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Ouch, they predict the Browns to go 2-14--a full three games worse than last year's pathetic showing. It'll be a fun experiment to review these predictions in about six months, so here's who they picked for division winners:
AFC East: Jets
AFC North: Ravens
AFC South: Colts
AFC West: Chargers
NFC East: Cowboys
NFC South: Atlanta
NFC North: Vikings
NFC West: 49ers
Now, since there are four teams in each division, pure random chance would result in about a 25% success rate. If the Sporting News can significantly exceed that, we'll know they have some idea what they're talking about. (for those interested, they predict the Jets beating the Cowboys in the Super Bowl).
Oddly, though, their prediction of teams' final season records is often at odds with their evaluations of whether the same teams are getting better or worse. For example:
The Bills are predicted to go 3-13, a three game drop from last year's 6-10 record. Yet their "stock report" is "up."
The aforementioned Browns are also receiving an "up" grade, and are also predicted to lose three more games than last year.
The Titans, on the other hand, are predicted to win three more games than last year and make the playoffs, but have only a "steady" stock report.
The Broncos, predicted to lose a whopping four more games than last season, also receive a "steady" stock report.
Does this make any sense?
And for the sake of posterity, the biggest jump the magazine predicts is the Chiefs, who they think will win five more games than last year to jump from 4-12 to a winning 9-7 record.
2 comments:
Nice to see the '9ers expected to start doing better. Hope the Browns do as well and I'd like to see their new rookie QB start sometime.
I have a hard time getting into the NFL anymore (and secretly hope to see both the NFL and NBA have a lockout here soon when their CBAs (or whatever they are called in those leagues) expire.) Many networks would have no choice but to increase NHL coverage then. :-P
Btw, when's your new campaign start?
I don't know about the NBA, but there's a LOT of talk about future NFL seasons being cancelled/delayed because the owners and the players are so far apart on the collective bargaining front. I wonder if they'll bring in replacement players like in the '87 season? You should try out, I remember you were a pretty good punter and WR-reverse TD passer :)
Not sure yet on the Cthulhu campaign. We've got another session or two of a D&D 3.5 mini-game directed by one of the players, and then another player is going to direct a one-shot or so of a super heroes game, and then we'll get the Cthulhu campaign started sometime in September/ early October, though the Fall is kinda crazy busy for me because I'll be trying to both finish the dissertation and look for a teaching job.
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