Originally Posted by BakoSaint (Post 976269)

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.

Originally Posted by Boston Saint (Post 976329)

Thanks for your predictions bako. I personally don't think the entire division will be under .500 again. I still look at how the Saints stacked and performed against the NFC playoff teams and I say it was good. We beat Philly. We lost on a late second FG against the Vikings in a game we had the lead with less than 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter. In San Fran Kamara fumbled on their 6 in the fourth and Dalton got sacked on 4th and goal at their 5 yard line with 6 minutes left. Lutz missed a FG too. The team was in all those games and to say otherwise is just not true.

The Saints worst losses were by 14 and 13 to the Ravens and Niners. Vikings only lost 5 games but three of those were 37, 24, and 17 point blow outs. We both had 11 games decided by one score (8 or less). But they were 11-0 while we were 5-6. Thats a heck of a lot of good bounces, favorable calls, and overall team injuries to go your way. Time will tell and bako could be right...but I don't see those kinds of trends happening again.