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Under-the-radar NFL stars through three weeks:

Every NFL fan is aware of the Dolphins offense putting up historic numbers, how dominant the 49ers have looked on both sides of the ball and the main storylines.

I wanted to shine a light on the top performers across the league, who aren’t talked about enough, but have stood out in a major way through the first three weeks.

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College Football

The top five college players at each position in 2023:

Three weeks into the 2023 college football season, I decided it was time to give an overview of the landscape and list my top players in the nation right now, going through each position. Generally I tried to stick with five or six names – if there was a tie for number five – but for some of these I felt the need to quickly outline one other player, who I struggled with ranking due to different circumstances, but looked at as worthy of bringing up in this discussion.

Please bear in my mind that I look at this through the lens of where these guys are right now at the college level, rather than evaluating them as NFL Draft prospects – there’ll be plenty of time for late from February until the end of April and beyond – although I may mention certain qualities/question marks that will ultimately be discussed further. So look at this as “If I had to play a college game today, who would I pick for my team?”. I went a little further in depth about the quarterbacks, while trying to give more of a general understanding of the other positions.

And just a quick note – some players that were in the running for me when I started putting together this list before the season kicked off, but haven’t yet played at all or have gotten hurt and therefore didn’t qualify – QB Michael Pratt (Tulane), WR Zakhari Franklin (Ole Miss), WR Ladd McConkey (Georgia), TE Brant Kuithe (Utah), LB Jestin Jacobs (Oregon) and SAF Rod Moore (Michigan).

Let’s get into the list:


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NFL games, NFL Weekly Recap, Storylines around the NFL

Three key takeaways from each week one NFL game (2023):

Every week of the NFL season there are a million things going on and it’s impossible to keep up with it all. So after watching the first full slate of games, I decided to outline three key storylines or takeaways for all 16 contests. These can be based around an individual player, coach, team unit or schematic nuance to track going forward.

Of course, week one can be liar and we shouldn’t overreact to anything we just watched, but based on where we stand right now, these are things that jumped to me across the league upon watching every game and trying to put them into context.



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NFL award winners, NFL Playoffs, NFL Predictions

Predicting the entire 2023 NFL season:

We’re less than a week away from the NFL regular season being kicked off in Kansas City and it’s time to put myself out there yet again, by predicting every single NFL award, the playoff picture and ultimately my pick for Super Bowl LVIII.

As always, I will list my top three candidates for MVP, Defensive Player of the Year and all the other awards, reveal my seven seeds in either conference and work my way through the eventual matchups, in order to get to the participants in the big game next February. Yet again I added the Excel sheet, where you can find my predictions for all 285 total games, at the bottom of this piece.

Once again, I attached the full regular season grid at the bottom, if you’re interested in how I ended up with the eventual playoff seedings or want to know where your team finished, if they didn’t make the cut.

This is what I think the 2023/24 season will look like:


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Storylines around the NFL

Most pivotal situations of the 2023 NFL season:

Only two weeks away from the 2023 NFL season being kicked off, I decided highlight some situations across the league that are highly volatile and I’m most interested in how they work out. These can be players, team units or coaches heading into crucial years. Altogether I came up with eight questions I’m waiting to have answered.

Just two quick disclaimers:
– Obviously how Deshaun Watson might bounce big for the Browns will be key, but I wanted to focus on different topics, without any off-field implications
– And I had already recorded this before the 49ers lost Taco Charlton to IR

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Fantasy Football

Fantasy diamonds for 2023:

Fantasy football is back and it’s time to help out everybody listening, by giving you a few names to target in your upcoming drafts!

Comparing my personal rankings to consensus boards, I’ll highlight the names who I believe present the most surplus value and therefore I’ll be targeting in my leagues.

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NFL Top 100

Halil’s NFL Top 100 Players of 2023:

It’s that time of the year again! After going through the extensive exercise of ranking the top 20+ players at every single position in the NFL today, I combined those to create a list of the 100 best in the game heading into this upcoming season, regardless of position.

The player’s list is one of my favorite things to watch every year, but the process is inherently flawed, since the voters only fill in their top-20 names and are tempted to prop up their teammates or even list themselves. Some of the guys near the bottom shouldn’t be on anybody’s top-20 ballot if they’re being objective.

What’s important to understand is that I’m trying to isolate the individual players, rather than judging their value to their respective teams or how good they may be in a specific role. So not while I bring up general statistics, but also give you background on studying the game’s best and try to draw a bow between both those worlds with some advanced metrics, in order to add context.

Before we get to the actual list, here are a few players who I considered ineligible due to missing time with injury in the past or expected to not be available for a certain amount of games in 2023 – Kyler Murray, Matthew Stafford, Alvin Kamara, Calvin Ridley, Darren Waller, Harold Landry, J.C. Jackson and Micah Hyde.

Let’s dive in now:

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