NFL Midseason Predictions (NFC)

Okay here we go with the NFC.

NFC East: Giants (12-4). The top three teams in this division, Cowboys excluded, all have a chance to win it since they all still play each other at least once before the season is over - the Giants and Eagles still have both of their games. I think there will be a tie for 2nd between the Eagles and Redskins and the Cowboys will finish in last even though they will probably have a winning record.

NFC North: I see a three-way tie for first at 9-7. I sized up all the matchups and it keeps coming up that way. Of course that is contingent upon the Vikes beating both the Pack and the Bears at home. Going through the tiebreakers, the head to heads would be 1-1 for all three, 4- 2 divsion record for all three, and 8-6 record against common opponents for all three. It would then come down to conference record, which I predict the Vikes to be on top of at 7-5, where the Pack and Bears would be 6-6 (Vikes 2-2 against the AFC, Bears and Pack 3-1). Did you get all of that? Of course the Vikes will let me down, probably as early as this weekend. In reality they are actually better off missing the playoffs again since then they could turn the page on the BChill era.

NFC South: Panthers (12-4). This is another divsion where all four teams could potentially have winning records or at least all four teams could have eight wins. These strong division are cancelled out by divisions like the....

NFC West: Arizona (9-7), in reality they really only need to win about one more game to capture the division since they are currently 5-3.

Wild Cards: There will be a three-way tie at 11-5 between the Eagles, Redskins, and the Bucs. The tiebreakers are too complicating to figure out without spending half a day on it and I have a wife, a kid, and a job so I will just say the Eagles and Bucs because I don't like the Redskins.

We'll see how I do, hopefully I get at least three teams right in each conference. Arizona and Tennessee are locks so I'm off to a good start.

NFL Midseason Predictions (AFC)

Nowadays everyone makes predictions on the NFL so I figured I might as well too. It usually makes for good discussion. I will pick a winner for each division and each conference's wild card with their projected record. I'll wait until right before the playoffs start to try and guess the Super Bowl matchup. I'll do the AFC today and the NFC tomorrow.

AFC East: Patriots (10-6) after the tiebreakers. I think both the Jets and Bill could finish 10-6 as well but the Patriots would finish on top because of tiebreakers. The Dolphins have a good chance of finishing over .500 as well.

AFC North: Steelers (12-4) easily. The only team with a shot of unseating them is the Ravens and at best they will finish 9-7.

AFC South: Titans (13-3) with the four-game lead they have now it would take a monumental collapse for them not to win it.

AFC West: Chargers (9-7). They have five home games remaining and they should be able to run the table on those and pick up a victory on the road along the way (at KC). Their only competitor, the Broncos, will probably only finish 7-9. However, they do play in San Diego the last week of the season so that could conceivably be a play-in game for the postseason since the Broncos have the tiebreaker due to Ed Hercules blowing that call when they played in week two.

Wild Cards: Jets (10-6) and Bills (10-6). I want to go against the Jets more than you can imagine for obvious reasons but they have a very winnable game at home against the Rams this weekend and their last five are all winnable. Sorry Colts fans but I think they will fall just short at 9-7 along with the Dolphins and Ravens.

If you couldn't tell, I didn't just randomly throw out numbers, I actually glanced at the remaining schedules, unlike the talking heads at ESPN. I'll still be wrong though.

Wide Open NFC North

With the ankle sprain of Kyle Orton keeping him out for a month and leaving the Bears QB job up to the one and only Rex Grossman, the NFC North is up for grabs between the Packers, Bears, and Vikings. Even if Orton was still in there the division title will come down to the finish.

Looking at the Bears and Packers upcoming schedules, 10-6 should be enough to get Vikes their first NFC North division title. Since there are eight games left I divide the remainder of the schedule up into two- four games stretches. The Vikes need to shoot for 3-1 in each stretch would get them the requisite 10 wins.

The first stretch: vs. Pack, @ Tampa, @ Jacksonville, and vs. Bears. Breaking this down, the games against the Pack and the Bears are must wins. They can't afford to go 0-2 against either one of them since they already lost to both on the road so in essence they have to find a way to win either at Jacksonville or at Tampa.

The second stretch: @ Detroit, @ Arizona, vs. Atlanta, vs. NY Giants. The game @ Arizona is going to be tough so you figure the Vikes will have to win the other three to get to double figures in wins. The game vs. Atlanta was one you could circle as an automatic win at the start of the season but that is no longer the case. That would be a nice one to get for tiebreaker purposes since the Falcons have already beat the Bears and Pack. It could come down to the last game against the Giants, who could very well be playing for home field throughout the NFC playoffs.

I will put another post out there in a few days on my predictions for all of the divisions in the NFL and who I think will get the wild cards.

So Much For That

Well, we saw the Gophers true colors today. Playing a glorified high school team in Northwestern in a game that on paper they should have won easily, the fighting Goofs found a way to find the loss column. Yes the same NW team, that was:

• without their starting QB,
• without their best offensive player - Tyrell Sutton (apparently they have no trust in their backup since the ball never left the QB's hands in the 4th quarter)
• only using about two offensive plays, QB option left and QB option right
• with about four defensive players that entered the game injured or were injured during the first half
• coming off a loss to the mighty IU Hoosiers.

This was not enough for the Gophers to find a way to win and keep alive at least one fans (me) Rose Bowl hopes.

I hate to question someone's heart and resolve but didn't you find it interesting that Eric Decker was still in the game at the end when he could barely walk and above that, Weber was still targeting him? It looked like a valient effort until he dropped the pass that turned into the winning interception. So much for the Arthur Ashe award.

When you take a step back though this isn't a huge shocker. The Gophers were 7-1 largely because they entered the game +16 in TO ratio and the score in this game was tied because of a pick six in the 1st half. It was only a matter of time before the law of averages was going to come back and bite them there. They also have absolutely no running game and as you saw at the end, they are incredibly overly-dependent on Eric Decker to move the chains (I know what else you are thinking, but I won't go there with the special teams).

Hopefully they can bounce back and win at least two of their next three and get to the Outback Bowl.

By the way, if you watched the end of the Wisconsin/Michigan St. game what was Bielema thinking calling TO when Michigan St. was scrambling to get their field goal unit on. Is he trying to get fired?

The Twin Cities Moves Into a Tie for 1st

There are 13 metropolitan areas (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Denver, Miami, New York, Philly, Phoenix, San Fran Bay Area, Twin Cities, and Washington D.C.) that have at least one team in the four major sports. After the Phillies win over the Rays last night to capture the World Series, the city of Philly's first title since 1983, the Twin Cities is now tied with D.C. as the metro area that has had the longest drought since their last championship - the Twins and Redskins in 1991.

It's ironic that a key part of the Phillies winning the World Series in five games was the bullpen work of former Twin J.C. (just call me John Wayne) Romero. He won Games 3 and 5 and even managed to do so without walking anyone, something he greatly struggled with as a Twin.

Anyway, I guess the question comes up, which MN team is going to step up and stop this depressing championship drought?

- Timberwolves: No chance

- Vikings: I can't see it until we get a different QB

- Twins: Decent chance if they can get a righthanded hitting third baseman and some bullpen help, however you have to think this year was a great opportunity with the Yankees being horrible and the Red Sox off their game a little bit. Both of those teams will reload and be in contention again and the Twins will have to overcome their ugly recent history against those two teams plus all the other contenders to get a championship.

- Wild: Also a decent chance. They have the ability to get to the postseason every year but their lack of explosive scorers and conservative style of play will probably hold them back from hoisting the Stanley Cup (how did you like that in depth hockey analysis - don't worry I won't mention anything about the sport again for a long time)

So there you have it. The four franchises that haven't won a championship since 1991. Sadly, only one of the four ever has. We'll give the Wild a pass since they have only been around since 2000 and the T'Wolves a pass since their first year was 1989 and their head personnel guy for the last 13.5 years has an IQ of 40.



The Vikes however don't get a pass. They have been around since 1961 so no excuse is going to hold its weight. Maybe we can turn the clock back to January 17, 1999 and replay the 4th quarter of the NFC Championship game......Please.





Sorry, but the picture correlates so well to the rest of the post

Here We Go Again

I almost forgot, and I will probably wish I forgot, but the T'Wolves open up their 20th season tomorrow. Let's hope the fans don't forget to show up and cheer them on. They definitely did last year. You can't blame them since they have excelled at the two b's for the last couple of years, bad and boring. They have that in common with the Pacers and about 25 other NBA teams for that matter.

Nevertheless, it was only a few short years ago when the T'Wolves were my favorite team and they almost made all my years of faithful support towards their futility pay off with an NBA Championship. Those days are a long way off as the expert moves by McHale have come to fruition. At least they will be more competitive this year than the 22-win debacle from last season. Some of the things I am looking forward to for this season (trust me, I say looking forward to with little enthusiasm).

• Randy Foye healthy for a full season and seeing if he can become an upper echelon NBA point guard. He played okay last year when he actually got in the lineup. If he would have been healthy for the entire season we might have won 25-26 games!
• McHale's prodigy, Kevin Love, playing against NBA competition. My gut instinct is it could be ugly but at least we got Mike Miller out of the deal and finally got rid of Marko Jaric (I am still at a loss for words to describe my thoughts towards McHale on that trade)
• The development of Al Jefferson into an all-star caliber player. Someone has to lead this team. I don't think Jefferson has the mentality to do it, but no NBA team goes anywhere without at least one superstar player.
• Mark Madsen cheer leading. What a team player!
• Watching the unlucky person that has to sit behind McHale crane their neck to see around him. My advice - their will be plenty of empty seats so just move. Go sit by Jesse the Body, at least he will make the game halfway entertaining.

Sadly, that's about all I could think of. I won't try to guess a win total since I have no idea to be quite honest, hopefully they can at least get back into the 30's.

The Williams Boys

The bye week has come and gone for the Vikes, and in what has become the norm, they emerge as a team in disarray. According to Jay Glazer from Fox, Pat and Kevin Williams tested positive for water pills which are on the NFL's banned substance list. Water pills are on the list since they can potentially mask steroid use. If you ever seen the Williams boys, you know that steroids aren't something they take, or if they do they don't take them properly. All indications are that they take the pills to help them lose excess water weight since they are a diuretic.

The thing I find amazing about this, even if they didn't have malicious intent, is why did they take them if they were on the banned substance list. Surely, someone from the league or the team circulates this to them.

We'll see how this plays out but it looks like a four-game suspension is likely since a player from the Saints already served a suspension for a similar offense. Without them in the lineup, the biggest strength of the team, the ability to stop the run, will be neutralized. The Vikings margin for error is small enough the way it is, this makes it even smaller. At a minimum, from a W/L perspective, this will cost them a game and probably eliminates any slim chance we had at a playoff berth.

I just hope the NFL waits until after the game against the Cheeseheads on Nov. 9 to start the suspensions so they can at least stop the five-game Brad Childress-led losing streak the Vikes have against them.