LET'S TALK FOOTBALL - A Debriefing of the 2023 NFL Season

Another NFL season has come and gone just like that. The scriptwriters gave us one to remember, filled with a lot of ups and downs. Through four months, there were elite teams that hit their pinnacle and surprise teams that came out of nowhere. On the other hand, there were those that shockingly regressed and whose seasons ended up being a complete disaster. For this article, we are going to do a brief recap on how each team has done for this entire season. Let's get into it, shall we?

ARIZONA CARDINALS (4-13)

Their season was just as forgettable as we all thought it would be for the Arizona Cardinals. I thought that they would only win two games because we didn’t know when Kyler Murray was going to return, the offense was average, and the defense had little to no talent. In the month of August, they cut their veteran backup Colt McCoy and traded for Josh Dobbs to be the replacement starter, so we certainly knew the last team we expected to make the playoffs was this team. Murray would miss the first eight games of the season and Arizona would only go 1-8, but we all had a great laugh for them beating the Dallas Cowboys 28-16 in the third week.

When Dobbs was the starter, the script was pretty much the same. They would overachieve early and played with a lot of passion, but as the game progressed, the vastly superior team would end up dominating the rest of the game and the Cardinals would lose in degrading fashion. Week 2 against the Giants was a perfect example. They were up 20-0 at halftime and 28-7 in the middle of the third quarter, but Daniel Jones threw five touchdown passes in the second half and the Cardinals gave up twenty-four unanswered points to lose the game. They traded Dobbs to the Minnesota Vikings at the deadline and started rookie Clayton Tune for their Week 9 matchup against the Cleveland Browns, in which their offense looked like absolute puke in a 27-0 shutout loss. Fans were clamoring for Kyler to come back so they can at least hold on to whatever hope they have left.

Kyler’s first start of the season was a pretty memorable one and he looked fully recovered from his torn ACL. In a home game against the Atlanta Falcons, he totaled over 280 yards from scrimmage and led a clutch drive near the end that set up the winning chip-shot field goal by Matt Prater, giving Arizona a 25-23 victory. The Cardinals were 3-5 with Murray and the script for them didn’t change too much. However, their best victory of the season had to be in Week 17, on the road against the Philadelphia Eagles. Not only was it a revenge game for Jonathan Gannon, but it was their most defining victory of the season. Down 21-6 at halftime, it looked like they were going to get destroyed again, but Arizona pulled off the impossible. In the second half alone, Kyler threw just one incompletion, three touchdown passes, and over 130 yards. He led four straight touchdown drives and the offense totaled over 220 yards on the ground, shocking the Philadelphia faithful and crushing their division title hopes.

Even though this was a terrible season for this football team, there were at least some positives to point out. First off, I think it’s safe to say that Kyler Murray is going to be their guy moving forward, and rightfully so because he is the only player besides Budda Baker that keeps this team afloat. Second, I have a lot of faith for Jonathan Gannon in his second year. The minute that his defense gets more talent, I think that the Cardinals are going to be in pretty good shape. They have the fourth overall pick this year and close to $45 million in cap space, so while I don’t think they are an instant playoff contender just yet, they should definitely be respectable as long as their franchise quarterback is 100% healthy.

ATLANTA FALCONS (7-10)

Read what I said in my preview page for the Atlanta Falcons this past summer. “For all of the moves that they made in the offseason, the Atlanta Falcons are a team with hope on one side of the ball but caution on the other. It is also a year where head coach Arthur Smith could quite possibly be on the hot seat after two straight losing seasons, featuring two below-average offenses… The offense is the biggest reason why I think the Falcons will be held from their true success. We don't know what to make of second-year quarterback Desmond Ridder, and in the games that he did get to start, he looked like an average game-manager… Just because the Falcons spent a lot of money in free agency, it doesn't mean that they are going to have a winning season. With the lack of depth on offense and the amount of "if's" on their defense, it is going to look like another season with a confused identity and lack of consistency.”

I don’t think I need to say anything else because that is exactly what happened this season. Let’s just start with the offense, particularly Desmond Ridder. Do I think that he is the worst quarterback in football? Absolutely not. There are plenty of guys that are worse than him. I get that he has tremendous character and that we can never question his work ethic, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re reliable whatsoever. Throughout this season, there were moments where he gave you positive flashes, but those were just moments. Other times, he held onto the ball too long and either took unnecessary sacks or turned the ball right back over to the other team. Any time Arthur Smith benched Ridder for Taylor Heinicke, the results were not completely different because he’s just a backup at best. I told you all at the beginning of the year that their lack of a true starting quarterback was going to hold this team back the most, and that is exactly what happened, but the head coach deserves just as much culpability.

This was the third straight season where the Falcons finished 7-10, but Arthur Smith’s flaws got more and more exposed. They finished twenty-sixth in points scored per game and twenty-second in passing yards per game. There were a couple reasons why they finished in that bottom tier. For starters, some of the play-calling and fourth-down decisions were just really head-scratching. But my biggest reason why was because Smith failed to utilize the three best players that he has on his entire roster. Last year’s sixth overall pick Bijan Robinson had a promising rookie season with over 1000 total yards of offense, but there were games where he either didn’t get enough carries or drives where he wasn’t on the field period. Remember that ugly victory against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? How his “illness” at the last minute forced him to only take seven snaps and touch the ball once? The Falcons got fined severely for this decision and Arthur Smith was at the most fault. Drake London had a better sophomore season with over 905 receiving yards… but he only caught two touchdowns. Heck, Kyle Pitts was getting passed up for Jonnu Smith for crying out loud! Arthur Smith got fired twenty-four hours after their final game of the season against the New Orleans, one where he was more known for yelling at Dennis Allen at the end of the game than how pathetic his team performed.

Defensively, they had that big leap that I thought could happen. They had four guys that finished with over 100 tackles, including their huge free agent signing Jessie Bates, who also had six interceptions in what was most likely the best season of his career. The unit overall finished eleventh in total yards allowed and eighth in passing yards allowed, but there were games where they just flat out collapsed or bottomed out. They gave up four touchdowns to a Will Levis that was making his first ever start in the NFL, and they allowed DeAndre Hopkins to catch three of them for 128 yards… on four catches! The following week, they fell apart down the stretch against the Minnesota Vikings with not Kirk Cousins at quarterback, but a Josh Dobbs who was just traded there four days earlier! One week after that, they collapsed again and gave up a game-winning drive to Kyler Murray making his first start of the season off of a torn ACL.

But of all of the losses that they had this year, the most humiliating was in Week 15 on the road against the Carolina Panthers. It was a monsoon game in which little to no fans showed up, the Panthers only had one win throughout the entire season, and Atlanta was the only team that scored a touchdown. With just under seven minutes left in the game, Ridder threw a horrible interception in the redzone, and it ended up being the final time he would take the field. In over six minutes, rookie Bryce Young marched his team well into field goal range and ran the clock all the way down to three seconds, setting up the game-winning field goal from Eddy Pineiro to give the Panthers an ugly 9-7 victory. Even though it didn’t officially eliminate them from playoff contention, it essentially put the writing on the wall for their season because this team was just so frustrating and agonizing every single week.

The Falcons took their time to find their replacement at head coach, and after pondering whether they should hire Bill Belichick, they instead brought back a familiar face in Raheem Morris. This will be his second time as the head coach of the team, the first being when he was the interim guy when Dan Quinn got fired in 2020. He brought a couple of LA assistants with him in Jimmy Lake and Zac Robinson that will try to get the offense and defense playing at a very consistent level, but more importantly, Morris will have a lot more cache and credibility than he did when he was the head coach of the Buccaneers over a decade ago. The most important question they need to answer is who they are going to go with at quarterback. If they stick with Ridder and Heinicke as the quarterback tandem, then they are going to be just as mediocre if not worse than they have been in the past. They either need to trade for Justin Fields or move up in the draft to select a top quarterback prospect, one that is going to put this franchise back on the map. With a few more tweaks on the both side of the ball, Morris needs to make sure that his best players are being utilized, otherwise they are never going to get out of the hole that they have been stuck in for years. Time will tell to see how Morris will do, but at least he has a bigger personality than Arthur Smith, so there will be more hope.

BALTIMORE RAVENS (13-4)

I was only one win off from how I thought the Ravens would play this year, but more importantly, this team completely exceeded my expectations. They clinched the number one seed in the AFC, Lamar Jackson won his second MVP, and the defense rose under Mike MacDonald to have the best scoring unit in all of football. Hell, they won a playoff game at home and hosted their first conference championship in franchise history! Unfortunately, the offense completely fell apart against the Kansas City Chiefs, turning the ball over three times in a 17-10 heartbreaking defeat. With how dominant they were throughout the regular season, this was literally their year not just to win their conference, but to potentially win their first championship since 2012 with Joe Flacco!

Even though the stats are not as mind-blowing than the MVP seasons that Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady had, Lamar Jackson still had an outstanding year statistically. He totaled close to 4500 yards of offense, scored twenty-nine touchdowns, and he turned the ball over just nine times. He was their leading rusher yet again, which was unsurprising, but the rest of their running committee was just as hopeful themselves. It was devastating that JK Dobbins tore his achilles in the first game of the season and that standout rookie Keaton Mitchell tore his ACL in the middle of the year, but Justice Hill and Gus Edwards successfully stepped up in their roles and Baltimore was still the leading rushing team in the regular season. Todd Monken did a great job at getting this offense to the level where it needed to be at, especially in terms of their passing game. The most promising plus of the unit, besides Lamar winning his second MVP, was the rise of Zay Flowers. He had a promising rookie year with close to 860 receiving yards and five touchdowns, cementing himself as the number one option for this team for the next few years.

Defensively, they were just as strong and formidable as their offense, and one can argue that this the biggest reason why the Ravens took off in the middle of the year. Let’s put it this way. They had a guy that finished in the top ten in sacks in Justin Madubuike, another that was sixth in tackles in Roquan Smith, and another that was second in interceptions in Geno Stone. It wasn’t just those three that played at an incredibly high level. Patrick Queen had the best season of his career with over 130 tackles and 3.5 sacks, both Jadeveon Clowney and Kyle Van Noy finished with just under ten sacks, and Kyle Hamilton had an incredible second season with thirteen passes defended and four interceptions. In the postseason, they held CJ Stroud out of the endzone and did whatever they could against Patrick Mahomes by shutting him out in the second half, but there were a few lows from this team that warned us what could happen in the postseason.

Week 3 against the Gardner Minshew Colts was one thing, it was early in the season and they lost in overtime. But then the offense completely self-destructed a couple of weeks later on the road against the Pittsburgh Steelers, dropping too many passes and turning the ball over repeatedly, with the defense putting on the finishing touches by giving up the game-sealing touchdown pass to George Pickens. Their next loss was five weeks later, at home against the Cleveland Browns with Deshaun Watson. They were up 24-9 in the third quarter and 31-17 in the fourth quarter. Not only did the offense shut down again, but Watson didn’t throw a single incompletion in the second half, and it took four field goals from Dustin Hopkins to give the Browns a 33-31 come-from-behind victory. I won't talk about their final game of the regular season because the Ravens were playing backups, but we should have known better after those three losses for sure. But to be fair, this team had more memorable victories than defeats.

They destroyed both the Lions and Seahawks at home, they beat Joe Burrow twice, Lamar had a perfect passer rating against the Miami Dolphins in his final start of the regular season, and their most defining victory was on Christmas against the San Francisco 49ers on the road. Lamar had an efficient night with just over 250 passing yards and a couple of touchdown passes with no turnovers, but the defense deserved the most credit by picking off Brock Purdy four times with a fully healthy offense at his disposal.

I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that this was their year to win this year’s Super Bowl because they had that conference championship all but won. If you told me that Patrick Mahomes wouldn’t score a point in the second half and that Zay Flowers would catch five passes for 115 yards, I would think that the Ravens did enough to win. But while the defense made their adjustments and showed their fortitude, the offense abandoned the running game and ended their drives with either punts or turnovers. They didn’t deserve to win that afternoon, even with all of the success that they had leading up to that point, because they did exactly the opposite of what you would expect from the best team in football. Next year is going to be even harder. Mike MacDonald is no longer there because he took the head coaching job for the Seattle Seahawks, and they have a bunch of other assistants that left for different place. While I expect them to be an instant playoff contender, it’s going to take a lot for me to believe that this team can make it back to the Super Bowl, and it starts and ends with Lamar Jackson.

BUFFALO BILLS (11-6)

The cycle just keeps repeating itself for the Buffalo Bills: strong expectations heading into the season, look strong through four months and win a division title, only to lose in heartbreaking fashion. The team that sent them home? None other than the Kansas City Chiefs, who continue to be their worst nightmare. Only this time, the Bills had a chance to beat them on their own field and they made it even more painful then their defeat two years ago in Arrowhead Stadium. One thing I will give them credit for is that with all of the odds stacked up against them, Buffalo still found a way to pull through together and get back into the postseason.

Through the first twelve weeks of the season, the Bills were on the fringe of missing the playoffs. Their defense suffered several key injuries on almost every single level, their offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey got fired after a Monday night loss to the Denver Broncos, and Josh Allen was being viewed as a turnover magnet more than a top five quarterback. There were games where they showed their true dominance, such as their victories against teams like the Miami Dolphins and Washington Commanders. But then they lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars in London, to the New England Patriots that were heading into the worst season ever under Bill Belichick, and the Philadelphia Eagles in overtime right before the bye week. When they took the field, did they look like Super Bowl contenders? Absolutely not, but they closed out the regular season with five straight wins. They held on against Patrick Mahomes on the road, but they can thank Kadarius Toney for lining up over the line of scrimmage on a game-deciding play. The Bills then dismantled the Dallas Cowboys at home thanks to James Cook the following week, did enough to beat two bottom-feeders in the Chargers and Patriots, and then headed into a division title matchup against the Miami Dolphins.

Through the first forty-five minutes, it looked like Josh Allen was going to be the biggest reason why the Bills were going to lose that game with three turnovers. But after Deonte Harty took a punt return 95 yards to the house that tied the game at 14, their franchise quarterback took the game over and the team captured their fourth straight division title. Several guys on their defense stepped up and played at an incredibly high level, and while the offense was still finding their identity, they didn’t collapse at the worst possible time. Now they got to host at least two more playoff games as the second seed in the AFC, after they were barely hanging on in the Wild Card just seven weeks prior.

Heading into the playoffs, they essentially had a cakewalk on their hands as they took on Mason Rudolph and the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the final outcome was exactly that. We all knew that the Bills were the vastly superior football team, and we also didn’t care because their real test was the following week against the Chiefs. We were all ecstatic that we got another postseason bout between Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen, but this time, Buffalo had the home-field advantage. Through three quarterbacks, both quarterbacks were doing everything in their power to give their football teams the victory, and it was a dreadlock heading into the fourth quarter. Sean McDermott ended up making a huge coaching blunder, faking a punt on his own thirty by forcing Damar Hamlin to run it up the left side of the field, but Mecole Hardman gifted the Bills the ball back by fumbling the ball into the endzone for a touchback. Both defenses tightened up in an intense grudge match, but Bufallo was in position to send the game into overtime, and Tyler Bass sailed the kick in the two words that fans dread hearing: WIDE RIGHT.

What we saw from the Bills was the same thing that we’ve seen from them the last two years: have championship-or-bust expectations and follow the latter. Heading into this upcoming offseason, I honestly don’t know what the future holds for this football team. Von Miller had a horrible year coming off a torn ACL and might be viewed as a cap casualty, but more importantly, Stefon Diggs might not be on the roster anymore. Remember that drama in August? When he voiced his frustrations with the offense and their window of success? They’re not going to be able to do anything in free agency because they are close to $55 million over the cap thanks to the nine guys that have over $10 million cap hits. Notable free agents include their best big playmaker in Gabe Davis, their starting safety in Micah Hyde, their leading sacker in Leonard Floyd, and one of their hopeful development guys in AJ Epenesa. Their Super Bowl window has been shut for years, but every time they keep bringing the gang back together and expect something else, the same results keep happening over and over. That's the definition of insanity.

CAROLINA PANTHERS (2-15)

I can’t believe that I thought the Carolina Panthers were going to win the NFC South this year. That is by far my worst take of the season because I thought that they truly had the pieces to do something. Frank Reich had a chance to revitalize his coaching career like Doug Pederson did in Jacksonville, they took Bryce Young with the first overall pick, they signed reliable offensive veterans on paper, and the defense had a lot of young hungry playmakers with a strong defensive coordinator in Ejiro Evero. Not to mention that Tom Brady had just retired from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Falcons didn’t have a quarterback, and the Saints had been in purgatory for the last few years. But everything that could have gone wrong for the Panthers absolutely did, and that’s putting it too nicely.

The wins that they had were really the only positives that the Panthers had all season. They stunned CJ Stroud and the Houston Texans and then crushed the Falcons playoff chances, using the same formula in both matchups: the defense played absolutely phenomenal, Bryce Young took as much time off the clock to lead a game-winning drive with little time on the clock, and Eddy Pineiro put on the finishing touches with the go-ahead field goals. Besides that, everything else was just flat out disgusting.

Bryce Young had one of the worst rookie seasons in NFL history. He didn’t even throw for 3,000 yards and finished with just eleven touchdown passes and ten interceptions. He also got sacked the second-most times out of any other quarterback, three fewer than the leading guy Sam Howell. But trust me, Young was not the only problem this offense had. Their huge addition Miles Sanders turned out to not just be one of the worst free agent signings this season, but quite possibly in NFL history if this continues in the next year or two. He had 129 carries this year, which is a pretty high number for a running back, and only totaled 432 yards with ONE TOUCHDOWN. That is 3.3 yards per carry! He got passed up on the depth chart for a backup in Chuba Hubbard, who was probably their best player since he had over 900 rushing yards. The only wide receiver that made a notable contribution was 33 year old Adam Thielen with a 1,000 yard season, and the offense flat out crumbled any time that he was shut out of the gameplan. Frank Reich got fired after they fell to 1-10, and this was easily the worst season of his coaching career, even worse than when he got canned in the middle of last year with the Indianapolis Colts.

Defensively, they were the furthest problem with this team and did everything they could that year with Evero at the helm. Sure, they were injured to hell in the secondary and their star linebacker Shaq Thompson suffered a season-ending injury, but they finished fourth in total yards per game and third in passing yards per game. Obviously, they were near the bottom in points allowed, but what defense wouldn’t with an offense that was the equivalent of a dumpster fire? Heck, they were the biggest reasons why they won their only two games of the year.

The Panthers finished the year with two shutout defeats to the Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers, and now they’re heading into an offseason where there is little hope at all. They don’t have a first round pick because they gave that and DJ Moore to the Bears so they could get Bryce Young, so getting a highly talented player early in the draft is out of the question. Brian Burns is a free agent and the only way that the Panthers are going to keep him is if he gets a massive overpayment, so their best edge rusher might be gone in free agency. They will at least have nearly $30 million in cap space, so they can afford to at least make some moves in free agency to try to improve the team. But when you have a first-time head coach that has only had one year experience as an offensive coordinator, a meddling owner that is known for throwing drinks on fans than leading a quality football team, a roster that is in complete disarray, and an apathetic fanbase that doesn’t care anymore, what is there to be excited about in 2024?

CHICAGO BEARS (7-10)

Here’s another bad take that I had last offseason: I thought that the Bears would win the NFC North with a 10-7 record. I knew that Justin Fields was a highly gifted quarterback that got the difference-maker receiver he needed with DJ Moore, a decently talented offense that could take a next step, and a young defense that had the experience it needed to exceptionally improve. Through the first four weeks of the season, they were looking like the worst team in football. They lost all four of their games, their defensive coordinator resigned, Justin Fields was throwing coaches under the bus, and Matt Eberflus was looking like he would be the first head coach to get fired in the middle of the season. Even when Fields had the best game of his career against the Denver Broncos, the Bears still managed to blow a 28-7 lead and give up twenty-four unanswered points to lose at home. They at least rebounded with an outstanding bounce-back victory against the Washington Commanders on Thursday Night Football, largely thanks to DJ Moore absolutely torching them for 230 yards and three touchdowns. But one thing was very clear: this team was not making the playoffs.

The following week after, not only did they lose a close game to the Minnesota Vikings, but Fields got injured and backup quarterback Tyson Bagent took over for the next four weeks. He did decent for a backup quarterback with a 2-2 record, but that’s the best I can really give him since he showed that he was nowhere near a starter. When Fields returned for their road matchup against the Detroit Lions, they blew another double-digit lead in humiliating fashion to lose the game by five points, but you could sense that the team was getting better. The defense was creating a lot of takeaways that kept the Bears alive in so many of their games, and the offense was at least showing flashes of what they could become. They picked off Josh Dobbs four times in an ugly Monday night victory against the Minnesota Vikings, then thwarted the Lions at home the following week, and ended their final two home games of the year with resounding victories against the Arizona Cardinals and Atlanta Falcons. However, there were still questions that still need to be answered today.

When you don’t know if Justin Fields is the guy heading into his fourth season for the team, that’s a pretty good sign that he isn’t and that they need to make a huge decision in these next two months. Thanks to the Carolina Panthers, the Bears have the first overall pick for the second straight year. They have three options to choose from. The first is that they can trade down again and get another massive haul of draft picks and potential players. Second, they can stick with the pick and maybe draft Marvin Harrison Jr. or somebody else that they think will change life in Chicago. The third is that they can move on from Justin Fields and draft Caleb Williams with the first overall pick. Whichever one that they decide to choose, I don’t see the Bears getting exponentially better. They actually have a really good roster, but the problem is that they don’t have the best coaching staff nor the best ownership group overseeing the football decisions that are being made on and off the field. So much is on the line for so many people involved within the organization, and if they screw up once again, then the McCaskeys just might as well sell the team.

CINCINNATI BENGALS (9-8)

This was just a really chaotic and frustrating year for the Cincinnati Bengals, from the moment that Joe Burrow injured his calf in the first week of training camp to the day that they were eliminated from playoff contention against the Kansas City Chiefs. The first stretch of the season was absolutely forgettable for this football team. Burrow was incredibly limited due to the injury, which forced the offense to not open up the playbook, and the defense was incredibly struggling with many of their veterans from last year no longer on the team. They started the first four games of the season 1-3, which included a monsoon 24-3 punking against the Cleveland Browns and then an even worse 27-3 defeat to the Tennessee Titans. They were at least a decent 3-3 heading into the bye week, which gave Burrow more time to heal his injury, and he absolutely took the stage once he got back on the field. With two straight victories against the San Francisco 49ers and Buffalo Bills, it looked like the Bengals were back in shape and that they would get back to the playoffs. Until one Thursday night matchup shifted their whole season completely.

They were 5-4 heading into a primetime game with the Baltimore Ravens, who had already beaten them 27-24 in the second week of the season. Leading up to the game, cameras caught Burrow wearing a protective brace on his throwing hand as he was walking into the stadium, but not many paid attention to it until the middle of the second quarter. On a touchdown pass to Joe Mixon that gave Cincinnati a 10-7 lead, you could see Burrow screaming in pain as he clutches onto the wrist of his throwing hand, and do the same trying to warm up on the sideline. He would be ruled out for the rest of the game and the Bengals ended up losing 34-20 as a result. When the reports revealed that he suffered a torn ligament and that his season was over, we all thought that their season was over. But one person that kept their season alive was not Joe Mixon, not Ja’Marr Chase, not even Tee Higgins. Instead, it was their backup quarterback Jake Browning who really shocked the world with his impressive play.

Heading into a Monday night bout with the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Bengals were 5-6 and it looked like this team was going nowhere. But Browning took the national spotlight by storm with an outstanding 354 yard performance, including his first career-game winning drive in overtime by setting up a 48 yard game-winning field goal by Evan McPherson to bring the team back to 500. Followed up with a twenty-point victory against the Indianapolis Colts and then a come-from-behind win against the Minnesota Vikings, the Bengals were 8-6 and it looked like they would be back in the postseason. Unfortunately, two straight crushing losses against the Steelers and Chiefs eliminated them from contention, ending what was just a wild rollercoaster season for this football team.

For all of the lows that the Bengals had this year, I have to give head coach Zac Taylor a lot of credit. Even though they were supposed to win their division and make another deep playoff run, he kept the team together with all of the Joe Burrow injury drama circulating around them, and they still finished with a winning record. Jake Browning did really well when he stepped in, reemphasizing the need for quality backup quarterbacks in free agency. But heading into this offseason, this team is going to look completely different. Their offensive coordinator Brian Callahan took the head coaching job for the Tennessee Titans, Tee Higgins and Tyler Boyd are unrestricted free agents, and their defense needs massive changes after a forgettable 2023 season. The good news is that the core on both sides of the ball is still intact and they will have a lot of money in cap space to make whatever improvements that they need to make. As long as Joe Burrow is fully healthy, they are going to be in playoff contention and they will be seen as the biggest threats to the Kansas City Chiefs since he is the only active guy that has beaten Patrick Mahomes in a playoff game.

CLEVELAND BROWNS (11-6)

The Browns have been under a huge microscope for the entire 2023 season and the biggest reason why is pretty obvious: the NFL world wants to see how this team can perform with Deshaun Watson at quarterback for the entire season. When he returned from a long suspension the year before, he looked incredibly rusty, and his play wasn’t anywhere close for them to return to the playoffs. Not only was Watson under immense pressure, but Kevin Stefanski as well since he was in control of the offense, as well as several key guys in the front office. The defense also needed to take a big leap with new defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, because with all of the talent that they have on all three levels, they haven’t risen to expectations either.

Through the first three weeks of the season, this team was looking pretty good. They opened the year with a dominating victory against Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals, then fumbled the game away against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday Night Football, and bounced back one week later by destroying the hapless Tennessee Titans with Ryan Tannehill at quarterback. The offense was not only going through growing pains, but they were unfortunately losing critical pieces throughout the year. They lost Jack Conklin for the entire season after Week 1 with a torn ACL and MCL, and then on Monday Night Football, the best player on the entire unit Nick Chubb was gone with a fractured leg. There was more and more uncertainty revolving around this unit, because while the defense was playing at an incredibly high level, it was once again the offense setting this team back from their goal.

Leading up to their Week 4 home matchup against the Baltimore Ravens, Deshaun Watson didn’t practice for the entire week due to a shoulder injury, and it ended up sidelining him for the next couple of weeks. The preseason fan favorite Dorian Thompson-Robinson got his first NFL career start and looked horrific in a 28-3 blowout loss, throwing three interceptions, and barely throwing for 120 yards in the process. After the bye week, they were heavy underdogs at home against the eventual NFC champion San Francisco 49ers, with PJ Walker at quarterback and Jerome Ford as the starting running back. However, they shocked the world by handing them their first loss of the season by giving up just seventeen points and relying on four field goals from Dustin Hopkins to pull off the upset. Watson was able to return the next week for their road victory against the Indianapolis Colts, but he got injured again early in the first quarter, and was sidelined for another game.

After Week 9, the Browns were 5-3 and still had a chance to fight for a playoff spot. The biggest reason why? Their vaunted defense that was their biggest strength all season long. At the conclusion of the regular season, they were first in total yards allowed and passing yards allowed, and sixth in sacks. Not only did Jim Schwartz reinvigorate this unit and give them the energy and spark that they had been lacking for years, but Myles Garrett was once again the heart and soul of the team. He earned his first Defensive Player of the Year award by totaling 14 sacks and four forced fumbles. Even though he didn’t lead the league in sacks, he was still the driving force of the best defense in football, and his presence alone was a headache for most offenses that went up against that unit.

Their most defining victory of the season was a Week 10 road matchup against the Baltimore Ravens. Watson returned for that matchup and had a horrific first half, completing just six out of twenty passes, and Cleveland was down by double-digits twice. But even with that shoulder injury still lingering, he still had a flawless second half with no incompletions and the Browns came back from a fifteen-point deficit to win the football game 33-31. Unfortunately, Watson broke a bone in his throwing shoulder, and was ruled out for the rest of the season. For the next two weeks, Thompson-Robinson got the start and looked better than he did in Week 4. He started out by squeaking out a victory against the Steelers at home and then kept it close on the road against the Denver Broncos, but he unfortunately suffered a concussion, and the offense fell apart in a 29-12 loss that sent the Browns to 7-4. Not a bad record, but the Browns just kept taking too many injuries that they couldn’t afford.

Their two tackles were gone for the rest of the year, their best offensive player is out, their two quarterbacks have suffered injuries, Grant Delpit was ruled out long-term with a groin injury, and even key depth options were sidelined. After a 36-19 blowout loss to the Los Angeles Rams with Joe Flacco as the replacement starter, their playoff hopes were looking bleaker and bleaker. Until somehow someway, the light was switched on for the 39 year old veteran and this team completely took off.

The issues that the Cleveland offense had all season long were still persistent in the final five weeks of the regular season. The running game never really took off, they kept turning the ball over, and they made games closer than they ever had to be in the first place. However, with Flacco under center, they were still pushing the ball down the field more effectively and put their defense in reasonable situations to close out games. Keep in mind, this was a quarterback that was on his freaking couch. After that loss to the Rams, the Browns won four straight with Flacco, including a Thursday night matchup against the Jets that officially clinched a spot for them in the playoffs. Looking back at it though, it was a pretty soft winning streak. They beat the Jaguars at home that was on the verge of self-destruction, the Chicago Bears, a Texans team that was without their starting quarterback, and then Trevor Siemian with the freaking Jets. However, I think all of us were rooting for Flacco to take this team deep in the playoffs, which was a huge reason why he won the Comeback Player of the Year Award.

Unfortunately, their season came to a crushing end as they crumbled against the Houston Texans in the Wild Card. It wasn’t that long when these two teams played against each other for the first time in the regular season, when Amari Cooper torched the Houston defense for 264 5 receiving yards and the defense shut down Case Keenum in a 36-22 dominating victory. However, when January came around, the Texans had their quarterback fully healthy and the defense knew what they had to do this time around. Both offenses went back-and-forth for the first seventeen minutes of play, but once CJ Stroud put Houston up ahead by double-digits, the Browns offense fell apart with back-to-back pick sixes and the team got blown out 45-14. It turns out that Stroud is nowhere near Keenum and all Houston needed to do was take Amari Cooper and David Njoku out of the gameplan.

Grading their season is complicated because with all of the injuries that they dealt with over the course of the season and the adversities that they have had to face, this Browns team did a hell of a job doing their best to overcoming them. Kevin Stefanski deserves the most credit for how this year has gone for them because with five different starting quarterbacks, they still made the playoffs with a quarterback that rose out of the ashes. It’s the biggest reason why he won the Coach of the Year Award for the second time in his career, but the same question that we asked last year is the same that needs to be answered today: how can this team perform with a fully healthy Deshaun Watson? If they go through another season where they struggle mightily with him and perform exponentially better with him on the sidelines, then that contract will go down as the worst in NFL History, and it won’t even be close.

DALLAS COWBOYS (12-5)

I had a feeling that after the Cowboys got destroyed in the playoffs by the seventh seed Green Bay Packers that the media was going to be “stunned”, that they didn’t see this coming, that they really thought that this year would be different for this team. We’ve heard Skip Bayless and Michael Irvin constantly gloat, Stephen A. Smith mock the fans for getting ahead of themselves, and even Scooter Magruder delude himself into thinking that they would win the Super Bowl. Was I surprised that Dallas lost? Absolutely not. I was laughing because I didn’t think that the score was going to be that bad, but I knew that this Cowboys team was fraudulent from beginning to finish. Allow me to explain.

Heading into Week 1, we all knew what type of team they would be throughout the year. They would play strong in the regular season since they have plenty of talent on both sides of the ball and they certainly don’t have a terrible head coach, but they would eventually get ahead of themselves and find a way to crumble apart when the lines shine the brightest. Just look at how this year has gone from them. They’ve certainly had dominating and convincing performances, but look at the teams that they did so against. Against the bottom-feeding teams, they look like they should win the NFC. Do you realize that they were 8-1 against teams under 500, and 4-4 against those that had a winning record? The four that they beat were the Los Angeles Rams in a slump, the Seattle Seahawks, the Detroit Lions thanks to a controversial flag at the end of the game, and the Eagles on the verge of a collapse. The four that they lost? A 42-10 demolition against the eventual NFC champion 49ers, a gut-wrenching loss to the Eagles on the road when they were still at their peak, a 31-10 blowout loss to the Buffalo Bills, and then another close loss to a Miami Dolphins team that got their first victory against a team with a winning record. Heck, the Cardinals with Joshua Dobbs beat the Cowboys! I know that Dak Prescott lead the league in touchdown passes this year. I get that CeeDee Lamb made Richard Sherman eat his words about not being a number one option by leading the league in receptions and targets. I also know that Micah Parsons is an absolute game-changer when he is on the field because of his explosiveness and agility, and that the defense didn’t have Tre’Von Diggs for most of the season with a torn ACL. But here’s what we also knew about this team from the very beginning.

The Dallas Cowboys haven’t been to a Super Bowl, let alone an NFC Championship, in close to 30 years. The current head coach of the team Mike McCarthy won one Super Bowl in 2010, mainly because he had a future Hall of Fame quarterback that he had been piggy-backing off of for most of his career. Dak Prescott might have outplayed Russell Wilson and Tom Brady in his two playoff victories, but he hasn’t proven that he can lead a championship team PERIOD! In 2023, Dallas finished with a 12-5 season for the third straight year and won the NFC East, partly in thanks to the Philadelphia Eagles completely collapsing after a 10-1 start to the season. They were undefeated at home and was fortunate to host another one in the Wild Card as the second seed in the NFC Playoffs against the seventh seed Green Bay Packers.

Aaron Rodgers might not be the quarterback of that team anymore, but the Packers might have another face of the franchise on their hands. Even though they backed their way into the playoffs, Jordan Love still finished second in touchdown passes and lifted them into that spot in the first place with his tremendous play. Why did I predict that the Packers would pull off the upset? Well, there were a few reasons. First off, Aaron Jones always plays incredibly well when he returns to Texas. Second, I thought that the Packers offense could really keep this Cowboys defense on its heels and make enough plays down the stretch to close the deal. But third and more importantly, the Packers have a better postseason record in AT&T Stadium than the Dallas Cowboys do in their entire history. Remember that Super Bowl victory I just brought up? When McCarthy got his one Super Bowl ring? Well, they won that championship in that stadium. So let’s remember what happened in that game.

The Cowboys didn’t just lose, they got absolutely annihilated. They were down 27-0 late in the second quarter and 48-16 early in the fourth. Aaron Jones, unsurprisingly, had an outstanding postseason performance by rushing for close to 120 yards and scoring three times on the ground. But more importantly, Love threw for just over 270 yards and three touchdown passes. It wasn’t that he was completing passes into tight windows, but there were so many plays in which the Cowboys defenders weren’t within five to ten yards of the intended targets. Don’t bring up that Dak Prescott threw for over 400 yards, he was going up against a prevent defense in literal garbage time and he was doing nothing but padding his stats. That loss was completely inevitable the moment that the matchup was announced, but nobody wanted to believe it at all. You can only hope that things will change within the organization, but that will never happen because Jerry Jones is still the owner and wants to make sure that the team is still in the headlines. The fact that they’re bringing Mike McCarthy back shows that they will never be given the respect that they think they deserve, because while Jerry will say that everything is fine, he’s been saying that for the last thirty years. More importantly, with Dan Quinn no longer there and Mike Zimmer taking the reigns, how long is it going to be before the defense eventually collapses? Here we go… back to the start of the cycle.

DENVER BRONCOS (8-9)

Several Broncos fans were incredibly hopeful at the start of the season that this team was going to be ten times better than the year before. Not only was Nathaniel Hackett no longer the head coach, but the team hired a man with plenty of credentials in Sean Payton, somebody that can give them a new identity and brand. We were all skeptical to see how well he and Russell Wilson can work together, but not only could the offense improve, but the defense would still be as strong after a strong 2022 season that kept several of their games competitive and close. Sean Payton let it be known that Hackett pulled off the worst coaching job in NFL History, and he wanted to prove that the Broncos would take the league storm. But through the first five weeks, it was an absolute nightmare of a start.

The lowest of their losses took place in Week 3 against the hot-shot Miami Dolphins on the road. To say that this team got blown out would be putting it too nicely. How would you feel if I said that the defense gave up seventy points for the first time since the 1970’s? After that game, many thought that Sean Payton was not going to last very long and that Vance Joseph’s days as a defensive coordinator are gone for good. Two weeks later, they suffered another humiliating loss to the New York Jets 31-21. Who was the offensive coordinator of that team? Nathaniel Hackett. After a Thursday night loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, the Broncos were 1-5 and once again, we all thought that this was going to be one of the worst teams in the league. But for the next seven games, Denver ended up reaching their objective, it just took a little longer than they thought. They won five straight games in that span and surged to 7-6, with a real shot of making the playoffs.

Their most two prominent victories in that span came in back-to-back weeks. They stunned the Kansas City Chiefs at home 24-9 by not giving up a single touchdown to Patrick Mahomes, and then followed that up with a gutsy Monday Night victory against Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills 24-22, letting the world know that the Broncos were not going to be mocked anymore. The biggest reason for this incredible turnaround is because of their defense playing absolutely out of their minds. In those seven weeks, the highest amount of points that they gave up was 22 and the youth was really starting to come out of the shadows. Offensively, Russell Wilson wasn’t exactly putting the team on his back, but he was certainly not screwing it up either and came up with a few game-winning drives that gave the team more and more momentum. If you told me that he would finish the year with 26 touchdowns and 8 interceptions, I would say that it’s an incredible bounce-back season. But he barely threw for 3,000 yards, so he was playing more like a game-manager than a franchise quarterback. The best player on the offense was without a doubt Courtland Sutton, with several highlight reel catches in incredibly timely moments of the game, both in wins and losses.

Unfortunately, the final four weeks of the season for the Broncos ended up costing them a shot at backing their way into the postseason. It started with an ugly blowout loss to the Detroit Lions 42-17, and then carried its way over into a heartbreaking Christmas Eve defeat to the four win New England Patriots with Bailey Zappe. Now the team was 7-8 and their odds were getting slimmer by the day. That was when Sean Payton made the biggest decision of the season by deciding to bench Russell Wilson for the final two games of the year. Not because of performance issues mainly, but because if he gets injured, it would trigger a clause in his contract that would force them to give him tens of millions of dollars in the next year or two. I personally hated that decision and thought it was incredibly classes. I know that he wasn’t playing great but you know that you can’t make a decision like that when your team still has a chance to make the playoffs. It didn’t matter because even though they beat the Los Angeles Chargers the following week to improve to 8-8, they were eliminated from the playoffs via tiebreaker.

This is not going to be a fun offseason for the Broncos. They’re $13 million over the cap, they don’t know who their quarterback is going to be for this upcoming season, and they don’t have the depth that’s going to make any of us believe that they are going to have a shot of making the playoffs next year. They’ll be an average team at best, and given the state of the NFL right now, that’s nowhere close to good enough.

DETROIT LIONS (12-5)

This was by far the most successful season that the Detroit Lions had in the history of their franchise. It took three years for Dan Campbell, but he ended up leading his team to the NFC Championship for the first time since 1991, with a heavily revamped offense and a gritty defense that he’s been wanting since he took the job. The way that it ended was incredibly heartbreaking, but it was incredibly fun watching this football team and you can only hope that they get back to that same spot next year.

Week 1 proved that this Lions team was going to be more respected than they had ever been. They visited the Kansas City Chiefs on the first day of the NFL season and pulled off an incredible 21-20 upset in Arrowhead Stadium. Sure, Travis Kelce and Chris Jones didn’t play in that game, but the NFL world celebrated the Lions get the first of the many victories that they would earn throughout the year. Throughout the entire regular season, this team picked up where they left off in the second half of the 2022 campaign. Their offense was incredibly efficient, they were aggressive, and promisingly balanced. Defensively, they were far from a top ten or fifteen unit in the league, but they were opportunistic and all it took was one takeaway for that unit to completely take over the game. Sure, we worried about their chances after a dooming blowout loss to the Baltimore Ravens, a surprising Thanksgiving defeat to the Packers, and then a self-inflicted upset to the Chicago Bears. But they still won the NFC North for the first time in their history with a 12-5 record, and it could have been 13-4 if it wasn’t for a certain flag that took place in their heartbreaking 20-19 loss to the Dallas Cowboys.

Heading into the postseason, the whole NFL world was hoping that they could make a deep run in the playoffs, myself included. Their first one was a huge challenge as they took on the Los Angeles Rams, and it wasn’t just any quarterback starting for them, but the best one that the Lions ever had in Matthew Stafford. It was the gritty and competitive matchup that we expected, but Detroit made more plays and pulled off the home victory 24-23. The following week, they walked into a similar situation against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but their defense came up with two interceptions and the offense stayed ahead as they advanced to the NFC Championship with a 31-23 win. Now they were one win away from making the Super Bowl for the very first time, with a shot of ending the season the way they started it in September. In the first half against the San Francisco 49ers, the Lions looked absolutely dominant. Their offense scored points on all four of their drives, the defense was showing their fortitude, and they headed into the locker room leading 24-7. But once the Lions failed to get the first down on a fourth down and two, the game completely got out of hand and San Francisco outscored them 27-7 to send Detroit home. The game was in the palm of their hands and it completely slipped away from them. The defense not only got exposed, but the offense failed to capitalize on the chances that they were given, and fans like myself were just incredibly crushed.

Dan Campbell said it that this year might have been their only shot, and he wasn’t wrong, because now everybody knows who the Detroit Lions are and they’re not going to be taken lightly anymore. The good news is that offensive coordinator Ben Johnson will be back with the team after he was the hottest head coaching prospect on the market for the last few months, so the offense will already stay the same and be the biggest reason why they will try to run it back. They also have a good amount of cap space to spend in free agency. Obviously, adding more to the defense is a good start, but I don’t know how much better they will be under an Aaron Glenn scheme that just hasn’t worked in the three years that he has been calling plays. This team will definitely have a realistic chance of getting back to the conference championship, and they will absolutely be the favorites to win the NFC North again, but that doesn’t mean that teams aren’t catching up with them, including the ones in their own division.

GREEN BAY PACKERS (9-8)

After the Packers traded Aaron Rodgers to the New York Jets in March, many of us asked the same question: what would the future hold for this franchise with Jordan Love as the new starting quarterback? Green Bay has had a successful history with the position, from Bart Starr winning the team five championships in the fifties and sixties, to Brett Favre winning three MVPs and a Super Bowl in the nineties, to Aaron Rodgers winning four MVPs and a championship in the 2010s. Fans were hoping that Love would follow that successful line and make a name for himself. Prior to this year, he had only made one career start in 2021 against the Kansas City Chiefs and was clearly not ready to become a starter, but now was his time to shine.

Through the first few weeks of the season, things were trending upwards. They spoiled any hope that Bears fans had at the beginning of the year by blowing them out at Soldier Field, and then rallied from a 17-0 deficit against the Saints a couple of weeks later, improving to 2-1. However, the Packers fell into a long and frustrating slump that exposed their flaws more than it showed their strengths. The defense got little to no pressure on the quarterback and their secondary was even worse. Aaron Jones was in and out of the lineup, so the offense didn’t have a prominent running game. Their wide receiving group was incredibly young and inexperienced, so it took a while for them to feel comfortable on the field. But more importantly, Jordan Love never made any real progress in his development, and in fact took steps back with constant turnovers. They lost five out of six games after Week 3, falling to 3-6 with little to no hope of making the playoffs. Beating the Chargers at home on November 19 was a promising bounce-back victory, especially since Love threw for over 300 yards and a go-ahead touchdown pass to win them the football game, but little did we know the type of leap that he would make that allowed him to stay on a higher path.

Entering Thanksgiving afternoon against the Detroit Lions, the Packers were pretty big underdogs against the eventual division champions, but they put the world on notice with a surprising upset. The lucky number for Green Bay was that game: three fumble recoveries, three sacks by Rashan Gary, and three touchdown passes by Jordan Love. But their most defining victory had to be the following week, when they took on the eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, and Jordan Love outplayed Patrick Mahomes with three more touchdown passes and close to 270 passing yards. Yet just when things were starting to turn things around for Green Bay, they took two more steps back with a couple of gut-wrenching losses. They started with a sloppy and frustrating defeat to Tommy DeVito and the New York Giants on Monday Night Football, and then the defense allowed Baker Mayfield to have a perfect passer rating in a loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers that gave the Packers a 6-8 record. Fortunately, through the final three weeks of the year, Jordan Love put the team on his back and achieved what many fans were hoping that he would do for this team the way that Aaron Rodgers had done in the past. They won all of their final remaining games to clinch a playoff spot as the seventh seed. In that span, he threw seven touchdowns and zero interceptions. Throughout the entire regular season, he was second in touchdown passes with 32 and only finished with eleven interceptions, thus cementing himself as the face of the franchise.

Entering the Wild Card round, they were pretty big underdogs against the second seed in the playoffs, which was the Dallas Cowboys. They obviously had the better talent on the football field. Dak Prescott was having an MVP caliber season with thirty-six touchdowns and nine picks. CeeDee Lamb finished the regular season leading the league in targets and receptions. The defense was loaded on all three levels and continued to be a top ten unit. They entered the game undefeated at home and they were hoping to continue that streak into the postseason. Yet, the Packers had a few things up their sleeves that gave them an advantage. The first was that Aaron Jones always manages to have the best games of his career when he plays against the Cowboys, particularly when they play at AT&T Stadium, because he grew up in El Paso and has extra motivation when he returns home. The second is that while Joe Barry’s defense has been rightfully criticized for their lack of depth and inconsistency, the Packers also have a promising quarterback that put together a successful track record of beating some quality teams, so there’s no reason why you can sleep on him. But the third is more from a historical perspective: the Packers have more playoff success in that stadium than the Cowboys do PERIOD! Hell, Aaron Rodgers won his only Super Bowl in that building, so who is to say that Jordan Love can’t get the victory with nothing to lose?

Not only did the Packers become the first seventh seed to knock off the two seed, but they flat out annihilated the Dallas Cowboys from start to finish. They were up 27-0 towards the end of the second quarter, and then freaking 48-16 in the fourth! The defense picked off Prescott twice, including one from Darnell Savage that was taken all the way to the house. Don’t worry that he threw for over 400 yards, most of them were in literal garbage time against a prevent defense. Jordan Love, on the other hand, was flat out phenomenal. If one of his receivers didn’t drop a pass near the end, he would have had a perfect passer rating, as he threw just five incompletions for 271 yards and three touchdown passes. Aaron Jones, unsurprisingly, torched that Dallas defense for close to 120 yards with a hat trick touchdown afternoon of his own. But the most shocking fact was that for half of the game, not one Cowboys defender was within five to ten yards of their intended targets. I was not surprised at all that Green Bay won the game, but I didn’t think the score was going to be that bad!

Unfortunately, their season came to an end the following week against nobody else than the San Francisco 49ers. This isn’t the first time that the Packers lost to this team in the playoffs, and I doubt it’ll be the last. While they did have a shot to pull off another upset with a 21-14 lead in the fourth quarter, the defense eventually broke down and Love couldn’t finish the job in the end. His final pass was pretty Brett Favre-esque, throwing an interception across his body that sealed the deal.

This season was by no means a failure for the Green Bay Packers. This team wasn’t given much of a shot to do anything at the beginning of the year, they looked lost in the water in the middle of the season, and they still overcame the obstacles to make the run that they made. They were a team that beat the eventual division champions in their house on Thanksgiving, the eventual Super Bowl champions on primetime television, and the second seed in the playoffs as underdogs! Even though they didn’t win a championship this year, there is so much hope on the horizon for this team. Love is going to earn himself a pretty big contract extension and I think it is very safe to say that the Packers quarterback tree will continue to grow beautifully.

HOUSTON TEXANS (10-7)

Nobody expected the type of season that the Houston Texans had in 2023. I thought that this was going to be one of the worst teams in the NFL, mainly because they were a young and inexperienced team that had to start from scratch for the third year in a row. At the end of the season, we’ve come down to three conclusions. The Texans might have found the best head coach they’ve had in their history with DeMeco Ryans, they have a new driving force of the defense in Will Anderson, and they officially found their face of the franchise with the second overall pick by taking CJ Stroud. The future is bright and sunny in Houston and they can only go up from here.

Houston didn’t get off to the best start, however. They were 0-2, Stroud took eleven sacks in that span, and it looked like the same results would just keep appearing throughout the year. But to all of our surprise, they stuck together and ended up being one of the biggest surprise teams of the season. There were a couple of setbacks along their journey, such as losing a gritty matchup to the Atlanta Falcons and giving the Carolina Panthers the first of their two wins of the season, but many of their wins made us forget those woes. Their most defining victory, in my opinion, had to be their Week 9 home matchup against Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Texans had a pretty rocky first half and trailed by as much as ten points. To make matters worse, their star kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn was ruled out of the game due to an injury, so there were even more obstacles for Houston to climb. However, in a back-and-forth offensive shootout, CJ Stroud had the game of his life. He threw for 470 yards and FIVE touchdown passes, including the go-ahead game winner to another rookie sensation in Tank Dell that won them the game 39-37. The following week, he outplayed Joe Burrow in Cincinnati that let the world know that Houston was officially a sleeper team in the postseason, as he threw for 356 more yards and drove his team into field goal range that set up the game-winning kick from Matt Ammendola.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out any of the other key contributors to this Texans offense. CJ Stroud might have been the runaway offensive rookie of the year, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other players that had breakout years of their own. I have to start with Nico Collins, a third year wideout whose career was pretty much on thin ice before he had a promising quarterback throwing him the football. He caught eighty passes for 1,297 yards and eight touchdowns, with a total of 549 yards after the catch, which ranked ninth out of everybody else in the league. Before he suffered a season-ending injury late in the year, Tank Dell was having a phenomenal rookie year, totaling 709 yards and seven touchdowns in just ten games played, showing that late-round picks can end up being one of the best players on your team. Devin Singletary wasn’t expected to do too much when he arrived in Houston, but towards the midway point of the year, he exploded and ran for close to 900 yards with over 200 carries! Along with Dalton Schultz and Noah Brown serving as reliable veteran presences, this Texans offense was a surprisingly fun one to watch, especially with an offensive line that was constantly rotating around.

The Texans might not have had the best defense in the league, but they were opportunistic and had a bunch of playmakers that could rise to the occasion at any moment. I already talked about Will Anderson Jr., who won Defensive Rookie of the Year after finishing his first season with a rookie-leading seven sacks, but there were plenty more. Jonathan Greenard might have earned himself a big payday with a 12.5 sack campaign, which was tied for tenth amongst everyone else, the same as Montez Sweat and more than Nick Bosa! Second-year linebacker Christian Harris had an underrated sophomore season and became a key staple of that defense, finishing with 101 tackles, seven passes defended, and a forced fumble. In the secondary, Derek Stingley Jr. also had a pretty underlooked season, because he lead his team with five interceptions and thirteen passes defended, which is a huge leap from how he did in his rookie year. DeMeco Ryans did a hell of a job bringing some fire and intensity into this defense, and his motivation and leadership is a huge reason why the Texans are in the position that they are in right now.

By the end of Week 13, the Texans were 7-5 with a real shot of making the postseason. However, things went a bit sideways the next week in a shocking 30-6 defeat to the New York Jets. Not only did they lose the game, but they also lost their quarterback for the next couple of weeks due to a concussion, which put their season on hold for a brief period of time. In their following game against the Tennessee Titans, their defense took over the game by sacking Will Levis six times, and Ka’imi Fairbairn put on the finishing touches in his return from IR by sending the game-winning field goal down the uprights to win 19-16 in overtime. They would lose the following week in blowout fashion to the Cleveland Browns at home, mainly due to the fact that Amari Cooper torched them for 265 yards and the offense was flat out lifeless without CJ Stroud. But not only did the defense snap out of that funk, but Stroud returned to the field, and the team was able to regain the spark plug of their team. With another victory against the Tennessee Titans to improve to 9-7, they headed into an all-or-nothing Saturday night grudge match against their division rival Indianapolis Colts.

Whomever won that game was going to clinch a spot in the playoffs, while the other team would unfortunately be eliminated from playoff contention. The game went exactly the way everybody hoped it would: both teams giving it everything that they’ve got, each offense doing what they can to get points on the board, with the defense trying to make the final stop. Stroud had an efficient night with just six incompletions and over 260 passing yards, and Nico Collins caught all nine of his targets for 195 yards, but it was all up to the defense to show their opportunistic passion once again. They might have given up close to 190 yards to Jonathan Taylor, but that didn’t stop them from getting the final stop, and the Texans managed to hold on for the 23-19 victory. One day later, the Jaguars lost to the Tennessee Titans that eliminated them from the playoffs, so that defeat right there gave Houston the AFC South title! Imagine that just for a minute. Over the last couple of years, the Texans fired two different head coaches after one season with terrible quarterback play and a team with a lost identity, but this new regime has completely given the fans something that they hadn’t experienced in forever: hope.

In the playoffs, not too much was expected out of them, and in fact they were considered underdogs against the fifth-seed Cleveland Browns. You can see why, they had the best defense in football and their offense had a resurgence with a 39 year old Joe Flacco going back in time to save the day. More importantly, they had already beaten the Texans in that stadium just a few weeks earlier, so there was no reason why they couldn’t do it again from their point of view. However, CJ Stroud is ten times better than Case Keenum, and there was no way in hell that the defense was going to let Amari Cooper abuse this secondary again. The first twenty minutes of the game went back-and-forth for both offenses, but the Texans headed into halftime with a ten-point lead, and then completely dominated the final thirty minutes of play. Stroud might have thrown three touchdown passes in the first half, but the Houston defense started the third quarter with back-to-back pick sixes that just completely blew the game wide open. One final touchdown from Devin Singletary put the Texans up 45-14 and the writing was on the wall for the Cleveland Browns.

Unfortunately, their season ended the way that it started: a humiliating and forgettable loss to the Baltimore Ravens. The offense couldn’t get any points on the board, the only touchdown that the Texans scored was off of a punt return, and the defense just eventually broke down in the second half. But having said that, this was a pretty fun year for the Texans. CJ Stroud arguably had the best rookie season out of any quarterback in NFL History, throwing for over 4100 yards with twenty-three touchdowns and five interceptions, winning a division title and playoff game in just his first year. Peyton Manning, Baker Mayfield, and Justin Herbert might have broken the touchdown pass record in their rookie seasons, but here’s the catch. Neither of them made the playoffs until their second or third years in the league. The Texans have their face of the franchise, the heart and soul of their defense, and an incredible mind and person at head coach. When you have all three determined, there is no doubt in my mind that this team is going to continue to have sustained success.

INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (9-8)

Another promising surprise team this year has to be the Indianapolis Colts, especially with how dramatic their offseason became. Any hope that their fans had was clouded due to the rift between owner Jim Irsay and star running back Jonathan Taylor. He started training camp on the PUP List because he was still recovering from an ankle injury, and then demanded a trade because they weren’t willing to give him a long-term extension, and this was something that nobody wanted to deal with because this was supposed to be a fresh start for the Colts. They have a first-year head coach in Shane Steichen, an intriguing rookie quarterback in Anthony Richardson, and a team that is just hoping to prove that last year was nothing but a fluke. Given everything that this team went through this year, the Colts had a pretty good season.

Unfortunately, Richardson didn’t have a chance to put together a full rookie season. He suffered a concussion in their Week 2 victory against the Houston Texans and then severely sprained his shoulder in their Week 5 win against the Tennessee Titans, knocking him out for the rest of the season. However, we saw some upside from the fourth overall pick out of Florida, but all we can hope for is that he keeps trending in the right direction. Gardner Minshew took over for Richardson and did well for a backup quarterback. He wasn’t exactly an instant game-changer, but he was serviceable and was at least partly responsible for the breakouts of a few rising players. First off, the running game rebounded from a dismal 2022 season. Jonathan Taylor ended up getting the extension that he wanted, and while he only played ten games, he still ran for over 740 yards and scored seven times on the ground. Whenever he was out of the lineup, Zack Moss filled his shoes big time and ended up having some of the best games of his career, starting with a Week 3 upset win against the Baltimore Ravens. Not only did he score their only touchdown of the game, but he carried the ball thirty times and ran for 122 yards, propelling them further and further down the field to set up five field goals from Matt Gay to win the game 22-19 in overtime. In the passing game, Michael Pittman Jr. played phenomenal in a contract season, catching 109 passes for 1,152 yards, which is good enough for him to earn a pretty big contract for whomever decides to offer one to him. But no matter where he goes, the Colts will at least know that Josh Downs can build upon his rookie success, especially since he totaled over 770 yards on just sixty-eight catches. The best part about their improved offense is that their line was no longer the trainwreck that it was in 2022. It still gave up 41 sacks, but it was certainly a lot better than the fluke that they had the season before.

The one thing that I was certainly not surprised about with this team was their defense. There were a few upsides. They totaled 51 sacks, which was the fifth highest in the NFL. They had four guys between eight and nine takedowns, and the leader was not Kwity Paye nor DeForest Buckner, but Samson Ebukam with 9.5! Their linebacker room continued to be one of the deepest units in the league, starting with Zaire Franklin, who lead their team with 179 tackles and it was four fewer than the league-leader Bobby Wagner. However, the flaws from last year were still apparent, which was unsurprising considering that Gus Bradley stayed at defensive coordinator. They ranked 24th in total yards per game and rushing yards per game, but worst of all, they gave up the fifth most points out of anybody in the league.

After Richardson was ruled out for the rest of the season with that shoulder injury, the Colts lost three straight games to fall to 3-5, with little to no chance of making at least some type of turnaround. But Indianapolis showed their resilience and ended up winning four in a row to get two games above 500! Their first two victories were at least somewhat expected, they were going up against two of the worst teams in the league, but they let everyone else know that this team might be a sleeper after their victory against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and especially after their overtime win against the Tennessee Titans. All three phases stepped up in that Tennessee game. The special teams blocked two punts, the defense came up with six sacks, and Gardner Minshew threw the game-winning touchdown pass to Michael Pittman that put him over 300 passing yards. At that point, the Colts were almost guaranteed to clinch a playoff spot, but their season was far from over.

To close out the year, Indianapolis was pretty on-and-off, which was something that this team couldn’t afford that late in the season. They would remind us why they are a sleeper team with wins against the Steelers and Raiders, two teams that they needed to beat to keep their season alive, but then tell us an entirely different story with two complete stinkers against the Falcons and Bengals. Their final game of the season was the biggest by far, because it was not against just any division rival, but one that was trying to eliminate Indianapolis from playoff contention. Whomever won that game was going to live for another day in January, while the other would unfortunately be sent home.

The game went the way everybody it would hope: a grudge match between two extremely competitive teams, the offenses did everything they could to get points on the board, and it was up to the defense to get the final stop. The Colts couldn’t slow down CJ Stroud as they forced just six incompletions and gave up over 260 passing yards, but Indianapolis was having no problem moving the ball down the field either. Gardner Minshew didn’t have an outstanding game with just 141 yards, but Jonathan Taylor was carrying them the entire way with close to 190 yards on thirty carries, and they had the ball in their hands in the final minutes of play. Their season would be decided on a fourth and one at the fifteen yard line, needing a touchdown to win the game. Instead of Taylor or even Zack Moss on the field, the Colts had rookie Tyler Goodson take the field on the biggest play of their lives. Wide open in the flat, Minshew threw the ball in his direction and it appeared that it would be a first down. But not only was the pass completely behind the intended target, it fell out of the rookie’s hands and the Colts turned it over on downs.

It was an absolutely heartbreaking ending to what was a surprisingly impressive season for Indianapolis, but it all left fans with more hope for the future than uncertainty. Shane Steichen has proven to be one hell of a head coach, getting the team to rally together around a series of obstacles thrown at them. Jonathan Taylor is still one of the best running backs in the league when he is fully healthy and is going to continue to be the face of this team. But there are still a couple of questions that need to be answered. Will the team keep Michael Pittman Jr.? How is Anthony Richardson going to play coming off of that injury? What changes are they going to make to the defense? While I think that they are going to be a competitive headache for a lot of teams in the next few years, it’s going to take a lot for them to take a major hurdle, and it starts with the quarterback play.

JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (9-8)

Ladies and gentlemen, what we witnessed was one of the most frustrating collapses that we have seen in the modern NFL. Were the Jaguars going to go anywhere deep in the playoffs? Absolutely not. But you would think that a team that was 8-3 with sole control of the division would at least hold onto that. Instead, the defense just got worse and the offense kept finding ways to shoot themselves in the foot, thus losing five out of their final six games to eliminate this team from playoff contention. I get that Trevor Lawrence was battling a series of injuries. There was the freaky ankle sprain he had on Monday Night Football, then there were reports that he was dealing with discomfort in his knee, and then he hurt his shoulder against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I understand that he wasn’t at 100%, but that is not an excuse if you’re still starting games in the most pivotal part of the season. More importantly, most of the issues that we saw during that collapse were problems that I could see coming a mile away when they were actually winning. Allow me to explain.

When I look at this offense on paper, fully healthy, I think that they can be a strong team to watch out for in the playoffs. Trevor Lawrence rebounded strongly from the depths of hell that Urban Meyer created and was set up for an even better third season with the weapons that he had at his disposal. Travis Etienne was coming off of a year where he totaled just over five yards per carry, Christian Kirk was always a dangerous wide receiver with his speed and route-running, Evan Engram proved to be a reliable tight end that needed a change of scenery, and Zay Jones is a reliable receiver you can have as a part of your depth. But the biggest acquisition that they made was trading for Calvin Ridley at last year’s trade deadline, and he was fully prepared to return to the football field in 2023. I thought that this was the type of offense that I believed would win the Jaguars the AFC South for the second straight year, even if I didn’t think they would make it anywhere past the second round.

One thing that I was definitely right about was their defense. Just read some excerpts from this preview that I wrote back in the summer. “The defense may still have a lot of issues that they have to correct, but they are an opportunistic bunch with key playmakers that can create takeaways… Josh Allen and Travon Walker have big seasons ahead as they will hope to bring a little more edge and voracity in the pass rush… The only concern I have for this unit will be their secondary, who might have forced a lot of interceptions, but can get slowed down against some of the better offenses in the league.” I also concluded by saying that it is a secondary that LACKS DEPTH, and that was exactly the case this season.

For the record, the Jaguars finished with forty sacks this year. 69% of them came from both Josh Allen and Travon Walker. Allen had the best season of his life in a contract year with 17.5 sacks (second in the league), two forced fumbles, and an interception! The first overall pick from last year Travon Walker had a better sophomore season as he finished with double-digit sacks, and the biggest hope is that he continues to trend upward. Another quiet positive was that Foyesade Oluokon still continues to be a valuable asset for this Jacksonville defense, who finished with 173 tackles, which was fourth in the league. But besides that, this unit was as vulnerable as I thought it would be in the beginning of the year. They finished 22nd in total yards per game and 26th in passing yards per game, but they still totaled 27 takeaways, which ranked pretty high amongst every other defense in the league.

They didn’t exactly get off to the best start in the first few weeks. Even though they beat the Colts to start the year, they dropped their next two at home to the Chiefs and Texans, dropping them to 1-2. However, this team regained its focus and found its true identity with five straight wins, including back-to-back games in London against the Falcons and Buffalo Bills. However, as I watching this offense throughout the year, I was noticing a lot of flaws that not a lot of teams were exposing. They weren’t terrible, don’t get me wrong, but it just looked like they didn’t have a set gameplan in place. Travis Etienne wasn’t taking off the way he did last year, Trevor Lawrence was turning the ball over more than he did the season before, and neither Calvin Ridley nor Christian Kirk were getting involved in the gameplan as freqeuently as they should have been. Overall, this team wasn’t any better or worse than last year, and it just felt like the script was just going to repeat itself. They ended up getting exposed after the bye week to the eventual NFC champion San Francisco 49ers 34-3, but they bounced back with two straight victories against the Texans and Titans to improve to 8-3, with a 98% chance of winning the AFC South! Even though Houston and Indianapolis were catching up, Jacksonville was still ahead by a pretty big margin, but little did we know how the final six weeks of the year would play out for this football team.

It really began with their home matchup against the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday Night Football in Week 13. Their opponent had recently lost Joe Burrow for the rest of the season with a wrist injury and Jacksonville was supposed to win this game pretty handidly. It ended up being a pretty exciting matchup with both offenses playing extremely well, but the Jaguars suffered a couple of notable injuries that ended up being the turning point for their entire season. Not only did Chrsitian Kirk hurt himself on his first catch of the game, but Trevor Lawrence sprained his ankle late in the fourth quarter, which sucked out the energy of that entire stadium. It ended up going to overtime, and while Jacksonville did get the ball to start, they couldn’t get points on the board and the Bengals pulled off the upset 34-31. Lawrence was able to play the following week in their road matchup against the Cleveland Browns, but he threw three interceptions, and they lost that game by one score. The following week on Sunday Night Football, they lost by double-digits to the Baltimore Ravens, where their offense just couldn’t buy more than seven points. Follow that up with their fourth straight loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and now the Jaguars were just 8-7. They would at least shut out the Carolina Panthers to get a winning season, but so much more was now on the line for their regular season finale against the Tennessee Titans.

Let’s just rewind to last year for just a minute. Both teams were trying to win the AFC South, and in what was an exciting grudge match, the Jaguars prevailed and captured the division title. Now the scenario was different. The Titans might have been eliminated from playoff contention, but nothing was going to stop them from playing spoiler, especially against the team that sent them home the year before. The score might have been 28-20, but the game was way worse than it appeared. Lawrence threw two more interceptions, the defense let Derrick Henry run for over 150 yards in what might have been his final game in Nashville, and the offense failed to get points on the board on their final drive of the game. The Jaguars were eliminated from postseason contention and they completed an agonizing collapse.

This season was nothing short of a failure for obvious reasons. The defense was horrible, the offense was inconsistent and didn’t really have an identity, and the team just folded once they got exposed down the stretch. As a result, Jacksonville fired most of their defensive staff, along with a couple of other assistants to assert that big changes needed to be made. Heading into 2024, there is more uncertainty than we thought there would be in August. We don’t know if Trevor Lawrence has what it takes to be a franchise quarterback, we’re hoping that Doug Pederson doesn’t revert back to making the same mistakes that he made in Philadelphia, and most importantly you’re praying to God that the team doesn’t suck so bad next year that the fans don’t come back dressing up as clowns. They’re no longer the favorites to win the AFC South next year, because CJ Stroud and the Houston Texans have completely taken over. We all know that Jacksonville is nowhere near the threats that the Ravens, Bengals, or Bills are in the AFC. They’re certainly not even in the same stratosphere as the Kansas City Chiefs. In short, the Jaguars are just an average Wild Card at best, and their Cinderella story ended just a bit quicker than we thought.

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (11-6)

Even in a “down year” for the Kansas City Chiefs, you can never rule them out of winning a championship as long as Patrick Mahomes is your quarterback. This season was very different than the ones that they’ve had in the last six years. It’s been forever since they played a playoff game on the road, let’s just start there. But more importantly, the offense was not the biggest strength of this football team. Instead, it was a unit that was more known for dropping passes and costing their team the game in big moments than they were for winning. We can talk about the night Kadarius Toney became a meme against the Lions in Week 1 with three horrible drops, how he did it again by lining up over the line of scrimmage on a game-winning touchdown, and Marquez Valdes-Scantling dropping what would’ve been the winning touchdown against the Eagles. Even Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce continuously struggled on their own throughout the regular season.

So how did they still win the AFC West? Because of their surprisingly lights-out defense. Normally, this unit would be the weak link of their team, but instead it was the furthest issue that they had all year long. The only notable guys that left this defense were Frank Clark and Juan Thornhill, so plenty of younger guys stepped up and the veterans made sure that they were key contributors as well. They gave up the second fewest total yards, the fourth fewest passing yards, and the second fewest points out of any other team in the league. They were also second in sacks, with Chris Jones and George Karlaftis leading the way with 10.5. They were the biggest reasons why they won all of their games, and they were hardly the reason why they lost all six. Here are a few examples.

Against the Lions on opening night, they only gave up fourteen points while the final seven came from a pick six off a dropped pass. When they lost to the Broncos for the first time in sixteen meetings, they still sacked Russell Wilson six times while the KC offense couldn’t score a touchdown. Against the Raiders on Christmas, they didn’t give up a single touchdown and didn’t let Aidan O’Connell complete a single pass in the second half! Steve Spagnuolo did a hell of a job with this defense and if they were any worse, this team might not have made the playoffs at all!

The Chiefs never really had an impressive regular season victory, but they did end up saving their best for the postseason, which is what makes them stand out differently than anybody else. Their only home playoff game was in the first round against the Miami Dolphins, a team that they had already beaten previously in Germany, and Kansas City was pretty much expected to run away with this victory. Against a defense that was injued to hell and an offense that can’t thrive against the better teams in the league, the Chiefs did what they were supposed to do and blew the game away 26-7. The next two weeks, however, were going to be very challenging since it would be the first two road postseason games that Patrick Mahomes would ever have to play in his career.

The third playoff battle between Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen went exactly the way we all hoped it would: both quarterbacks were playing well enough to win, but in the fourth quarter, each defenses really tightened up their gameplans. After a fake punt went nowhere for the Bills, the Chiefs were up by three and had a chance to put the game away, but Mecole Hardman gifted it right back to their opponent by fumbling the ball into the endzone for a touchback. Buffalo soon drove into Kansas City territory, and the Chiefs defense held to force a field goal, which ended up sailing wide to the right. Patrick Mahomes was back in the AFC Championship for a sixth straight year, and now it was time for him to knock down the MVP in Baltimore. The offense got off to a really fast start, scoring touchdowns on their first two possessions, and Travis Kelce completely took the game over by catching all eleven of his targets for 116 yards along with the first touchdown of the afternoon. However, the offense fell into quicksand again and it was up to the defense to save the season for the Chiefs. After Lamar tied the game at seven by throwing a touchdown pass to Zay Flowers, the Ravens only scored three more points and turned the ball over as many times. On the final offensive drive of the game, Mahomes sealed the deal by a lofting a third down pass to Marquez Valdes-Scantling to run out the clock, putting the game on the ice and locking up another trip to the Super Bowl. It’s like the 2018 New England Patriots all over again, because even when things look mediocre and stale, the Chiefs still found a way to make it back to the biggest dance in all of sports.

I’m not going to break it down play by play, but the Super Bowl was a rematch of the championship from four years ago, when they beat the San Francisco 49ers after coming back from a ten-point deficit in the fourth quarter. This time around, the script was more or less the same. The Chiefs trailed 10-3 at halftime, and after an interception by Mahomes on the third play of the second half, it looked like the doors were going to flood wide open. But Kansas City’s defense didn’t give up too many punches for the entire game, and the momentum swung in their favor after they recovered a muffed punt, and scored a go-ahead touchdown one play later. For the rest of the second half, both offenses struggled but managed to get enough points on the board, and we were in store for the second overtime in Super Bowl history. The 49ers won the coin toss and elected to receive the football, which ended up being a big mistake considering that Patrick Mahomes was going to have the ball in his hands last. San Francisco couldn’t get the touchdown that they needed and settled for three, and by the time Mahomes took the field, it was game over. Thirteen plays and seventy-five yards later, Mecole Hardman was wide open for the game-winning touchdown, and the Chiefs officially became a dynasty.

For Patrick Mahomes, it’s his third Super Bowl championship and the second straight time he’s won it without Tyreek Hill. As I said earlier, as long as you have the nucleus around you, you can’t count this team out until the clock hits zero. If there’s one player that you can never bet against, it’s the quarterback that wears #15 in red and white.

LAS VEGAS RAIDERS (8-9)

This season wasn’t as crazy as it was in 2021, but this year was still insane nonetheless. Entering the year, I don’t think any of us had the Raiders making the playoffs this year. Even though they had a decently talented offense featuring Josh Jacobs and Davante Adams, along with a defense with a beast of a pass rusher in Maxx Crosby, it was still a team with Josh McDaniels at head coach and Jimmy Garoppolo as their starting quarterback. That’s right: the antithesis of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady were going to “take the Raiders to the playoffs.” Jimmy G might have had years of success with the 49ers, but general manager Dave Ziegler threw too much money at a man coming off a broken foot and was the freaking backup to Trey Lance at the start of the 2022 season. Let’s just start at the beginning and work our way from there.

Through the first six weeks, the Raiders were actually doing okay. They weren’t garbage, they weren’t anywhere near a playoff contender, they were just average. The defense was playing well for the most part, with the exception of a 38-10 butt-kicking against the Buffalo Bills, but the offense couldn’t take off whatsoever. In a span where they went 3-3, they never scored twenty offensive points and all of their victories came by single-digits. Garoppolo was near the top of the board in the interceptions, Josh Jacobs didn’t take off the way he did the year before, and defenses had no trouble shutting Davante Adams out of the gameplan. Things really came to a boil between Weeks 7 and 8.

Jimmy Garoppolo was ruled out for the first of these road matchups due to a back injury, so Brian Hoyer got the start against the Chicago Bears. Their opponent was playing a backup quarterback of its own in Tyson Bagent, so we were due for a pretty boring matchup. That ended up being the case, but it wasn’t even close. D’Onta Foreman scored three touchdowns for the Bears and Hoyer was pretty pathetic, not getting any touchdowns on the board with two interceptions. He ended up getting benched for fourth-round rookie Aidan O’Connell, who had his first career start in Week 4 against the Chargers, only for it to get spoiled by a six-sack performance by Khalil Mack. You know, the franchise cornerstone that the Raiders traded away in 2018? That was one thing, but their next loss was just even worse. Monday Night Football against the Detroit Lions, the loveable team with the three things that can make you successful: a positive head coach, an efficient offense, and a gritty defense. The Raiders might have lost that game 26-14, but it was way worse than the score said.

The only reason why it wasn’t any worse was because the Lions were one for five in the redzone, so it really should have been a thirty-point blowout. It didn’t stop Vegas from giving up over 220 rushing yards and 272 more to Jared Goff, but the worst part about that game was the pathetic offense. Jimmy Garoppolo returned just in time for what ended up being his final game of the season, the worst of his career. He overthrew Davante Adams twice on what could have been the biggest plays of the night, and he ended up catching just one pass on seven targets. Jimmy G barely threw for 126 yards with a completion percentage of less than 50, he had no touchdowns, he threw a pick, and he got sacked six times. It was so bad that Adams slammed his helmet down on the sideline and kept his face down while sitting on the bench, thinking “I left Aaron Rodgers for this?” After that defeat, the Raiders were 3-5 and Mark Davis was not thrilled. So what did he decide to do?

Twenty-four hours after the game, Josh McDaniels and Dave Ziegler got fired. The offensive coordinator Mick Lombardi also got canned, and Jimmy Garoppolo was benched for the rest of the year. The Raiders decided to make Aidan O’Connell the full-time starter and promote linebackers coach Antonio Pierce to be the interim head coach. The toxic stench that was revolving around that organization was finally gone, and the moment that he accepted the job, Pierce was willing to bring in new enthusiasm and energy that nobody had experienced in quite a long time. From that point on, the Raiders were a different team that was actually fun watching.

Remember what I said earlier about the offense? How it didn’t score twenty points with McDaniels as the head coach? After he got fired, the Raiders scored more than that total five times. It started with their most refreshing victory of the season, dominating the New York Giants 30-6, who Pierce ironically won a Super Bowl with when he was a player. The defense finished that day with eight sacks, three of them from Maxx Crosby, and Josh Jacobs finished two yards short of 100 with a couple of touchdowns. Another victory against the other Jersey team Jets brought Vegas to a steady 5-5 record, and it felt like this team was repeating the script from the 2021 season. Unfortunately, they lost three straight games to fall to 5-8. One of them what was probably the most ugly game of the season, in which they lost to the Minnesota Vikings 3-0. No that was not a typo.

Four days later, however, they celebrated their biggest victory of the season. Not only did they beat the Chargers on Thursday Night Football, but they annihilated that lifeless team 63-21 to the point where their opponent fired the head coach and general manager. Yet, that was not their most defining win. Instead, that came on Christmas Day on the road against the Kansas City Chiefs. In a game where Aidan O’Connell didn’t complete a pass in the second half and where the offense couldn’t score a touchdown, the Raiders still pulled off a stunning upset, mainly in part because of the defense scoring back-to-back touchdowns in just seven seconds. Their defense carried Vegas to that victory and got the best present that any player or coach could have asked for. Unfortunately, they were eliminated from playoff contention one week later after a close loss to the Indianapolis Colts 23-20, but the Raiders finished the year at a promising 5-4 record with Pierce as the main guy in charge!

This next offseason is going to be critical for this football team. They already stripped the interim title off of Pierce, making him the full-time head coach, so that is at least a slam dunk. But there are so many questions to ask. Why the heck is Luke Getsy the offensive coordinator? Should we feel confident that Tom Telesco is the general manager? Who the heck is going to be the quarterback next year? Will the Raiders try to bring Josh Jacobs back? How satisfied is Davante Adams? Even though Mark Davis finally found the right head coach to lead this team, they’re not going to be better than they were this year. They’ll at least have a good amount of cap space to address the issues they need to resolve, but if they spend money on the wrong players, then they’re only going to set themselves back even further.

LOS ANGELES CHARGERS (5-12)

I’m not saying that I wasn’t surprised with the record that the Chargers finished with this year, but I also saw this type of season coming from a mile away. Even though they have a generational franchise quarterback in Justin Herbert, one that they recently gave the bag this past offseason, I knew that any type of success that he would have would be hindered by a horrible defense led by a hack of a head coach in Brandon Staley. One lesson that you should learn is that you should never have too much faith in the Chargers or else they’re just going to completely let you down, which is why I can’t stand them at all.

Justin Herbert started the first fourteen games of the season for LA and the team went 5-8 with him at starter. Five of those losses came by one score, meaning while the offense was holding up their end of the bargain by trying to deliver the wins that they needed, the defense just completely collapsed and failed. While Herbert and company have done their best, the defense has been torched by plenty of quarterbacks such as Tua Tagovailoa, Ryan Tannehill, Jordan Love, Jared Goff, and Dak Prescott.

To be fair, there were some highs early in the year. Herbert threw for over 405 yards and three touchdowns in a Week 3 victory against the Minnesota Vikings, and Keenan Allen caught eighteen passes for 215 yards in what was the best game of his career! One week later, Khalil Mack took center stage and had six sacks against the team that traded him away just five years earlier in the Las Vegas Raiders. Then in Weeks 8 and 9 they blew out the Bears and Jets, obviously two of the toughest teams you have to play every year. The Chargers were 4-4 and you would think that as long as Justin Herbert was fully healthy, that they’d have a fighting chance. But then in his final games, the team lost four out of their next five games, with their one victory being an atrocious 6-0 escape against the Bailey Zappe New England Patriots. When Herbert fractured his finger the following week at home against the Broncos, sidelining him for the rest of the year, everyone knew it was pretty much over for this team.

Everything just came completely crashing down four days after Herbert was ruled out for the rest of the year, on Thursday Night Football against the Las Vegas Raiders. I won’t blame backup quarterback Easton Stick too much for that game, since he was thrown into the worst fire imaginable, but this ended up being the final one that Brandon Staley would coach. They didn’t just lose that day, they got annihilated 63-21 in what was arguably the worst loss in the history of the franchise. You could just tell that the Chargers players completely quit in that game and were completely just lifeless from start to finish. Staley got fired 24 hours later, as well as the general manager Tom Telesco, which was honestly long overdue. Even though he’s had some hits over his career, these last few years have just been nothing but whiffs. They spent so much money on the defensive side of the ball, yet almost anybody that they’ve signed have completely blown up in their faces. Look at how Jerry Tillery, Kenneth Murray Jr., and JC Jackson have done with the team and try telling me otherwise. Joey Bosa got a big contract extension a while back, and he can’t stay on the field. Since Staley left the Rams with Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey, the defenses that he’s had have gotten worse and worse to the point where it’s essentially their own kryptonite.

Outside linebackers coach Giff Smith took the interim head coaching title for the final four games of the season and the Chargers went 0-3 in that span. Even though they kept it close and made teams really earn their points, they still got overpowered and just didn’t have enough juice to really close the deal. The nightmare season was finally over for the few fans that they have right now, but I think more will start to crawl back if their future is as bright as we all hope it can be with the new regime that they have in place.

Los Angeles started their offseason by hiring the hottest head coaching prospect on the market Jim Harbaugh, someone that not only won a National Championship with the Michigan Wolverines, but also had tremendous success as an NFL head coach when he was with the San Francisco 49ers from 2011-2014. The team is at least doing everything they can to make sure that Justin Herbert is completely happy, but new general manager Joe Hortiz is going to have a long free agency period ahead of him with a tricky cap situation to resolve. Time will tell to see how much better the Chargers will truly be in 2024, but at least there is hope for the first time in who knows how long.

LOS ANGELES RAMS (10-7)

After the turbulent offseason that the Rams had last year, I didn’t think that this team had any shot of making the playoffs. They cut several pieces on the defensive side including studs like Bobby Wagner, Leonard Floyd, and Jalen Ramsey. Matthew Stafford had an injury-riddled 2022 and many were skeptical to see how he would rebound from a lingering shoulder problem. But having said that, both Sean McVay and Raheem Morris the most credit for the type of turnaround that the Rams had this year because of how fast and efficient they were able to develop some of their younger players that really needed to take that next step and help out the veterans as much as possible.

When you look at the offense, two young guys really stood out from this season. The first has the name that many will remember the very first time you hear it: Puka Nacua. The fifth-round rookie out of BYU wasn’t expected to have a significant impact on this LA offense, and if you told me that he was going to set the rookie record in catches and yards, I would say that’s pretty unbelieveable. Well, it was! He caught 105 passes, finished fourth in the NFL with 1,486 yards, and caught six touchdowns! He was so valuable to this LA offense that many forgot that Cooper Kupp was still on the football team, who still had a pretty solid year for a receiver that only played ten games. But the second is one that I believe was pretty underappreciated by media pundits: running back Kyren Williams. There was a reason why the Rams traded Cam Akers away to the Minnesota Vikings, and it was because Sean McVay saw something in Williams that none of us did at the beginning. In just his second season, he finished third in rushing yards with 1,144 in just twelve games. He scored a total of fifteen times, twelve on the ground, and he averaged five yards per carry! Now that we’re in 2024, they have the receiving corps in place and they have a franchise running back that the team has been looking for since Todd Gurley.

Let’s transition over to the defense because there were so many guys that really came into their own. Surprisingly enough, Aaron Donald didn’t lead the team in sacks this year, even though he finished with a healthy eight. Instead, it was his potential successor Kobie Turner with nine, the third round rookie out of Wake Forest! Donald was also not the only one to finish with more than five sacks. Byron Young had the same amount, who was also a rookie taken in the third round by Tennessee. Michael Hoecht also had somewhat of a breakout year in his third season, finishing with six sacks and one forced fumble, so his contract year is going to be a pretty big one. Let’s transition to the second level, particularly with Ernest Jones. His third season was also a memorable one as he finished with 145 tackles, which placed eleventh in the NFL, more than guys like Fred Warner and Lavonte David! That man proved to be a very versatile linebacker, someone that can not only stuff the run, but also sack the quarterback (4.5) and even play coverage at times (6 passes defended). The secondary still has some work to do, the Rams defense is going to be in pretty good shape for the next few years, if not more.

However, the one player that I have to say I was most impressed with was Matthew Stafford. Obviously, he didn’t have the best season out of any quarterback, but he certainly proved that last year was just an injury-riddled fluke and that he still has plenty left in the tank. It didn’t look that way before the bye week. Through their first nine games, the team was 3-6 and Stafford had only thrown seven touchdowns with as many interceptions. Their victories showed the type of promise that this team could have, but it would have to be with somebody else at quarterback under center. It didn’t help that the defense was still incredibly young and inexperienced, so it wasn’t shocking that the team was pretty bad with neither side of the ball clicking.

I don’t know what changed during the bye week, because once they returned to the field, they shocked their way into the playoff. They won seven out of their final eight games, with their one loss taking place in overtime to the Baltimore Ravens, who ended up getting the number one seed in the AFC with the eventual MVP. Sure, it might have been a pretty paper-soft schedule, but going 7-1 after the bye week to clinch the sixth seed doesn’t just happen by accident. After the bye week, Stafford threw sixteen more touchdown passes and just four interceptions. That is pretty astonishing for a quarterback who was pretty much written off into retirement by plenty of critics and analysts. All it took was one win for this team to fully regain its confidence, and now they were back in the playoffs for the first time since they won the Super Bowl just two years earlier. But this road was going to be way tougher than it had been in the past.

Their Wild Card matchup was an emotional and challenging one for Matthew Stafford because this wasn’t just any team he went up against, it was the Detroit Lions. He was the best quarterback that the organization had, and even though he didn’t have the type of postseason success that he wanted there, he was certainly worth watching for twelve years there. The game went the way everybody hoped that it would: a grudge match between two quarterbacks hoping to get their revenge and have the last laugh. Stafford played really well in that game, throwing for 367 yards with two touchdown passes and no interceptions. Puka Nacua was arguably the best player on the field for the entire game, as he caught ten passes for 181 yards with a touchdown reception of his own. Unfortunately, n ot only was Detroit’s offense more efficient and consistent, but the Rams stalled out in the redzone in critical situations and they could never get out in front.

As I said earlier, I’ll give the coaching staff the most credit for how great of a job they did at developing their younger players and bringing back the energy that they needed for a long time, but this 2024 season is going to be interesting for this football team. Raheem Morris will no longer be the defensive coordinator since he took the head coaching job for the Atlanta Falcons, but they’ll at least have a decent amount of cap space to make sure that certain weaknesses get addressed. I expect them to be a competitive team once again, but it’s too early to say that this team will be a playoff contender, because they need to prove that they can beat the teams on their level as well.

MIAMI DOLPHINS (11-6)

Out of all the teams that made the playoffs this year, the Miami Dolphins were by far the most overrated in my opinion. They might have had the number one total offense in football, Tyreek Hill did have the best season out of any wide receiver, and Tua had a tremendous comeback year by leading the league in passing yards. Their defense looked somewhat improved under Vic Fangio, with a pass rush that finished third in sacks with fifty-six, and a secondary that had Jalen Ramsey return just in time for the middle of the year. But at the same time, just look at how their season played out.

Whenever they went up against bottom-feeders, they looked like the team that would win the AFC. They showed that against the Chargers in Week 1, when Tyreek Hill had 215 receiving yards and won Miami a close 36-34 shootout. Two games later, they freaking scored 70 points against the Denver Broncos. They also beat the Patriots and Jets twice, the Giants, the Panthers, the Raiders, and the Commanders. The only team that they beat with a winning record was the Dallas Cowboys, who were just as overrated and fraudulent themselves. If their whole schedule was against teams that completely sucked, the Dolphins might have repeated the 72 season all over again. But their losses just cemented why they were nothing but an overrated attraction.

Losing to the Bills in Buffalo in Week 4 was one thing. Then the offense scored just ten points against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday Night Football. Then Miami was down 21-0 at halftime to the Kansas City Chiefs in Germany. They had a 27-13 lead with four minutes left in the fourth quarter to the Tennessee Titans, who had four wins leading up to Week 14, and they completely blew that and lost. When they visited Baltimore near the end of the regular season, with a chance for them to clinch the AFC East, they got routed 56-19 and gave up a perfect passer rating to the eventual MVP Lamar Jackson. But the ultimate back-breaker came in the final game of the year, at home on Sunday Night Football against the Bills, with a division title on the line. Miami got off to a pretty good start, taking a 14-7 lead heading into the break. However, not only did the offense get completely shut down in the second half, but the special teams gave up a 96 yard punt return score that tied the game, and the defense just unraveled towards the end. That loss dropped Miami from being the second seed in the AFC to the sixth, and now they were forced to travel to Kansas City to take on the eventual champions in the first round of the playoffs.

Against teams under 500, the Dolphins offense averaged close to 36 points a game and totaled nearly 443 yards. When they had to go up against teams either on their level or above them, they scored just seventeen an afternoon and would finish with just 320 yards of offense. This is the biggest reason why Tua gets criticized, because every time he has these big expectations and is forced to deliver, he just shrinks and the team’s body language just completely vanishes away. The same goes with their defense, however. Against losing teams, they give up close to just eighteen points and only 279 yards of offense, which is pretty impressive! Yet, against those above 500, they allow 33 points a night and 345 yards a game. They were also dealing with several injuries that just kept killing this unit each and every week. Jaelan Phillips tore his Achilles against the Jets on Black Friday, Bradley Chubb tore his ACL late in the year, Xavien Howard was in and out of the lineup to close out the year with nagging injuries, Jevon Holland played just twelve games, and Jalen Ramsey missed the first half of the year with a torn meniscus. When they were forced to play the Chiefs in frigid weather, they were all but set up for a blowout defeat.

I don’t care that Tyreek ended up scoring a touchdown in his return to Arrowhead Stadium, the game was as ugly and boring as we all expected it would. They were playing in negative degree weather, and the Dolphins couldn’t do anything right. The offense was one for twelve on third down, they didn’t even get into the redzone, and a defense that was injured to all hell just couldn’t hold off Patrick Mahomes any longer.

I don’t feel good spewing a lot of negativity towards the Dolphins because they’re a really likeable team. Mike McDaniel has an outstanding personality and loves his players, Tua is an incredibly heartwarming person, and they have a roster that SHOULD be a Super Bowl contender. But for whatever reason, they just never seem to put it together when they absolutely have to, and that’s going to be their biggest downfall every single time. Tua is going to earn himself a huge contract extension, but how much longer is he going to be excused for when they don’t achieve their ultimate goal? They’re already $28 million over the cap, and it’s going to be more when they give Tua his money, so their future is not going to completely change for the time being. Cutting Xavien Howard was at least a shocking starting point, but he was never healthy and hadn’t lived up to the contract extension that he got a while back. While this team will be an instant playoff contender due to the plethora of explosion and talent that they have, they’re never going to be elite unless they actually start beating the teams that they need to in order for them to make a deep run.

MINNESOTA VIKINGS (7-10)

2022 was a very fun season for the Minnesota Vikings that unfortunately ended with a one-and-done heartbreak. One year removed from firing Mike Zimmer, new head coach Kevin O’Connell brought a different energy that the players had been needing for years, and completely brought in so much fresh air that was had just been slowly sucked away for the last seven years. They won thirteen games that season, and eleven of them were by one possession, so the Vikings always found a way to keep their fans extremely nervous to say the least. Heading into 2023, this next season was going to be incredibly challenging. We all knew that this team wasn’t going to fluke their way to another 13-4 season, especially with a defense that ranked dead last the year before, but they still had plenty of talent around them.

However, the first three weeks of the season were very turbulent and frustrating. They started off the year 0-3, and ironically, all of them were by less than seven points. In those defeats, we saw much of the same things that we saw in their victories last year. Justin Jefferson continued to serve as the focal point of the offense and Kirk Cousins was playing at a relatively high level, so they had no trouble putting points on the board. The biggest issue that lead to their losses was not really so much because of their defense, but because the offense couldn’t stop turning the ball over. It wasn’t just Cousins getting strip sacked or throwing a back-breaking interception, it was nearly every single damn person on the offense! In Week 1, they turned it over three times in a 20-17 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Four days later, they lost to the Eagles 34-28, and could have potentially won if it weren’t for four more turnovers, including one by Justin Jefferson that went into the endzone for a touchback. The following week against the Chargers, Brandon Staley pretty much gifted them a chance to win by failing on a fourth down attempt inside his own territory, but Cousins threw the sealing interception to Kenneth Murray Jr.

After Week 5, the Vikings were 1-4, tied for dead last in their division. The worst part was that Justin Jefferson was placed on IR due to a hamstring strain, so their best player on the team was not going to be on the field. But over the next few weeks, they started to turn things around. It began with a defensive victory against the Chicago Bears, but their most defining victory was eight days later on Monday Night Football against the eventual NFC champion San Francisco 49ers. I won’t go far as to say that this was the best game that Kirk Cousins played in his career, but it is quite honestly right up there. After throwing an interception on his second pass of the game, he completed his next thirty-four passes out of forty-three attempts for 378 yards with a couple of touchdown passes and no interceptions. It was also a breakout for first-round rookie Jordan Addison, who caught both touchdowns and totaled 123 yards, cementing himself as an integral part of the organization. On the other side of the ball, the defense had one of their most remembered wins of the season by forcing three turnovers, including two interceptions by Camryn Bynum that all but put the game on ice.

Unfortunately for Minnesota, their next victory was a pyrrhic one. The following week on the road against the Green Bay Packers, Kirk Cousins tore his achilles in the fourth quarter, sidelining him for the rest of the season. When he got hurt, he was starting to have the best statistical season of his career. He had already thrown for 2,330 yards and threw eighteen touchdowns with just five interceptions. Nobody knows how great of a season that Cousins could have but more importantly, we’ll never know how the Vikings would play with him fully healthy. Leading up to their next game against the Falcons, the team made an emergency trade for Arizona Cardinals backup Joshua Dobbs, who was about to hit the bench since Kyler Murray was fully healthy.

Their next game was one for the ages in Minnesota Vikings history. BYU rookie Jaren Hall got the start and was on pace to have a pretty solid game, completing five of six passes for 78 yards. Unfortunately, he was sidelined for the rest of the afternoon due to a sustained concussion in the second quarter, and Dobbs took over. When he took the field, not only was he not familiar with the offense, but he didn’t even know some of his teammates. Things started out pretty rocky, but once Dobbs was comfortable, he completely took the game over and led an insanely clutch game-winning drive in the final minutes to give Minnesota the 31-28 victory. Keep in mind, Justin Jefferson was still on IR and the Vikings had little to no run game, so that was even more challenging They won the next week against the New Orleans Saints, and now the Vikings were 6-4, with a real shot to making the Wild Card. Unfortunately, that was when things started to really go sideways.

Losing to the Broncos on Sunday Night Football was one thing, but then things came to a boil on Monday Night Football against the Chicago Bears. Even though the defense didn’t give up a single touchdown all game long and recovered two fumbles, the Vikings still lost 12-10 due to four interceptions thrown by Dobbs that brought them back to 6-6. The following week against the Raiders, he got benched in what was a 0-0 stalemate through the first fifty-eight minutes. I am not making this up. Nick Mullens filled in for the final minutes of the fourth quarter and at least drove the offense into field goal range, setting up the winning kick from Greg Joseph. Sadly for Dobbs, that was the last game that he would ever play, and he was so disappointing that he reverted back to being the third-string quarterback.

The Vikings would lose their final four games of the season and be eliminated from playoff contention, and the reasons why were the same in every single one. The defense was never that strong in the first place, and it was just completely exhausted towards the end of the year, but the biggest reason was because of the fact that the Vikings didn’t have a true franchise quarterback. Even though Mullens threw for a lot of yards and did what he could to get the ball in the hands of their best playmakers, they would still lose because he would just turn the ball over at the worst possible moments, and the team could never recover from those mistakes. It started with the back-to-back failed quarterback sneaks in an overtime loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, when they had a 14-3 lead heading into the fourth quarter. The following week, they were in position to upset the Lions at home, but Mullens threw four interceptions and could never jump out in front down the stretch. In Week 17 against the Packers, the team just got absolutely annihilated by Jordan Love 33-10, and then they got overpowered by Detroit once again in their final game 30-20.

The Vikings definitely should have had a record that is way better than 7-10, but there is a huge reason why they lost six out of their final seven games to close out the year, it was because they didn’t have a quarterback. As I said earlier, we don’t know how much better or worse Minnesota could have been if Kirk Cousins or even Justin Jefferson were fully healthy, but they would have been a fraudulent team regardless. The offensive line was still a mess that kept giving up too many hits, there was no running game whatsoever, and the only real positive about their defense was that Danielle Hunter finished with 16.5 sacks. They would have just been the Seattle Seahawks with more talent, if we’re being brutally honest. Heading into 2024, I honestly don’t know which direction this team will take. They need to determine if they want to bring back Cousins for one more year, they have to give Justin Jefferson a huge bag that will make him the highest paid receiver, and Hunter wants his extension as well. Even though this team can still be competitive with a real shot of making the playoffs, they need to make sure that they know who the guys are moving forward, or else the same script from last year is just going to repeat itself.

NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (4-13)

I truly thought that last year was going to be an anomaly for Mac Jones and the New England Patriots. Even though the team wasn’t completely terrible, I thought that things were going to truly be better with a real offensive coordinator and a team that at least stays competitive in almost every game that they play in throughout a year. I was so damn wrong. Bringing in Bill O’Brien didn’t solve anything, and in fact, it was flat out worse. Not because of who was calling the plays, but because of the type of roster that he was forced to work with.

Mac Jones was god awful, don’t get me wrong, but who wouldn’t fail with one of the worst supporting casts ever? They let Jakobi Meyers walk away in free agency and they gave JuJu Smith-Schuster a three-year contract to be their number one option, somebody that is a number two or three at best, who has only had success because he was behind Antonio Brown in Pittsburgh and Travis Kelce in Kansas City. They kept DeVante Parker and Kendrick Bourne around, who aren’t completely terrible, but two guys that can’t gain separation the way that they used to anymore. Besides tight ends Hunter Henry and Mike Gesicki being at least somewhat reliable, the only guy that made somewhat of an impact was rookie Demario Douglas. The offensive line was even worse because they had no starter at right tackle, Trent Brown just stopped showing effort, and David Andrews just kept limping around. When you have to start freaking Jalen Reagor at wide receiver, there is a serious damn problem with the guy that is making football decisions, and that’s no other than Bill Belichick.

The whole point of drafting a quarterback in the first round was not just for that player to make you successful, but to make sure that the general manager surrounds him the right talent around him that will make sure he plays well, and the head coach gives him the confidence he needs to try to get the job done. Belichick took both responsibilities and failed miserably. This was Mac Jones’ third year in the league, and not only did he break, but he was completely shattered on the inside and out.

We all thought that he was due for another successful year after the first game against the Philadelphia Eagles. Even though the Patriots lost, he still threw for over 300 yards and three touchdown passes. I know that the Philly defense ended up being a complete dumpster fire, but New England had at least some bit of hope. Through the first three weeks of the season, they were at an unsettling 1-2, but there was still a long way to go. Then they got rocked 38-3 against the Dallas Cowboys, and then shut out against the New Orleans Saints one week later 34-0, and then Jones got sacked for a sealing safety by the Raiders the next game. Jones got benched for Bailey Zappe both times, and he was also just a deer in headlights trying to run for his life. Now the Patriots were 1-5 and they looked like one of the worst teams in the league.

Not only were they losing games, but they kept losing critical players. Marcus Jones tore his labrum in Week 2 against the Dolphins and he didn’t play another game. Rookie sensation Christian Gonzalez broke his shoulder against the Cowboys and he was also ruled out for the season. The biggest blow to the team took place in that same game, when Matt Judon tore his bicep and was sidelined for the rest of the year, so now their best player was officially gone.

The only ounce of hope that the Patriots fans had was their Week 7 home matchup against the Buffalo Bills. Nobody thought that New England was going to win, in fact I thought they were going to get destroyed. But with about seven minutes to go, the Patriots were up 22-10 and we all thought that they were going to win handidly. But Josh Allen reminded us all why he is a top five quarterback in the league and scored fifteen unanswered points to give Buffalo a 25-22 lead. Did Mac crumble? Absolutely not. Instead, he drove his team down the field 75 yards in just eight plays, and threw the game-winning touchdown to Mike Gesicki. He finished that game with just five incompletions, 272 yards, two touchdown passes, and zero interceptions. He reminded us all why he was the perfect fit when he got drafted in 2021, why Pats fans loved him when he helped bring them back to the playoffs. But that peak ended way too quickly.

Mac Jones lost the remaining four games that he started, the Patriots fell all the way to 2-9, and he was sent to the bench for good. When they played the Colts in Germany, they didn’t score a single touchdown as he got sacked five times, and threw just a head-scratching interception at the end of the game. He got benched for Zappe for the third time that year, and the backup ended up throwing the sealing pick into triple coverage, with the final score being 10-6. The following week against the Giants, Jones was just flat out broken. He played one half before Belichick decided to play Zappe for the rest of the game after Mac threw two more interceptions with under 90 yards passing. Bailey Zappe at least got the Pats their only touchdown of the game and at least drove them into field goal range to try to send it into overtime, but Chad Ryland missed a chip-shot field goal that lost them the game 10-7.

Notice the scores that I just brought up. The offense was flat out diarrhea, but these losses also showed that the furthest problem from this team was their defense. Even with all of the injuries that they sustained over the course of the season, they were at least still respectable in the fact that they did everything in their power to keep their team in the game. Christian Barmore had an underrated third season with 8.5 sacks, they had three guys that finished with 100 tackles, and they still finished in the top ten in total yards allowed!

The season was a flat out disaster for the Patriots, but besides that Bills victory, they at least played spoiler in a couple of primetime games. They put the playoff hopes of the Pittsburgh Steelers on life support after shocking them in Pittsburgh 21-18, even taking a 21-3 lead at one point with Bailey Zappe throwing three touchdown passes in the first half. On Christmas Eve, they looked like they were going to rout the Denver Broncos after they took a 23-7 lead in the third quarter. But Russell Wilson managed to tie the game with sixteen unanswered points, and Chad Ryland was sent out to kick a 56 yard game-winning field goal, which was nailed through the uprights! Even though there were way too many lows to point out, you could at least point out two positives.

Belichick would end up coaching his final game as a New England Patriots at home against the New York Jets in blistering snow, and the team got predictably crushed 17-3. It was also the last time that Matthew Slater would suit up as a player because he would end up retiring two months later as one of the greatest special teamers that have ever played the game. Belichick got fired a few days later, they promoted Jerod Mayo to be the full-time head coach, and a new era is now officially in place. Everything that could have gone wrong this season absolutely did in so many ways. Mac Jones was completely shattered and lost all his confidence. Bailey Zappe proved that he was a backup quarterback at best. The offense had nobody that could get open or explode off the line of scrimmage. The defense was injured to hell once again.

This needs to be the offseason where they make massive changes to their roster. They already completely reassembled the coaching staff, so that's at least a start to signal that new fresh air is going to be brought into the building. They have the third overall pick in this year’s draft and over $100 million in cap space. There is no excuse for them to not overhaul the offense and add a couple big names to their defense. I have a lot of faith in Mayo and I’m interested to see what this front office can do in the post-Belichick era, but ever since Tom Brady left in 2019, this team has just completely disintegrated before our very eyes and it is completely the end of an era. It was nice seeing outstanding football during my entire childhood, but it’s never going to happen again unless this team dramatically overachieves.

NEW ORLEANS SAINTS (9-8)

Yeah, I’m surprised that the Saints finished with nine wins as well. With how frustrated it was to watch this team, you would think that they would finish anywhere between six and seven. The nice way to put it is that New Orleans had a mediocre season, and the only reason why you’d consider that to be respectable was because the defense was still in great shape and the offense closed out the year on a promising note by four out of their final five games after they were 5-7 at one point. But that’s the thing. When you look at this roster on paper, you would think that it can at least be a respectful contender, but there were just too many games where their self-inflicted mistakes kept shooting them in the butt.

My stance on Derek Carr has been the same for the last few years now and it is still true to this today. I think that he’s a good quarterback that is definitely a starter on any franchise, but he is not going to get you the wins that you need the most that is going to make you a respectful contender. When you look at how he played this season, he wasn’t terrible. 25 touchdowns and just eight interceptions is a really respectful stat-line. More importantly, he was banged up in several of the games he played in this year, so that’s a big reason why he couldn’t crack 4,000 yards. He sustained multiple concussions, suffered an AC joint sprain in his shoulder, and fractured some of his ribs. Carr still continued to play and he started every single game, so his heart and work ethic cannot be questioned by anybody. But we all knew that he was this type of player when the Saints grossly overpayed him to $40 million per year. When you get those contracts, they’re expecting that you are going to be the difference maker of this team, not just another contributor. Even though he has never been a horrible quarterback, he’s never taken his game to a whole different level, which is why I didn’t like that contract in the first place because I never thought he was going to be the right fit for that football team.

Offensively, they were the definition of mediocre. Against teams that really had nothing to play for, New Orleans turned it up a notch. When the pressure was a bit more amplified, the Saints just never found a rhythm and they just stumbled. On paper, they look solid and incredibly talented, which is what we saw in flashes and in spurts. Chris Olave cracked over 1,000 yards for the second straight year, Rashid Shaheed showed how much of an explosive playmaker he truly is when he is on the field, Juwan Johnson continued to serve as a reliable security blanket, and the Saints might have found another promising role player in A.T. Perry that might turn out to be even better with the right amount of development. Heck, they were a top ten scoring offense in the league! When you look at some of their wins, you would think that they’d stay this consistent. Against the Indianapolis Colts, they cracked over 500 total yards and scored thirty-eight points! They destroyed some of the biggest bottom-feeders like the Panthers, Patriots, and Giants. In their regular season finale against the Falcons, they hung 48 points, 31 of them in the second half!

Yet, there were a few losses that New Orleans had that just reminded us why they can never take that leap. Against the Houston Texans, their defense held CJ Stroud out of the endzone in the second half, and the Saints offense had so many chances to just punch it home and win the game. They made it to the redzone three times and failed to get touchdowns in all of them, wrapping it up with a sealing interception to lose the game 20-13. On Thursday Night Football against the Jaguars, they were moving the ball extremely well, but also failed to close out their drives with touchdowns. Carr threw a pick six in the third quarter that brought their deficit to 24-9, but they scored fifteen unanswered points to tie the game. After the defense gave up a long touchdown that put Jacksonville up by seven, Carr got his team all the way inside the five yard line, but Foster Moreau dropped what could have been the game-tying touchdown and New Orleans lost 31-24. After the bye week against the Falcons, the Saints got into the redzone five times and couldn’t score a touchdown for the entire game. They lost 24-15 mainly due to the fact that Carr threw a 92 yard pick six to Jessie Bates that was essentially the biggest difference in the entire ballgame. Even though this offense showed promise, they were never an elite unit, which was why the team decided to move on from offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael at the end of the year.

Their defense was once again a top ten scoring unit, giving up just nineteen points a game. There were some games where they got overpowered and outmatched, but others where they responded by making their opponents tap out. Marshon Lattimore only played ten games this year and this Saints defense never lost their focus. Demario Davis continued to be that heart and soul of the unit by finishing with 121 tackles, but plenty of younger guys really stepped up. First-round rookie Bryan Bresee had a respectable 4.5 sacks, Carl Granderson lead the team in takedowns with 8.5, Pete Werner had a breakout third season with 93 tackles of his own, and Paulson Adebo had a team-leading four interceptions tied with the Honey Badger Tyrann Mathieu.

I’m sure that a lot of you are looking at these positives and thinking to yourself “Now I can see why they finished with nine wins”, but I never thought that was possible with how they played for most of the year. There were so many games where they had plenty of chances to win this one and that, but their defense either just folded down the stretch, or the offense could never capitalize on their opportunities. Look at Week 3 against the Green Bay Packers! They were up 17-0 at halftime, and when the offense failed to get points on the board, the defense just crumbled by giving up eighteen unanswered points to lose the game that was wrapped up with a missed field goal by Blake Grupe that could have given New Orleans an ugly victory. That’s why I never had too much faith in the Saints this year because while I thought they could be decent, I knew they were never going to be great unless Derek Carr went back in time to 2016 and started ripping people’s hearts out.

We all know that this upcoming offseason is going to be incredibly boring for this team. They’re going to be over the cap once again, so they’re not going to do too much in free agency, and you could only hope that the guys that they draft turn out to be legit. Nothing is going to change for this football team, the wheel of mediocrity is going to spin, and we’re just going to feel nothing for them because this is what they signed up for.

NEW YORK GIANTS (6-11)

This season for the Giants was a trainwreck even before it started. It wasn’t that way through the first months of Spring. They resigned Dexter Lawrence and Andrew Thomas, two cornerstones of the franchise that have made tremendous impacts at their positions, but the biggest question was what to do with their two faces of the offense: Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley. One of them was going to get a big extension, and the other was most likely going to play under the franchise tag. Instead of giving all the money to the guy that’s not only been there longer but has had way more success, Brian Daboll and Joe Schoen got desparate and gave Jones the bag that could have had disastrous consequences in the future. Barkley held out for a bit until the Giants gave him a respectful deal, so the drama was over for the time being and now they could focus on trying to get back to the playoffs. With a revamped offense just recently acquired stud tight end Darren Waller, along with a Wink Martindale coached defense that rose back into the top fifteen, Big Blue was hoping to prove that last season was not a fluke. Even if I thought that the Giants grossly overachieved, I knew that they had the Coach of the Year calling the shots leading a roster that at least wasn’t Joe Judge or Pat Shurmur.

Any hope that their fans had was immediately destroyed on just the first offensive drive of the season, Sunday Night Football at home against the Dallas Cowboys. Even though they got into the redzone with a third and two at the Dallas eight yard line, this sequence ended up shoving the Giants into a hole. First, Andrew Thomas false started. Then, the rookie center botched the snap. On the field goal attempt, it got blocked and recovered for a touchdown. New York proceeded to get destroyed 40-0 as Jones got sacked seven times and threw two interceptions. But you know what? It’s too early to judge them because it was just the first game. The following week, they took on the Arizona Cardinals with Josh Dobbs at quarterback, and the first half got off to a similar start. New York’s offense got shut out and they were down 20-0 at the half. But Daniel Jones turned it on by leading five straight scoring drives, throwing for over 320 yards and scoring three times on his own to give the Giants the 31-28 victory. Their next loss was at least expected, they were on the road against the San Francisco 49ers and Saquon didn’t play due to an injury. But their next home game could have been even worse than their first, on Monday Night Football against the Seahawks. Not only did the offense fail to score a touchdown, but Jones got sacked TEN TIMES and threw two interceptions, which is the biggest reason why they got destroyed 24-3. Early in the season, this offense was putrid. They didn’t score a touchdown at home until October 22, when they beat the Washington Commanders 14-7. Their offense couldn’t get in the endzone for three straight weeks, and even with Jones on IR due to a neck injury after their loss to the Dolphins, the results were more or less the same.

Yet, those two blowout losses were not even the most embarrassing in my opinion, because there were too more that were just absolutely mind-blowing. Let’s go to Week 6 against the Buffalo Bills on the road. Pretty much everyone thought that the Giants were going to get blown out. Even though the offense didn’t score a touchdown, their defense only gave up fourteen points, and the team was in position to get even more points on the board at the end of both halves. At the end of the fourth, the refs were definitely seen in the red as they didn’t throw a flag on what looked like a holding call on the final play, but there was no excuse for what happened at the end of the second. With the ball at the one-yard line and no timeouts, the Giants had a choice to either kick a field goal that could have put them up 9-0 at the end of the break, or put salt on the wound and go for the endzone. Tyrod Taylor decided to go for it by running a quarterback sneak that went nowhere, and as the time was running down, he couldn’t spike it in time to stop the clock from running. You get three points on the board and the Giants are not going for a touchdown at the end, they’re kicking a field goal to win the game.

Three weeks later in the infamous MetLife bowl against the Jets, it was quite possibly the worst game of the entire season as both offenses looked absolutely putrid, but New York was up 10-7 with close to a minute remaining in the game. Unfortunately, Tyrod got injured with a rib injury, but third-string rookie Tommy DeVito at least prevented it from going out of reach. On their final drive of regulation up 10-7, the Giants had a fourth and one at the seventeen yard line. Brian Daboll elected to go for the field goal and take a six-point lead, but Graham Gano shanked the kick wide to the left, with just twenty-eight seconds left. When Zach Wilson got the ball back, the Giants defense let them easily get into field goal range, and Greg Zuerlein tied the game and sent it into overtime. The Giants won the coin toss and got the ball to start the period, but Daboll and offensive coordinator Mike Kafka thought it was a great idea to run three straight screen passes to Saquon, which resulted in a three-and-out. When the Jets got the ball back, New York’s defense flat out collapsed again. The back-breaking play took place on third and five at the Giants forty-five, when Adoree’ Jackson was called for a blatant pass interference penalty that set up a chip-shot field goal, and Zuerlein knocked down the kick to win the game 13-10. Ironically enough, if the Giants won both of those games, this team would have been 8-9, which is flat out crazy given how this team played throughout the year.

Daniel Jones returned for their next game against the Las Vegas Raiders, but he unfortunately tore his ACL in the second quarter, and New York proceeded to get destroyed off the field 30-6 in Antonio Pierce’s first game as the interim head coach of that team. Funny how his first victory was against the team that he won a Super Bowl with as a player. After a 49-17 loss to the Dallas Cowboys, in which the offense was once again disgusting and the defense just simply quit, the Giants were 2-8 and they were one of the worst teams in the league. But the following week was when Tommy DeVito ended up being somewhat of a folk hero. He was nowhere near a starting quarterback, but he wasn’t completely terrible, and the fans started to love him once they won their next three games.

Against the Washington Commanders in FedEx Field, he got sacked nine times and he still threw three touchdowns and scored thirty-one points, while the defense gave up just nineteen and picked off Sam Howell three times. The following week, he got taken down six times and still barely pulled off the victory against the Patriots 10-7. But Monday Night Football against the Packers was probably their most defining win of the season. The defense might have frustrated Jordan Love early on with a “bend but don’t break” approach, but they let him take a 22-21 lead with close to a minute remaining. Unexpectedly, DeVito put the team on his back and drove his team into field goal range, setting up the game-winning 37 yard kick by Randy Bullock to seal the deal 24-22. He might have only thrown for 158 yards, but he also used his legs incredibly well by running for 71 more, and he did more than enough on his end. Not only did the fans love DeVito’s “Italian celebration” after every touchdown, but they even loved his agent afterwards!

Unfortunately, the Cinderella story ended with two destructive losses to the New Orleans Saints and Philadelphia Eagles, and the first two quarters on Christmas Day would be the final ones that DeVito would play for the rest of the season. Even though they lost to Philly 33-25, the Giants were down 20-3 at the half, and Tyrod Taylor couldn’t get them out in front once he returned to the field. New York finished the season 6-11, but at least closed it off on a high note by destroying the Philadelphia 27-10, forcing Nick Sirianni to play his backups at the end of the first half.

This was the definition of the worst case scenario for the New York Giants. Daniel Jones turned out to be a massive flop, the offense regressed back to what it was with Judge and Shurmur, and the defense was incredibly frustrated to the point where Wink Martindale just packed up his bags and left. Joe Schoen expresses that he has faith for Jones in 2024, but anybody that truly watched this season knows that this team needs to bring in a more gifted quarterback quick fast and in a hurry. It’s highly unlikely that they bring back Saquon after what transpired last offseason, so one key piece to their offense is already gone. The offensive line is still a trainwreck, they still don’t have a game-changing receiver, and now the defense is going to have to go through a new identity for the third time in the last five years. Daboll will at least coach them well enough to the point where they can be competitive, but there is no way that this team makes the playoffs again unless their quarterback situation is once and for all resolved, and the offensive line is finally not a unit where you have to pray every time for them to not give up a sack.

NEW YORK JETS (7-10)

The season was over for the Jets four snaps into the season, when Aaron Rodgers tore his achilles on a sack taken by Leonard Floyd. It didn’t matter that the Jets ended up winning that game in overtime thanks to Xavier Gipson walking it off with a punt return touchdown. It didn’t matter how great that defense was going to perform throughout the year. I didn’t care that Breece Hall and Garrett Wilson are generational talents that other teams would dream to have on their offense. Here are the biggest issues. Nathaniel Hackett was the offensive coordinator, who is only there because he’s Rodgers’ best friend. Besides Garrett, the other two starting wide receivers were Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb, both of Aaron’s teammates in Green Bay. They signed a solid running back in Dalvin Cook to a one-year deal and the team hardly ever played him. The offensive line was still an absolute mess that never got better in the offseason. Most importantly, the two remaining quarterbacks on the depth chart were Zach Wilson and Tim Boyle, and Trevor Siemian joined later on. This was literally a team built for Aaron Rodgers, and now that he wasn’t going to play for the rest of the year, there was literally no hope for them anymore.

Zach Wilson played as bad as you would expect, even getting benched at one point of the season, and then returning before he unfortunately suffered a season-ending concussion. Tim Boyle started three games and proved why he was trash in college, with his most memorable play of the season being the infamous “Hell Mary”, the 100 yard pick six by Jevon Holland on a Hail Mary attempt at the end of the half on a Black Friday loss to the Miami Dolphins. The fact that Trevor Siemian started games was freaking mind-boggling to me. For the record, they did have Mike White and Joe Flacco last year, and the latter helped the Browns get back to the playoffs just this season!

To be fair, there were some highs that you could take away from this offense. Zach Wilson actually had a strong performance on Sunday Night Football against the Kansas City Chiefs, but they unfortunately lost 23-20 after some controversy in the fourth quarter that involved an interception called back due to holding. Against a future playoff team in the Houston Texans, Wilson had his best game by throwing for 300 yards in a 30-6 rout! Heck, they were 4-3 at one point in the season, which included them beating the Philadelphia Eagles for the first time in franchise history! The reason why was the same most of the time. Their defense played out of its mind, Breece Hall or Garrett Wilson made a few incredible plays, and the quarterback was just there for the ride.

Robert Saleh might be a questionable head coach, but he has proven that he still knows what the hell to do on the defensive side of the ball. They finished third in yards allowed and second in passing yards allowed, which is why some of the best quarterbacks had forgettable performances against this unit. In Week 1 against the Bills, Jordan Whitehead had a career game by picking off Josh Allen three times, and the pass rush ended up sacking him five times as well. Against Patrick Mahomes, they picked him off twice and gave up just 203 passing yards on Sunday Night Football. Jalen Hurts threw three interceptions against this defense including one that ended up costing Philadelphia the game 20-14. Before suffering a concussion late in the game, CJ Stroud couldn’t get any points on the board in the first half and he finished that game with just 93 yards. Even when the Chargers destroyed this team 27-6 on Monday Night Football, Justin Herbert still only threw for 136 yards and he got sacked five times. The furthest issue with this team was their defense, because it was at least still a dangerous unit that had tremendous playmakers on all three levels.

The Jets at least closed out the season strong by getting the last laugh in what would be Bill Belichick’s final game as the Patriots head coach, blowing them out 17-3 in the frigid snow at Gillette Stadium. We all know that Aaron Rodgers is the only reason why Saleh and general manager Joe Douglas are still employed, and for a 40 yard old quarterback coming back from a torn Achilles, I honestly don’t know how well he is going to play. I get that he attacked that rehab process with every ounce in his being, but he’s not going to camouflage the rest of the issues that the team needs to address. This is truly going to be another boom-or-bust season for this football team, and if Rodgers suffers another setback, the team is due for another blowup.

PHILADELPHIA EAGLES (11-6)

There’s no sugarcoating what happened to the Eagles this year. It was quite possibly the biggest in-season collapse we have seen from an NFL team in the modern era. At least with the 2020 Pittsburgh Steelers and 2021 Arizona Cardinals, we could say that they just got hot way too early and just fizzled out at the worst time. The Eagles were the defending NFC Champions, they just gave Jalen Hurts a boat-load of money, and they had one of the most stacked rosters in the NFL. Sure, it was going to be a bit different without Shane Steichen or Jonathan Gannon, but it was too early to judge Brian Johnson and Sean Desai before we had a chance to see what this team can do. But from the first game of the season up until the last, everything just felt off.

Through their first eleven games, they were 10-1 and Philadelphia was beating quality opponents along the way. At home, Jalen Hurts outplayed both Dak Prescott and Josh Allen in thrilling shootout victories. Their defense held Tua Tagovailoa and the hot-shot Miami offense to just ten points. They got back at Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs by beating them at Arrowhead Stadium on Monday Night Football 21-17. Even though their defense clearly showed signs of regression and they were barely escaping most games, nothing signaled that this team was going to go through a massive self-destruction. D’Andre Swift filled in nicely for the departure of Miles Sanders and soon quickly became the team’s lead running back, finishing the year with just over 1,000 yards and six total touchdowns. From weeks three to eight, AJ Brown totaled over 125 receiving yards per game, and he ended up finishing fifth with 1,456. Devonta Smith continued to have another productive 1,000 yard year and is arguably the best number two option in football just because of his explosiveness and talent alone. Defensively, first-round pick Jalen Carter had as promising of a rookie season as you could ask for with 6.5 sacks and two forced fumbles. Haason Reddick once again led the team in quarterback takedowns with 11 of his own, and Reed Blankenship had a breakout sophomore season by finishing with over 110 tackles and three interceptions. The potential was there and they were easily one of the top two teams that could win the NFC at that point in the season.

However, from Week 13 moving forward, the flaws of this team ended up being their ultimate downfall. Even though they got away with Sam Howell having his best career performances against this defense, and while the offense bounced back after they completely wet the bed against the New York Jets, the Eagles kept getting more and more blasted once they kept losing football games. It all started with a blowout loss to the same team that they beat in the NFC Championship in that same stadium last year, the San Francisco 49ers. Even with all of the trash that Deebo Samuel spewed throughout the week, he at least backed it up by torching them with 138 total yards of offense and three touchdowns. The Eagles didn’t just lose, they got annihilated 42-19, and it just legitimized the fact that last season might have been a different story if Brock Purdy didn’t tear his UCL. The following week, the offense couldn’t get in the endzone on Sunday Night Football against the Dallas Cowboys, and they got blown out again 33-13. Then Philly had another prime-time game, and there was a lot of chaos leading up to that one. Jalen Hurts was questionable throughout the entire week since he was battling the flu, the Seahawks were starting Drew Lock, and Nick Sirianni removed play-calling duties from Sean Desai and gave them to Matt Patricia. That ended up being such a “great idea”! Even with a 17-13 lead in the fourth quarter, Hurts threw two interceptions and Lock torched that Philly secondary on the final drive by completing two straight third-and-long passes, one of them a touchdown to Jaxon Smith-Njigba that gave Seattle the 20-17 victory. Their final three games of the season were “cakewalks” as the Eagles had to play the Giants twice, a division rival that they normally crush in their sleep, and a Cardinals team that had three wins leading up to their matchup. They at least beat New York the first time on Christmas afternoon at the Linc, but their most embarrassing loss of all took place the following week.

Against their former defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, the Eagles showed their superiority in the first half with a 21-6 lead. Philly’s offense looked like it rebounded to their true form and the defense was taking care of business. That optimism lasted for about thirty minutes because when both teams returned to the field for the third quarter, it was a completely different story. Kyler Murray torched the Eagles on four straight touchdown drives, and even though Hurts was at least trying to hold his end of the bargain, the Cardinals still came all the way back to win the game 35-31 and sending Philadelphia to second place of their division. Their final regular season performance was another regrettable one as they got blown out by the Giants 27-10, and once Nick Sirianni saw that the Cowboys were going to win the NFC East, he pulled his starters at halftime.

By that point, the Eagles were exposed as complete and utter frauds. The defense was absolutely hot garbage to the point where I could have played wide receiver and I would still have a solid performance. The offense showed that it had talent, but the play-calling was extremely predictable and they were figured out on almost every single play that they ran down the stretch. Jalen Hurts was turning the ball over more frequently, they completely abandoned the running game, AJ Brown was bottled up on nearly every snap, and even the offensive line wasn’t showing signs of life. They went from being the best team in the league to the fifth seed in the NFC, and they were forced to stay on the road to play Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Even though they were in that game in the third quarter down by just one score, it took a horrible missed tackle from James Bradberry to blow the game wide open, and Philadelphia ended up getting crushed 32-9. The Eagles were a big zero for nine on third down, they didn’t have AJ Brown in that game due to a knee injury, Baker Mayfield threw for 337 yards and three touchdown passes, and the only thing that we saw from Philly was a dead and lifeless football team. Heck, the Tush Push got stuffed for no yardage! Once that play doesn’t work, then the Eagles can’t do anything else.

This team needs to do some serious soul-searching this offseason. That team had way too much talent on both sides of the ball to go through a collapse of those proportions, which goes to show that there had to be a lot of internal drama and dysfunction for that type of season to take place. I get that Jalen Hurts was battling through a nagging knee injury for most of the year, but it’s not an excuse if you’re still on the field trying to win your team critical football games down the stretch. Right after the season, the team moved on from Brian Johnson and Sean Desai, and replaced them quickly with Kellen Moore and Vic Fangio. Both of them are exceptional football minds that know how to lead strong units with talent, but I’ll believe their upside when I actually see it next year. If you’re not playing like a team though, then you’re never going to be great at all.

PITTSBURGH STEELERS (10-7)

Would you look at that? It’s another season where Mike Tomlin doesn’t have a losing record. Even though the Steelers have been nothing but the definition of mediocre these last few years, Tomlin is at least still strong of a coach to the point where they never finish with more losses than victories. 2023 was supposed to be a huge evaluation year for the Steelers. We needed to see how the defense could perform with a fully healthy TJ Watt, but more importantly, we still didn’t know what to make of Kenny Pickett. There were games where he showed his potential, especially on a few clutch game-winning drives, but we still didn’t know if he was a true franchise quarterback. After a near-perfect preseason, the odds were that he was going to continue that success for the next few months, but that ended up not being the case.

Their first game of the season was not just a forgettable loss, it was an absolute nightmare as Pittsburgh got destroyed on their home field 30-7. Newly signed cornerback Patrick Peterson gave the 49ers a bit of bulletin board material, saying that he had a tell on 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, but the veteran ended up getting torched on two touchdown passes to Brandon Aiyuk. The worst part about it was that Pittsburgh’s offense looked like absolute puke in that first half, particularly in the first quarter. Throughout the first fifteen minutes, the Steelers didn’t get a single first down and had -3 net yards of offense. The good news was that Pittsburgh bounced back after that game with two straight primetime victories against the Browns and Raiders, but the offense never exceeded expectations. Offensive coordinator Matt Canada was getting chants from the fans to get fired because the offense was so damn predictable and uncreative. That’s one of the biggest reasons why they got destroyed by the Houston Texans 30-6, and why they could do little to nothing against the Jaguars, and especially why they lost to the Dorian Thompson-Robinson led Cleveland Browns 13-10. Even though the running game was decent and the passing game showed flashes, they ranged between mediocre and just straight up trash on every given week. They never had a game where they could total 400 yards of offense and the highest amount of points that this unit scored was 24. Matt Canada ended up getting fired after their loss to the Browns in Week 11, the first time that the Steelers made that type of a change since 1941.

Defensively, they were also just an okay unit. The one constant that never wavered was TJ Watt, who led the league in sacks with nineteen, along with a regular season that saw him have nineteen tackles for loss, eight passes defended, and four forced fumbles. But besides that, their inside linebacker room was incredibly weak, their pass rush solely relied on TJ Watt, and their secondary never had a guy that finished with more than two interceptions. They gave up a lot of yards, but the best part about this defense was that they hardly gave up too many points, finishing sixth in the league with just 19 allowed a night.

The game after Canada got fired, the Steelers offense conveniently finished with 400 total yards and they were now 7-4 with a spot looking to be all but secured for this football team. Their next two games were supposed to be “cakewalks”, in which they got two of the worst teams in Pittsburgh: the Arizona Cardinals and the New England Patriots. In their first one against Arizona, they were tied at three late in the second quarter, and the Steelers were in position to take the lead at the one-yard line. Unfortunately, Pickett suffered a high ankle sprain on that drive and was ruled out for the rest of the game. Once Najee Harris got stuffed on fourth down, the whole game blew wide open, and the Steelers got crushed 24-10 with Mitchell Trubisky at backup quarterback. The former Steeler James Conner was the star of the show that day with 105 yards and a couple of touchdown runs, but it was more frustrating the next week. On Thursday Night Football against the Patriots, Bailey Zappe threw three touchdown passes in the first half, and the Steelers offense under Trubisky couldn’t score more than twenty points as they lost THAT game 21-18. He ended up getting benched the following week against the Indianapolis Colts, a game in which they were up 13-0 at one point, only for them to get outscored 30-0 by an offense with a backup quarterback and two third-string running backs. Now the Steelers were 7-7 and they relied on Mason Rudolph to try to get them back into the playoffs.

Heading into Week 16 at home against the Bengals, this Pittsburgh team was given next to no chance of winning. Not only were they playing their third quarterback of the season, but George Pickens was also getting heavily scrutinized for not willing to block for one of his teammates on what was a critical play for the Steelers into the redzone against the Colts. But the Steelers on that Saturday night pulled off the near unthinkable and destroyed Cincinnati 34-11. The defense that had Patrick Peterson play safety picked off Jake Browning three times, Rudolph threw for 290 yards, and Pickens torched that Bengals secondary for 195 yards on just four catches with a couple of touchdown receptions! The following week, the Steelers clinched yet another winning season with a needed road victory against the Seattle Seahawks. Pickens totaled 131 yards on seven receptions and they ran for over 200 yards thanks to the solid tandem of Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren, with the defense sealing the deal thanks to a strip sack by the rookie Nick Herbig. In their final regular season game, they handled their business against a Ravens team mainly starting their backups, and a Jacksonville loss got the Steelers into the playoffs as the seventh seed! Even though we expected them to be in this position after November 26, nobody was expecting them to make it after they lost three games in a row in December, so Tomlin did a hell of a job at getting this team to see the bigger picture at the most important time.

Unfortunately, their season came to an end against the Buffalo Bills, who just proved to be the vastly superior football team. Pittsburgh did what they could to make it competitive, but they just made way too many mistakes and didn’t do enough to win that football game. Heading into this next offseason, things are just looking more and less the same for the Steelers. They found a new offensive coordinator in Arthur Smith, but we all know that the biggest question that this team has to address is what to do about their quarterback situation. Pittsburgh has been on record saying that they’re willing to make their quarterback room a competitive one, so it's not even guaranteed that Kenny Pickett is going to be the starter, which is a huge red flag for somebody heading into their third year. He obviously hasn’t been a terrible quarterback, but he also hasn’t proven to be the franchise guy for anybody, so these next few months are going to be absolutely crucial for this organization. But I don’t see this team getting any better nor worse than they’ve been in the last few seasons. They’re going to fluke their way to at least nine wins for the season, and if they back their way into the playoffs, they are just going to get crushed. Unless they make a franchise-altering move that will scare everybody out of their seats, they are just going to continue to spin through that wheel of mediocrity.

SAN FRANCISCO 49ers (12-5)

Last year, the 49ers felt that they were screwed out of a trip to the Super Bowl after their quarterback Brock Purdy tore his UCL in the first quarter, and they set out on a mission of vengeance for this upcoming 2023 season. Throughout the regular season, this team established themselves as the best team in the NFC. Their offense was still one of the most efficient and balanced units in the league, and while their defense might have taken a bit of a step back, they still gave up the third fewest points in the league with loaded talent on all three levels. They finished with a 12-5 record as the number one seed in the NFC, but they had to overcome a lot to get to that point.

One of the biggest questions that needed to be answered was who the 49ers felt comfortable with at quarterback. They already let Jimmy Garoppolo walk into free agency and sign with the Las Vegas Raiders, so it was down to the third overall pick in Trey Lance or the Mr. Irrelevant that helped this team get back to the NFC Championship in Brock Purdy! After a long training camp and preseason, Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch made the bold decision by deciding to move on from Lance and making Brock Purdy the full-time starter moving forward. The reason why this was so huge because not only did the 49ers draft Lance with the third pick, but they traded a large package just to acquire this guy, so there was more pressure on Purdy than ever before. Coming off of that torn UCL, he ended up having an outstanding regular season. He finished fifth in passing yards with over 4200, he threw the third most touchdown passes at 31, and had the highest passer rating out of any quarterback at 113! Even though he’s had an outstanding offensive mind at head coach and one of the best supporting casts in the league, Purdy proved that he was a franchise quarterback that can help their team succeed more than flounder.

Through the first five weeks, the 49ers were the undisputed best team in football. Christian McCaffrey scored at least one touchdown in all five of their first victories, Deebo Samuel continued to serve as the best hybrid threat in the league, Brandon Aiyuk was still a reliable deep threat and big play-maker, and George Kittle had a quietly positive impact with both his pass-catching abilities and powerful run-blocking. However, the 49ers fell into a three-week slump that caused a little bit of caution. Most of it was due to the fact that they were without Deebo in that span and McCaffrey was banged up. They lost three straight games to the Cleveland Browns, the Minnesota Vikings, and the Cincinnati Bengals. In those three loses, Purdy threw five interceptions and the offense could only score seventeen points, but the defense can’t be let off the hook either. They gave up a game-winning drive to PJ Walker when they went up against the Browns, then they allowed Kirk Cousins to absolutely torch them without Justin Jefferson on Monday Night Football, and finally they let Joe Burrow carve them up in Santa Clara. Fortunately they headed into the bye week after their loss to Cincinnati, which gave this team so much time to heal up and recover, the best thing that could have happened to this organization.

After the bye week, the 49ers won six straight games and all of them were by multiple scores, including a 42-19 demolition against the team that they lost to in last year’s NFC Championship: the Philadelphia Eagles. Deebo Samuel talked a lot of trash during the week, but he sure as hell backed it up by torching that secondary for over 130 yards and three touchdowns! Things hit a road block on Christmas night when they got punked by the Baltimore Ravens at home, thanks to Purdy throwing four interceptions and Lamar Jackson totaling nearly 300 yards against that dominant 49ers defense. The good news was that San Francisco bounced back with an expected victory against the Washington Commanders, and they ultimately won home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. Their offense was still one of the most dynamic units and their defense was always in great shape, so the only team that could stop the 49ers was themselves in the playoffs.

Their first matchup was against the seventh seed Green Bay Packers, who was coming off a week in which they absolutely pummeled the number two seed Dallas Cowboys on their home field, so this was no laughing matter. Green Bay had a 21-14 lead in the fourth quarter, and before that game, Kyle Shanahan didn’t win in the thirty games in which he trailed by more than five in that period. However, the San Fran defense tightened up and the offense made some incredible plays down the stretch to win the game 24-21, advancing to the NFC Championship for the third straight year. But there were bigger obstacles to climb in THAT matchup as well. They weren’t just trailing at halftime, but they were down 24-7! The Lions scored on every possession of that period, while the 49ers were just sloppy and out of rhythm. But when they returned for halftime, the offense was once again just unstoppable. San Francisco outscored their opponent 27-7 in the final thirty minutes of play, and the defense never allowed any points until the game was out of reach. Heading into the Super Bowl, they were three point favorites against the same team that they lost to on that very stage just four years ago, the Kansas City Chiefs.

I’m not going to do the entire breakdown of what happened in that game, but I will give you a brief overview. The 49ers once again had a ten-point lead with all of the momentum in their favor. Even though the offense struggled on most of their drives, they were at least getting needed points on the board, and their defense was holding Patrick Mahomes out of the endzone. Early in the third quarter, however, they abandoned the running game and every stalled out drive just gave Mahomes more and more life in that ball-game. It took a muffed punt by Ray-Ray McCloud for the Chiefs to get their first touchdown of the night, and from that point on, it was a gutsy grudge match. The Super Bowl ended up going into overtime for the second time in history, but the rules were different this time. If the team that received the ball first scored a touchdown, then the other team would have a chance to respond with a touchdown of their own, instead of having it go to sudden death. The 49ers won that coin toss and instead of deferring, they elected to receive, which ended up being a costly mistake. San Francisco didn’t get the touchdown that they needed and settled for three. When Mahomes got the ball back, it was game over. Thirteen plays and seventy-five yards later, Mecole Hardman was wide open for the winning touchdown, and San Francisco was on the losing side once again.

Narratives had a chance to be crushed this season. Kyle Shanahan could have proven that he was done choking away big games and that he could actually win a championship. Brock Purdy could have shut up those critics that said he was just a system quarterback or a game manager. Yet the 49ers just proved that they were the NFL equivalent of the Boston Celtics: two incredibly talented teams that should have no excuses of not winning a championship, yet always unravel at the worst possible time. What they do in next year’s regular season is not going to matter. They can be 17-0 and we still wouldn’t care because if they don’t win a championship, then they’re not going to get the respect that they feel they deserve.

SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (9-8)

This was supposed to be a season in which the Seahawks could prove that they were a team better than the year before. Geno Smith got a pretty deserving three-year contract extension, the offense was still incredibly talented with an additional weapon in rookie Jaxon-Smith Njigba, and the defense was fully healthy! Yet, this team didn’t get better nor did they get worse. They were the definition of mediocre, and when they were in playoff contention, incredibly fraudulent.

Last year, Geno led the league in completion percentage and threw for over 4,000 yards with thirty touchdown passes. I get that he missed two games this year, but he still finished the year with just 3600 yards and only twenty touchdown passes. I could sense that something was wrong the minute that they got absolutely punked in the second half of their opening game against the Los Angeles Rams. They were up 13-7 in the first thirty minutes of play, but then when they returned to the field, the Rams put up 23 unanswered and didn’t let the Seahawks go past midfield. The good news was that this offense bounced back in their best performance of the season, beating the Detroit Lions 37-31 in overtime thanks to a walkoff touchdown pass from Geno to Tyler Lockett. But then after that game, they were just really average and pedestrian.

They were horrible in the redzone in their games against the Panthers and Bengals, they only put up 20 against a Cardinals defense with little to no talent, it took a defensive breakdown for them to beat the Browns 24-20, and they barely beat the four-win Commanders 29-26 with a walkoff field goal! Even when their defense finished with eleven sacks in a Monday night victory against the Giants, their offense only put up seventeen points! It’s no wonder why they got pummeled 37-3 against the Ravens, why they got swept by the 49ers, why they lost to the Rams twice, and why they failed to beat the Cowboys on Thursday Night Football. Any time they went up against bad competition, they played down to it and barely escaped. When they played the teams that were on a higher level, the Seahawks were predictably vulnerable and exposed.

My biggest disappointment with this team more than Geno however was the defense. I was on the record saying that this had the potential to be the Legion of Boom 2.0, which aged poorly because the scheme was still terrible and they took more steps back than forward. They gave up the third-most yards out of any other team, they ranked 21st in passing yards allowed, they were the second-worst rush defense in the league behind Arizona, and they ranked 25th in points per game allowed. Even though Bobby Wagner lead the league in tackles at 183, and while Devon Witherspoon proved that he is going to be a star for years to come, this defense continued to be a bottom-feeder. The biggest disappointment was Tariq Woolen, who was coming off an outstanding rookie year, and just massively imploded in his sophomore season. He was not good in coverage, he was horrible at tackling, and there were games in which Pete Carroll just simply put him on the bench.

The one game where I thought Seattle still had a shot to make the playoffs was on Monday Night Football against the Philadelphia Eagles. Geno was ruled out due to an injury, so Drew Lock ended up getting the start as a 4.5 point underdog, but Pete Carroll was undefeated against the Eagles in his head coaching tenure with Seattle. The Seahawks trailed for most of that game and into the final minutes of the fourth quarter. But not only did Julian Love come up with two huge game-deciding interceptions, but Lock led an insanely clutch game-winning drive by converting on two straight third-and-longs, including the go-ahead touchdown to Jaxon-Smith Njigba that gave Seattle the 20-17 victory. That victory brought them back to a steady 500, and with Geno returning just in time for their victory against the Tennessee Titans, they were now 8-7 and just needed to win out to have a chance. Unfortunately, any hope that they had ended with a crushing home loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers 30-23. The defense allowed over 200 yards on the ground, they let George Pickens have 130 receiving yards of his own, and the Seattle offense failed to capitalize in the second half. Even though they beat the Cardinals in their final game of the season, the Seahawks were still eliminated via tiebreaker.

One of the most shocking reports of this offseason was the fact that the Seahawks decided to move on from Pete Carroll as the head coach and move him into an advisory role. While I don’t blame the organization for wanting a new fresh start, I thought it was shocking because not only did the players love him, the team was still respectable and not absolutely terrible. But Seattle found the perfect consolation prize by hiring Mike MacDonald from the Baltimore Ravens to be their next head coach, signaling a brand new change with their defensive scheme. However, their quarterback situation is one that they really need to address. Geno Smith is obviously not a horrible quarterback, but this year, he proved to just be a middle-of-the-road starter and not a long-term solution. You can win games with him but not the ones that you need the most. If he is still their quarterback, then the Seahawks will still finish with eight or nine wins, but the team is still going to remain in neutral. It’s highly unlikely that they sign anybody in free agency and I honestly don’t know if they’ll select a quarterback early in the draft, so I’m not expecting anything other than just another average 2024 season.

TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (9-8)

After the Bucs got destroyed by the Cowboys in last year’s Wild Card round and once Tom Brady retired from the NFL for good, it seemed like any hope that they had was going to be crushed. The offense had a shockingly massive dropoff in 2022, one where it was completely one-dimensional with no running game or a stable offensive line, and Baker Mayfield’s fourth team in the last two years was going to be the post-Brady Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The team also didn’t really do much in free agency, besides resigning Lavonte David and Jamel Dean, but little to nothing was done to fix the offense. Center Ryan Jensen once again couldn’t play for an entire season due to a knee injury, the only running backs on the depth chart were now Chase Edmonds and Rachaad White, and the only two receivers that you could remember from Tampa are Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. The defense kept a lot of its players from the year before and added a couple of rookies to a unit that was a top ten scoring unit, but the fear was that Tampa was going to revert to being a four or six win football team. But they ended up being the biggest overachievers of the season.

That notion all started with their first game of the season, a 20-17 upset victory over the Minnesota Vikings. They had a hard time shutting Justin Jefferson out of the gameplan, but they held him to just two catches in the second half, and they forced three turnovers for the entire afternoon that ended up being the biggest difference in the game. Baker might have thrown for just 173 yards on twenty-one completions, but he threw a couple touchdown passes and was efficient, which carried over into the next week against the Chicago Bears. Mayfield responded with a 300+ yard game of his own, with Mike Evans totaling 171 of them, and the defense put on the finishing touches by sacking Justin Fields six times and coming up with a pick-six to send it home. Through four weeks, the Bucs were 3-1 and while they were certainly far from an elite team, they looked like a respectable playoff contender. Unfortunately, that was when things stared to skid as they lost the next six out of seven games. Between weeks five and twelve, their only victory came at home against the Tennessee Titans, and most of their losses were more or less the same. The offense could never gain any sort of rhythm against quality defenses, and the more that they stalled out, the more worn out their defense got. When they lost at home to Atlanta, the defense did whatever it could by forcing three turnovers, but Tampa could only score one touchdown and they were incredibly sloppy in the redzone. That led to the Falcons easily getting into field goal range on their final drive, and Tampa lost that afternoon 16-13. When they went up against the Houston Texans, it was a little bit of a different story. This was one where Baker Mayfield did more than enough to win; he threw for over 265 yards and a go-ahead touchdown pass to Cade Otton with close to forty-five seconds left. However, the defense got absolutely torched by CJ Stroud as the rookie threw five touchdown passes, including the game-winning one with six seconds left that gave Houston a 39-37 decisive victory.

Heading into Week 13, the Bucs were 4-7 and even though the NFC South was a completely terrible division, it was going to take a miracle for Tampa to come out on top. But not only did the defense regain its poise, but the offense turned on the switch that they’ve been looking for all year, and Baker Mayfield ended up playing some of the best football he’s played in his career. In another grudge match with the Atlanta Falcons, he might have thrown for 144 yards, but he had the last laugh as he threw the game-winning touchdown pass to Cade Otton that put Tampa ahead of Atlanta in the NFC South. One week later, Baker had a perfect passer rating for the first time in his career against Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers, in Lambeau Field! The defense once again didn’t have its best day, but Baker carried that team with 381 yards and four touchdown passes, even with him taking five sacks that day. After a blowout victory against the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Bucs had a chance to put the division on ice if they beat the Saints at home, but they went right back to their October form and got absolutely neutralized. Fortunately, they took care of business on the road against the Carolina Panthers and they ended up winning the NFC South for the third straight year.

Their first playoff game would be against the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday Night Football, the same circumstance that Tampa headed into in Week 3, before the Eagles ended up shutting them down 25-11. But this time, the headlines were different. While the Bucs were rising up, the Eagles were sinking all the way down, and it was time for the home team to take advantage. It was a sloppy defensive battle for the first forty-five minutes, but all it took was a horrible missed tackle by James Bradberry on a 56 yard catch-and-run touchdown by Trey Palmer for the game to blow wide open, and the Bucs ended up quashing their opponent 32-9. Baker played better than he did in his first playoff game in 2020 against the Steelers, throwing for 337 yards and three touchdown passes. The defense was also superb, not allowing a single third down conversion or a touchdown, and they even stuffed the Tush Push! This Bucs team was even better than what it was last year under Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback that has ever played the game.

Unfortunately, their season came to an end on the road against the Detroit Lions. It was a competitive game where both quarterbacks played exceptionally well, but not only was Detroit’s offense more efficient, but they made less mistakes. Baker might have thrown three touchdown passes, but he also threw two back-breaking interceptions, and Tampa was unfortunately not going to the NFC Championship. Even if I thought that they were going to get destroyed by the 49ers, the Bucs had a chance to go really far, but they just never capitalized.

This season was far from a failure for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Even though they won their division for the third straight year, nobody expected this team to go anywhere without Tom Brady, and especially when Baker Mayfield was the quarterback. But the young gun got his swagger and confidence back, which is why he is going to get a deserving contract extension. Todd Bowles might not get the credit that he deserves from most people, but I will absolutely give a lot to him for how this year played out. Even though they fell into a slump in the middle of the year, the Bucs ran the table near perfectly at the end of the year, and we saw more positives from this team than negatives. Mike Evans had another 1000 yard season to add to his Hall of Fame resume, Rachaad White had a decent 900+ yard season, Trey Palmer is a speed demon that could be dangerous in the future, and the defense saw plenty of young studs really take over for this team. YaYa Diaby and Calijah Kancey had solid rookie seasons that are not going to get talked about enough. Most importantly, Antoine Winfield got absolutely snubbed from Pro Bowl consideration for a safety that had 120+ tackles, six sacks, twelve passes defended, and three interceptions.

The most important thing that I think general manager Jason Licht needs to accomplish is bringing three veterans back: Baker Mayfield, Mike Evans, and Antoine Winfield. I think it’s safe to say that Baker has earned to be the franchise quarterback of this football team, but if they don’t bring back Evans or Winfield, then this team is going to take a few steps back not just because of their impacts on the field, but the leadership off of them. Because it’s the NFC South, I’m certainly not going to rule them out of winning their division for the fourth consecutive year, but they need to prove that last year wasn’t a fluke. Their offensive coordinator Dave Canales is no longer on the team since he took the head coaching job for the Carolina Panthers, and I certainly have doubts about the new guy in charge Liam Coen, so we might be seeing another version of this year’s Giants. I certainly hope that doesn’t happen but if the Bucs run it back with the same team or let one of their key players walk away, then we might see somebody else in their division catch up to them sooner than later.

TENNESSEE TITANS (6-11)

I said that this season was the last chance for the Titans to have a competitive year, but they didn’t even achieve that until it was too late. I’m sorry if you didn’t like the fact that I didn’t think that the addition of DeAndre Hopkins was going to make this team ten times better, but what did you expect with a below-average offense and an average-at-best defense? Ryan Tannehill had lost the magic that he had between 2019 and 2020, Derrick Henry was on the final year of his contract, the offensive line was an absolute trainwreck, there were no real legitimate receiving threats around Hopkins, and the secondary was complete garbage that was just full of reaches and busts! Did nobody see that in Week 1 when Tannehill threw three interceptions and it took five field goals from Nick Folk for Tennessee to even stay in that game? Or a couple weeks later when Myles Garrett took him down nearly three times and where the team got blown out by the Browns 27-3? I mean, there were some good moments. They pummeled an injured Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals with the exact same score one week later. They carved up the pathetic excuse that Brandon Staley calls a defense by beating the Los Angeles Chargers in overtime. But before the bye week, this team was 2-4 and dead last in their division. In their loss to the Baltimore Ravens in London, Tannehill injured his ankle and had only thrown two touchdowns with six interceptions! Mike Vrabel said that in their next against the Falcons that they were going to play both Malik Willis AND rookie Will Levis! Any time a team tries to do that, it usually blows up in their faces. However, after that week, there was no question who their quarterback of the future was that year.

Will Levis not only led the Titans to victory, but he ran away with it by throwing four touchdown passes in a debut for the ages! DeAndre Hopkins was just as dynamic, catching three of those scores with an additional 128 yards on just four catches! The defense might have let the Falcons back into this game once Taylor Heinicke started the second half, but nobody was going to beat Tennessee that day with their rookie quarterback playing out of his mind. Unfortunately, the euphoria vanished away after they lost four out of their next five games, with their only victory coming against the one-win Carolina Panthers. The most painful of those losses came at home to the Indianapolis Colts, where everything just fell apart for them at the worst possible time. Levis got sacked six times, the special teams gave up two blocked punts, and the defense unraveled in overtime and gave up the game-winning touchdown to Michael Pittman Jr. After that loss, the special teams coordinator got fired and the team fell to 4-8. They were in an even worse situation the next week against the Miami Dolphins. Even with the defense looking respectable, they were still trailing 27-13 with about four minutes left to go thanks to three costly turnovers from Tennessee that set up all of Miami’s points that game. However, the Titans pulled off the near impossible by scoring fifteen unanswered points for a thrilling upset, capping it off with a sealing hat-trick sack by Harold Landry! Even though Tennessee was not going to make the playoffs that year, they weren’t going to let anybody stop them from playing spoiler.

They had a couple of chances to do that to the Texans and Seahawks at home, but they failed, but not in their final game of the season. In what was possibly Derrick Henry’s final game in Nashville, the Titans eliminated the Jacksonville Jaguars from postseason contention by what might be their most defining victory of the season. The reason why I say that is because just one year ago, both teams played each other in the final game of the 2022 season for a chance to win the AFC South, and Jacksonville stole it from them. Now that the Titans were eliminated and the Jaguars still had a shot, it was time for the uno reverse effect to take place. Henry ran for 153 yards and carried the offense from start to finish, Ryan Tannehill threw a couple of touchdown passes in place for an injured Levis, and the defense picked off Trevor Lawrence twice that gave Tennessee the edge to crush their opponent’s hopes.

Even though this was absolutely not the season that Tennessee wanted, there is at least hope heading into this offseason. It sucked that Mike Vrabel lost in a power struggle, but they brought in a hopeful offensive mind in Brian Callahan that can make Will Levis into a successful starting quarterback, the same way that Joe Burrow has been in Cincinnati. But the biggest thing that they need to do in the next two months is give him all of the help in the world because Hopkins is not getting any younger and Derrick Henry is an unrestricted free agent that wants to join a contender. The offensive line was a mess, the receiving room was a travesty, and the defense needed an on-and-off front seven to at least have a chance. They’ll have plenty of cap space and a high draft pick to address these issues, and while it is going to take them a long while for them to be relevant again, there is at least some clarity that the Titans have a good head coach and quarterback in place for this upcoming season.

WASHINGTON COMMANDERS (4-13)

Even though the rotting stench known as Dan Snyder was forever removed from this organization, the Washington Commanders were still one of the most pitiful teams in the league. The reasons why were very simple. They had the worst offensive line in the league that gave up the most sacks in football, they had the worst defense in football, and they had a promising quarterback in the middle of the year that just completely shattered at the end. I’m not exaggerating when I say that.

In his first ten starts, Sam Howell was actually looking like one of the most hopeful quarterbacks in football. Even though he kept taking sack after sack, he showed a lot of the positive traits that you need in a quarterback for your team to succeed. He was accurate, he was mobile, and extremely confident in his abilities! He torched the Eagles twice, throwing for 290 yards and a last-minute tying touchdown in the first one, and then close to 400 yards and four touchdown passes in the second! He was one of the only inexperienced quarterbacks that carved up Bill Belichick’s defense as he threw for over 320 yards against the New England Patriots in an impressive 20-17 victory! He threw three more touchdown passes against the Atlanta Falcons, close to 300 yards and a pair of touchdowns against Denver, and then over 300 yards and three scores against the Seattle Seahawks! There were a few abnormalities, but after their game against Seattle, he threw seventeen touchdowns and nine interceptions. But for whatever reason, he was just so scared to take even a five-step drop in the pocket. In the final seven games of the year, Howell threw just four touchdown passes and a gross twelve picks. It all started with their loss to Tommy DeVito and the Giants, one where Washington’s defense finished with nine sacks and they still lost 31-19 because of three touchdown passes given up, and the same amount of interceptions thrown by Howell. He was so bad against the Rams and Jets that he got benched for Jacoby Brissett, who actually ran the offense significantly better and more efficient! I’m not kidding! When Howell was in against the LA, they were down 28-7 in the fourth quarter, and Brissett somehow made it a one-score with plenty of time left. They were down 27-0 to the Jets at halftime, and Brissett scored 28 unanswered points to take the lead, before Greg Zuerlein kicked the game-winning field goal. If it wasn’t for him tightening his hamstring, Howell would have been on the bench, but he was thrown back into the fire and never regained the strength that he once had earlier in the year. But in his defense, even though the turnovers were just flat out horrible and head-scratching, a lot of quarterbacks could have failed with that bad of an offensive line. It’s even more disappointing when you know that Eric Bieniemy was the offensive coordinator because he had a chance to prove that his success wasn’t just built off of Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid, but now he’s no longer with the team and is officially the offensive coordinator at UCLA now.

It also didn’t help that the defense was an absolute travesty that was by far the worst in the league. Jack Del Rio got fired in the middle of the year, and not too long after the season, Ron Rivera went right out the door with him. It’s not just the fact that they were getting destroyed by vastly superior football teams, but even those that were hardly anywhere average! Remember Thursday Night Football against the Bears? When DJ Moore torched that secondary for 230 receiving yards and three touchdown passes? I already talked about the game against Tommy DeVito where nine sacks didn’t matter if he’s still throwing for 246 yards and three touchdowns! Emmanuel Forbes got benched earlier in the year due to his poor performance, Montez Sweat and Chase Young got traded at the deadline, they had the worst turnover differential in the league, and they only had four sacks in their final six games of the season!

I knew that this team was going to be nowhere near a playoff contender and I wasn’t too far off when I said that they would only get five wins at the beginning of the year, but this was worse than I expected! Now they have a new head coach in Dan Quinn, a new offensive coordinator in Kliff Kingsbury, the second highest cap space in the league, and the second overall pick! They’re most likely going to pick Drake Maye or Jayden Daniels if Caleb Williams is off the board at number one, but they need to get better at several areas, particularly with the offensive line and several defensive positions. No quarterback is going to succeed with this football team if they’re left out to die the way that Sam Howell did this year, and while I trust Quinn as a motivator and football mind, I don’t know if the supporting cast is going to hold their end of the bargain just yet. The new ownership in charge is known for being impatient with failure, so if the Commanders fall into another pitiful season, the timer is going to be expedited pretty quickly.

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