Ross Jacobs reviews the 2022 Faux Season projections (Weeks 10-12)
--We've all got Buffalo 8-3 so mark that one down...definitely has to happen!
Of the remaining AFC East teams, the group all thinks Miami will be in the mix with 6-8 wins, but I am a definite outlier on the Patriots at only 4-7. Everyone else thinks they will at least have a winning record. I certainly think that's possible. On further review 5-6 wins seems about right. They have 4 games where they are a decent favorite, 4 coin flips, and 3 outright dog games.
The Jets range from 3-6 wins with me as the lowest and Chris as the highest. I still don't see a team that is that much improved over last year.
--Once again I am the outlier with the Bengals. The group collectively sees 8-3 except me. I gave them 6-5. 8-3 is well within their range. By my count they have 6 games where they are strong favorites and 5 coin flips. 6-7 wins is probably average but a bit of luck could get them higher.
RC and Xavier still are not fans of the Ravens. Both have them at 5-6 while Chris and I are at 9-2 and 8-3 respectively. I'm curious about their reasoning. I count 6 games where they are clear favorites, 3 coin flips, and 2 dog games. You would expect them to win 4 or 5 of the favorite games, 1-2 of the coin flips, and perhaps sneak out an underdog win. That should give them a safe floor of 6 wins and possible 7 or 8 with some luck.
Chris and RC aren't fans of the Browns even with Deshaun Watson projected back by this point. I have them starting to win games now that he's starting and they have pulled to nearly .500 after a rough start. Xavier of course has them battling the Bengals for the division lead.
And finally another team I have been a strong outlier on, the Steelers have a high of 3 wins among the others (to Xavier) while I have them at a respectable 5-6. I definitely think I overrated their chances a bit. They are clear dogs in probably 6 games and the other 5 are coin flips. Unless they get fairly lucky I'd say their chances are highest of being at 3-4 wins.
--The group once again thinks very similarly about the AFC South. The consensus is that Indy and Ten will be battling for the lead around 5-6 wins with Jacksonville and Houston bringing up the rear.
Xavier is higher on the Jaguars than the rest of the group, but it is my projection of Indy with a 6(!) game lead over the Titans that looks astounding. If I could redo it I think I'd have Tennessee with a win or two more to put them in line with the group, but I'm not sure I'd adjust Indy much. Possibly a game or two, but I challenge anyone to look at their first 12 games and tell me it's remotely hard. I see only 1 game (week 3) where I'd say they are a very slight underdog. Every other game I believe they are favored, often by large margins. I'm predicting a very hot start for Indy.
--We've still got mixed opinions in the AFC West which should make for some good debate after this series wraps up. RC and Chris are both big fans of the Chargers and Broncos for good reason, but I have a hard time seeing anyone in this division getting this far with only a loss or two. It's a brutal schedule for everyone and I think all these good teams are going to beat each other up. That's why I have everyone basically tied at 7 wins. That's what the division looked like this time last year and it wasn't nearly as competitive as it projects to be this year.
The really strange projection to me is Xavier's pick of the Broncos to be 4-7. A Russell Wilson led team 3 games under .500? How? Why?
--After the AFC West I continue to think the NFC East will be our next most interesting division. We have quite different opinions here. Xavier and Chris are of the belief that Philly will be leading by a decent margin. I could definitely see that happening but I'm erring on the side of caution with them for now (I still have them in the lead it's just smaller).
Quite surprisingly to me, Chris is the lone Dallas supporter at 7-4. The rest of us have them under .500 at this point coming off a 12 win season!
I have the Giants at the bottom with a 3-8 record while everyone else is much more positive on their chances at 5-6 wins. I definitely want to hear an explanation why everyone thinks they are so much improved. I still see a bad team.
The bottom team across the board is Washington with Chris going as low as 3 wins. I'm highest at 6. To me the Wentz pickup was quite an upgrade for them no matter what we think of Wentz. He has to be better than Heinicke right?
--Our NFC North opinions aren't too divided. RC and Xavier both favor the Packers with a 2 game lead over the Vikings. I think it might be a tick more than that and our poor delusional Vikings fan Chris still thinks the Vikings could be leading.
Of the other two teams RC and I favor the Lions for 3rd place and Chris and Xavier favor the Bears. Curious how that one turns out.
--Pretty much everyone is on the same page in the NFC South. Tampa in the lead with New Orleans second. RC seems too low on the Saints with only 4 wins but I think I'm definitely too high with 8 wins. Xavier and Chris are likely more correct at 6 wins.
I'm the only one of the group that thinks Carolina will be ahead of the Falcons. That will be interesting to follow.
--We're also all thinking along similar lines with the NFC West. Rams, 49'ers, Cardinals, Seahawks in that order. Chris is alone with the 49'ers on top, but if I could change mine I think I would join him. I'm convinced now that the 49'ers improved a decent amount this off-season and their schedule looks easier to me than the Rams.
Surprisingly the group is not at all high on the Cardinals! RC and Chris think they'll have a losing record with Chris all the way down at an astounding 3 wins. Xavier and I have them at 6. That feels like the right amount to me. I see a .500 team, not the 11 win team of last year.
I reviewed last season's early projections to see if I could find any patterns that might help us when reviewing the 2022 projections. Here's what I found.
--If you averaged all our picks together we would have been fairly close on the AFC East. Xavier was right on the money with NE 1 game up on the Bills but he was too high on the other two teams at this point. Chris and I were far too high on both the Bills and Patriots and RC was too low on the Patriots. Averaging all our picks each week is probably the best way to look at things. I want to do that at the end of the 2022 series and see what we get. Wisdom of the crowds!
--Again it looks like if you averaged our results for the AFC North we would have been nearly spot on. We were all too high on Cleveland but the Baker injury couldn't have been predicted. Ditto some of the Ravens injuries that happened after we did this series. I was still probably a little too positive on them, something to keep in mind for 2022...
We were all a teensy bit low on the Bengals but that's a pretty good job in retrospect because they were coming off several very bad seasons and Burrow was still dealing with his knee injury.
--Same story as every week for the AFC South. We pretty much had the right idea, Indy and Ten leading but we were all expecting the Titans to be much worse than they were. Also there was a little too much support for Jacksonville. Little did we know how terrible Urban Meyer was going to be!
--RC and Xavier had the right idea with the AFC West. Xavier especially was quite accurate with every team at 7 wins or under. Chris and I got too carried away with the Chiefs love in a tough division. That's why I'm quite skeptical of any of our “out there” predictions for 2022. The only one I think I'd still pound the table for is the Colts.
--The NFC East goes to me for the second week in a row. I nailed Dallas with a two game lead over Washington. The rest of the group was quite accurate as well but we were all too low on the Eagles except for RC. He perfectly predicted their 5 wins. (He made up for it by being too high on Washington however).
--We all got the order correct for the NFC North except of course Chris. He had the Vikings with a 3 game lead over the Packers who he gave only 4 wins! There's no bias there though I'm sure....
--I led the NFC South with just 2 games off but Xavier was right behind me at 3 games off. We both had Tampa with a large lead over the field but I had Carolina just under .500 while he had them with 3 wins. I definitely think his hatred of Sam Darnold is hurting his projections just a little there.
--We all missed quite a bit on the NFC West, but even though I botched the 49'ers I had the rest of the division quite close including the Cardinals at 8-3! (They were a very surprising 9-2 at the time). Nobody else in the group had them over 6 wins. This is definitely proof that occasionally one of us might hit an outlier prediction. It's quite rare to do so however.
There was far too much SF love among us except for Xavier who correctly had them pegged at 6-5. He missed on the Seahawks though by having them at 7-4 and leading the division. The rest of us had 5-6 wins (they had 3) although the Russell Wilson injury certainly contributed to that.
--The more I review the more I think the proper idea is to average all our results. That seems to give the best overview and be most accurate for probably 28 or 29 of the teams. Every once in a while one of us will have a brilliant insight but usually the group is smarter collectively than we are individually.
