Jay L
Jay L
Sep 6, 2018 · 17 min read

NFL 2018 Preview Capsules — AFC East

Buffalo — The potential payoff moment of new head coach Sean McDermott’s re-framing of the Bills unending narrative of mediocrity seemed to arrive ahead of schedule, with Buffalo ending the longest standing playoff drought in the NFL at seventeen years as 2017 drew to a close. And perhaps recognizing that their accelerated arrival was a bit of a mirage — most tellingly, Buffalo finished just 2–6 against teams with a winning record a season ago including their Wild Card Round loss to the Jaguars (7–2 against everyone else) — the Bills operated more like a team that was hitting the reset button to an extent this offseason, rather than one that saw themselves as just a few moves away from true championship contention. The team traded starting quarterback Tyrod Taylor to the Cleveland Browns for a third-round draft choice after the season. They stayed focused on riding out the growing pains that will continue to come with developing a mostly young wide receiving corps. They drafted a 20-year-old middle linebacker to be the new centerpiece of their defense. Every one of those moves makes sense in a vacuum — the passing attack was unquestionably broken last year under Taylor, the free agent class at the wide receiver position this summer was fairly pedestrian, and Tremaine Edmunds (6-foot-5, 250-pounds, and a 4.54 40-time at the NFL Draft combine) was too much of an athletic marvel to pass up as a potential Luke Kuechly type of player for McDermott’s defense — but taken in the aggregate they look to be the types of decisions that are made when a team is positioning itself for a future that isn’t quite here yet. Of course, the biggest question coming into 2018 for this team will be the quarterback position — after trading Taylor, the Bills inked former Cincinnati Bengals back-up AJ McCarron to a free agent deal and selected one of the top quarterback prospects in the country in Wyoming’s Josh Allen with the seventh overall pick in the NFL Draft. McCarron didn’t even make it through his first training camp with the team, scuffling through a nondescript preseason and then ultimately getting traded to Oakland prior to opening weekend. As for Allen, anyone familiar with the work of the analysts at Football Outsiders, who have long discussed completion percentage as one of the main indicators of potential professional success for highly drafted college quarterbacks, will have serious concerns about the fact that he was a career 56.2% passer at Wyoming. The rookie’s performance was uneven at best throughout the preseason, and Buffalo decided he wasn’t yet ready to be named the starter heading into the first week of the season, a judgment that has to be a bit disconcerting for the organization given that 2018 may very well be a rebuilding year for the team anyway. We have already seen enough of Nathan Peterman to know that he is probably not the long-term answer here either, but the failed McCarron experiment and Allen’s lack of readiness meant that Peterman was atop the depth chart at quarterback when all was said and done. Peterman compiled a 75.6 passer rating as a rookie during the 2017 preseason while completing 54.5% of his 79 passing attempts for 453 yards and one touchdown. His infamous five-interception first half against the Chargers comprised his main body of work in the regular season, when he was able to put together just a 38.4 quarterback rating across 49 total pass attempts. His work this preseason was much more encouraging, with the second-year signal caller completing 80.5 percent of his passes for 431 yards with three touchdowns against just one interception, but Peterman entered the NFL as a developmental prospect, with much more of a chance to become a decent starter rather than a star, and it remains to be seen how we will react to regular season reps once again. Add the ongoing uncertainty at quarterback to the lack of game-changing talent in the receiving corps, along with an offensive line that will have at least two new starters in 2018, and it’s hard not to project some major struggles for Buffalo on this side of the ball. The short-term prospects for the defense, however, are decidedly brighter. McDermott of course made his bones as a defensive coordinator before landing his head coaching stint with the Bills, leading the Panthers to four top-10 finishes in yardage allowed in six years from 2011 to 2016. His secondary was tremendous last year even though the Bills ranking in passing yardage defense doesn’t reflect that, as they were able to hold opposing quarterbacks to just a 78.9 passer rating despite playing behind one of the worst pass rushes in the league (and with Cam Newton, Matt Ryan, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Alex Smith, and Tom Brady — twice — on the schedule). The free agent signing of Vontae Davis, if he can stay healthy, juices the unit even more by adding in a legitimate number one type cornerback to a group that already featured top rookie Tre’Davious White and last year’s two free agent additions at safety, Pro-Bowler Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer. If Buffalo can coax a better pass rush out of their front seven, the passing defense has an opportunity to be downright dominant, although the Bills will mostly be relying on better performances from existing talent on the roster (Jerry Hughes, Shaq Lawson) in order to pull that off. Edmunds addition also has the potential to be transformative — McDermott’s defenses in Carolina were built around multiple linebackers with his type of athletic profile, and a player with his type of raw talent simply didn’t exist at the second level of Buffalo’s defense last year. Add in the likelihood that free agent addition (and former Panther) Star Lotulelei will improve the run defense, and Buffalo could unquestionably field a top ten defensive unit this year. What does it all add up to? The defense will be good enough to give this team a chance to win in every single game they play. The offense will probably be overly reliant on the singular talents of LeSean McCoy and the running game, but that type of an approach leaves a slim margin for error in today’s pass-happy NFL. Expect a bit of a step back before the Bills take another step forward. If Allen eventually lives up to his draft pedigree, however, the window for this team to contend could open very quickly in the next couple of years.

Projection: Mediocrity

Miami — The Dolphins were the yin to the Jets yang in terms of offseason expectations a year ago, with many forecasting big things for them in 2017 after a 9–2 close-out to the 2016 regular season ended in a 30–12 Wild Card Playoff Round loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Although Miami was thoroughly outclassed in that game, their first postseason appearance since 2008, Ryan Tannehill’s week 14 injury provided at least some food for thought as to what might have been, and the otherwise strong finish left the team’s believers with plenty of ammunition as they took aim at what appeared to be a bright future. In a piece posted on February 17th, The Ringer’s Robert Mays identified the Dolphins offense as one of the “Five NFL Units That Could Make the Leap in 2017.” Tannehill and Head Coach Adam Gase were at least meriting discussion as one of the up and coming young quarterback/head coaching combinations in football. Jay Ajayi was coming off a huge year. Ndamukong Suh was still getting paid huge sums of money. Then came the August announcement that Tannehill would have season-ending surgery to repair the same ACL injury that had dampened the team’s hopes at the end of 2016, and just like that the Dolphins season was effectively over before it even started. Jay Cutler was called out of retirement but proved to be ineffective as a stop-gap answer at quarterback, even with his prior knowledge of Gase’s offense. Ajayi ended up being traded away at mid-season. The up and coming quarterback/head coaching combinations worth watching were in Philadelphia and Los Angeles and even San Francisco, not Miami. Suh, although he didn’t know it at the time, was playing through his last games in a Dolphins uniform. The broken mirror imagery even seemed to extend to the team’s record…a 2–8 finish to 2017 left the Dolphins with a 6–10 record only a year after their 10–6 playoff season had created so much promise. And while it might be a bit too simplistic to lay the majority of the blame for Miami’s fall from grace on Tannehill’s absence, that line of thinking actually wouldn’t be too far off the mark. The three quarterbacks who played for the Dolphins in 2017 combined to produce just a 76.9 passer rating — Tannehill’s mark in his 13 starts prior to getting injured in 2016 was 93.5. To put that in context, those two ratings are essentially the difference between Trevor Semian and Ben Roethlisberger on last year’s AFC passer rating leaderboard. Those numbers aren’t meant to overrate Tannehill, nor to suggest that he even belongs in the same discussion as Roethlisberger as a passer, and it remains to be seen how he returns to form this year (and knocks off any attendant rust) after missing an entire season due to his knee injury. But it’s probably fair to say that Miami would have at least been in the mix for a playoff spot once again in 2017 if they had received quarterback play that was equivalent to what Tannehill had given them the prior season, given the severity of the drop-off in their production at the position. Interestingly enough, though, Miami chose not to run it back with mostly the same roster for 2018 despite the fact that the core of this team may have gotten them to back to back playoff appearances with just a bit more luck. The offseason moves definitely betray a focus on improving veteran leadership over sheer talent. Strong personalities like running back Frank Gore, wide receiver Danny Amendola and offensive guard Josh Sitton were brought on board, while players like Suh and wide out Jarvis Landry were deemed expendable. Maybe Gase looked at his team and decided the mental toughness to more effectively weather the storm of last year’s injuries was the most critical element that needed to be addressed on the roster. Landry’s production will definitely be missed after he averaged 100 catches and 1,009 yards in four seasons with the Dolphins — Amendola, even if simply by virtue of his injury history, doesn’t have a prayer of touching those numbers. The offensive line may also take some time to gel as it breaks in at least two new starters. But if second-round draft choice Mike Gesicki emerges as a viable receiving threat at tight end, a possibility that is very much up-in-the-air after a very inconsistent preseason for the rookie, and with Tannehill returning, there is more than enough talent here for the Dolphins to see real improvement on offense in 2018. The team may be developing a potential star on this side of the ball at running back in third-year player Kenyan Drake, who rang up 641 yards of total offense and three touchdowns (two rushing, one receiving) while averaging 4.6 yards per carry on 100 total rushes over six starts late in the season last year. Defensively, a lack of playmaking talent — the team finished 28th in the NFL in interceptions, tied for 26th in sacks, and tied for 29th in turnover differential — has been a major hindrance in taking any meaningful steps as a unit. Miami made two specific moves to address that issue this off-season, acquiring DE/LB Robert Quinn from the Rams in a trade (he of the 62 ½ career sacks over 95 career games) and selecting DB Minkah Fitzpatrick (nine interceptions in 42 career games at Alabama) with the number 11 overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft. Although those two players alone can’t fix all of the issues on defense, they should certainly add some extra juice to a unit that sorely needs it. The rest of the improvement here will be designed to come from within — the Dolphins project to have five home-grown players with three years or less of experience starting on this side of the ball in 2018, the result of placing heavy early emphasis on defensive players in their most recent drafts. Suh will undoubtedly be difficult to replace on the field — he is the type of talent that an entire defensive scheme can be built around, and Miami simply doesn’t have another player of that caliber on their current roster. Add it all up and you have a team with probably slightly worse talent, a slightly better locker room environment, and an improved quarterback situation thanks to Tannehills’s return from injury. I believe Miami will be better this season, but getting back to a playoff level will require a lot of maturation from their new young defensive core, and that type of growth may still be a year or two away.

Projection: Mediocrity

New England — It’s still the Patriots. It’s still Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and Gronk. It’s still a team that has averaged a shade under 13 wins per season over the past five years, and that has now gone to three of the past four Super Bowls. And it’s still probably the only squad in the NFL that goes into every new year truly thinking that anything less than a Super Bowl appearance constitutes an abject failure for their franchise. The run-up to last year’s playoffs introduced perhaps the most challenging opponent the Patriots have faced during their current run of success — themselves — culminating in the bizarre benching of Malcolm Butler right before the start of Super Bowl LII against the Eagles, a game that featured the most complete and total defensive implosion in any single game in Belichick’s entire tenure in New England. And anyone who has followed the Pats for any length of time can tell you that this subsequent off-season has felt anything but “normal” for a team that has presented itself to the outside world with an almost uncanny solidarity as its public face over the past two decades. There was social media drama, both immediately after the Super Bowl and further on into the offseason. There were Brady and Gronk openly (and that’s the key word in this sentence) flirting with retirement. There were very quick free agent defections. There was no long-term solution for the quarterback position. There were even BELICHICK trade rumors several months ago, for Christ’s sake. It’s tough to know what is real and what is just noise in the internet age, and anyone thinking that the Patriots haven’t dealt with internal strife at other points in time during their dynastic run since 2001 is surely kidding themselves, but something different was happening these past few months, and it remains to be seen how those differences effect the team as we head into 2018. Seattle’s core never fully recovered from Pete Carroll’s decision to take the ball out of Marshawn Lynch’s hands at the end of Super Bowl XLIX, and it will be interesting to see if Belichick’s decision on Butler will have a similar effect on these Patriots. On the field, it’s hard not to see New England as one of a handful of true championship contenders for this year, even if there are more questions to answer than there were at this time a season ago. Josh McDaniel’s return — after reneging on an agreement to become head coach of the Colts — is a major coup for both the continuity and the schematic malleability of the offense. Brady can’t be considered a question mark until he shows real signs of eroding — and this is where I will remind you that he set a record for passing yards in the Super Bowl in the last game he played against one of the best defenses in football, without two of his best receiving weapons in the mix — but the harsh reality is that no full-time quarterback playing at the age of 41 (with the sample size here being very limited, of course) compiled even an 84 passer rating in a season, and even going on the assumption that we will see limited drop-off in his game this year, and that Brady will put together the greatest age-41 season at the position in the history of the NFL, all bets are off starting in 2019. The running back position is still deep, even with the free agent loss of Dion Lewis, and Gronk is still one of the most singular offensive weapons in the entire sport (witness his fourth quarter demolition of the Pittsburgh defense last year). Wide receiver should be a concern, with the team relying way too much on players returning from injury (Julian Edelman, who will also be serving a four-game suspension for a violation of the league’s PED policy, and Chris Hogan, who never looked completely right last year after returning to the lineup) or who were cast-offs from other teams (Cordarrelle Patterson, Phillip Dorsett, Chad Hansen). There is also still a lot of uncertainty around what type of performance can be expected out of the tackle spots for a team that is trying to protect a 41-year-old quarterback. But the fact remains that Brady has propped up lesser talent in his career with the Pats, and barring a major drop-off in the quarterback’s play, there is no reason to expect the offense to be anything but championship-level once again in 2018. Defensively, this team looked terrible early and terrible again at the very end last year. It’s hard to quantify the effect the Butler decision had on the game against the Eagles (and Butler wasn’t particularly good for large swaths of the season last year anyway), and Doug Pederson is a truly brilliant offensive mind, but the Patriot’s defense had absolutely no answers for a back-up quarterback in the biggest game of the season, and that alone probably created a need for some major changes this off-season. The actual changes may not feel as decisive as that — bringing in Adrian Clayborn and Danny Shelton on the defensive line, swapping out Butler for Jason McCourty in the secondary, losing defensive coordinator Matt Patricia to the Lions after he was hired as their new head coach — but it’s hard to imagine a Belichick defense playing this poorly for two seasons in a row. The defensive line rotation is deep with the new additions and after several young players (Adam Butler, Deatrich Wise) got extensive playing time a year ago, and on paper at least this is a talented secondary that was characterized as potentially one of the best in football heading into last season. Belichick also always prioritizes special teams in a way that most NFL teams do not, and the addition of Patterson in the return game and several draft choices who will help the coverage units will make this another area of advantage once again. Everything with this version of the Patriots is now truly a year to year proposition — Brady and Belichick could retire at any time, Brady’s play could finally succumb to the aging curve that hits every great athlete — and we may look back on the loss to the Eagles, and the dissension that led up to it, as the beginning of the end of one of the greatest runs in NFL history. But would I bet against the best quarterback and the best coach in the history of the game as being anything less than Super Bowl contenders this year, despite the signs to the contrary? Absolutely not.

Projection: Super Bowl Contender

New York — At this time last year, the Jets and their fans were gearing up for what almost everyone predicted would be a nightmarish season, after a drop from 10 wins in 2015 to five wins in 2016 precipitated the team’s decision to take a sledgehammer to their existing roster. Nine players who had started at least eight games the prior season were jettisoned, including franchise mainstays such as wide receiver Brandon Marshall, center Nick Mangold, defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson, linebacker David Harris, and cornerback Darrelle Revis, along with several other players (the biggest name among them being wide receiver Eric Decker) who would have started more regularly in ’16 if not for injury issues. The subsequent results still didn’t end up being particularly good — conventional NFL team statistics can certainly be misleading, but the fact that New York was able to crack the top twenty in just two of the league’s core statistical team rankings speaks to the issues that still remained on their roster in 2017 — but the Jets were a respectable 5–7 in the 12 full games that starting quarterback Josh McCown played before breaking his hand, certainly sidestepping the train wreck narratives that had been written for them before the games actually started, and head coach Todd Bowles deserves tremendous credit for keeping his team engaged and invested throughout a season that was initially and almost universally forecast as being dead on arrival. McCown was one of the keys and played better than anyone probably anticipated he would, with his 94.5 quarterback rating in 2017 far outstripping his 80.8 career mark. The offense averaged 22.2 points in the 12 games prior to his injury, and just eight points per game after (although, to be fair, all four of those games were against teams that finished in the top 10 defensively in either points allowed or yardage allowed by year end). I’m not sure whether I should consider it an indictment of the offense or a sign of its potential that it was so reliant on essentially a journeyman quarterback a season ago, but it’s easy to see the thought process here in giving up a premium haul of four high-value draft picks (including one first-round pick and three second-rounders) for the rights to the number three overall selection, and the ability to take University of Southern California quarterback Sam Darnold — continued improvement at the position, even if it comes a year or two down the road, could quickly transform this offense into an upper level unit. Darnold enters the NFL with a reputation for being the most pro-ready of the big four signal callers selected in the upper half of the 2018 draft. His work in the preseason was good enough that the Jets were comfortable naming him their starter for week one, and although he will undoubtedly take his lumps in leading an offense with some definite talent deficiencies, the experience he will get starting from the onset of the season could accelerate the development of the team on this side of the ball in 2019 and beyond. The offensive line in front of the rookie is average at best and will require more attention from the front office via free agency or the draft going forward, but there is enough talent at the skill positions — including a budding star at wideout in Robby Anderson (provided he can clean-up his off-field issues, which could still lead to a personal conduct suspension from the NFL at some point this year) and a potentially effective two-headed running back combination in Bilal Powell and free agent acquisition Isaiah Crowell — to make things very interesting if the quarterback position gains some stability this year. The changing of the guard may even be more pronounced for New York on the other side of the ball. At every level of the defense, older foundational pieces have now been replaced by newer ones. On the defensive line, Leonard Williams has replaced Richardson and Muhammad Wilkerson as the centerpiece. At linebacker, Darron Lee has been tasked with replacing Harris, although the returns have been mixed so far. In the secondary, Jamal Adams and Marcus Maye have replaced Revis. Some of the players lost to the roster purge over the past couple of years were among the most talented or decorated players at their positions in the entire NFL, so at least to a certain extent the Jets are still currently in the midst of recasting this unit more in the name of potential than actual achievement. The upside is real, though — Williams may be on the verge of becoming one of the better overall defensive ends in the league, and both Adams and Maye were considered some of the most talented defensive rookies in the NFL last year. The pass rush remains a significant weak spot unless several players within the current core of the defense take a big step forward in that area this year. Cornerback Trumaine Johnson was inked to a large free agent deal to help solidify the secondary around the young talent that is already present. This unit should be better in 2018, and the future is bright. It’s tough to predict the Jets to be all that good just yet — this is a team that hasn’t exceeded five wins in three of the past four years, after all. But after last year’s group showed that it had the ability to exceed expectations, it wouldn’t surprise me if this team — with some definite upgrades made on the roster — ended up being one of the bigger surprises in football in the upcoming season.

Projection: Mediocrity

Predicted Finish

1. New England

2. Miami

3. New York

4. Buffalo