Holy crap! It’s football in less than a month! You know what that means? That’s right! It’s time to lose most of my baseball fan readers by doing a whole lot of preview posts! 9 of them, to be exact! With even more exclamation points! ! !!!!!
We’ll start with the NFC West, just to ease my way into this. The NFC has a lot of young players playing in important roles, which should make things interesting. The younger players tend to want to make big plays rather than grinding it out, often with disastrous results. I guess that’s the theme of the NFC West. Disastrous results.
Seattle Seahawks: The Seahawks are fairly one dimensional on offense, but that’s OK, because the one dimension they have is pretty good, what with Shawn Alexa
nder headlining the ground game. Oh by the way, the Hawks have the best D in the West. Also, they feature a coach that looks like a walrus and a quarterback who looks like Scott Hamilton. The depressing thing is, that doesn’t really add up to being all that interesting. They should win out West fairly easily, mostly because the other teams have the same major flaw, namely, incredibly porous defense.
St. Louis Rams: Undoubtedly have the best functioning offense. The Cardinals may have better talent, but the team isn’t quite clicking yet, which means the Rams should hold on to the second spot in the division for at least another year. As I said, the problem with this division is defense. The Rams reflect this by having almost no talent at linebacker. I would fear this team if they were a threat to stop the run (not a huge concern in this division) or put some pressure on the quarterback (a little bit of a problem). Steven Jackson is among the elite running backs in the game, but it remains to be seen if he will be used properly.
Arizona Cardinals: One day, someone is going to realize that Denny Green, while maybe not a top flight coach, should be a guy involved in your draft process. New coach Ken Whisenhunt may be able to work out some of the problems the offense, but the defense is still a nightmare. The talent on the offensive side of the ball could have overcome their problems, but the defense will definitely pull this team back. They should hope for some 56-49 games.
San Francisco 49ers: The Niners are all right. They have a guy so many people have said is underrated that I think he’s reaching overrated status in Frank Gore. They improved at receiver and on defense, but it may be a while before the team gels as a whole. Give this team a little while, however, and they may just challenge for a playoff spot.
After reviewing this division, I am fully convinced that my picks could be flipped totally upside down, and I wouldn’t be surprised. This division is the definition of parity. Maybe this wasn’t a good way to ease into the previews.
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