With the 2025 NFL scouting combine in the books, it’s time to once again highlight one prospect at each position who helped and hurt themselves respectively with their performance in Indianapolis.
Author Archives: hallachhalil
One fit for each NFL team in 2025 free agency:
The 2025 NFL offseason is here and before we fully dive into draft content, I wanted to release my annual version of a free agency, where I match all 32 teams with one player about to hit the open market.
College all-star game standouts for 2025:
The NFL season has concluded with the Philadelphia Eagles putting on a dominant showing in Super Bowl LIX, when they got revenge on the Chiefs by ending their quest to the first ever three-peat, which started two years ago with a win over the Birds on the big stage. Of course we’ll discuss free agency soon, but we are ready to fully dive into draft season and for people who haven’t paid attention yet – this process has already started.
We’re just over two weeks away from the NFL combine, but the all-star games and preparation for those are in the books. So after watching all of the practice footage and both contests to finish off those events, I want outline the names that stood out the most to me from East-West Shrine and Senior Bowl weeks. I did watch the Hula and Tropical Bowl and we’ve still got the HBCU Bowl on slate, but I want to focus on those two prime showcases of talent.
Therefore, I decided to highlight ten standouts on offense and defense each, also picking the same number from each event. I could’ve easily talked in detail about several other players who caught my eye and am happy to share my notes down in the comment section, but I did at least list a bunch of names at the bottom.
Everything to know about Super Bowl LIX:
We are here. 284 total games have been played between the regular season and playoffs, 30 teams have been eliminated and two more remain, battling for the right to hoist the Lombardi Trophy this upcoming Sunday.
With how things played out, we get a rematch of Super Bowl LVII from two years ago, when the Chiefs beat the Eagles 38-35 in Glendale, Arizona. The Eagles took the regular season battle in week 11 of the following season. Now, they are set to square off again, with a lot of the same faces but especially on Philadelphia’s side, they come in with two new coordinators and a superstar in running back Saquon Barkley.
One side is going for the first three-peat in NFL history, while the other one is trying to get revenge and stand up to another dynasty, just like they did against the Patriots seven years ago.
Kansas City’s only legitimate loss outside of week 18, when they were resting starters since they had already clinched the AFC’s number one seed, came to the Bills. Although they weren’t dominating opponents and ranked just outside the top-ten in overall point (+59), they routinely were able to come out on top of tight battles, even if some might argue that a few favorable calls at least aided them along the way. Still, they were in control throughout their Divisional Round affair against the Texans and were able to avenge that one meaningful defeat when they once again hosted Buffalo in the Championship game.
Philadelphia in the meantime needed a good month to find their groove, as they started off the season only 2-and-2 before winning 10 straight games and all but one of their final 13. Only the Lions ended up with a better point differential (+160) and with those guys losing in the Divisional Round, the NFC more or less went through Philadelphia. In no way would I say the Eagles were particularly convincing against the Packers or Rams, but Saquon delivered multiple break-away runs, the defense stepped up in key moments and they won the turnover battle six-nothing across those two games. Then, in the conference title game, they arguably had their most complete showing against Washington, who previously beat them in walk-off fashion in week 16, and pulled away from them in the second half.
I want to first break down how the two representatives want to operate on both sides of the ball, some of the ways they could attack each other schematically, present a couple X-factors for each team and then give my prediction for the final score, including my pick for Super Bowl MVP.
Let’s dive into this massive showdown:
How to lose Divisional Round playoff games:
We’re coming off an exciting, dramatic even if at times chaotic Divisional Round weekend. However, one of the overarching themes watching these four games for me was how the losing teams shot themselves in the foot and cost themselves chances to come out on top of those matchups.
So rather than highlighting positives and breaking down great plays of the winners primarily – as we usually do – let me be THAT guy for a day and just vent about some of the decisions and moments that proved costly for the other side!
NFL All-Rookie team 2024/25:
We’re taking a small break from the NFL playoffs to spotlight the players with the best debut seasons. As always, I constructed a full 11-player lineup on both offense (11 personnel) and defense (nickel personnel), along with four special teamers (kicker, punter, return specialist, and core team player). I also added six key substitutes/backups for the first two units.
Overall, I’d say this is one of the strongest rookie classes we’ve had in recent memory, with six names who at worst should be on the fringe of Pro Bowl nomination and a handful of names who didn’t even quite make the cut who I’d already label as average starters. So this wasn’t an easy exercise, although several guys were no-doubters based on how bright they were able to shine straight away. And just for clarity purposes, I only took the regular season into account.
Let’s meet the squad:
Predicting the full 2024/25 NFL playoffs:
The NFL playoff bracket is set and I took on the exercise of previewing/predicting every single matchup, leading up to Super Bowl LIX! I’ll share a few thoughts on each side and how I came to all my decisions!
New year’s resolutions for NFL playoff teams (2025):
We’ve reached the final week of the NFL season and the calendar year 2025. So, with the playoff participants at least largely established, while I’m generally not a big believer in them personally, I took the opportunity to come up with resolutions for each of the six teams who have already clinched a spot on either side of the bracket.
Since the Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Bengals are still fighting for the final Wildcard berth in the AFC and the Atlanta Falcons could still take away the NFC South crown from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the task for them is to just take care of business (and hope for some help). Therefore, I didn’t give them their own paragraph.
For this exercise, I largely focused on personnel usage, schematic details and attitude in how teams should approach future matchups. Let’s dig in:
Voting for the 2025 Pro Bowl:
We’re just a few days ago from Pro Bowl voting being closed. So I thought I’d once again take you guys into the process of filling out my ballot, sharing a few words of analysis for my picks at every single position. (This was recorded ahead of the Thursday night game)
Power rankings heading into the final month of the 2024 NFL season:
At this point, 14 weeks of NFL action are in the books and we’re entering the home stretch. With 17 games, there’s no perfect solution mathematically, but all teams have now had their bye weeks and have four more contests remaining before the playoff picture is finalized.
Seven teams have already been eliminated while four have clinched playoff berths – and even division titles on the AFC side of things. That means five more sports are still up for grabs on either half of the bracket, although realistically, there is a pretty wide gap between the franchises who simply have to take care of business on their end compared to ten times “in the hunt” officially but sat below .500.
As always, these are power *rankings* rather than standings, meaning teams with worse records may be listed above others with slightly better results so far or who they’ve lost to directly. The purpose of this exercise is to project how many of the other 31 franchises each side would beat head-to-head right now and not weigh likelihood of securing a certain seed in the postseason or compare to results from months ago.
Let’s dig in:
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