2019 NFL Preview Week

The 8 NFL Teams Fighting for the #1 Pick

The first of a 4-part NFL season preview of all 32 NFL teams, starting with the 8 teams at the bottom…

NFL SEASON PREVIEW WEEK IS HERE! The season finally kicks off Thursday night with the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers, and all 32 teams are in action this weekend. We made it, y’all.

Turns out 32 teams break conveniently into four groups of 8. Today we’ll preview the 8 teams at the bottom who may be fighting for the #1 pick in next year’s draft. Tomorrow we’ll look at 8 teams headed in the wrong direction. Then it’s 8 on their way up for Wednesday, and 8 Super Bowl contenders for Opening Night, where only one of those two teams will be present.

Today, like Drake, we start at the bottom.

Miami Dolphins

There’s little question Miami is one of the worst teams in the NFL. Few would suggest they’re anything other than the very worst team. And that was true before Miami traded away their best offensive lineman and wide receiver to the Texans in a move that will certainly help the team long-term but can only make them worse right now.

The only real strength on this roster is the secondary. Miami has the worst offensive line in the league and possibly the worst D-line, too. There’s very little talent at the offensive skill positions to get excited about. Ryan Fitzpatrick begins the season at QB, keeping Josh Rosen’s seat warm for no apparent reason. Both have been turnover machines and will have no time to throw and no one to throw it to.

Miami won 7 games last year, but their underlying numbers suggest they should have won 5. This year they seem to be actively trying to lose, and unless Rosen grabs the job and looks special, it’s hard to see them having any reason to not tank completely and go for the #1 pick and a franchise QB.

Miami is so bad they’re the sort of team some team will lose to this season and immediately fire their coach the next day. They have a legitimate shot at going 0–16.

Under 4.5 — pass

Oakland Raiders

You’ve watched HBO’s Hard Knocks, so now you know what many already knew: Antonio Brown is as much of a freak show off the field as on it, and Jon Gruden is a walking bucket of football cliches stuck in the 20th century.

The Raiders struggled mightily in the first year of Gruden’s absurd 10-year $100-million contract. Gruden traded his best player to what became the league’s #1 defense while Khalil Mack literally as many sacks as the entire Raiders team. Oakland had 13 sacks for the season. 13!! Gruden also traded WR Amari Cooper, then watched him spark the Cowboys into the playoffs.

Those trades netted the Raiders a couple extra first-round picks, which they promptly spent on players no one projected that high, cuz Raiders. They also traded two picks for Pittsburgh malcontent Antonio Brown, who promptly got frostbite in August and threatened to retire because he didn’t like his helmet. We’ve still yet to see Brown actually play football for the Raiders.

The product on the field isn’t quite as disastrous as the one off it, but it’s not pretty. The defense is below average at every position but linebacker. The offensive line is now below average. Derek Carr has become a replacement-level quarterback. The receivers outside of Brown are terrible. One of those first-round picks, Josh Jacobs, is the plan to revitalize the run game.

Oakland plays in a division with the AFC’s two 12-win teams a year ago plus an improving Denver team. The Raiders were bottom 10 DVOA in offense, defense, and special teams last year. They’re turrible.

Under 6 — play

Arizona Cardinals

The Cardinals are the fun kind of bad. Arizona has a lot of interesting talent on the roster and stalwarts like David Johnson and Larry Fitzgerald to help on offense. The defense is fairly talented and finished top-4 in DVOA in 2017 and 2016 — and they were #17 last year. That’s actually pretty good considering how pathetic the Cardinals offense was. Arizona scored 225 points all year, barely 14ppg, and finished dead last in offensive DVOA. They were on pace to be the worst offense in DVOA history until the final weeks of the season.

Enter Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray. Murray is the Heisman winner out of Oklahoma, eschewing a baseball career and overcoming his height to become the #1 pick in the draft. He’s been handed the keys to the offense, with Arizona quickly moving on from last year’s top pick, Josh Rosen. Arizona went out and got Murray a spread offense coach in Kingsbury, who was let go after going 35–40 in six seasons at Texas Tech.

Kingsbury ranked top-25 in scoring offense in five of his six Tech seasons and helped mold Patrick Mahomes, so that’s the spark Arizona is looking for. Kingsbury wants to play fast, like Chip Kelly’s Eagles fast, hoping to run 80 or 90 plays a game. That’s a lot. You might recall that failing miserably for those Eagles, and that was without a rookie QB making 80+ reads a game behind one of the league’s worst offensive lines.

This great experiment will be fascinating, but it could be ugly at times too. Arizona is missing its top two corners the first 6+ games of the season with star Patrick Peterson suspended, so they may have the worst Opening Day secondary in the league. It could be an ugly first half of the season. Murray will be fun and make plays by land and air, but there’s going to be a lot of sweet-TD-in-a-20-point-blowout highlights for awhile.

Arizona will be a second-half team. They’ll score more in the second half while trailing, and they’ll find their footing in the second half of the season once Kliff and Kyler get some experience and the defense is whole again.

Under 5 — pass

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The Bucs took a big step in the right direction, hiring two-time Coach of the Year Bruce Arians to lead the charge, and Arians brought in Bryon Leftwich to run the offense. Those two give the offense hope, especially with Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, and O.J. Howard catching passes. That’s about it for strengths on this team. The running back rotation might be the worst in the league. The line is bad. Jameis Winston is a turnover machine at quarterback, somehow brought back for yet one more lame-duck season.

The defense is better — at least they pretty much have to be, mathematically. Tampa ranked dead last in defensive DVOA in 2018 with an historically awful pass defense. They literally can’t be any worse. The Bucs spent three early draft picks on the secondary and added LB Devin White to anchor the D. All that will help the team quite a bit, especially up the middle, where they could be a pretty good run defense.

The only way this Bucs thing works is if there’s still a real quarterback trapped somewhere deep inside former #1 overall pick, Jameis Winston. Arians is a magician, but even he can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The magic on this team is the guys catching passes, but it’s hard to catch passes if Jameis is constantly throwing them to the other team.

Tampa won’t be awful, and as erratic as Winston is, this team will surely have a few huge scoring games and embarrass someone better. The Bucs were a top-12 offense a year ago. If they improve the D, they’ll at least give their fans something to cheer for, even in one of the NFL’s toughest divisions.

Under 6.5 — play

Buffalo Bills

The thing with the Bills is that they were very good at one thing last year and very bad at everything else. Buffalo had the #2 DVOA defense in the league — but the #31 offense and the #32 special teams. In case you forgot, there are 32 teams. So Buffalo was better than everyone but Chicago on D but worse than everyone at everything else, other than Arizona’s offense, which was the third worst offense in history. Oh.

The defense should be good again. Not necessarily great, but good. Sean McDermott and Leslie Frazier will do their thing, and there’s top talent at linebacker and safety and solid names everywhere else. They should be an above average D.

The offense is entirely dependent on the growth of sophomore QB Josh Allen, and I’m not a believer. Allen has a big arm, and he can certainly run through some guys. The latter is not really a great QB skill in 2019. Allen’s been working on shorter, touchier passes with some success, but it’s the mental side of the game I’m still not seeing. Where are the reads and the progressions, both pre- and post-snap? It’s hard to get excited about a 4-yard first-read pass out of the shotgun with no pressure. Yes, that’s a necessary professional QB skill, but it’s setting the bar pretty low.

Allen has precious little help. The line is poor. LeSean McCoy was a surprise cut, so it’s now old man Frank Gore and a rookie at RB. The receivers are John Brown and Cole Beasley. These are leftover spare parts no one else wanted.

The defense will regress some, so that means the offense needs to take a sizable step forward just to maintain Buffalo’s 6–10 record from a year ago. Allen is simply going to have to make a believer out of me.

Under 6.5 — play

Cincinnati Bengals

The Bengals are more mediocre than bad, but they’re certainly not good. Cincinnati is the AFC version of the Detroit Lions, only a little worse and maybe in an even tougher division.

The Bengals defense is average. The linebackers are bad and there aren’t any real defensive game changers, but they’ll be fine as long as they’re not put into bad position. Unfortunately, the offense is also average at best. The line is one of the worst in the league (notice a theme with these teams?). They invested a first-round pick in LT Jonah Williams but already lost him for the year injured. Andy Dalton is the very definition of replacement level. He is the Mendoza Line of quarterbacks. Joe Mixon and A.J. Green are good, but Green is already hurt.

There are some reasons for optimism. Cincinnati played the league’s second toughest schedule a year ago and won 6 but should’ve won 7.2. Again: average. They also could get a coaching boost from Zac Taylor, who once played nine holes of golf with Sean McVay, replacing Marvin Lewis.

In the end, this team will be average or worse in a division with three good teams. They have an eternally lame duck quarterback, the bad luck has already started piling up, and they badly need a high draft pick to reset the franchise. It feels like the bottom could fall out.

Under 6 — pass

New York Giants

The Giants were not as bad as you think last season. In fact, they were maybe the NFL’s biggest underachiever. Underlying metrics suggest New York might have actually been the best NFC East team, that they should have won 7.9 games instead of 5. Even the Giants much-maligned offense wasn’t that bad. They were actually above average.

Of course, that offense lost Odell Beckham Jr., so it’s pretty much just Saquon Barkley and a moldy sack of Eli Manning. The receivers lack punch, and Eli’s been on his last legs for half a decade. Enter Daniel Jones, the shock #6 pick out of Duke. Jones has looked great in preseason and, yeah but it’s only the preseason jokes aside, he’s going to get the reins at some point.

If Jones is as good as he looks, maybe the Giants hang around .500. But he’s not going to get much help outside of Saquon. In many ways, this team is reminiscent of last year’s Cardinals, and Barkley could have a fate similar to David Johnson if he’s not careful. One stud RB is not an offense, not in 2019, and this defense is somewhere between bad and pitiful. The Giants could trail a lot and don’t have the guns to throw the ball down the field, and Pat Shurmur is forever outmatched as a head coach.

This year is all about transition for New York. It’s time to move on from Eli and from Shurmur. Neither is likely to be around on Opening Day next year, so for now, it’s just hanging on during a rocky transition.

Over 6 — pass

Indianapolis Colts

This will feel like an overreaction to some, after Andrew Luck’s surprise retirement. The Colts will obviously be worse without Luck; the question is how much worse. The real problem is that I was already down on Indy, even with Luck. Without him, it just gets even worse. Much worse.

Jacoby Brissett is a decent game manager. There’s a reason he’s been a backup quarterback thus far. Think something like Alex Smith or Andy Dalton, only a little worse. He’s not going to actively hurt the team, but he’s not going to change the game for good.

Andrew Luck wasn’t just a better QB. He was a better quarterback that made everything else better. He had the deep ball timing with T.Y. Hilton. His pocket presence helped the line look great. The threat of his passing opened up the run game for Marlon Mack. The improved offense set up the defense to succeed. This isn’t just a downgrade from Luck to Brissett. It’s a loss everywhere.

The Colts defense is mostly average. They played an oversimplified system last year that worked until teams started to figure it out. They have a good front seven and a decent secondary. It’s a fine defense but not a great one.

In the end, this was a mostly average roster elevated by a surefire Hall of Fame quarterback, and that guy just retired. Ewing Theory doesn’t work for the most important position in sports. The Colts went 6–26 the last two seasons when they were suddenly missing Luck and Peyton Manning. Quarterbacks are that valuable. It sucks, but it is what it is.

The Colts have a very nice core, but they just lost the centerpiece. It’s better for everyone if they bottom out, get a high enough draft pick to find a Luck successor, and try this thing again.

Under 6.5 — pass

Be sure to check out the full season preview: 8 teams taking a step back this year, 8 sleepers headed in the right direction, and 8 Super Bowl contenders, all published this week at SportsRaid! ■

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