The 2020 NFL season has come to a close with Super Bowl LV and we are breaking the big game down in detail – a general recap, either offense vs. the opposing defense and a look ahead to the offseason for both teams!
Tag Archives: 2020 NFL season
NFL All-Rookie team 2020:
The only game left this season is the Super Bowl, which we will break down in depth here on my page next week, but right now let’s take a look what these NFL rookies have done in their pro debuts. I filled out a starting lineup for offense and defense, plus notable backups, and the key special teamers (just like you would usually when voting for the Pro Bowl).
For the offense, I went with 20 personnel, meaning two running backs and three receivers, because that definitely gives me the best eleven players out on the field. Tight-end I only listed among the notable backups, because the whole class didn’t even combine for 100 catches or 1000 yards in all of 2020. Vikings rookie receiver Justin Jefferson alone outperformed them as a group basically.
And on defense I went nickel personnel. So a four-man front with two stacked linebackers behind it and three safeties on the field, even though one of them is more of a slot backer anyway. That is the most common personnel grouping in the NFL today (or rather if you put a true nickelback in there) and it also once gives me the best eleven defenders in one lineup I feel like.
Make sure to subscribe to my Youtube channel, where I will put out my detailed recap of the Conference Championship games and already give out my initial thoughts on this Super Bowl matchup between Kansas City and Tampa Bay.
Ten biggest omissions for the 2021 Pro Bowl:
It’s Christmas time and it’s time some players get the love they deserve, but didn’t get from Pro Bowl voters.
I have a problem with the voting process in general, already because pass-rushing outside linebackers are still in the same category off-ball players, but this year in particular the NFL’s ballot were pretty ridiculous – whether it’s not even showing comma numbers, listing players by categories that shouldn’t be as relevant or even having kickers all with a perfect 100 percent rate for a while, while listing them by total makes rather than percentage altogether.
Considering that, the results weren’t as bad as I thought they might be, because the choices for a few positions are just so much straight-forward, but there are a few glaring omissions
While most people just throw out names of players they like, but don’t tell you who they’d take off, I’m looking for actual solution here. So I will keep names like Ryan Tannehill or Justin Herbert, who are both certainly worthy, in the honorable mentions, because the three AFC quarterbacks are just amazing in their own right.
NFL 2020 midseason awards:
We have made it through the first eight weeks of the 2020 season and it’s time to hand out some trophies (not literally of course, since we have to wait until the year is over). I already did this when I predicted the entire season about a week before we kicked things off and a lot of the candidates I mentioned back then, you will here again, but at the same time, some guys have kind of come out of nowhere. For some of these categories, three names were enough, while for a few others I mentioned two more notables. So who have been my MVP, Defensive Player and Coach of the Year, among others, for the first half of the season? Plus, at the bottom I added my All-Pro teams at this point.
Also make sure to check out my detailed recap of NFL week eight.
NFL Power Rankings after the first quarter of the 2020 season:
Now that the first four weeks of the NFL season are in the books and we have a pretty good idea about who all these teams are, while the results may not fully tell the story yet, I decided to put them all in order for the first version of my Power Rankings in-season. Funnily enough my number one and 32 teams are still the same that I had when I put out my list a couple of weeks before the year was kicked off. Once again, I’m not trying to just put these teams in order by their record – for that you can check the official standings on NFL.com – but rather I tried to figure out how I would personally rank them based on the tape I’ve watched and with some stats to help me put it all in context.
This is my list:
Three statements for each week one NFL game:
Football is back, baby! After an awesome first week of NFL action, which I watched every full game of, I wanted to kind of recap all 16 matchups and come up with three statements for each one. Some of them may be more hyperbolic or could be labelled as hot takes, while others state for obvious facts. You can also listen to my Youtube breakdown of week one, where I just give more of my general thoughts on all these games, while also bringing up some of the points I make in this article.
So here’s what I took away from week one:
Ranking all 32 NFL teams in tiers pre-2020 season:
Now that we have passed the opt-out deadline and are only about three weeks away from the Chiefs and Texans kicking off the 2020 NFL season, I wanted to put together my pre-season power rankings and put all 32 teams in separate tiers, to give you an idea of where I see them at this point.
When putting together this list, I considered the talent on the roster, coaching staff and what will be a more important factor coming into this season than it has been in previous – the continuity as a franchise, since the COVID situation has limited the amount of preparation and ability to build chemistry as a team. That will be especially tough for new head coaches and inexperienced teams.
With that being said, this is how I would group them:
NFL Top 100 Players of 2020:
Every year NFL Network puts out a list of the Top 100 Players for the upcoming season, as voted by their peers. I have talked about the flaws of that whole process a few times already – the players only write down their top 20 players, which is understandable, but also doesn’t result in the proper results, since everybody is somewhat to put their guys on; not all players actually get to watch a lot of games, if they don’t include teams they actually face or are limited to watching highlights; and the voting concludes before the playoff are even here, which can be the only somewhat logical reason, Patrick Mahomes was only number four on the official list – even though that would still be wrong.
For the purpose of this list, I first put together my rankings of the top players at every single position, but then somewhat went off script by just writing down names in the order that they shot into my head, before comparing it with the positional rankings and trying to weigh guys against each other. And just to make this clear – these rankings are based on players regardless of their position, since otherwise would have almost half the starting quarterbacks in the league within the top 20 or so. And of course this is a bit of a projection and not solely built on what these players did this previous season, but also not about where they will be at the end of 2020.
Here is my list:
Key position battles at 2020 NFL training camp:
We have finally reached NFL training camp and with the agreement between the league and the players association, there is a little more clarity about how the preparation for the 2020 season will look. With such a long time off, the early stages of this will involve a lot of lifting and running, before the players actually go out on the field and compete, but like I have done for several years, I want to look at some of the more interesting battles for starting positions.
Now that preseason has been cancelled, it will only enhance the importance of these competitions and even though I usually have a little bias towards rookies, since I studied them a lot since the Super Bowl ended, this whole situation should actually favor the more seasoned veterans. For this exercise, I tried to avoid a few of the really obvious ones, such as the Bears QB competition that has and will be talked to death by all the major networks, or the Dolphins entire offensive line pretty much, where you can’t point to one specific spot.
With that being said, here at the ten that I will follow the closest:
NFL players in a 2020 make-or-break season:
We have talked a lot about breakout NFL players, most improved position groups and all that kind of stuff. Now I want to shift the focus more towards players, who aren’t in a position where they are locked in as long-time contributors for their respective teams and will be entering a crucial season in their careers.
Those can be young players not living up to their draft status, guys in a contract year wanting to earn another lucrative deal or long-time veterans trying to stick around. I called this a make-or-break season for these players because they aren’t at a point, where people recognize them as some of the best players at their position. So you won’t see necessarily see players on the franchise tag, trying to earn that long-term contract for big money, but rather guys who could also be labelled as draft busts or washed up veterans.
Here is the list:
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