2019 NFL Preview Week

The 8 NFL Teams Taking a Step Backward in 2019

The second of a 4-part NFL season preview of all 32 NFL teams, with 8 faux contenders heading in the wrong direction in 2019…

NFL SEASON PREVIEW WEEK CONTINUES WITH EIGHT TEAMS TAKING A STEP BACKWARD THIS SEASON. Progress isn’t linear, and not every team can get better every season. The NFL is a zero-sum game, and every win is a loss for someone else.

We started our season preview with eight teams whose only real relevance this season will be contending for the #1 pick. Now we turn to eight that are more pretender than contender. Parity reigns in the NFL. Seven of these teams finished .500 or better last year. They could all miss the 2020 playoffs.

These are not necessarily power rankings. These are not the 24th through 17th best teams in the NFL. Some of these teams may even make the playoffs. But they’ll be worse than last year, and they are faux Super Bowl contenders. Last year this list included teams like the Jaguars, Panthers, Seahawks, and Lions. It’s easy to forget now, but those teams all won 9+ games in 2017, and they all missed the playoffs last year.

Start with the 8 NFL bottom feeders preview if you missed it, and come back soon for 8 teams headed in the right direction and 8 Super Bowl contenders. Now let’s get to the 8 teams closer to the bottom than they’d like to believe…

Washington Redskins

Is there a more nondescript NFL team than the Washington Redskins? In last year’s preview, I wrote that Washington looked like “what you’d get if you tried to build the most forgettable, most likely-to-finish-.500 team possible.” They finished 7–9, and I swear they would’ve won 8 if Alex Smith hadn’t gotten hurt. Washington’s won 7, 7, 8, and 9 games the last four years. They’re not good or bad. Just utterly forgettable.

This year’s team might trend towards bad, if only because they have one of the worst quarterback situations in the league. Case Keenum will start, with Colt McCoy in the wings. Eventually, rookie Dwayne Haskins should get time. After all, Dan Snyder drafted the local kid to keep the crowds happy — cuz that’s a good reason to draft a first-round quarterback, right?

Petition to rename this team the Washington Haskins? Yes, I think so.

The one thing that makes this team below average but not awful is that they’re pretty solid in the trenches, on both sides of the ball. That’s where the game is won, and that plus a weak division could keep the Haskins closer to .500 than you think. But that doesn’t mean you have to watch them.

Under 6.5 — pass

Tennessee Titans

Washington has too many flaws to be the perfect .500 team in 2019. The Titans may have taken their place. Did you know Tennessee won nine games last year? It’s true, I looked it up. They won nine the year before too, and the year before that! The Tennessee Titans have won nine games in three straight seasons, Marcus Mariota, Mike Mularkey, Mike Vrabel, and all. That’s a lot of Ms, and not as many Ls as you’d think.

ESPN’s Mike Clay thinks the Titans have the fourth best defense in the league. I don’t see it. Tennessee ranked 18th, 21st, and 24th in defensive DVOA the last three seasons, below average all three times despite their 9–7 records. The Titans have a good secondary and a couple good linebackers and interior linemen. They don’t have many holes on D, and maybe that makes them good, but it does not make them great.

The offense definitely isn’t great or even good. It feels like the ship has sailed on Marcus Mariota. He’s always injured and doesn’t produce. He has thrown only 69 touchdowns in four seasons and is barely over 3000 passing yards a year. That doesn’t cut it in 2019. The Titans have a good line and seem to have found a run game late last season with Derrick Henry, but we’ll see if that holds up in the new season, especially with a new offensive coordinator.

Tennessee had a +7 point differential last year. They were -22 the year before and +3 before that, all while somehow going 9–7. Last year’s underlying metrics suggest the Titans should have won 7.7 games, not 9. This is just a very average team. Even in a wide open division, average isn’t enough.

Under 8 — pass

Pittsburgh Steelers

You see the black and gold, you see Mike Tomlin and Ben Roethlisberger, and it’s hard not to pencil these guys right back into the playoff picture, just like every other year. But Father Time is undefeated (when it’s not playing the Patriots) and nothing lasts forever.

The Steel Curtain is dead and gone. Pittsburgh’s defense is closer to bad than good. They’re relying on first-round pick Devin Bush to improve the run game in Ryan Shazier’s place, but the pass D is questionable and there’s just not a ton of defensive talent. The offense lost a lot too. Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown have been replaced by James Conner and Donte Moncrief. That is a gigantic drop-off, even if Conner and JuJu Smith-Schuster are quite good.

The offensive line is still elite, and Conner was terrific last year. But Ben Roethlisberger takes another tiny step back every year. He led the NFL in interceptions last season and had his second lowest yards per attempt of the decade, and he’s now 37. Even legends die.

Pittsburgh missed the playoffs last year with nine wins, and only their offense kept them above .500, and that was with the best wide receiver in football on their side. There’s just not a lot to love here outside of tradition and jerseys. The Steelers are not what they once were.

Under 9 — pass

Dallas Cowboys

No team overachieved more than the Cowboys last year. I picked 6 over/under locks last fall and went 5–1. The only loss was the Cowboys, who eked out 10 wins and won the NFC East despite looking extremely mediocre early on. The popular narrative is that the Amari Cooper trade saved the season, but the reality is the Cowboys won with defense and, more than that, they got lucky. Football Outsiders advanced metrics show Dallas should have won 7 games last season, not 10.

This is the same team we know. They still have an awesome offensive line and an outstanding run game. Ezekiel Elliott should get his contract done any day now. Dak Prescott wants a big contract extension, so that could hang over the team all season, especially if he struggles. Amari Cooper wants one too, and Dak and Amari just watched LB Jaylon Smith and RT La’el Collins get paid. This contract stuff feels like it could hang over the team all season.

Somehow Jason Garrett has coached this team all decade, and he’s been .500 or better all but two seasons. This feels like another team that will float around .500 with high highs and low lows, plus all the usual drama.

Jerry Jones thinks Dallas is a team to watch. I suppose they are — if you like soap operas.

Under 9 — pass

Seattle Seahawks

The Seahawks feel like the NFC version of the Steelers, which I’m sure Seattle fans will love to hear. You see Russell Wilson, Pete Carroll, and the ugly lime green and you think 10 wins and the playoffs, just like every other year. And it’s hard to blame you: 10, 9, 10, 10, 12, 13, 11. That’s the number of wins Wilson has each year in the NFL, and he’s never missed a game.

But why does it feel like Wilson has a little less help every single year? The Seahawks line still isn’t very good. Doug Baldwin retired. Chris Carson is fine, but Brian Schottenheimer’s scheme limits this offense and consistently keeps Wilson behind glass for way too much of the game.

Like the Steelers, Seattle’s defense is not what it once was. Bobby Wagner is awesome, and Jadeveon Clowney should be a great addition. The linebackers are good. The rest of the defense is not. The D-line is weak even with Clowney, and the secondary is a far cry from what it once was.

Seattle isn’t bad. That’s not possible with Wilson and Carroll around. But they’re not going to improve on last year’s 10 wins or make a Super Bowl run, so that puts them firmly in this section of teams headed the wrong direction as they continue to waste Russell Wilson’s prime in the wrong system.

Over 8.5 — pass

Houston Texans

Just about everyone expects the Texans to be good, especially now that Andrew Luck is out of their way. Houston jumped from +285 to +130 to win the AFC South after Luck’s retirement, nearly even odds. They have a star-studded roster highlighted by names like Deshaun Watson, DeAndre Hopkins, and J.J. Watt, and they’re fun and easy to root for.

Behind those flashy names is an incomplete, flawed roster. The offensive line is still awful, even after the Texans gave up two first-round picks for Laremy Tunsil. Tunsil is an above average pass blocker but isn’t good at run blocking, and one man doesn’t fix a broken line. Houston also traded for Duke Johnson and Carlos Hyde to replace the injured Lamar Miller. The Texans made four trades on cut-down day, pushing their chips all-in on this Luck-less window.

But it’s that all-in push that could come back to bite them. The Texans have a brutal schedule out of the gates, and now they face a ton of pressure to live up to the hype. Houston heads to New Orleans Monday night for a likely Week 1 opening loss. They follow that up with games against the Jaguars, Panthers, Chargers, Falcons, and Chiefs. The Texans might actually be less talented than all six of those opponents.

Last year’s team won with defense, in part because they finally got 16 games from J.J. Watt. Watt played only eight games the previous two seasons combined, and now there’s no Jadeveon Clowney if Watt or Whitney Mercilus falter. The Texans secondary is poor, and they’ll never match last year’s historic run defense. The metrics say they should have won 9 games last year instead of 11, and they might be worse now.

Even if they’re not, the schedule gets a lot harder even without Luck, and expectations can be a real dick. Bill O’Brien is the coach and de facto general manager, and he’s gonna get fired for both of those jobs if this all-in push goes south.

Under 8.5 — play

Los Angeles Chargers

The Chargers tied for the best record in the AFC last year at 12–4. You just forgot because they didn’t win the division and thus fell to the 5-seed, then eked out a road win over the Ravens before getting hammered by the Patriots. They theoretically return the same team, except not really.

Burgeoning star tight end Hunter Henry is finally healthy, and stud pass rusher Joey Bosa is too, after missing most of last season. But this team never gets everyone on the field at once. Do-everything safety Derwin James is already injured and out until at least November after a dazzling rookie season. Left tackle Russell Okung is out indefinitely and could miss the season. Melvin Gordon is still holding out, with no end in sight.

The Chargers have one of the worst offensive lines even with Okung, almost certainly the worst of any contender. That means precious little blocking for 38-year-old Philip Rivers and not much help in the run game without their star runner or much blocking. The defense should still be very good, especially the pass D. L.A.’s corners are great, and Bosa and Melvin Ingram are superb pass rushers. The Chargers can pass and defend the pass, and that’s important in 2019, but the run game has to matter at some point.

It feels like the Chargers are always good not great, but the reality is they’re usually average, not good. Check out Rivers’s win total this decade: 12, 9, 5, 4, 9, 9, 7, 8, 9. Worse than you thought, huh? The Chargers might be, too.

Under 9.5 — LOCK

Chicago Bears

Before you call me a Bears hater, you should know Chicago was my biggest sleeper last season, my lockiest lock of the year and my preseason Coach of the Year pick. The season played out even better than I expected. The Bears had the league’s #1 defense and stormed to 12 wins, and now everyone expects them to do it again.

That’s… not how things work. Let me introduce you to my friend, regression. Historically good defenses don’t stay historically good forever. The Bears defense is great, and almost all the key components are back, outside of longtime coordinator Vic Fangio. The defense will be good again. It should be great, probably even top-5. You just need to understand that top-5 is a really big difference from historically great #1.

That means the offense has to make up the difference, and I’m not sure they have it in them. This is a big year for Mitch Trubisky. Trubisky was much improved last year but still a far cry from good. He’s a weapon on the move, but he’s still struggling to read the defense and make decisions. The Matt Nagy and Mark Helfrich system helped, but the Bears are still winning in spite of Trubisky, not because of him. A solid offensive line and potential Rookie of the Year in RB David Montgomery should help, but will they help enough?

Chicago’s defense ranked #1 in DVOA last year. Its offense was only #20, and that’s even with the D setting them up for success all year, plus one of the league’s easiest schedules. Remember what happened to Jacksonville last fall? When their defense dropped from historic to just great, the offense couldn’t make up for it, and they crashed back to earth at 5–11. In my preview last fall, I called the Jags more likely to finish last in the division than first. They ended up in last, and that prediction rings true for this Bears team.

As Chicago’s defense regresses, there will be more pressure than ever on Trubisky and the offense. And unless they improve by a sizable margin, this team is going to fall well short of expectations.

Under 9 — play

Be sure to check out the full season preview: 8 teams fighting for the #1 pick, 8 sleepers headed in the right direction, and 8 Super Bowl contenders, all published this week at SportsRaid! ■

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