Re: Ain't Skeered
 

We beat the Eagles with their starting QB out. The 49ers shut us out 13-0, that is not giving them all they could handle, they went up 3-0 early, led 10-0 at the half, made it 13-0 early in the 3rd quarter, and didn't pile on more points because they didn't need to, this was our worst loss of the season and we were dominated. The game was very similar to LSU's performance in the 2012 National Championship against Alabama, minus a 4th quarter piling on TD. We did hold our own against the Bengals but the Bengals were not a good team in the 1st half of the season. The Bengals were 2-3 when we played them and were a 4-4 team in the first half of the season. They went undefeated in the second half but were just not great when we played them, and they still beat us. A reasonable thing to conclude about our 2022 season is not that we gave a bunch of great teams tough games, its that we were able to pick off a lot of close wins against teams playing backup and rookie type QBs. If I remember right, we did not beat any team in 2022 who was using the same QB who was their starter in 2021 and remained their starter at the end of 2022, we beat all unstable/new/changing QB situation teams, except we could not beat the Panthers.

Re: Ain't Skeered
 

So injuries are an excuse for Philly but not us? Ok.
If you watched the niners game, yes we did give the Niners all they can handle. We played them closer than any other team during their seven (I believe) game win stretch. It took a bad fumble by us and bull**** ref calls to beat us.
I’m not going to bother refuting you point by point because it’s not going to change anything. You look at things with a clearly negative view on whatever Mickey Loomis on the side to do. It’s the complete opposite of Guido, who looks at it with a completely positive viewpoint. I’d like to stay in the middle of myself because I realize there’s things they’ve done well and there’s things they haven’t done well.

Re: Ain't Skeered
 

It's hard to say what's an excuse, a reason, or an explanation. When I say excuse, I mean we are excusing it in order to justify a better record next year on the basis that it won't happen again, and therefore we can deduct its effects. I think that is BS. If Eagles fans are predicting a 16+ win season and claiming Jalen Hurts missing 2 games last year was a fluke and really they were essentially a 16-1 team last year then I disagree and consider that a lame excuse.

Did the Eagles go 14-3 not 16-1 last year because Jalen Hurts missed 2 games? Yes. Can that be their excuse? I guess. Will they go 16-1 next year? Probably not. Why not? Probably Jalen Hurts will miss a few games next year too, because he runs a lot and got injured the previous year and its kind of predictable. If not, someone else will get hurt among their stars, probably.

Did the Saints go 7-10 not 10-7 last year because of many injuries to many aging and injury prone players on one of the oldest rosters in the NFL filled with players who might be cut on other teams whose salary cap management strategy allows them to absorb the cap hits of cutting injury prone players? Yes. Can that be the Saints excuse? I guess. Will they go 10-7 or better next year? Probably not. Why not? Probably a similar set of players will miss a similar number of games because the roster is still built to lead the NFL in injuries, with guys like Peat, Thomas, Hill, and Winston returning a year older, mostly with more injuries, still among the oldest rosters in the NFL, but unlike most teams with old rosters the Saints did not cherry pick healthy older players and cut injury prone ones, they restructured the contracts of the injury prone ones for short term cap savings.

Essentially the most likely injury scenarios for the Saints and Eagles are what we saw in 2022 repeating in 2023. The Saints will probably have a ton of injuries. The Eagles will probably see Jalen Hurts pull a Lamar Jackson and miss a few games. Both will have excuses I guess, but those excuses will not predict bounce backs, because those excuses will be built around facts that repeat every year until something big changes. Hurts is a running QB who takes hits. The Saints are an old team that restructures and extends cripples.

Re: Ain't Skeered
 

Individually I would predict a sub .500 record for every team in the NFC South. I expect the division overall to be below .500. Overall I expect one team or another to beat the average and would guess that whoever manages to win the NFC South gets about 9 wins, though its definitely possible someone wins it with 7-8 wins. The Panthers and Falcons are younger with young QBs and better salary cap positions and have the most potential to win 9 or more games if their QB works out. I would put the odds on the division something like 35% Panthers, 25% Falcons, 25% Saints, 15% Bucs. But I think whoever wins the division loses quickly in the playoffs. In general the NFC is weak and winning the NFC South could lead to a home playoff game against a beatable team and a trip to the divisional round, but I don't see the NFC South champ getting past that, and at the end of the gauntlet are teams like SF we could not even score on. I don't see us taking the QB we shut out and beating the team that shut us out with him. And if we did, then you get to the real juggernauts in the AFC with QBs like Maholmes, Allen, Rodgers, and Burrow. I just don't see some 9-8 team that squeaks out of the NFC South going to the big show and taking down the hot hand from that AFC group.

Re: Ain't Skeered
 

So, more anti-Saint points than actual answers.

Re: Ain't Skeered
 

If you want an exact answer I think the Panthers will win the NFC South and I think the Panthers will go 8-9. I think the NFC South looks something like this:

Carolina 8-9
Atlanta 7-10
New Orleans 7-10
Tampa Bay 6-11

There is a lot of parity so reasonably any of those teams could get +/- 2 or 3 wins and its anyone's game, and probably someone gets 9, but thats my prediction if you want an actual answer.

Carolina beat us twice this year, and separately the player who is now their backup QB won a 24-0 shutout win over the player who is now our starting QB. Our upgrade at QB was acquiring a QB we shut out with Lattimore inactive. Theirs was acquiring the #1 overall pick and getting our starter to back him up.

Re: Ain't Skeered
 

OK. What are the Saints 10 losses? For each of those losses, what do you see on the other team that makes you think that the Saints are going to lose?

Be an analyst, not just a pessimist. You can't just simply gauge this upcoming season on what happened last year. You can't project there being 4 QBs on the field, the #1 CB out for 10 weeks again, and MT13 lasting only a couple of weeks. What exactly do you project with the 90 man roster we have today that points to 10 losses?

Now shutting out Carr is true. However, Carr is on a new team with completely different scheme and weapons. And both the 24-0 shutout and the 13-0 loss are both testament to the fact that even injured, our defense can put it on people.

Little in the NFL projects from year to year. If that were the case then there would be no playoff team turnover year to year no would there be any worst to first stories. But both happen in the NFL with astonishing consistency.

Here are my projections:

Division 5-1: Sweep the falcaints and yuccs, split with the kitties. Raw QBs on each team will succumb to the defense while our offense delivers consistent points under Carr.
NFC North 2-2: Love is raw. Fields is dynamic. Lions are a tough out. Finally put Minnesota down
AFC South 3-1. Jacksonville has it together. The other 3 are trying to get it together.
Equal positions 1-1 (maybe 2-0): Giants will be tough. Rams not so much
Patriots 1-0: Mac Jones. Enough said.

12-5 division champs, #2 seed.

I just don't think you give this defense enough credit. And they have a fairly long history of defending tough. It's not something they will have to learn.

SFIAH


SFIAH

Re: Ain't Skeered
 

Division 3-3: Lose twice to Carolina like last year, 1-1 with Atlanta which is a younger team and took our defensive coordinator and several of our young free agents, 2-0 over the Bucs.

NFC North 1-3: Vikings and Lions were winning teams last year. They have established QBs. We did not beat those kind of teams last year. Bears and Packers have young hungry mobile QBs but have many other problems so I say we split those two games one way or another.

AFC South 2-2: Jacksonville beats us with an established QB and young team. The other 3 teams are trying to get it together, but like so are we, and two of them got high picks and selected a QB who may run all over us. We got a high pick and gave it to the Eagles for an injured oline. So honestly even going 2-1 against the group of Indy, Hou, and Titans is optimistic.

Equal positions 1-1 (maybe 2-0): Giants will be tough. Rams not so much. Agree with your here except I would say just as likely to go 0-2 as 2-0. If Michael Thomas and Andrus Peat are healthy, maybe Matthew Stafford and Cooper Kupp are healthy???

Patriots: 0-1. Bill Belichick vs Dennis Allen. Enough said.

Factor into all of this, the refs still hate us and will screw us. In their view the no call was the worst call by a fan base in NFL history to dare call them out in such a situation where the replays were so unfair to the challenges of their job in real time. They feel they are the victims of the no call 1000x more than we do and they have actual power to continue exacting revenge if our team shows signs of life.

And thats a reasonable scenario for 7-10.

I absolutely can project MT13 only lasting a couple weeks. If you want to lose your fantasy league, project him playing all year. I also know the end is coming for Lattimore at some point and it could be soon. Lattimore is entering his 7th season. Asomugha's last pro bowl season was his 8th. Revis' was his 9th. But sometimes those are won on name. When those guys declined they declined fast. Richard Sherman played more than 9 games only 2 of 5 years after his 6th season. Lattimore faces two challenges going forward: staying on the field and remaining effective. Probably Lattimore plays more than 7 games but also he could easily lose a step and miss some games still. And at the same time, Jordan, Davis, and Mathieu are a year older. And we gave our DC to a division rival to reward last years strong defense. So I can project our defense being less good than 2022.

Re: Ain't Skeered
 

he'll learn from his mistakes and he will move on.

Re: Ain't Skeered
 

Great question. Bako has good insight now and then.