The Cellar Dwellers... ~ ~ ~

[kelly]

It’s harder to predict what will happen in an NFL season than it is to project what will go down in any other major American sport. It’s the nature of a league that is subject to enormous amounts of attrition and plays a schedule that isn’t even one-fifth as long as basketball or hockey and one-10th as long as baseball. Take what was roughly the 16-game mark of this year’s MLB season and you’ll find the Red Sox, Tigers, Padres, and Rockies in the playoffs. They’re a combined 64 games under .500 since. In baseball, that’s a stretch; in football, it’s a season.

With such little information available, we have to try to find little slices of information to use as guidelines. In many cases, that can simply be expecting teams that stand out in some way to no longer do so, even if their talent suggests that it’s plausible. The 2013 Seahawks led the league in takeaways and had the sort of dominant defensive stars who you would assume would push them up to the top of the pack year after year, but history tells us that teams struggle to stay atop the takeaway leaderboard on an annual basis. Last year, with virtually identical personnel to its Super Bowl–winning team, Seattle was just 20th in takeaways. And then the Seahawks had seven across three playoff games.In other cases, it’s about recognizing that certain teams are limited by given factors. The obvious one is that it’s virtually impossible to win in the NFL without a competent quarterback. Having a major question mark at the game’s most important position places an immediate ceiling upon your chances of succeeding, even if everything goes right with the rest of your team. It’s more plausible that the majority of the Browns will collapse than it is that Josh McCown will suddenly turn into a Pro Bowl quarterback. Because of that, you’ll note that many of the teams in this bottom eight simultaneously have low-ceiling and/or low-floor options under center. With so much uncertainty in football, the simple truth that you need a quarterback to win is as important as ever.

This is the first part of our four-day team-by-team NFL preview. As we do every year in this space, we split the NFL’s 32 teams into four groups. Today’s list includes the eight teams that should expect to compete for the first overall pick in next year’s draft. Tomorrow includes those teams that should decline in 2015, followed on Wednesday by the teams that should take a step forward and improve, and finishing up Thursday with the league’s top eight contenders for the Super Bowl.Each of the team capsules includes a series of key statistics evaluating the team’s performance from 2014; many of those numbers are described in this statistical primer. The exception is strength of schedule, which I calculate using the point differential for each team’s opponents in the games that didn’t involve the teams in question. Just trust me on that one. Let’s begin with the best team from last year’s bottom eight, which has a new coach and the same problem :

~ ~   New York Jets

Key 2014 Results
Record: 4-12 (NFL rank: 27)
Pythagorean Wins: 4.9 (NFL rank: 27)
Pythagorean Difference: minus-0.9 (NFL rank: 26)
Record in Close Games: 3-6 (NFL rank: 23)
Strength of Schedule: 0.520 (NFL rank: 7)
Turnover Margin: minus-11 (NFL rank: 29)

For whatever flaws there were in John Idzik’s two-year run as general manager of the Jets, the one thing everyone can agree on is that he left New York in sound financial shape, with plenty of cap space to improve a moribund 4-12 football team with precious little young talent.Sure enough, new general manager Mike Maccagnan came in and spent a lot of that money to patch up the roster’s many holes. A secondary that was riddled with injuries and even a deserter last year was stocked to the brim, with ex-Jets Darrelle Revis and Antonio Cromartie leading the way. Brandon Marshall, James Carpenter, and Ryan Fitzpatrick were imported to fill in trouble spots on offense. The Jets even came away with one of the top coaching candidates on the market in Arizona defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, a schemer who should be able to make the most out of a roster that doesn’t have much in the way of a natural pass-rusher.And yet, before the clock even struck September, the Jets began to Jets. Wildly talented defensive end Sheldon Richardson was suspended for four games for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy before being arrested in July after driving 143 mph with a 12-year-old in his car, according to authorities. His status to come back at any point in 2015 is still up in the air, and while the Jets have a ready replacement in sixth overall pick Leonard Williams, their depth up front is rapidly disappearing. Williams, too, is struggling with a strained muscle in his knee.

The defense should still be very good, but the offense remains a major question mark. The infamous knockout of Geno Smith might not have cost the Jets a very good quarterback, but it’s hard to fathom that Fitzpatrick will be much better. Fitzpatrick has a reputation as a steadying hand who can manage games, perhaps owing to his Ivy League background, but he throws interceptions more frequently than Jay Cutler. He won’t lack for options with Marshall and Eric Decker on the outside, but move tight end Jace Amaro is already out for the year with a torn labrum.And for whatever success Chan Gailey had early in his career, his return to the NFL after Georgia Tech has delivered just one above-average offense in four years, when Fitzpatrick handed the ball off to a dominant Fred Jackson–C.J. Spiller tandem in 2011. It’s hard to see the Jets running the ball anywhere near as effectively with Chris Ivory and Bilal Powell this season. The coaching staff and many of the names have changed, and the Jets should be better than they were in 2014 because of it, but this is the sort of low-ceiling offense that kept the Jets down during the fading days of the Ryan era.

Best-Case Scenario : The offensive line stays healthy and produces a useful running game, Marshall returns with the sort of spark he had during his early days in Denver and Chicago, and Bowles pieces together a top-three defense. The Jets win 10 games and make the playoffs.

Worst-Case Scenario : Huge investments in the secondary can’t mask problems at safety and linebacker, the pass rush never comes together, and Fitzpatrick turns the ball over too frequently to win close games as the Jets limp to 5-11.

rest of above article :

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