It’s too early to give a final prediction but I will say 6-11 at this point and update later as I said in the earlier thread. I feel Carr is a minor and risky upgrade. Our schedule is a bit easier so maybe that gains us one game also. But I think we lost solid starting caliber players in free agency in Onyemata and Ellis and gained question marks. I think retaining Thomas and Peat is actually a minus and destroys accountability. We are also abou the oldest team in the league and needed Ellis for the future as David and Jordan decline, not Peat to keep us old. I think our division is getting better with the Panthers having a #1 pick qb and the Falcons raiding our defense and having cash. I think Allen is a bad coach and 4-12 is the sort of record he historically reverts to, especially with his coaches not Paytons. So the net for me is 6-11. We will see how the draft and free agency goes for us and for division rivals and if we trade any young stars to the Eagles for 5ths.

So we upgrade at running back and quarterback, keep valued pieces on defense, and Tom Brady retires and you think we will lose one more game than last year? Slowly back away from the pipe. It’s bad for you

So we upgrade at running back and quarterback, keep valued pieces on defense, and Tom Brady retires and you think we will lose one more game than last year? Slowly back away from the pipe. It’s bad for you

So we upgrade at running back and quarterback, keep valued pieces on defense, and Tom Brady retires and you think we will lose one more game than last year? Slowly back away from the pipe. It’s bad for you

It’s too early to give a final prediction but I will say 6-11 at this point and update later as I said in the earlier thread. I feel Carr is a minor and risky upgrade. Our schedule is a bit easier so maybe that gains us one game also. But I think we lost solid starting caliber players in free agency in Onyemata and Ellis and gained question marks. I think retaining Thomas and Peat is actually a minus and destroys accountability. We are also about the oldest team in the league and needed Ellis for the future as Davis and Jordan decline, not Peat to keep us old. I think our division is getting better with the Panthers having a #1 pick qb and the Falcons raiding our defense and having cash. I think Allen is a bad coach and 4-12 is the sort of record he historically reverts to, especially with his coaches not Paytons. So the net for me is 6-11. We will see how the draft and free agency goes for us and for division rivals and if we trade any young stars to the Eagles for 5ths.

So, I am updating my projection now that our offseason is complete to 8-9. Overall, I think we had a better offseason than in 2022. We didn't make a big trade up in the draft. We recovered value for Payton. We made at least some of our draft picks at positions of need. We got some value free agents. But we did lose some talent due to our salary cap situation. Preseason looked decent. We did not suffer injuries to key starters. We didn't trade Shaheed to the Eagles for a 5th. Carr looked good. We seem to have depth issues but our rivals in Carolina may have some oline issues.

I still feel Carr is a big risk. There are cases of QBs reaching new heights on their second team like Brees (though he was much younger) or Stafford. But there are a number of QBs who have gone to a second team with high expectations and proved mediocre (Drew Bledsoe, Jim Everett, Carson Palmer), not the answer (Brett Favre, Joe Montana), or disasters (Donovan McNabb, Duante Culpepper, Russell Wilson, Matt Ryan, Dalton after Cincy). Its easy to think Carr is so different and that can't happen again. But remember all the hype last year on Russell Wilson? Remember how many forum members cheered when Matt Ryan was traded away from the Falcons to finally not have to face him and how broadcasters looked at Matt Ryan's stats and said this guy can play into his 40's and challenge some of Brees and Brady's records? Remember all the hope last year for how Winston was finally back? We did shut out Derek Carr last season, when he had Davante Adams, who was supposed to be the missing piece who made him a star. A fresh start for QB's does not always work, even though it often always involves 'something' they didnt have before, which in this case is a good defense. But Russell Wilson had a good defense last year, didn't do much. And Carr is going from playing for a string of offensive gurus, including his best season under John Gruden, to playing for Dennis Allen. Also, a string of QBs like Brady, Brees, Manning, and Favre spoiled us to the concept that good QBs can play at an elite level until age 40+ but that may be more of a historic anomaly and QBs slowing down in their early 30's can be common too. It may be a telling stat that in his limited time at QB for the Raiders last year, Jared Stidham had a slightly higher QB rating than Derek Carr. If Carr was really struggling only due to the Raiders being a train wreck, one might have expected Stidham to implode and set interception records in the games he was handed the reigns, but thats not what happened. Maybe Carr just needed a change of scenery and is elite but many he is who he is with a slow decline or maybe this change of scenery is his last gasp of desperation and his healthy and/or talent falls apart.

I also see a big and overlapping risk in coach Dennis Allen. He was Mr. 4-12 in Oakland and finished 7-10 his first season here. I have a hard time betting big on a double reclamation of a head coach who averaged about 5 wins a year and a QB who averaged about 7 wins a year teaming up to win '12 games minimum.' Maybe Dennis Allen finally puts it all together and fields a winner in his 5th season as a head coach, or maybe he is who he is and winning 5 games +/- a few is what he is capable of, or maybe this is his last gasp of desperation and reuniting Dennis Allen and Derek Carr works about as well as reuniting Derek Carr and Davante Adams and the wheels fall off.

Ours starters look pretty good, but our depth is questionable. Our seconds units got outplayed. For two years in a row we have been among the most injured teams and I don't think that is just chance. It has to do with evaluation, conditioning, and roster management. We brought back many chronically injured players like Thomas and Peat. We no longer have Armstead and Landry so thats good. And unlike least offseason we didn't completely raid the thrift store on aging/injury/suspension risk players like Landry, Maye, and Mathieu. But at the same time many of our aging starters like Peat, Thomas, Jordan, Davis, Mathieu, Hill, Kamara, and Maye are a year older and many have an additional injury in their stack of xrays. Many other teams pre-emptively cut a player when the injuries start stacking up even if that player still shows talent, but we have restructured all our contracts so many players are uncuttable due to the cap hit, so the injury risk remains. I expect we will continue to have a lot of injuries until we make more changes with our lousy doctors and gain the cap flexibility to cut players like Peat and Thomas. I expect Thomas will get injured again this year at some point even if he is healthy today, its just very unlikely to miss 40 of 50 games and return to reliable quality production. Its a bad bet. But the biggest risk is the oline where we have minimal depth and most of our starters have injury issues. But don't worry, we draft our oline for their flexibility, so when one starter gets injured, another will slide over, and instead of having new starters at one position we will change our starters at 2 positions, and then be absolutely shocked when a QB or RB goes down next.

From what I can tell, even though we got younger, we are one of the oldest rosters in the NFL by any lists I can find. We also seem to have a lot of older starters, though I cannot find a list by age of starters.

I think there is some risk to our defense with changing coordinators despite a successful run in 2022. It seemed like a mistake to use co-coordinators last year and then this offseason we lost both because we would not commit to either. While its easy to assume our defense will remain top tier, I don't think we can totally be sure when our best defensive players are getting older for their positions and we changed coordinators and our head coach, though a defensive guru, is struggling with how to be an effective head coach and could take his eye off the ball on defense.

The refs are still an issue. The refs consider the 'the no call' to be the worst offenses against their profession in the history of the game by our fans daring to put so much blame on their incredibly challenging profession. Ever since the no call, the refs have done everything they can to keep us out of contention, but last year we kept ourselves out so they didn't have to work quite as hard at it, but still showed bias. At a minimum, the refs are likely to cost us a couple of games, but on the off chance everything goes right and we are a top NFC contender, its likely they will kick into high gear and cost us more. It's possible that voting with Goodell on Thursday Night flexing and extra Thursday Night games will cause Goodell to put in a good word for us with the refs, but I think its more personal than that, and I am not convinced we can have a great record with the refs working against us unless we have a truly dominant team, which I don't see us having with a retreat QB, long time losing coach, and a roster compromised by refusing to rebuild and being unable to keep all our young talent or pursue marquee pro-bowl type free agents (no matter how much money we gave Carr, most don't view him as a top 10 QB).

Our division is weak. Our schedule is weak. But we were 7-10 last year and we added a QB who my median expectation is Bills Drew Bledsoe but with the stats of this passing era in the NFL. So I don't think we are super strong either. So I expect a lot of close games that could go either way, with the refs putting a foot on the scale. I can't look at our schedule and point to 4 games we 'shouldn't' or 'can't' win but I can't point to 4 games we 'can't lose' or that a fan of the other team couldn't mark down that they 'should' win against the 7-10 Saints and their retread Raiders QB. I don't think anyone in our division is poised to dominate and take the division by storm, but this is a division that likely is won with 7-10 wins, and I think all 4 teams could do that, with the Bucs being the least likely. Yes, Carolina's oline looked weak in preseason, but it was fine last year, and they have the #1 pick at QB. The Falcons are a young team and have more players who could take the next step, along with a good oline that can run the ball and a QB who is careful to avoid turnovers. The Bucs are rebuilding, but a few years ago Mayfield was just as good as Carr and younger, and its also not unprecedented for a young QB to have ups and downs, and he has the arm to air it out to his quality receivers. The Bucs could be horrible, they could be 0-17, but they could also beat us, as Baker Mayfield did last year.

Outside our division we play a lot of toss up games against ok teams that could be 50/50 to beat us. Will we be able to stop Richardson and Fields or will they run for a TD on 3rd on 20? Last year we never beat a team with an established QB who was their teams started from 2021 through the end of 2022, while we usually beat teams with less stable QB situations. By that measure we could fair well against Young, Stroud, and Richardson but we would lose against Tannehill, Mac Jones, Lawrence, Fields, Cousins, Ridder twice, Goff, D Jones and Stafford. That would be 10 losses but last year we had one seemingly established QB we played in Carr who actually had his job on the line and was benched by the end of the year, and certainly a few of these guys could end up in the boat or be injured and we never play them. Then again we also lost to a couple unestablished QBs last year, Mayfield and PJ Walker come to mind. I just see our whole schedule as a bunch of toss ups against mostly teams with similar questions to ours, many with some new hope at QB like three with top 4 picks at QB, several with young QBs they hope are the answer who have shown encouraging signs of development like Love, Fields, and Ridder, and some hoping their QBs are finally living up to the promise of their draft status despite past inconsistency like Lawrence after a rough rookie year, Goff after all his ups and downs, and D Jones after taking a step forward last year. QBs like Mayfield, Tannehill, and Mac Jones are at lower points in their careers than Derek Carr, but give any of them one good season and they are seen as a mid-level starter like Carr is now, or give Carr one bad season and he is seen as in danger of becoming a journeyman like they are. Unfortunately, we don't play Arizona this year. Fortunately we don't play SF or Philadelphia (with Hurts) or any of the AFC Elite that would probably smash us all. But what that leads to is having to predict the results of a .500-ish caliber team against 17 .500-ish caliber opponents, those over which that finished much worse than .500 last year having top-4 pick rookie QBs. Its like 17 coin flips. We have an edge at QB experience over many and play in a weak division, but our coach has a career .283 winning percentage, we have a history of injuries and doctor misdiagnoses (would anyone be surprised if Shaheed comes back, plays 2 games, misses the rest, and we later find out the doctors missed an ACL and he was playing on it torn?), and the refs hate us.

So overall, I feel this is an incredibly hard season to predict, but 8-9 feels reasonable to me. I see a wide variety of possibilities and I would not be shocked if the wheels fall off with injuries and Carr and Allen's confidence and we go 4-13 or if everything goes right and we go 11-6. I just can't see us making noise in the playoffs and challenging the best teams. The AFC teams with elite young QBs Mahomes, Burrow, and J Allen are the class of the NFL right now. I can't imagine us competing with them. To do that we would have to beat NFC teams like the Eagles and 49ers which I can't see happening unless they are all missing their QBs. And somehow, if we make the playoffs due to our weak division, we go into the playoffs having never faced one of these 5 elite teams in the regular season. The easy schedule sounds like a blessing, but if we get to the playoffs its a curse, we get there like TCU in the national championship bragging about a possible signature win against the Lions or Vikings. So, with my reason and logic, I don't see this as our year. I wish we didn't sign Carr. I wish we took the cap hits to rebuild and get rid of injury prone players. I don't think this would have prevented us from winning the divison or being exciting to watch, maybe it would be a little less likely but its still a toss up. Honestly, a team with Haener at QB or if we traded for Love or Tyler Huntley or picked up Zappe on waivers we could win this division and make a token playoff appearance too.

Last year I was exactly right predicting 7-10. I know this is negative but at least I am putting my cards on the table. 8-9, thats my call. We will see. I will root for us. This is just how I see it.