country has seen since Phil Spector or Paul Kelly. Brady was left with a receiving core of rookies Aaron Dobson and Kenbrell Thompkins, who both dropped so many passes that they made Stevie Johnson look like he has sure hands (they were two of three NFL players along with Browns running back Chris Ogbonnaya with at least 7 drops and less than 40 catches in 2013-2014), and Danny Amendola, who was a free agency disappointment in coming over from St. Louis in the off-season. However, outside of three years with Randy Moss from 2007 to 2009 when Moss caught 47 touchdowns in three seasons including a record 23 in 2007 and the 2011 year when Welker, Gronk, and Hernandez combined for 33 touchdowns and each eclipsed 900 yards, Brady has never really had top end receivers and he has been just fine in New England. Now, that is not to say that if Brady had a receiving core like the one in Chicago with Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery, or Washington with DeSean Jackson, Pierre Garcon, and Andre Roberts, or San Francisco with Boldin, Crabtree, Steve Johnson, Brandon Lloyd, and Vernon Davis that he wouldn't be a much more efficient quarterback. What I am saying, though, is that Brady's receiving core was better than many of the groups he has had in the past in New England and that Brady should be held accountable for some of the mistakes he made last year, particularly when he missed so many throws high against Denver in the first half of the Patriots 26-16 AFC Championship Game loss to the Broncos. Furthermore, Julian Edelman, was terrific last season and may have been just as lethal as Wes Welker in that slot receiver role for New England in helping the team constantly move the chains with short routes to the sidelines and slants over the middle, so exclusively blaming the receivers for some of the Pats offense struggles is just not warranted. Brady struggled against the blitz last season, especially on third down, and although that certainly had something to do with his receivers not getting off the line quick enough and making plays, Brady took too many sacks to cost him team opportunities to score in the opposing territory.
Despite all of that talk, the Patriots should still win the AFC East once again this season by several games (in the last four years, New England has won the division by 3 games, 5 games twice, and then 4 games last season), and despite some of his struggles last season, Tom Brady is not regressing to the mean and is still a top four NFL quarterback along with Manning, Rodgers, Brees. The Pats have completely moved on from the Aaron Hernandez fiasco, the most paranoid man since Joseph Stalin, and Brady should have more continuity and familiarity with his receiving core this year of Danny Amendola, Julian Edelman, Aaron Dobson, Kenbrell Thompkins, newly acquired Brandon LaFell from Carolina (sorry Cam Newton but your receivers are all but gone), and for Pats fans sake, hopefully a healthy Rob Gronkowski. Gronk has been limited in practice and will likely take some time to come back and return to his normal self, but the Pats really need the big tight end for the stretch run and the postseason more than anything else. His addition to New England's offense is so important and cannot be understated because of his value to Brady in unlocking defenses over the middle and in the red zone especially. At 6-6, Gronk is such a big body that it is almost impossible to get in front of him when he runs those inside seam routes and crossing routes over the center of the field, and with the new NFL rules, you also can't hit him up high to jar the ball loose (if you can't hit high, you have to hit low and remember T.J. Ward, now of the Denver Broncos, cost Gronk the end of his season last year when he got him down in the knees, the only spot you can hit now without getting flagged for unnecessary contact; thanks Roger Goodell). New England had a 58.11 red zone touchdown percentage in 2013-2014, which was still good enough for 8th in the NFL, but with Tom Brady at QB, only in 2009 did they have a lower touchdown success rate between the 20 and the goal line in the last 10 years and that had a lot to do with Gronk's absence. Clearly, in the red zone everything is compressed, so it is harder for smaller guys like Edelman and Amendola to find space and open field because everything is so clustered, and the two combined for just 8 touchdowns last season. New England dearly missed having the big body of Gronk to throw to up high in the red zone when things got tight and there were not as many open windows to throw to underneath. With Gronk returning, it not only gives Brady a dynamic option in the red zone and when he is under pressure and needs to get rid of the ball because of Gronk's ability to out muscle any defender whether it be a bigger but slower linebacker or a quicker but smaller safety (unless it is Kam Chancellor because he is just huge), but it will also create more room for guys like Amendola, Dobson, and Thompkins to go down the field with all of the attention that Gronk's presence down the middle of the field deservedly creates (his presence off the field also seemingly creates a lot of notice amongst people, but that is for another time). Obviously, the more time that Brady's line of Nate Solder, Josh Kline (replacing Logan Mankins), Ryan Wendell, Dan Connolly, and Sebastian Vollmer gives him, the better he will be at spreading the ball around and getting the running game going with their assortment of backs including Stevan "Nobody Lost More Fumbles Than Me Last Season" Ridley, Shane "I Am Such A Good Pass Catching Tailback Just Call Me Kevin Faulk 2.0" Vereen, Brandon Bolden, and James "Watch Out For Me Because I'm Good Even Though I Played Behind Montee Ball In College" White.
People often tend to forget with Tom Brady and the Pats offense, just how concentrated the club has been with their running game since Bill Belichick took over as head coach at the turn on the century. Obviously, the emphasis on the running game has gone away a little bit over the years with Brady maturing as a quarterback and the league rules changing in such a way where any time a defensive back touches a receiver, it is a holding or pass interference penalty. Nonetheless, New England is one of the more balanced teams in the NFL (something the Lions and Cowboys could learn from), and are at their best when they are able to move the sticks with the run game and then set up the play action for Brady when he has more time to set his feet and really step into his throws without defenders in his face. Only the Bills, Jets, Chargers, and Bengals averaged more rushing attempts per game than the Patriots last season in the AFC and that was only the case for Buffalo and New York out of necessity because you really don't want to see EJ Manuel and you really, really don't want to see Geno Smith sit back and throw the ball 35-40 times a contest unless you are the opposing defense. In 2012, New England led the league in total yards (6,846) and points per game (34.8) largely because their 9.2 rushing first downs per game led the league (it has still not been bettered by any other franchise over the past 11 seasons), but last year they averaged just 7.1 rushing first downs per contest and were down to 7th in total yardage in the NFL. The Pats have always liked to wear teams down in the Brady-Belichick days with the running game and then set up the pass as the game goes along, but they do have some offensive line question marks. New England traded long-time left guard Logan Mankins to the Tampa Bay Bucs because of some issues with contract restructuring in very Patriots like fashion and their replacement, Josh Kline, only started one game in his rookie season last year. Furthermore, Sebastian Vollmer is coming off a broken leg and missed the second half of the year in 2013-2014 with the injury. Offensively, however, the Patriots have Tom Brady and the other teams in the AFC East do not possess the same advantage, so scoring a lot of points will not be too tough for this Patriots team in the regular season, but they will have to be hitting on all cylinders to win their first Super Bowl since back in 2004 (it has been longer than you think). Time is of the essence for an aging Tom Brady, who is already 37 years old, but they should have no problem rolling through the AFC East and finishing with a 11-5 or 12-4 record like they do almost every year. I also say that in large part when you consider the fact that they will have Vince Wilfork and Jerod Mayo, the lynch pins of their defense, both returning from injuries that cost them their season in 2013, Darrelle Revis shutting down one side of the field at cornerback and bringing back Revis Island, and the very athletic Chandler Jones rushing the passer from the right defensive end spot in the Pats much improved 4-3 defense.
Miami Dolphins:
There are certain quarterbacks coming into this season that are a very delicate point in their careers amongst fans of the league and NFL teams, and if they play well, they will have faith restored in their ability to lead a club to the promise land, but if they don't have a good season, serious doubts about their future as a starting quarterback and the amount of success that they can have if the NFL may come into thinking amongst everybody involved with a particular franchise. That is not to say that if certain quarterbacks don't have a good season this year that they will no longer have a job as a starter in this league, although it could in some instances, but it does means that serious doubt will be cast over their ability to take a team deep into the postseason and clubs may need to re-evaluate if this is their quarterback of the future (for example, the Vikings did not see enough out of Matt Cassel or Christian Ponder and the Raiders saw nothing positive out of Terrelle Pryor and Matt Flynn in 2013 to give either team the confidence that any one of their respective quarterbacks could be the long term solution for the club behind center, so Minnesota took Teddy Bridgewater out of Louisville with the last pick of the first round despite some of his arm concerns and Oakland took big throwing Derek Carr from Fresno St. in the second round of the 2014 NFL draft despite some of his brother concerns in hopes that they can be the guy for the next couple of years). Some of those signal callers that are at a very make-or-break point this season include Jake Locker, Carson Palmer, and Jay Cutler and possibly if you want to stretch this category out a little bit, Andy Dalton if he gets to the playoffs and fails to win a playoff game for the 4th straight season, Robert Griffin III (Kirk Cousins is right on his back in Washington), and even Eli Manning after his 27 interception laughing stock of a season last year although I think he needs maybe one or two more poor years to put him at a breaking point because of his two Super Bowl wins against Tom Brady and the Pats in 2007 and then again in 2011. However, the first name that comes to mind under this classification of quarterbacks is certainly Miami Dolphins third-year starter out of Texas A&M, the new factory for quarterbacks, Ryan Tannehill. After a 7-9 year as a rookie and a 8-8 season that came up just shy of the postseason in 2013-2014 because of some really bad losses at the end of the season including a 19-0 defeat to the Bills in week 16 and a 20-7 clunker against the Jets in the final week of the season at Sun Life Stadium, Tannehill needs to prove himself down in Miami this year for the Dolphins to put their complete trust in him going forward as their franchise QB. Tannehill throws a really nice ball, and he has a strong arm to get the pigskin down the field in a hurry, even when he is on the run and outside of the pocket, which is perfectly suited for a team that has the down the field receiving threat of Mike Wallace breaking the top off defensive coverages with his outstanding speed. Tannehill spreads the ball out nicely, despite too many of his passes getting tipped at the line of scrimmage (he had one game in a 2012 loss when two of his tipped passes against the Texans resulted in picks), and he isn't afraid to gun some throws into tight coverage, but like many young quarterbacks, his decision making needs to improve, and he needs to get rid of the ball quicker while not staring down receivers when doing so from the pocket. Tannehill is probably a 4th level QB and somewhere in the range of 20-25 amongst NFL single callers and he will have to make a little bit of a jump into the level of Nick Foles, Alex Smith, and Andy Dalton in order for the Fins to be all-in on him.
As much as this is a make-or-break year for Ryan Tannehill in year three, the Dolphins are almost at a franchise crossroads entering the 2014-2015 season because they either need to make some strides forward or change the way their roster is shaped under new general manager Dennis Hickey because the Bills, Browns, Lions, and possibly Texans and Redskins are the only teams that have been less successful than Miami since 2000. The Fins have been so mediocre since Marino's retirement 14 years ago with a record of 107-117 since the turn of the century, not good enough to challenge in the AFC with the likes of the Pats, Colts, Steelers, Ravens, and Broncos but also not bad enough to blow the whole thing up and start all over again (they have finished between 6 and 8 wins for 5 straight seasons since 2009 and have only had three top 7 draft picks since 1993). The Dolphins have tried for years to put some nice complimentary pieces around their quarterbacks on the offensive side of the ball, and despite past failures with guys like Jake Grove, Ernest Wilford, and to a certain extent Brandon Marshall, they have tried to make some strides in improving their offensive line, which was just terrible last season, and receiving group. Miami signed Branden Albert to a 5-year, 47 million dollar contract in the off-season to hold down their left tackle spot, which was a good move since Albert is coming off his best season with the Chiefs in 2013, and drafted Ja'Wuan James out of Tennessee in the first round, who is a much better pass protector than dominate force in the run game. The Dolphins desperately needed some new linemen to keep Ryan Tannehill on his feet and Albert and James should provide that in the passing game. Last season, Tannehill was hit more than almost any other quarterback in the NFL and had very little time in the pocket to go through his progressions because of constant pressure in his face. Miami was dead last in the NFL in QB sacks per game at 3.6, the most in a year since 2006, and in plays without the opposition sending extra men on a blitz, teams were still able to sack Tannehill 30 times, the most in the league by a good margin. Tannehill really struggled with his decision making when he faced pressure in 2013, which he did on nearly 23 percent of his passing attempts, so Miami was often put into long down-and-distances because of sacks and errant throws. With Mike Pouncey on the PUP list while still recovering from hip surgery, the Fins will be starting five entirely different offensive lineman from last season, which is a positive sign in the sense that they were proactive in the off-season and didn't just sit back after their QB was constantly knocked around last season like the Texans did with David Carr, but it is also a little bit worrying since they have barely worked together as an offensive unit. If the Dolphins are able to run the ball this season with new back from Denver Knowshon Moreno along with second-year tailback Lamar Miller, it will take a lot of pressure off the back of Tannehill. The Fins were only ahead of the Browns, Steelers, and Ravens in the AFC in rushing yards per game in 2013-2014 and were 27th in the NFL in rushing touchdowns last year, which put everything on the shoulders of Tannehill. They will need to be more balanced this year to help out Tannehill and get their offensive line pushing forward in the running game.
Much like how their offense has some really nice features (their receiving core with Mike Wallace, Brian Hartline, and Charles Clay) and also some real question marks (offensive line and running game) and would be categorized overall as fairly average to below average, the same can be said for their defense and their entire team in general (essentially, they are headed for another 7-9 or 8-8 season and a year of mediocrity). The Dolphins were 24th in rushing yards allowed per game last year at nearly 125 yards and as a Colts fans, I know what it is like to have opposing teams tail backs constantly running all over you on Sundays, so they need to improve on that front or feel the misery I have become so accustomed too over the years (as an optimistic Colts fan, however, with the newly acquired 30-million dollar Arthur Jones from Baltimore, Montori Hughes, and Cory Redding up front in the 3-4, Indy is going to have their best run defense since they ranked 15th in rushing yards per game in 2007 and went 13-3). Like many teams with below average rush defenses, Miami does have some dynamic pass rushers to get to the quarterback because their defensive ends just shoot down their lanes on the outside of offensive tackles and get to the QB on occasion, especially in obvious passing situations, but also leave openings in between the guard and the tackle in the running game. Aldon Smith, DeMarcus Ware, and Miami defensive end Cameron Wake are the only defenders to have two seasons of 14 or more sacks since 2010 and only Robert Mathis and Mario Williams had more sacks in the AFC than Miami's other defensive end, Olivier Vernon, last season, who came up with 11.5 including 7 in his last 7 games. In the secondary, any team that has to be heavily reliant on the very erratic and unpredictable Cortland Finnegan, like Miami is going to have to do this year with second-year players Will Davis and Jamar Taylor as their only other main cornerbacks, is a little nerve wrecking. Miami probably did make an upgrade in bringing in safety Louis Delmas from the Lions and letting the worse Chris Clemons, not the former Seattle and now Jacksonville one, go to Houston, but it may not make up enough for some of the defensive woes that the team has in the run game and with the unreliable Finnegan at the other starting corner spot across from Brent Grimes. Expect another year of .500 football from a very mediocre Miami Dolphins team and more head scratching and pondering of what to do moving froward with the club.
New York Jets/Buffalo Bills:
It is the Jets and the Bills. They are starting Geno Smith and EJ Manuel at quarterback respectively, two guys who make me confident in the abilities of Shaun Hill and Ryan Fitzpatrick. Do I need to say anything more? They are actually two teams that have a lot of similarities when you really come to think about it. New York and Buffalo both have second year quarterbacks that did not show nearly enough in their rookie seasons to give their fan bases any confidence in them going forward. When Manuel was on the field last year and not dealing with his knee injury, he showed his athleticism and ability to throw the ball on the run, but he still needs to improve on his pocket awareness this upcoming season. Geno Smith looked out of his comfort zone at times last season, like the game was just moving too fast for him, and he will have to be, at the bare minimum, a servicable quarterback for the Jets to do anything in 2014-2015. The Jets and Bills were also two teams that ranked at the top of the AFC in rushing play percentage in 2013 despite the fact that Chris Ivory's only good game came against the Saints, his former team, and C.J. Spiller single-handled ruined 30 percent of all fantasy football leagues last season when he went late in the first round and had 2 touchdowns all year long and had 23 rushing yards or less in 5 out of the 15 games he played in for Buffalo. The clubs have some serious defensive problems heading into this season despite the Jets very solid interior and Bills above average secondary, as New York's cornerback situation is in such disarray that Dimitri Patterson ran away from the team in fear of what was going to come in the future and the Bills lack the quality linebackers that you need in a 4-3 defense to stop the run (they ranked 28th in rushing yards allowed per game in 2013 and that was with a Marcell Dareus that didn't come to camp way overweight and a healthy Kiko Alonso, who will be out for the entirety of the season with a torn ACL). New York and Buffalo also have new wide receivers to help their young quarterbacks, as the Jets spent the big bucks for Eric Decker and the Bills traded up with the Browns to acquire Sammy Watkins. Nonetheless, expect 5-11 or 6-10 seasons for New York and Buffalo and top 10 picks in the 2015 Draft with questions circling around the teams all season long about future quarterback prospects such as Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota, Brett Hundley, Connor Cook, and Kevin Hogan. Also expect Rex Ryan and Doug Marrone to be looking for jobs this off-season and Muhammad Wilkerson and Sheldon Richardson of the Jets defensive line and Mario Williams, Kyle Williams, and Leodis McKelvin of the Bills defense wishing they had more capable offenses to help them win some more football games. New York football teams are in for another tough season, especially if the new look Giants offense mirrors their miserable performance in the pre-season and the Jets and Bills play the sub-par football must people expect from them in 2014-2015.
The New England Patriots have dominated the AFC East unlike any other team in a single division in all of sports (basically, they have been the Microsoft of the AFC East). The Pats have won the division 11 of the past 13 years with the only exceptions being in 2002 when they went 9-7 with a second year Tom Brady - the last time they didn't have double-digit wins in a season - and in 2008 when they joined the 1985 Denver Broncos as the only teams to not make the playoffs despite winning at least 11 games in a season (the Seahawks won the NFC West with 7 wins in 2010 for perspective) after they went 11-5 with a Belichick is the true genius inspired Matt Cassel replacing an injured Tom Brady at quarterback for the entire season (ironically, the next year in 1986 the Broncos and John Elway had the same record in the AFC West and were actually the 2 seed in the conference, the same season they beat the Browns in "The Drive"). The Patriots have had an unprecedented run of success since Belichick ditched the Jets for New England in 2000 in a move somebody with true integrity like Jason Kidd would never do, as a 158-50 record over the past 11 years with 8 AFC Championship Game appearances, 5 Super Bowl appearances, and 3 Super Bowls is something that Browns and Lions fans wouldn't even be able to dream about because it seems so distant and fanciful to their doormat franchises. Tom Brady is one of the top 4 quarterbacks of all-time along with Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana, and Peyton Manning (apologizes to Otto Graham, John Elway, and Dan Marino) and Belichick is one of the top 8 greatest coaches ever along with legends Vince Lombardi, Paul Brown, George Halas, Tom Landry, Bill Walsh, Chuck Noll, and Don Shula (sorry Joe Gibbs, Curly Lambeau, and Bill Parcells).
However, it is a lot easier to be the class of your division when everybody around you is about as incompetent as Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell in The Other Guys. The Bills have not made the playoffs since they fatally lost the Music City Miracle to Frank Wycheck, Kevin Dyson, and Tennessee Titans all the way back in the 1999-2000 season. Over the past 14 years, the Bills have been 88-136 with 8 seasons of double-digit losses, have trotted out the likes of Alex Van Pely, Rob Johnson, J.P. Losman, Kelly Holcomb, Trent Edwards, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Brian Brohm, Jeff Tuel, Thad Lewis, and now EJ Manuel to play quarterback, seen a variety of their top picks excel on other teams whether it be Willis McGahee in Baltimore, Donte Whitner in San Francisco, Marshawn Lynch in Seattle, or Paul Posluszny in Jacksonville, and had Donald Trump and Bon Jovi make runs at buying the team (the only thing worse that could happen to the Bills is if they moved to Toronto and had Rob Ford replace Doug Marrone as head coach and Doug Whaley as general manager. On second thought, no longer having Doug Marrone patrolling the sidelines wouldn't be the worst of things for Buffalo). It has not been much better in Miami despite their owner Stephen Ross spending huge chucks of money on big name free agents to try and make the team relevant down in South Beach, as they have brought in guys like wide receiver Mike Wallace, left tackle Branden Albert, cornerbacks Brent Grimes and Cortland Finnegan, and defensive tackles Randy Starks and Earl Mitchell over the past two free agencies. The Fins have not won a playoff game since they beat the Colts in the 2000 Wild Card round with Jay Fiedler playing QB - their defense with Trace Armstrong, Jason Taylor, Zach Thomas, Larry Izzo, Sam Madison, and Brock Marion was ferocious - and unlike the Packers, who went from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers, the Colts who went from Peyton Manning to Andrew Luck, or the Oilers/Titans who went from Warren Moon to Steve McNair, they have still not found a reliable starter since Dan Marino retired in 1999, playing everybody from Sage Rosenfels to Tyler Thigpen over that time span. Finally, outside of the two seasons in which they somehow made back-to-back AFC Championship Game appearances in 2009 and 2010, the Jets have been full of drama and juicy story lines whether it be Tebow or Sanchez or Revis, but have not done all that much to challenge the Pats in the East. New York has not had a winning season in each of the past three years, the only other teams with that unfortunate mark are the Dolphins, Bills, Jaguars, Raiders, Bucs, and Rams, and Rex Ryan's time at MetLife Stadium may be running on thin ice.
New England Patriots:
Before any sentence can even be muttered about the Patriots offense in 2013-2014, it has come as a prerequisite to say, "Tom Brady had limited pass catching weapons," or "Tom Brady had a depleted receiving core," or "the Patriots lacked the options on the exterior to exploit a defense down the field," and that may be fair to say about the team (they did have the second most drops and second worst drops percentage in the NFL last season, only behind the Detroit Lions). Rob Gronkowski had two different surgeries on his forearm and then back surgery in the off-season, which caused him to miss the team's first 6 games, and then tore his ACL and MCL, which caused him to miss the club's last 3 games and the postseason. Aaron Hernandez went from 910 yards and 7 touchdowns in 2011 to being indicted for murder by 2013 and became the biggest criminal the country has seen since Phil Spector or Paul Kelly. Brady was left with a receiving core of rookies Aaron Dobson and Kenbrell Thompkins, who both dropped so many passes that they made Stevie Johnson look like he has sure hands (they were two of three NFL players along with Browns running back Chris Ogbonnaya with at least 7 drops and less than 40 catches in 2013-2014), and Danny Amendola, who was a free agency disappointment in coming over from St. Louis in the off-season. However, outside of three years with Randy Moss from 2007 to 2009 when Moss caught 47 touchdowns in three seasons including a record 23 in 2007 and the 2011 year when Welker, Gronk, and Hernandez combined for 33 touchdowns and each eclipsed 900 yards, Brady has never really had top end receivers and he has been just fine in New England. Now, that is not to say that if Brady had a receiving core like the one in Chicago with Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery, or Washington with DeSean Jackson, Pierre Garcon, and Andre Roberts, or San Francisco with Boldin, Crabtree, Steve Johnson, Brandon Lloyd, and Vernon Davis that he wouldn't be a much more efficient quarterback. What I am saying, though, is that Brady's receiving core was better than many of the groups he has had in the past in New England and that Brady should be held accountable for some of the mistakes he made last year, particularly when he missed so many throws high against Denver in the first half of the Patriots 26-16 AFC Championship Game loss to the Broncos. Furthermore, Julian Edelman, was terrific last season and may have been just as lethal as Wes Welker in that slot receiver role for New England in helping the team constantly move the chains with short routes to the sidelines and slants over the middle, so exclusively blaming the receivers for some of the Pats offense struggles is just not warranted. Brady struggled against the blitz last season, especially on third down, and although that certainly had something to do with his receivers not getting off the line quick enough and making plays, Brady took too many sacks to cost him team opportunities to score in the opposing territory.
Despite all of that talk, the Patriots should still win the AFC East once again this season by several games (in the last four years, New England has won the division by 3 games, 5 games twice, and then 4 games last season), and despite some of his struggles last season, Tom Brady is not regressing to the mean and is still a top four NFL quarterback along with Manning, Rodgers, Brees. The Pats have completely moved on from the Aaron Hernandez fiasco, the most paranoid man since Joseph Stalin, and Brady should have more continuity and familiarity with his receiving core this year of Danny Amendola, Julian Edelman, Aaron Dobson, Kenbrell Thompkins, newly acquired Brandon LaFell from Carolina (sorry Cam Newton but your receivers are all but gone), and for Pats fans sake, hopefully a healthy Rob Gronkowski. Gronk has been limited in practice and will likely take some time to come back and return to his normal self, but the Pats really need the big tight end for the stretch run and the postseason more than anything else. His addition to New England's offense is so important and cannot be understated because of his value to Brady in unlocking defenses over the middle and in the red zone especially. At 6-6, Gronk is such a big body that it is almost impossible to get in front of him when he runs those inside seam routes and crossing routes over the center of the field, and with the new NFL rules, you also can't hit him up high to jar the ball loose (if you can't hit high, you have to hit low and remember T.J. Ward, now of the Denver Broncos, cost Gronk the end of his season last year when he got him down in the knees, the only spot you can hit now without getting flagged for unnecessary contact; thanks Roger Goodell). New England had a 58.11 red zone touchdown percentage in 2013-2014, which was still good enough for 8th in the NFL, but with Tom Brady at QB, only in 2009 did they have a lower touchdown success rate between the 20 and the goal line in the last 10 years and that had a lot to do with Gronk's absence. Clearly, in the red zone everything is compressed, so it is harder for smaller guys like Edelman and Amendola to find space and open field because everything is so clustered, and the two combined for just 8 touchdowns last season. New England dearly missed having the big body of Gronk to throw to up high in the red zone when things got tight and there were not as many open windows to throw to underneath. With Gronk returning, it not only gives Brady a dynamic option in the red zone and when he is under pressure and needs to get rid of the ball because of Gronk's ability to out muscle any defender whether it be a bigger but slower linebacker or a quicker but smaller safety (unless it is Kam Chancellor because he is just huge), but it will also create more room for guys like Amendola, Dobson, and Thompkins to go down the field with all of the attention that Gronk's presence down the middle of the field deservedly creates (his presence off the field also seemingly creates a lot of notice amongst people, but that is for another time). Obviously, the more time that Brady's line of Nate Solder, Josh Kline (replacing Logan Mankins), Ryan Wendell, Dan Connolly, and Sebastian Vollmer gives him, the better he will be at spreading the ball around and getting the running game going with their assortment of backs including Stevan "Nobody Lost More Fumbles Than Me Last Season" Ridley, Shane "I Am Such A Good Pass Catching Tailback Just Call Me Kevin Faulk 2.0" Vereen, Brandon Bolden, and James "Watch Out For Me Because I'm Good Even Though I Played Behind Montee Ball In College" White.
People often tend to forget with Tom Brady and the Pats offense, just how concentrated the club has been with their running game since Bill Belichick took over as head coach at the turn on the century. Obviously, the emphasis on the running game has gone away a little bit over the years with Brady maturing as a quarterback and the league rules changing in such a way where any time a defensive back touches a receiver, it is a holding or pass interference penalty. Nonetheless, New England is one of the more balanced teams in the NFL (something the Lions and Cowboys could learn from), and are at their best when they are able to move the sticks with the run game and then set up the play action for Brady when he has more time to set his feet and really step into his throws without defenders in his face. Only the Bills, Jets, Chargers, and Bengals averaged more rushing attempts per game than the Patriots last season in the AFC and that was only the case for Buffalo and New York out of necessity because you really don't want to see EJ Manuel and you really, really don't want to see Geno Smith sit back and throw the ball 35-40 times a contest unless you are the opposing defense. In 2012, New England led the league in total yards (6,846) and points per game (34.8) largely because their 9.2 rushing first downs per game led the league (it has still not been bettered by any other franchise over the past 11 seasons), but last year they averaged just 7.1 rushing first downs per contest and were down to 7th in total yardage in the NFL. The Pats have always liked to wear teams down in the Brady-Belichick days with the running game and then set up the pass as the game goes along, but they do have some offensive line question marks. New England traded long-time left guard Logan Mankins to the Tampa Bay Bucs because of some issues with contract restructuring in very Patriots like fashion and their replacement, Josh Kline, only started one game in his rookie season last year. Furthermore, Sebastian Vollmer is coming off a broken leg and missed the second half of the year in 2013-2014 with the injury. Offensively, however, the Patriots have Tom Brady and the other teams in the AFC East do not possess the same advantage, so scoring a lot of points will not be too tough for this Patriots team in the regular season, but they will have to be hitting on all cylinders to win their first Super Bowl since back in 2004 (it has been longer than you think). Time is of the essence for an aging Tom Brady, who is already 37 years old, but they should have no problem rolling through the AFC East and finishing with a 11-5 or 12-4 record like they do almost every year. I also say that in large part when you consider the fact that they will have Vince Wilfork and Jerod Mayo, the lynch pins of their defense, both returning from injuries that cost them their season in 2013, Darrelle Revis shutting down one side of the field at cornerback and bringing back Revis Island, and the very athletic Chandler Jones rushing the passer from the right defensive end spot in the Pats much improved 4-3 defense.
Miami Dolphins:
There are certain quarterbacks coming into this season that are a very delicate point in their careers amongst fans of the league and NFL teams, and if they play well, they will have faith restored in their ability to lead a club to the promise land, but if they don't have a good season, serious doubts about their future as a starting quarterback and the amount of success that they can have if the NFL may come into thinking amongst everybody involved with a particular franchise. That is not to say that if certain quarterbacks don't have a good season this year that they will no longer have a job as a starter in this league, although it could in some instances, but it does means that serious doubt will be cast over their ability to take a team deep into the postseason and clubs may need to re-evaluate if this is their quarterback of the future (for example, the Vikings did not see enough out of Matt Cassel or Christian Ponder and the Raiders saw nothing positive out of Terrelle Pryor and Matt Flynn in 2013 to give either team the confidence that any one of their respective quarterbacks could be the long term solution for the club behind center, so Minnesota took Teddy Bridgewater out of Louisville with the last pick of the first round despite some of his arm concerns and Oakland took big throwing Derek Carr from Fresno St. in the second round of the 2014 NFL draft despite some of his brother concerns in hopes that they can be the guy for the next couple of years). Some of those signal callers that are at a very make-or-break point this season include Jake Locker, Carson Palmer, and Jay Cutler and possibly if you want to stretch this category out a little bit, Andy Dalton if he gets to the playoffs and fails to win a playoff game for the 4th straight season, Robert Griffin III (Kirk Cousins is right on his back in Washington), and even Eli Manning after his 27 interception laughing stock of a season last year although I think he needs maybe one or two more poor years to put him at a breaking point because of his two Super Bowl wins against Tom Brady and the Pats in 2007 and then again in 2011. However, the first name that comes to mind under this classification of quarterbacks is certainly Miami Dolphins third-year starter out of Texas A&M, the new factory for quarterbacks, Ryan Tannehill. After a 7-9 year as a rookie and a 8-8 season that came up just shy of the postseason in 2013-2014 because of some really bad losses at the end of the season including a 19-0 defeat to the Bills in week 16 and a 20-7 clunker against the Jets in the final week of the season at Sun Life Stadium, Tannehill needs to prove himself down in Miami this year for the Dolphins to put their complete trust in him going forward as their franchise QB. Tannehill throws a really nice ball, and he has a strong arm to get the pigskin down the field in a hurry, even when he is on the run and outside of the pocket, which is perfectly suited for a team that has the down the field receiving threat of Mike Wallace breaking the top off defensive coverages with his outstanding speed. Tannehill spreads the ball out nicely, despite too many of his passes getting tipped at the line of scrimmage (he had one game in a 2012 loss when two of his tipped passes against the Texans resulted in picks), and he isn't afraid to gun some throws into tight coverage, but like many young quarterbacks, his decision making needs to improve, and he needs to get rid of the ball quicker while not staring down receivers when doing so from the pocket. Tannehill is probably a 4th level QB and somewhere in the range of 20-25 amongst NFL single callers and he will have to make a little bit of a jump into the level of Nick Foles, Alex Smith, and Andy Dalton in order for the Fins to be all-in on him.
As much as this is a make-or-break year for Ryan Tannehill in year three, the Dolphins are almost at a franchise crossroads entering the 2014-2015 season because they either need to make some strides forward or change the way their roster is shaped under new general manager Dennis Hickey because the Bills, Browns, Lions, and possibly Texans and Redskins are the only teams that have been less successful than Miami since 2000. The Fins have been so mediocre since Marino's retirement 14 years ago with a record of 107-117 since the turn of the century, not good enough to challenge in the AFC with the likes of the Pats, Colts, Steelers, Ravens, and Broncos but also not bad enough to blow the whole thing up and start all over again (they have finished between 6 and 8 wins for 5 straight seasons since 2009 and have only had three top 7 draft picks since 1993). The Dolphins have tried for years to put some nice complimentary pieces around their quarterbacks on the offensive side of the ball, and despite past failures with guys like Jake Grove, Ernest Wilford, and to a certain extent Brandon Marshall, they have tried to make some strides in improving their offensive line, which was just terrible last season, and receiving group. Miami signed Branden Albert to a 5-year, 47 million dollar contract in the off-season to hold down their left tackle spot, which was a good move since Albert is coming off his best season with the Chiefs in 2013, and drafted Ja'Wuan James out of Tennessee in the first round, who is a much better pass protector than dominate force in the run game. The Dolphins desperately needed some new linemen to keep Ryan Tannehill on his feet and Albert and James should provide that in the passing game. Last season, Tannehill was hit more than almost any other quarterback in the NFL and had very little time in the pocket to go through his progressions because of constant pressure in his face. Miami was dead last in the NFL in QB sacks per game at 3.6, the most in a year since 2006, and in plays without the opposition sending extra men on a blitz, teams were still able to sack Tannehill 30 times, the most in the league by a good margin. Tannehill really struggled with his decision making when he faced pressure in 2013, which he did on nearly 23 percent of his passing attempts, so Miami was often put into long down-and-distances because of sacks and errant throws. With Mike Pouncey on the PUP list while still recovering from hip surgery, the Fins will be starting five entirely different offensive lineman from last season, which is a positive sign in the sense that they were proactive in the off-season and didn't just sit back after their QB was constantly knocked around last season like the Texans did with David Carr, but it is also a little bit worrying since they have barely worked together as an offensive unit. If the Dolphins are able to run the ball this season with new back from Denver Knowshon Moreno along with second-year tailback Lamar Miller, it will take a lot of pressure off the back of Tannehill. The Fins were only ahead of the Browns, Steelers, and Ravens in the AFC in rushing yards per game in 2013-2014 and were 27th in the NFL in rushing touchdowns last year, which put everything on the shoulders of Tannehill. They will need to be more balanced this year to help out Tannehill and get their offensive line pushing forward in the running game.
Much like how their offense has some really nice features (their receiving core with Mike Wallace, Brian Hartline, and Charles Clay) and also some real question marks (offensive line and running game) and would be categorized overall as fairly average to below average, the same can be said for their defense and their entire team in general (essentially, they are headed for another 7-9 or 8-8 season and a year of mediocrity). The Dolphins were 24th in rushing yards allowed per game last year at nearly 125 yards and as a Colts fans, I know what it is like to have opposing teams tail backs constantly running all over you on Sundays, so they need to improve on that front or feel the misery I have become so accustomed too over the years (as an optimistic Colts fan, however, with the newly acquired 30-million dollar Arthur Jones from Baltimore, Montori Hughes, and Cory Redding up front in the 3-4, Indy is going to have their best run defense since they ranked 15th in rushing yards per game in 2007 and went 13-3). Like many teams with below average rush defenses, Miami does have some dynamic pass rushers to get to the quarterback because their defensive ends just shoot down their lanes on the outside of offensive tackles and get to the QB on occasion, especially in obvious passing situations, but also leave openings in between the guard and the tackle in the running game. Aldon Smith, DeMarcus Ware, and Miami defensive end Cameron Wake are the only defenders to have two seasons of 14 or more sacks since 2010 and only Robert Mathis and Mario Williams had more sacks in the AFC than Miami's other defensive end, Olivier Vernon, last season, who came up with 11.5 including 7 in his last 7 games. In the secondary, any team that has to be heavily reliant on the very erratic and unpredictable Cortland Finnegan, like Miami is going to have to do this year with second-year players Will Davis and Jamar Taylor as their only other main cornerbacks, is a little nerve wrecking. Miami probably did make an upgrade in bringing in safety Louis Delmas from the Lions and letting the worse Chris Clemons, not the former Seattle and now Jacksonville one, go to Houston, but it may not make up enough for some of the defensive woes that the team has in the run game and with the unreliable Finnegan at the other starting corner spot across from Brent Grimes. Expect another year of .500 football from a very mediocre Miami Dolphins team and more head scratching and pondering of what to do moving froward with the club.
New York Jets/Buffalo Bills:
It is the Jets and the Bills. They are starting Geno Smith and EJ Manuel at quarterback respectively, two guys who make me confident in the abilities of Shaun Hill and Ryan Fitzpatrick. Do I need to say anything more? They are actually two teams that have a lot of similarities when you really come to think about it. New York and Buffalo both have second year quarterbacks that did not show nearly enough in their rookie seasons to give their fan bases any confidence in them going forward. When Manuel was on the field last year and not dealing with his knee injury, he showed his athleticism and ability to throw the ball on the run, but he still needs to improve on his pocket awareness this upcoming season. Geno Smith looked out of his comfort zone at times last season, like the game was just moving too fast for him, and he will have to be, at the bare minimum, a servicable quarterback for the Jets to do anything in 2014-2015. The Jets and Bills were also two teams that ranked at the top of the AFC in rushing play percentage in 2013 despite the fact that Chris Ivory's only good game came against the Saints, his former team, and C.J. Spiller single-handled ruined 30 percent of all fantasy football leagues last season when he went late in the first round and had 2 touchdowns all year long and had 23 rushing yards or less in 5 out of the 15 games he played in for Buffalo. The clubs have some serious defensive problems heading into this season despite the Jets very solid interior and Bills above average secondary, as New York's cornerback situation is in such disarray that Dimitri Patterson ran away from the team in fear of what was going to come in the future and the Bills lack the quality linebackers that you need in a 4-3 defense to stop the run (they ranked 28th in rushing yards allowed per game in 2013 and that was with a Marcell Dareus that didn't come to camp way overweight and a healthy Kiko Alonso, who will be out for the entirety of the season with a torn ACL). New York and Buffalo also have new wide receivers to help their young quarterbacks, as the Jets spent the big bucks for Eric Decker and the Bills traded up with the Browns to acquire Sammy Watkins. Nonetheless, expect 5-11 or 6-10 seasons for New York and Buffalo and top 10 picks in the 2015 Draft with questions circling around the teams all season long about future quarterback prospects such as Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota, Brett Hundley, Connor Cook, and Kevin Hogan. Also expect Rex Ryan and Doug Marrone to be looking for jobs this off-season and Muhammad Wilkerson and Sheldon Richardson of the Jets defensive line and Mario Williams, Kyle Williams, and Leodis McKelvin of the Bills defense wishing they had more capable offenses to help them win some more football games. New York football teams are in for another tough season, especially if the new look Giants offense mirrors their miserable performance in the pre-season and the Jets and Bills play the sub-par football must people expect from them in 2014-2015.
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