NFL Season Predictions, Part 1: The Cellar Dwellers

[Thewholefnshow28]

NFL Season Predictions, Part 1: The Cellar Dwellers

The rosters have been pared down to 53 men, and with thousands of words of preamble out of the way, it’s time to finish up the 2014 NFL Preview. As always, during this last week of boring before the NFL season finally begins, we break up the league’s 32 teams into four groups, writing about one of those groups per day. The series begins today with a look at the teams I’m expecting to be among the eight competing for the first overall pick in next year’s draft. Tomorrow, I’ll look at eight teams that are likely to decline in 2014, before getting to eight improving teams on Thursday and the top eight contenders to win Super Bowl XLIX on Friday. If you want more detailed looks at each NFL team and its chances in 2014, you can refer to the Grantland NFL Podcast previews from the past month with myself and Robert Mays.

Each team capsule lists a number of key statistics that contextualize how the team performed in 2013. Many of them are described and explained in this statistical primer from 2012. I calculated strength of schedule for 2013 by — blink a couple of times right now or your eyes are going to glaze over — using the average Pythagorean expectation for each opponent a team played, not including the points scored or allowed in games between those two teams. OK, so your eyes probably glazed over anyway. Mine did too. Simpler explanation: To figure out the Falcons’ 2013 strength of schedule, I started with Week 1, in which they played the Saints. To determine how “difficult” the Saints were, I gathered the Saints’ points scored and points allowed in games that didn’t involve the Falcons and converted that to a winning percentage. Do that 15 more times and you find that Atlanta’s average opponent had a non-Falcons Pythagorean expectation of .532, the fifth-toughest slate in football.

The only problem? Nobody has played any meaningful games in 2014, so it’s impossible to project the schedule the same way. Football Perspective used the Vegas lines to infer each team’s strength of schedule in 2014 through Week 16, so we’ll use that as an estimate. Now, let’s go make fans of eight teams angry!

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Pretty much agree with Barnwell on the cellar dwellers this year. The Bills are in the worst spot if EJ cannot step it up this year and make the leap. To flame out once again and not even have a first round pick to potentially get QB would be such a gut punch to the Buffalo fans.

[BpG]

Ray Farmer will look like a wizard if The Bills cough up the #1 overall pick for a freaking WR. Did they Browns need a WR, sure they did.....is Sammy Watkins worth the #4 overall pick and a potential #1 overall pick? Absolutely not. He is a rich mans Santonio Holmes. 

[jvan1973]

Browns will have the number one and number two pick next season