Jacksonville Jaguars: Holy Crap the Jags went 5-11 last season? Wow. They did not have a stellar year. I guess when you lose both starting safeties and a starting CB for a different bad CB (Drayton Florence), lose players on the defensive line and grow really old, and then have your offensive line gashed with injuries where you lose both guards AND center then you MIGHT be in for a bad season. Wow. I assumed they were 7-9 or 8-8 or something like that. Teams like the lions might want to learn that you kind of need offensive and defensive lines to play football. To combat their awful season they actually did quite a bit, completely reshuffling their offensive line and now looking like they might be even a good offensive line with FA Tra Thomas, Vince Manuwai, Brad Meester Maurice Williams, and Tony Pashos and TWO first round OTs waiting to replace someone in there. They’ve some depth and some talent and that goes with the fact that Garrard was quietly amazing last year, he had one of the worst receiving corps in football (34 drops) and still led a solidly above average offense (15th passing, 13th rushing). With an improved offensive line and a not worse WR corps, I’d expect this offense to be top 10, or at least right around 10th or so. Defensively they did basically nothing, other than cut Florence and Mike Peters. Marlon Mcree will add, in all likelihood, some much-needed depth to the safety position since Reggie Nelson has yet to learn to play football, but the defensive line remains old and not really particularly good. The Jaguars are joining the 3-4 craze that is hitting the NFL but they’re doing it with John Henderson playing the NT position, which seems like quite a stretch. I expect the defense to be just as bad as it was last year. Their division should be SLIGHTLY less strong than it was last season, and the offense should be slightly better than it was last season. I’d guess the defense will be comparable, there are some young players in the secondary in particular that one could hope would develop, but I kind of doubt it especially since I think the d-line will be so bad. Fantasy Potential: Everyone loves MJD and I’m always scared by him but he probably is a top 3 fantasy back at this point, if not number 1 overall. Garrard is probably an underrated qb, I wouldn’t be shocked if he’s hovering around a top 5 fantasy qb this season, well maybe top 10 is more realistic. But in drafts he’s probably going later than he should. Along those lines I think Torry Holt is a nice pickup. I don’t love the defense here… Outlook: Last year’s 5-11 was injury-riddled and in a tough division and I kind of think they’d have made the playoffs if they’d been in the AFC Bad (see previous post) but as it is, I suppose I’ll say 7-9? I don’t like teams with bad defenses. Indianapolis Colts: Ugh, I’m literally going to copy and paste this from my preview of last year before continuing. “I basically never like the Where will the Jags be going this year? Up? colts. Every year I think they are all dessert (skill positions) and no meat and potatoes (lines) and I don’t think you can eat dessert before you have your meat and potatoes. And every year they [ice] cream the competition with QB-WR play and a suspect defense. I don’t get it but I think Bob Sanders is really good at football. One feature of Indy is that they NEVER pick up free agents. This year their only signing was dominic Rhodes to rejoin his old team as backup RB. (the raiders had like 10 FA signings, and many other teams too) Every year they lose people to free agency and I think that means they lost players and every year they have people come up through the system. It might be that the colts are a well-run organization. Nonetheless, there’s your grain of salt should you choose to take it. The colts suck.†And last year I was totally correct, the colts were horrible, particularly at the beginning and they had a ton of really filthy lucky wins over teams that should have put them away and then they got Jeff Saturday back and were healthier and made a playoff-push at the end of the season. Really just disgusting all around, they should have been like 0-6 to begin the season. Either way, as always their run-defense was gashable and they had a decent pass defense (6th overall). They were 31st in the NFL in rushing the football and 5th in passing yards. I’m convinced for the first time in years that if Saturday is healthy then they’ll be a reasonably good offensive line, I really think he’s kind of amazing. But he’s not going to be healthy forever and if Ugoh or Lilja get injured as well they’ve (as far as I know) no real backups. I mean, as every year I think their offense is largely patchwork and if anyone goes down or doesn’t play as well as the colts hope then they’ll be bad. Every year I think it seems pretty unlikely that everything on their offense works out and ends up being perfect and every year I’m wrong, except for last year when I was right and they STILL eked into the playoffs. What a horrible team. Defensively Bob Sanders is obviously injured in the preseason, Antoine Bethea is back after missing some of training camp but if Sanders is injured I can’t but assume that their defense will be bad. I mean, as always I think their offense is hanging by a thread and their defense is probably bad and ALSO hanging by a thread, and they play in a pretty tough division. They’ve made no signings or anything, as is always the case, and so many of their players are unheralded draft-picks that I assume suck but that turn out to be amazing and it’s just frustrating that that’s the case every year. Either way, I have a hard time picking a team full of players with no experience and no real promise to be good over a team that has a prettier roster at every position other than safety and quarterback. I happen to think those two positions are very important, but surely not everything on a football team? Fantasy Potential: a worse year than last year for Peyton, and last year wasn’t even stellar for him. I’d guess Wayne is a nice pickup than Gonzalez, with Clarke being one of the top 5 TEs. Same as every year. I think their defense is bad. Outlook: 8-8 BM
