Every year, there are those teams that want to be there. That's their goal and anyone that messes it up will be punished by the fans reactions. They want the 1st overall pick. We obviously have the teams that we know already are participating for it: Lions, Washington, Jags, Bengals again, Dolphins, and Jets. But, there are those teams that have a losing record when we don't expect it such as the Chargers.
5. Pats
Yes, I know they signed Cam Newton.... but, who knows how he will perform. He is coming off of 2 big injuries that affect both parts of his game. Pro writers are literally saying his throwing motion has changed, and he suffered a Lisfranc injury. That affect his other half of the game (literally). And enough about the Newton, what about the other parts? The WRs need to step up, and the O-Line needs to become good again. To be fair, it did lose 2 key starters early, so we have to see. And on the defense, quite a bit of it has been shipped out to the Southern Patriots and Midwestern Patriots. They are set up to fail if the offense doesn't produce and Bill Belichick can't work his magic on his defense that lost some good players.
4. Panthers
Now you might be saying that they have Teddy Bridgewater, McCaffery, some decent WRs. But, is that enough? Do they not need a a good O-Line? Taylor Moton is the only one that has a really good rating from PFF at 76.2. Everyone else is below 63.4. Their defense is very very iffy. A nice way to put it is their D-line is decent, their LBs are ehhhhh, their CBs are ummm.... let's go with not good, and their safties are actually not bad. For their linebackers, Shaq Thompson is not bad, but his missed tackle rate last year was 12.3%. Yeah. Not good. And Tahir Whitehead missed 7.6%, but let up 74.4% completion rate. Yeah. Not good either. Let just say that their corners are not pretty. Eli Apple is not the worst guy, but he's not a No. 1 corner much less a lockdown one and Donte Jackson's completion percentage is the only good thing to look at and everything else is pretty bad. Their safeties show promise. Tre Boston was rated a 76.4 by PFF which is really good (his stats are pretty good too). And It's down to the SS. Both of them are pretty good. Jeremy Chinn has a very high ceiling and Juston Burris could be a good fill-in while Chinn develops.
(One of my favorite players read his story and you will see why)
3. Dolphins
You might be wondering why the Dolphins are on here, but they have high expectations. They went on a shopping spree taking the Patriots' best LB (Kyle Van Noy), they took the Pats starting center for 2019 (Ted Karras), they took the Pats FB/LB (Elandon Roberts), they took one the best cornerbacks in the league from the Cowboys (Byron Jones), they took the a pretty good DE in Emmanuel Ogbah, they took the Bills DE Shaq Lawson, they took a decent guard in Ereck Flowers from the Washington Football Team, they took a decent RB in Jordan Howard, and they took a decent LB from the Eagles (Kamu Grugier-Hill). So, to say that they need to produce would kind of be an understatement. But, since they got a lot of players from different teams and maybe different schemes, and they need time to gel. However, they can't do that in only a max of 14 padded practices and no preseason. I don't think they'll be good until at least week 5 or 6. I see them going 6-10 at the very most (again, this is teams that could be going to the bottom, not are).
2. Vikings
Now I know you are all thinking DEFENSE. Look at the defense. And their offense isn't bad either. But, their corners got stolen in free agency by the Bengals and Colts. All they have left is Trae Waynes who isn't the best corner in the world. He's pretty inconsistent. They cut one of their best DEs because they needed cap space (Everson Griffen). And, they also cut Linval Joseph because their cap space situation was that bad. The Vikings did replace him with Michael Pierce, though he's a little worse statistically. The only positions intact on the defense were Safety and LB. But that's only the defense. Their offense is not atrocious, but it could suffer a little if Justin Jefferson doesn't get it going early in the season. Here's what would happen: since the opposing defense doesn't have to focus much of Jefferson, they can focus more on Thielen (whoever is going to be their starting slot WR isn't the flashiest of names, but they might be decent. Not enough to get too much attention though). Because of that, the defense can put more players to stop the run (hopefully). And the offense then falls apart. But, who knows, they could do horrible on defense, but have a great offense.
1. Rams
I know I didn't have a blog last year, but I predicted that they would do worse because of all the problems. They were literally a win-now team in 2018. After Super Bowl season, they fell off of a cliff. They even lost to the Bucs. But, it shouldn't have been a surprise with the Todd Gurley issue. He was the featured player on the offense, and if he went down, the offense would be in trouble. This offseason, even with his big contract, they cut him. When the Rams tried to trust Jared Goff and made him throw over 40 times a game, he went 2-5. If he threw less, they went 7-2. As I have said in this post the Rams O-line is not very good (if you want to learn about the Rams O-Line, read this post). That's not the end of it though. The Rams' cap space is in the dumps right now and it could get stinkier with the COVID situation. The defense might be decent with Aaron Donald creating pressure and Jalen Ramsey locking down his side of the field, but the linebackers are in a not good state right now. They do have Sam Ebukam, but that's about it. They are relying on undrafted and back-ups for now.
That's the article for today. Thanks for reading as always and see you in the next one!!!
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