Tag Archives: Football

Super Bowl

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:



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NFL Playoffs

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!

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NFL Quarterbacks, NFL Rookies, Player Rankings

Checking in with the rookie and sophomore NFL quarterbacks:

Over the last two drafts, ten quarterbacks were selected within the first 33 picks respectively and now that all but one of them have logged double-digit starts, I thought it was time to review what they’ve shown. I will provide my general thoughts, aided by some advanced metrics, and express my level of confidence in their long-time viability at the pro level.

Just to be clear, I won’t be discussing this year’s eighth and eighth overall selections Michael Penix Jr. (Falcons) and J.J. McCarthy (Vikings), who only saw very limited action in mop-up duty and unfortunately got hurt after a promising preseason showing respectively. Therefore, we’ll be looking at four guys from each of those draft classes.

Let’s dive in, going by chronological order of when they got selected:


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Storylines around the NFL

Misery index seven weeks into the 2024 NFL season:

Unlike most weeks where one topic jumps out to me for a video or article I want to write or even there’s a point in the season where it makes sense to do power rankings or mid-season awards, there were several ways I considered going here. However, as I looked a broader view at the NFL landscape, my one grand thought I came away with is the state of affairs for the teams at the bottom of the standings and their gap to the rest of the league. In large part because I currently don’t see a path where those franchise massively turn things around and I don’t want to ignore them until draft season rolls around.

With some teams having already had a bye week, I didn’t want the cut-off to be two wins, but rather I chose to go with the nine squads at least three games below .500 – meaning 2-5 or worse. That also made sense considering the two teams that criteria excludes are the 2-4 Rams and Dolphins, whose campaigns have been heavily affected by injuries and still have some hope to turn things around.

To illustrate that rift between the franchises in question and those in legitimate position to compete for playoff spots ultimately, here’s a number to consider – and I understand of course that it has to exist for this make sense mathematically – but the nine teams I’m about to discuss have an average point differential of -53.1 for the year, meaning the median outcome for them every week is pretty much losing by just over a touchdown. I did not go back to recent years to really dive into how this stacks up, but it feels like quite an extreme line of demarcation – and that calculation includes the Saints’ clearly unsustainable start, where they led the league with a +62 point differential through the first two weeks.

So this isn’t meant to be a way for me to trash the bottom-third of the league, but rather trying take a step back and reflect on how we got here, by going through these teams. And maybe give an outlook for the near future, as we think about how things could be course-corrected.

We’ll go by record first and then alphabetical order:


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College Football, College Football Rankings

Top five college players at each position a month into the 2024 season:

We’re four weeks into this collegiate season and it’s time for me to give my annual check-in on who the best players in the nation are currently. My rankings are largely based on the film work I did partially during this prior draft cycle for returning names and studying up during the summer, but also catching up on them in the early stages here. Obviously, I haven’t watched every single FBS game, but a large portion of those, I went through a bunch of the advanced numbers and tried to at least evaluate each of these (and other) guys in one more matchup so far.

Just to clarify, these rankings are concerning the top five players at each position for the college level – so how well they’re performing at right now and how I’d pick them in a team selection-like setting, somewhat detached from their surrounding pieces, as I’m trying to judge them individually. There’s a lot of overlap to how I’d stack the names up projecting forward to next year’s draft already (at least for the guys who are eligible), but I wanted to make that distinction here.

Let’s get into it:

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Game Previews, Super Bowl

Everything to know about Super Bowl 58:

Four years after Patrick Mahomes pedaled backwards and hit Tyreek Hill on “2-3 Jet Chip Wasp” to convert a third-and-15 and start their comeback over the 49ers, these two sides are set to face off again on the biggest stage. This time around, Kansas City is looking to cement itself as a dynasty, with their third championship in five years, while San Francisco is going for their sixth title in franchise history, but the first one in 29 years, after knocking on the door with four NFC championship game appearances in those last five seasons.

The Niners looked dominant throughout the regular season en route to the NFC’s number one seed, before having to battle until the end against the Packers and Lions, coming back from a 17-point deficit in that conference title game. Meanwhile, it wasn’t nearly as smooth a ride for the Chiefs, trying to defend their championship, finishing with an 11-6 record and having to go on the road in the playoffs for the first two teams in the Mahomes era.

Based on the current active rosters, the 49ers are slated to return nine players and the Chiefs seven who were also part of those Super Bowl 54 teams. Both Kyle Shanahan and Andy Reid return as head coaches, while Steve Spagnuolo on defense and Dave Toub on special teams for the Chiefs are the only two of six total coordinators still around. They also have the benefit of a quarterback starting his fourth Super Bowl in five years, but the Niners have their best signal-caller under Shanahan in the Bay Area.

I want to look at both sides of the ball, break down in detail how the offensive and defensive units function respectively, along with how I believe they’ll match up, before presenting a couple of X-factors for each group and ultimately giving you my prediction for the final score.

Let’s dive in:


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NFL Top 100

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:

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