2010 NFL Division Preview: NFC East

Yesterday I put up a post by Michael Wright that gave 15 thoughts he had about his New York Football Giants for this upcoming season. I hinted that my NFC East preview would be written in the near future so here it is. This is the third installment of my eight-part preview of the 2010 NFL season, breaking it down division by division. In each of these posts I will preview each team in the division and then at the end I will predict who will win the division and how the other three teams will end up behind them.

To read my other divisional previews just click on the appropriate link:

NFC South

NFC West

In the NFC East we have had a lot of drama this offseason. A face-of-the-franchise quarterback being traded to another team within the division. Big name veteran free agency signings. A team trying to bounce back from a disappointing 2009 season. A team trying to build on their first playoff win since 1996. We had a big name quarterback get bloodied in the preseason opener. There was a prima donna receiver refusing to carry pads. You get the idea. Let’s jump in.

Teams: Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins

2010 NFL Division Preview: NFC South

For those of you that don’t count down the days until the start of the football season, it is officially 40 days until the first Sunday of the NFL season, and 37 days until the opening game when the Vikings will be visiting the Saints on September 9. My plan is to write one (of eight) division preview every five or six days between now and then. I’m going to hold off as long as possible on writing the NFC North preview because of the never-ending Brett Favre saga. I realize there are reports that he’s told the team he won’t be playing this year, but I don’t think they’re going to give up that easily. Until we’re within a week or so of that first game I’m taking all of the reports with a grain of salt because I don’t want to write an entire division preview assuming one way or the other and risk it being the wrong assumption. And you should never assume - just ask Michael Clarke Duncan.

Colts Offense – WMD

Editors note: I recognize how unrealistic this idea is, but it sure is fun to think about.

Sanders being a beast

A little over a week ago I wrote a post where I mentioned that I would soon be breaking down what makes next year for the Colts exciting. One of the things that I’m stoked about is that it sounds like Bob Sanders is healthier than he has been in a long, long time. This post though (as you can guess from the title) is about the offense, and honestly the magnitude of firepower that the Colts have on the offensive side of the ball is enough in itself to have me excited about next year. However I received some inspiration to probe a little more thoroughly into the possibilities that this gives us when I read this quote from Jim Caldwell:

WMD – March Madness

No, not Weapons of Mass Destruction. This obviously stands for Weller’s Musing and Divination. I have no idea if this will become a frequent type of post or not, but this one will be similar to the Bracketology that Joe Lunardi does for ESPN. And of course by similar, I mean that I will be doing exactly what he does: predicting the field of 65 and their seedings in each region. Don’t fool yourself though, Mr. Lunardi knows significantly more about college basketball than I do. In fact, I haven’t hardly followed college basketball at all this year but this seemed like a fun idea and thought I’d give it a shot. Feel free to tear it apart:

NFL Preview: AFC South

For those of you that realize the first game of the 2009 NFL season is less than 48 hours away from kicking off you will probably be wondering how I expect to be able to finish the rest of these division previews. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a good question but I think I can pull it off. The game on Thursday is between the Titans and Steelers, so by doing the AFC South today and the AFC North tomorrow I’ll have those teams out of the way. On Thursday I will likely do two, those being the AFC East and the NFC North. On Friday I will again do two, the NFC South and the NFC East. Saturday brings UCLA to Knoxville to face my Volunteers and I highly doubt that I’ll be posting anything that day. So on Sunday morning and early afternoon I will churn out the NFC West, because all of the NFC West teams kickoff at 4:15 ET on Sunday. So if I actually manage to pull this off, that’s how it’s going to happen.

On to the AFC South. This is the division I know the most about because this is the division that contains my Colts but I’m going to try to keep this one shorter (yeah right) than my 1400-word AFC West post. The teams in the AFC South this year will be facing the AFC East and the NFC West. This should provide for some interesting matchups, the most intriguing of which is the always anticipated Colts vs cheaters patriots game, which takes place this year on November 15 in Indianapolis.

Consolidated Preseason NCAA Football Rankings

I have compiled NCAA football preseason rankings from a wide range of sources. I’m linking to each one and then including a chart at the bottom showing the rankings side by side and then put in an average ranking for each team and also and adjusted average. The adjusted average only includes the rankings from sources that actually included the team in their rankings. Rivals and Sports Illustrated are the only two sources I used that ranked all 120 teams. I took the top 70 from each of those sources and came up with 75 schools. For the rankings that didn’t have a school included, I gave the excluded schools a default ranking for that source that would be the next highest rank. So if a source only ranked their top 25 then the other 50 teams on my list that weren’t included automatically got the ranking of 26. That way the fact that they would impact the averages in comparison to one another. If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comments section below.

Where Might I Find Michael Vick in 2009?

Last year around this time I wrote a post (I’m actually just one week short of it being the exact same date) breaking down each team’s quarterback situation. You can check that out here. This post is going to be similar except it will be to specifically address whether or not each team has a need for Michael Vick and if they do, how much of a need it is. Some teams may need him simply because they need a quarterback, while others might be looking to use him in the Wildcat formation. Just today on ESPN.com’s NFL rumors section they said that the Redskins may be interested in Vick. I’d be interested as to what our commenter, Michael, who is a Redskins fan, thinks about this.

The SEC Basketball Tournament

Yesterday I put up my predictions for the Big 12 Conference Tournament, and as promised I am putting up my SEC predictions today. I have a little more bias when it comes to the SEC side of things, so please forgive me when you disagree with my picks. An interesting tid-bit that has always intrigued me is that the SEC and Big 12 both have 12 teams in their conference, and both are divided into two divisions of six. The weird part is that for the Big 12 conference tournament, they seed all the teams 1 through 12 regardless of division, while the SEC seeds the two different divisions 1 through 6 and has it set up so that for the first round no two teams from the same division are matched up against one another.