AN OFFSEASON HIGH STAKES GAMBLE (AGAIN)
The story in the NFC East, this offseason, is the same as it usually is, Redskins owner Dan Synder making one high stakes gamble after another. He’s consistently piling his money on the shoulders of a glitzy free and like an aggressive poker player wannabee, he is chasing the potential of straights and flushes with new coaches, new co-coordinators and new free agents. Yet, is he putting too much money in the pot to justify the return. There has been so much rebuilding it’s hard to see when the Redskins ever do any building at all. Like many poker players that chase draws more often than not in Texas Hold’em they don’t get there and the question now lingers… will they ever get there.
Synder has a new head coach and though it seems like he’s collected one for every year he’s been there, it isn’t quite that rate of attrition (but it’s not too far from it). This time it’s Mike Shannahan who is a bit of an enigma. In Denver on the talented shoulders of John Elway, a running-back making offensive line, and a stingy defense Shannahan found glory. Without Elway he hasn’t done much. He certainly hasn’t proven he can do anything more than build a competitive team, yet he’s the Redskin’s man.
Donovan McNabb is another guy that was at the top of the mountaintop, though he lacks Shannahan’s superbowl rings. McNabb is coming to Washington with something to prove. Synder took a gamble on his division’s former best quarterback and thinks he could be Shannahan’s new Elway. If you take a step back, Elway won at the tail end of his career when he sublimated himself for the team, and the more you look at the physicality of McNabb the more similarities you see with Elway. Perhaps, the formula’s got a chance to work again. What about this year?
Well, the Dallas Cowboys are going to win the division. The NFC East is one of the strongest divisions in football on paper but the Cowboys are also the strongest team in football on paper. Back when the NFC East was winning the Superbowl every year in the 90s it had this kind of parity which bodes well for Dallas in January.
Dez Bryant looks like he’ll bring even more sizzle to a Dallas offense that has plenty of it. The question at running back is who will be the man, but that doesn’t need answering because their depth provides the security that as long as only one of Felix Jones or Marion Barber gets hurt there will be the man on the field. The defense, already good, has improved and even if it didn’t the Cowboys may just pull off a Saints and outscore enough of their opponents to win it all.
The Washington Redskins despite the ongoing Albert Haynesworth drama and distraction are going to be very good this year. Shannahan wins games. Donovan McNabb wins games. The Redskins will contend for a wildcard spot and should get there if the toughness of the division doesn’t cost them too many games. For once, the offseason Super Bowl champions will be contenders and Dan Synder might finally catch the Texas Hold’em draws he’s been chasing.
The New York Giants won a Super Bowl most recently and have many players from that team still on the roster but they are a shell of their former selves. Their receiving core, while talented, doesn’t have a star like Miles Austin in Dallas, and unless Hakeem Nicks or Mario Manningham makes that next step Eli Manning is going to need more help. He won’t find much of it in the running game either as physical back Brandon Jacobs has shouldered too many hits and loads already. They’ll be third or fourth in this tough division.
The Philadelphia Eagles will likely bring up the rear. Neither Kevin Kolb or Michael Vick is Donovan McNabb. Kolb might get there one day and if Vick gets enough reps he might shed the rust to return to that level but there are too many holes in the Eagles lineup. Jim Johnson is gone as defensive coordinator and with him might have left that aura of impregnability the Eagles once had. They’ll be in a lot of games but besides Desean Jackson don’t have as many difference makers as their rivals.

There is news of a grand donation of one million dollars to the Ole Miss Scholarship program. The generosity comes from Eli Manning and his wife. Eli Manning is currently working as the quarterback for the New York Giants. This program is based at the University of Mississippi and we must congratulate him on his generosity. This is the type of support that is needed to keep these programs going. If all the NFL American Football players took a similar stance then there would be a lot of good work that is achieved within the community. Unfortunately the money is sometimes scarce and people have different priorities.

There is a new opening in San Antonio and the Cowboys are feeling absolutely on top of the world as a result of it. There are some great expectations for the team in terms of getting back the disappointment in the recent past. The new training camp is likely to bring a new sense of optimism in the fans. They set themselves up so high that if they do not meet those exacting standards then there is a feeling that somehow the team has let down the fans. The reality is that the Dallas Cowboys are a great team that brings a lot to NFL American Football. They are certainly successful but that also brings pressures of its own. If one is not careful the team can become obsessed with winning.

There is news of a two year contract at the Dolphins. It is worth two point five million US dollars. The Miami Dolphins are taking over Marques Douglas in order to fill the gap that has been created when Phillip Merling faced injury problems. This is a wise move given the sheer importance of the position in the term when it comes to winning tight matches. They cannot wait indefinitely without proper support in that area. The consequences would almost certainly mean that there was very little to be had from the way that the program is run. It is entirely up to them to work out the right strategies for that process.

Projecting who will win the Super Bowl is a bit like playing poker. You have to evaluate the teams at the top of the league like you would other players at a poker table. What kind of teams are they, are they trending up, are they trending down, and what do they have to work with in terms of chips or assets? Like poker, projecting teams has an element of luck to it just as much at the element of skill. In Hold’em poker randomness can destroy your session, just as in forecasting random oddities can curtail successful prognostication.

For example, if you want to talk about a weird run of cards, you need only look at the history of the NFC South division to know each year in the NFL is completely different than the previous year. The NFC South has been around since realignment in 2002 and it’s been basically unpredictable ever since.

They say hope springs eternal and nowhere is that truer than the division that has a history of worst to first. Want a sign of a team’s likely success the next year? Look for the team that finished last the previous year in the NFC South. In six of the seven years of the division being in existence the last place team in the division, the previous year, won the division the next. Even better, the previous last place team has qualified for the NFL playoffs in the following year in all seven years.

Also, no team in the division of perpetual upheaval has gone to the playoffs in back to back years. This makes the NFC South one of the most competitive divisions in football but also one of the hardest to pick (unless you are just blindly taking last year’s last place to qualify for the playoffs). Every year it would make sense that the previous winner would be in the best place to repeat.

The division has had three wildcard teams in its history which is just under the four it should have if all things were equal. At the same time, the division is responsible for two Super Bowl winners Tampa Bay (2003) and New Orleans (2010). The Carolina Panthers finished runners-up in 2004. The fourth member of the division, Atlanta, lost in the NFC Championship in 2004 and had a Super Bowl appearance shortly before realignment.

Tampa Bay has won the division three times, New Orleans and Carolina twice, with Atlanta winning only once. However, the Falcons have two of the three wild card berths and are tied with Tampa Bay and Carolina with three playoff appearances. New Orleans, like Tampa Bay, has only qualified for the playoffs when it has won the division.

What does that mean looking forward? Perhaps this is one division you should throw out things like most talent coming back, coaching staff, and intangibles. For if you were to do that, you’d likely have New Orleans repeating as champion, last year’s second place and improving Atlanta contending for first but earning a wild card bid, with Carolina mired still rebuilding and last place Tampa Bay overwhelmed by divisional opponents.

However, if history is your guide you’d say, no team has made the playoffs in back to back years… so throw out New Orleans from the top two spots, as there is likely enough talent in the division to get two teams in the playoffs. You’d take formerly last place Tampa Bay to transform themselves from a 3 -13 team to a 11-5 or 10-6 division champion. There is nothing in the division’s crazy history to suggest Atlanta can’t qualify as the wild-card despite finishing second last year. However, it is interesting to note in 04-05 Carolina and Tampa Bay finished third and fourth in the division. The next year they finished with the same record of 11-5 and qualified for the playoffs, so maybe this go around the third place team (Carolina) will be the wildcard as it was that year.

This year more than any other year we are seeing the effects of a multi cultural NFL American Football that brings in different people from different walks of life and even different countries. This is good for making the game richer and winning new fans that might otherwise never pay attention to what is happening in the game. This type of adjustment will be crucial to the success or failure of the game in the long run. The NFL American Football league has been in active operation since 1996. The creation of the league was in response to the overwhelming demand for a professional body to represent a game that was gaining traction in all sorts of spheres that were previously excluded. In the event the NFL American Football has been a great success because of the diversity of coverage that it gets.

By 1999 the number of foreign born players had significantly risen to thirty five and the audience levels were growing on a regular basis. At the moment we are seeing the fruits of this growth in foreign players. The squads are getting stronger and stronger in the NFL American Football and there is a wide range of fans that are able to sustain the sport on a long term basis. Had they not embraced the diversity agenda then the sport might have remained stagnant with just the handful of traditional market segments to select from.

That could be the case for many sports such as tennis where the time bomb is ticking. However the NFL American Football has taken a totally different approach and the chances are that it will pay off handsomely when they look at the intake figures that are coming in with the new players having a say in the direction of the game and the old players adjusting to the demands of working within a changed environment. It is all for the better and I would heartily recommend the system that they are using at the moment. It is anticipated that these figures will go even further in the future.