The NFL season is almost upon us – in just over three weeks you, me and Tom Brady will all be watching from the sidelines.
On The Roar we’ll be running through all 32 teams over the next month in a four-tiered preview, finishing up with the Carolinas of the world, but beginning with the Clevelands.
And that’s where we start, with the team that desperately needs LeBron James to continue chasing Michael Jordan by trying to conquer a second sport.
32. Cleveland Browns
2015 record: 3-13
2016 prediction: 3-13
Robert Griffin III is not LeBron James. He’s not even Tristan Thompson. The sad thing is, three years ago Griffin looked like he was going to be the NFL’s LeBron – a transcendent, dynamic superstar, ready to be the face of the world’s most powerful sports league.
Now he’s had to win a training camp battle against Josh McCown to start at quarterback for the game’s most inglorious team. Life comes at you fast.
RGIII is a broken player, so it figures that he’s playing for a broken franchise. The Browns are putting themselves back together though, with new management intent on a lengthy, no-shortcuts rebuild. They’re the Philadelphia 76ers of the NFL, and the Sixers now look well placed to rise up the NBA ranks.
But their rebuild required three years of shameless, agonising losing before hope even began to surface. The Browns have a similar timeline in front of them, which will be tough to stomach for a fanbase that hasn’t seen a playoff victory since 1994.
31. Tennessee Titans
2015 record: 3-13
2016 prediction: 4-12
If Mike Mularkey could stop his love affair with 1982 football tactics, the Titans might be interesting this season. But the present-day NFL of high-octane passing offences frightens Mularkey, a coach with an 18-39 career record intent on suppressing the dynamism of young, star signal-caller Marcus Mariota by installing a ground-and-pound offence.
We’ve seen this movie too many times. Mariota’s talent will win out in the long-term, but may only blossom once Mularkey’s term expires. In the meantime, his brilliance will have to be content with occasional flashes; peeks out from behind the curtain of antiquated strategy.
Who knows, maybe Mularkey is right and he’s found an inefficiency in the game. Perhaps DeMarco Murray running into the line is the new Moneyball. Maybe stud defensive end Jurrell Casey anchors a defence that over-performs and flaunts with competence, and maybe the Titans become competitive in a wide-open division.
Then again, maybe reality happens.
30. San Francisco
2015 record: 5-11
2016 prediction: 5-11
What the hell happened to Colin Kaepernick? Just three years ago he was firmly in discussions of the five best quarterbacks in the game. Then, for whatever reason, it all fell apart.
Where his movement was once syncopated, it’s now nonsensical. Where his decision-making was once bold and decisive, it’s not timid and plagued with anxiety. Better play-calling and Kaepernick is a Super Bowl champion, and maybe a Super Bowl MVP. Now, four years later, at just 28, when he should be in the middle of his prime, he’s locked in a battle with freaking Blaine Gabbert for a starting job.
Chip Kelly is a special coach but his team is a lost cause in the present day. They play in the league’s most brutal division, and have troublingly little blue-chip talent.
Kaepernick was once one of the NFL’s handful of most valuable chips, and Kelly’s primary task this season has to be salvaging that talent.
Beyond that, content yourself with Kevin Durant YouTube videos, San Francisco fans.
29. Philadelphia Eagles
2015 record: 7-9
2016 prediction: 5-11
Speaking of strange quarterback situations, the Eagles have the least comprehensible one in the NFL. Sam Bradford has no place on this team and yet there he is, with the place on this team: starting quarterback. Bradford is the game’s poster boy for mediocrity, someone who will never drive you where you want to go, but won’t crash the vehicle either.
Carson Wentz is the future for these Eagles, or at least he better be, because they gave up their future to get him. A year on the sidelines isn’t the worst thing for a young quarterback, especially one like Wentz who doesn’t exactly scream ‘Andrew Luck’. But Bradford’s continued presence on the team is toxic – it never seems to end well when someone demands a trade and then reneges on the demand – and he doesn’t exactly seem like a prized veteran mentor for Wentz.
The Eagles have an excellent offensive line, led by rock-solid tackles Jason Peters and Lane Johnson, but the rest of the team is riddled with question marks, and the skill positions can’t even claim to be that ambiguous: they’re definitively bad.
28. Miami Dolphins
2015 record: 6-10
2016 prediction: 5-11
One of 2015’s louder debacles, the Dolphins should be even worse this season. What exactly does this team do well? And what do they have the hope of doing well in the future?
Quarterback Ryan Tannehill is Bradford Southeast, a bastion of mediocrity. The front seven was once formidable, but while Ndamukong Suh will still wreak havoc, Miami are relying heavily on a 34-year-old Cameron Wake coming off an Achilles tear and Mario Williams, past 30 and looking more and more like he’s washed up.
The Dolphins are loaded with reclamation projects like Williams and the Byron Maxwell/Kiko Alonso duo they picked up in an inexplicably bad trade with the Eagles. Those are likely losing bets, and with Tannehill rolling the dice for, shockingly, the fifth consecutive season, there’s nothing to suggest that Miami won’t come up snake eyes, once again.
27. Los Angeles Rams
2015 record: 7-9
2016 prediction: 5-11
There’s a positive way of looking at the Rams and it goes like this: they’re in Los Angeles, one of America’s most attractive cities, and they’ve got Todd Gurley powering the offence, and Aaron Donald leading a vicious defensive front that is going to put offensive linemen in therapy and quarterbacks in hospital.
Then there’s the other way to look at the Rams: Los Angeles is actually hell on Earth, a depressing haze of car exhaust and racial tension that symbolises everything that is wrong with America, new quarterback Jared Goff has nobody to throw to, and the secondary – now absent defectors Rodney McLeod (Philadelphia) and Janoris Jenkins (Giants) – is a disaster.
I skew to the more pessimistic view.
26. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
2015 record: 6-10
2016 prediction: 6-10
The Bucs have mastered the art of becoming the trendy playoff pick that falls flat on their face. This year though, expectations of Tampa Bay seem to have sobered up.
Yes, the Bucs are loaded on offence. Jameis Winston could emerge as an upper-echelon quarterback sooner rather than later, and with Doug Martin at running back and the monster receiving tandem of Mike Evans and Vincent Jackson – man-beasts capable of rising up to the moon and chucking it into a trash can with their ridiculous hands – Tampa’s young stud has some of the shiniest toys in the league to play with.
So often though, we get sucked into skill-position myopia, failing to look beyond the bright lights to ‘boring’ things like the offensive line and a defence. It’s in those areas where things get dark for Tampa Bay.
The O-Line is nothing but question marks, and the defence beyond Lavonte David and Gerald McCoy (when he’s engaged, which wasn’t last year), is woeful.
When they augment the defence and shore up Winston’s pass protection, the Bucs are going to be a force. That won’t be 2016, though, and it might be a while yet if the team keeps trading up into the second round to draft kickers.
25. Detroit Lions
2015 record: 7-9
2016 prediction: 6-10
There’s something almost comforting about the Lions and their reliability in being disappointing. Detroit natives likely won’t share that sentiment, but in a league coloured by ambiguity and mayhem, it’s nice to know that one team will always let you down.
Except it’s not really letting you down, because you always saw it coming.
The Lions are going to have a very good front seven. They have an elite linebacker core, led by star DeAndre Levy, and a solid pass-rush spearheaded by quarterback-eater Ezekiel Ansah. Darius Slay looks like he’ll be a star cornerback for years to come too, giving the defence a cornerstone at all three levels.
That’s the good. Almost everything else is bad.
Marvin Jones plus Golden Tate doesn’t equal Calvin Johnson, unfortunately, and the declining Matthew Stafford might plummet even further without the safety net that he’s had for his entire career of tossing it up to Megatron.
Running back is a question mark, the offensive line is weak, and the secondary after Slay ranges from uninspiring to hopeless.
‘Uninspiring to hopeless’… ah, Detroit, the NFL season is near.
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