IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING!! (Technically the season has already started. It started on Thursday and it's continued through to today. But for what it's worth, the projections on here that could be affected by the first week of the season (primarily standings/playoffs) were completed BEFORE kickoff of the Seahawks game, and I will not change them. Also I don't give a fuck about making my projections on time.)
So anyway, the season is officially here. Some things are going to happen, some games are going to be played, and some awards are going to be won. Here's exactly what all those things will be!
DIVISIONS:
AFC North: Bengals! No one else will be good enough to contend in this division. The Ravens will experience a minor revival and finish 9-7. The Browns will utterly fail to ascend to the heavens, as they are widely predicted to do, and instead will win 5 games.
AFC South: Texans! Is anyone else sick of the fucking Colts always winning the AFC South despite never actually being that good a team? And is anyone else sick of Andrew Luck always getting ALL the credit for whatever success the Colts actually do have? Is anyone else preemptively outraged that Luck has a receiving corps led by possible HOFer Reggie Wayne, the absurdly talented TY Hilton, and the WR who made Eli Manning look good Hakeem Nicks, plus an underrated set of TEs in Coby Fleener and Dwayne Allen, AND YET any success the Colts passing game has will be exclusively attributed to Luck, at the expense of his--wait for it--"decidedly mediocre" receiving corps? If that group was on ANY OTHER TEAM in the league, they'd be a top-five corps in the NFL. Think I'm crazy? The Falcons beat them, the Bears beat them, the Broncos beat them, the Lions beat them, and that might actually be it. You can make an argument for the Niners, but I don't love Crabtree, I don't believe in Lloyd (Kaepernick is not Brady), I'm pretty sure Stevie Johnson is gonna bust (Hey guys remember when he said "I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO..." after he dropped that pass in the Steelers game?), and Boldin is basically a poor man's Wayne at this point. Okay, so you can make an ARGUMENT for the 9ers. You could also argue for the Saints or Packers, but you'd be wrong; that's the impact an elite QB has. (Also the reason people think Golden Tate is actually good. He's decent. But the Lions were in that list just because of Megatron.) The point is, I said the Colts have a top-five receiving corps, and it's legitimately possible to argue that they do (and if not it's pretty clearly top ten). And yet Luck gets all the credit, for playing poorly on a decent team and winning games... I guess I should talk about the Texans? They're not actually as bad as they looked last year. Okay, so they don't have a quarterback... Um.
AFC West: Broncos! Duh. Do I even need to explain this one?
AFC East: Patriots! Duh, although I'll concede this one is SLIGHTLY less duh, but still.
AFC Wild Cards: Chargers! and Ravens! You fucking heard me! I believe in these teams! For no reason!
NFC North: Packers! Again, an elite QB is incredibly important. The elite QBs in this league are Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Russell Wilson, and Philip Rivers. Foles has the ability to ascend there if he can repeat last year's performance +/- 10 PR points. No other QBs are close. All of those QBs' teams are going to make the playoffs.
NFC South: Falcons! #TheComeback! This might just be the Saints. Who have an elite QB, unlike the Falcons. But fuck it, it's my prediction post!
NFC West: Seahawks! Duh duh-duh. The Seahawks have the GOAT secondary (if this sounds crazy to you it's because you either don't understand how fucking crazy it is that the Seahawks have the best player in the league at all three secondary positions as well as an ascending star in Maxwell, or because you don't realize that this kind of shit doesn't happen, historically speaking, or because you just hate the Seahawks. In which case you're probably on the wrong blog). They have an elite QB. They might have a healthy offensive line. They'll have an effective running game. They have excellent linebackers and a good defensive line. They have the best coaching in the NFL west of Foxboro and possibly east and central of it as well. They have a hard schedule, sure, but remember when they won the Super Bowl by 35 points against one of the best teams of all time?
NFC East: Redskins! YEAH I WENT THERE. I keep saying Wilson is an elite QB, because he is, but there's an argument to be made that Griffin The Third was better in their rookie year. Now Grif Trey is back and quite possibly better than ever, and he's actually got a decent set of receivers in DeSean Jackson and Pierre Garcon. He's still got Alfred Morris, who is a top-ten back in the NFL (and benefits HUGELY from having a healthy Robert G. Three in the backfield), and the Eagles aren't actually as good as they look. Remember the Dream Team? Remember who was on that? Remember how shitty they were? That's the problem with counting your eggs before you ovulate. I realize the Eagles had basically the same team last year and did very well, but they were resting on the back of an unbelievable, where-the-fuck-did-that-come-from season from the apparently great Nick Foles. That's not going to happen again. The Eagles also lost DeSean Jackson, who I'm willing to bet was a crucial part of their offense's dominance. Where did he go? Oh yeah, the fucking Redskins.
NFC Wild Cards: Saints! and Niners! Okay these ones aren't as groundbreaking. It's actually fucking hard not to have the Eagles in the playoffs, because I think they're a really good team. Actually, they might just make it over the Niners... But I'm willing to bet that they won't.
SUPER BOWL: Seahawks def. Patriots. You can retroactively fill in the rest of the playoffs more or less accurately from this prediction.
AWARDS!!!!!!!
MVP: Russell Wilson! No, I'm not joking. This is the year. He's going to break out and put up 1994 Steve Young numbers. And he's going to do it as the leader of the best team in the NFL. The sad, awful thing is that it's legitimately possible that 1994 Steve Young doesn't actually win an MVP in the modern NFL, because that's how fucking stupid all the volume-based arguments are, but I'm willing to bet that if he has that dominant a season the media will have no choice but to recognize it. (Young put up 70.3% cmp, 3969 yds, 35 TDs at 7.6% TD%, 10 ints at 2.2% int%, 8.6 YPA, 112.8 rtg, 8.24 ANY/A. Wilson is currently on pace for 67.9% cmp, 3056 yds, 32 TDs at 7.1% TD%, 0 ints at 0% int%, 6.8 YPA, 110.9 rtg, and 7.97 ANY/A, but I'm willing to bet his yards/game, YPA, Rating, and ANY/A are all going to jump significantly as the season progresses.)
EDIT (9/14/2014): The Seahawks lost. FUCK. But Wilson is now officially on pace for 67.9% cmp (nice how that's the same), 3144 yds (going up), 32 TDs (samey) at 7.5% TD% (up), 0 ints at 0% int% (same, but perfect), 7.4 YPA (up), 114.7 PR (up), and indeterminate ANY/A because I don't want to have to calculate that and it's not up anywhere yet (we'll assume up). MVP. MVP! MVP!!!
OPOY: Peyton Manning! OPOY is a stupid award. What even does it mean? Manning's going to have a good season and the media will give him something. Namely, this.
DPOY: JJ Watt! Here's me showing an unreasonable amount of faith in the media's ability to correctly analyze defensive performance. Watt has been the best defensive player in the league, by FAR, in each of the past two seasons. Yet somehow he failed to win DPOY last year, losing to the FAR inferior Luke Kuechly, who isn't even the best player at his position (or the second-best, or the third-best). So DPOY kinda sucks. But I'm still gonna pencil in Watt because he's so damn good that guessing anyone else is just stupid.
OROY: Blake Bortles! YEAH BOY!
DROY: Jadeveon Clowney! I hate this pick. I think Clowney's overrated. But everyone in the media loves him so much that they'll probably give it to him on name alone. Kind of like if Bobby G Cubed hadn't dominated so much his rookie year (and Wilson hadn't been so absurdly underrated) and Luck had won OROY in '12 despite barely being a top-three QB in his draft class.
COY: Pete Carroll! How the fuck has Carroll not won COY yet? This is such a stupid award. Again, like Watt, I'm never going to stop guessing Carroll, because he's so clearly great that it would be stupid to guess anyone else.
CBPOY: Percy Harvin! This one is more likely to happen. Harvin was injured all of last season, and the season before that, when he played he looked like an MVP candidate. If he can stay healthy this year--and he CAN--he'll run away with this award.
EOY: John Schneider! I know this looks biased but I actually don't know any other execs but John Elway and he sucks. This is purely a pick of necessity.
GO HAWKS!
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