2006 football reports

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NFL Team Reports

By Dale Sims and Kurt Schumacher

Our totals projections are heavily weighted to division contests.  Of course we cannot take into account injuries at the time of these forecasts.  

The AFC West

Denver appears to be the clear front runner in this division. However, much is still up in the air here as far as things coming together; will QB Phillip Rivers pick up where Drew Brees left off? Can KC keep it going?  Each team has made some critical changes.  Denver let their number one running back leave in free agency.  San Diego decided to replace a quarterback who did not appear to need replacing, while Oakland replaced one who did but not necessarily make an upgrade. Oakland and Kansas City replaced coaches and the Chiefs just seem to be running out of time (and linemen).  As the season unfolds things will all become clearer but as it stands now Denver appears to have a clear edge in talent.  The schedules are all moderately difficult so there are not many easy games to call in these schedules.  The AFC West gets to play the AFC North, which is good, and the NFC West, which is not exceptional.

Denver               13-3

Kansas City        9-7

San Diego           9-7

Oakland              5-11

Denver

This is the best offensive line in the NFL for the run so a lack of a clear number one running back is neither very disturbing nor even unusual; they keep grinding out 1,000-yard rushers perhaps more than one in a season this year.  The signing of Walker adds a dimension to the offense if he is back from the ACL injury that makes the passing game more explosive.  Plummer had a solid season last year but still makes critical errors in close games, which has been an issue throughout his career.  Still the offense has not looked better than this since the Elway years.  The Denver defense last year was a bit of a surprise, rotating Cleveland retreads to make an effective defensive line in the Denver scheme.  It is not a dominate line but serviceable the rest of the defense is more than adequate and the overall product is good.

Kansas City

This is an aging team and it pretty much looks like now or never.  The offensive line is old and retirement and free agent defection are issues for the running game; Larry Johnson is going to have to be every bit as effective as expected for the Chiefs to have success this season.  The real problem though may surface in the passing game, the Chiefs have been a top passing offense and the loss of pass blocking and having to keep Gonzalez in to block more often is going to hurt.  The defense should be better, it would almost have to be; actually, the scheme seems to be fine but the tackling display last season was terrible.  Herman Edwards will shift some focus to that side of the ball and it is reasonable to expect improvement.

San Diego

This could be a very good team or a very disappointing one.  Starting a quarterback with no real NFL experience is quite a gamble and it often does not work out well.  Here though the situation is about as good as it could be; a decent offensive line and a quality running game along with a good defense is how Roethlisberger got started but for every Ben there is a Ryan or two.  Expect to see a lot of Marty ball, running right, running left running up the middle and a controlled passing game.  This formula only works if you can play from ahead; this means they have to fix the pass defense very quickly.  The good news about that is the pass rush is very good which decreases the time in coverage for the backs.  Still this team has a number of questions that are simply going to have to be answered on the field.  They may start slow but have a good chance to get better as the season progresses.

Oakland

This could be the team most immediately helped by the coaching changes.  The talent is certainly here on the offensive side of the ball but the performance has been missing for a while as has focus and dedication.  Randy Moss could be just what Brooks needs as he will catch anything that comes close on deep patterns but more importantly, Brooks needs to improve his decision-making, perhaps new surroundings will help.  The play of the offensive line simply has to get better for that to happen though, Brooks under pressure can produce some ugly football, and one would hope the presence of two hall of fame linemen on the Oakland staff would help that group along.  The defense has much less going for it on the surface and needs to step up just to get to average.

Summary

This is perhaps the most difficult division to analyze in the NFL.  Denver seems to be a clear favorite here but each of the other teams has a wide variance of potential wins over the season.  San Diego has Super Bowl level talent but generally a “rookie” quarterback is going to make enough critical mistakes to cost a game or two and the offense will be running a restricted playbook.  The team that seems closest to collapse would be Kansas City, but it is not yet clear that Roaf will stay retired and they are very talented if aging.  They too have playoff possibilities in their future but are an injury or two from being under 500.  Oakland too might be dangerous, at least on offense but they have issues and must get the offensive line playing better.  If so though they will end up being in shootouts they rate to lose more often than they will win.

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