We are back with yet another weekly recap, as we run through all 14 games from week six!
Surprisingly there were plenty of one-sided matchups for large stretches, but we also have a lot of interesting storylines coming out of the weekend.
Tag Archives: NFL
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:
Previewing the Chiefs-Ravens week three matchup:
We are in for one of the best Monday Night showdowns I can remember in a long time, as I already highlighted this as the best game of the 2020 NFL season when the schedule came out, and there is nothing that should take away from the hype coming in. The reigning league Lamar Jackson and Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes both have their teams at 2-0 and fairly entrenched as the two elite squads in the AFC, ready to battle for the right to stay undefeated.
Two years ago, the Ravens seemed to have this one in their bag, until Mahomes pulled off some magic on a couple of fourth down plays to still turn things around and last season these two teams went up against each other in week three as well, where the Chiefs controlled the game for the most part, but then Lamar tried to manufacture a late comeback, to make the final score 33-28 Kansas City. Baltimore would lose the following week to Cleveland, but then went undefeated the rest of the way, until they lost in the Divisional Round to Tennessee.
This is the matchup everybody wanted and expected to see in last year’s Conference Championship game and it could easily be a preview of what we see in this year’s semi-finals, with crucial tie-breakers being on the line Monday. In this preview, I will break down both offenses and how they match up with the opposing defense, talk a little bit about special teams and two X-factors for each group.
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:
Predicting the entire 2020 NFL season:
Now a week away from the season officially being kicked off with Texans @ Chiefs, I’m ready to commit to all these predictions. As I have done for several years now, I am going to forecast all the major season awards, such as league MVP, Defensive Player of the Year and others, before I get into my playoff picks. To do so, I went through the schedule and predicted all 256 games, before putting all of that into playoffpredictors.com – which I can absolutely recommend you check out – to double-check my final seven seeds for either conference. On my first version, I got so complicated with the tie-breakers, that I actually had to contact the host of the page, to get some clearance on an issue, but after I went over it a second time, things became a lot easier to figure out.
With that being, this is how I believe the 2020 NFL season will look like:
Fantasy diamonds for 2020:
Now that we are close to a lot of people’s fantasy drafts, I wanted to hand out some names that I frequently end up with when I do mocks, just because I have them higher in my rankings. So these are players, who present value based on their ADP (average draft position), all as an average between the three biggest platforms for fantasy football – NFL.com, ESPN and Yahoo. That’s as of August 20th, with the first two having a full-PPR scoring system and the last one being set to .5PPR. They also all have a standard lineup of 1 QB, 2 RBs, 2 WRs, 1 FLEX, 1 TE, 1 DEF and 1 K. I had to wait until now, so that the draft data is representative of what people actually think of these players, especially with so many mocks having the majority of users set as auto-picks and distort the results.
So I will talk about what I like about these players heading into 2020, maybe a couple of concerns and talk a little bit about what I look at them as, compared to the where people are selecting them in their mock drafts. I listed three guys for every position that fills one spot in your standard lineup (QB, TE, DEF) and five for running back and wide receiver respectively. Oh, and I’m not doing kickers here – just pick one from the high-scoring team and that you know has a proven track record of converting on his opportunities.
Here are some of my favorite value picks:
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:
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