Jay L
Jay L
Sep 5, 2018 · 20 min read

NFL 2018 Preview Capsules — NFC West

Arizona — Windows close fast in the NFL. In 2015, the Cardinals finished 13–3 and went to the NFC Championship Game. Although they were blasted 49–15 by Carolina in that contest, Arizona looked as likely as any team in their conference to challenge for a Super Bowl title over the ensuing two or three seasons. Carson Palmer appeared to be enjoying a late-career renaissance under head coach Bruce Arians, having posted his two best quarterback ratings in a decade in consecutive seasons. Arizona entered 2016 having seemingly addressed the one weakness of that 2015 squad, an ineffective pass rush, by acquiring Chandler Jones in a trade with the Patriots and selecting Robert Ndemkiche with the number 29 overall pick of the 2016 NFL Draft, and they looked to be primed for a potentially long postseason run. Instead, the team hasn’t finished above .500 now in two seasons since. Palmer began showing his age in 2016 only a year after putting together the best season of his career, with his quarterback rating plummeting from 104.6 to 87.2. Injuries annihilated the roster, with 32 different players combining to miss a total of 159 games, including 17 players who went on injured reserve. The secondary and offensive line were hit especially hard, with four different players from each of those positional units going on injured reserve, including two starters on the line. The biggest positive to emerge from an essentially lost season in 2016 was the breakout performance of running back David Johnson, who took over the keys to the offense in his second season by exploding for 2,118 all-purpose yards and 20 total touchdowns in an MVP-level performance. Johnson didn’t even make it through a single game in 2017 before breaking his wrist and being lost for the year. Palmer played seven games at an average level before also going on IR, and he retired when the season was over. With all the key injuries, the Cardinals scored 123 fewer points as an offense than they did in 2016, and the team was lucky to finish 8–8. And just like that, they were starting over. Arizona may not want to characterize the 2018 season as a rebuilding year, as several of their most important players on both sides of the ball are sitting squarely in their prime, but this will be a significantly different team from the one that had such high hopes just three short years ago. The biggest changes come at the quarterback position, where the Cardinals completely re-made the depth chart, inking Sam Bradford and Mike Glennon to contracts in free agency and using the number 10 overall pick in the draft to select UCLA’s Josh Rosen as their potential future star at the position. Bradford has been good to excellent over the past few years when he has played, but that’s the problem — he hasn’t managed to play a full season since 2012, made only seven starts combined in 2013 and 2014, and played only slightly more than a single game last year before being placed on — you guessed it — injured reserve. If Glennon gets meaningful snaps this year, the Cardinals are in trouble. So that leaves Rosen, who comes with a wealth of talent but also concerns about his injury history and leadership skills. Besides Johnson, the top of Arizona’s offensive depth chart is mostly filled with veteran names, and how quickly and effectively Rosen gets buy-in from those players may end up being the key to his performance when — not if — he plays this year. Johnson’s injury had a devastating effect on the offense last year — the team ranked 15th in passing yardage but 30th in rushing yardage, 25th in scoring, and 30th in red zone touchdown percentage, and all of those struggles can probably be directly traced back to his absence. Arizona actually rushed the ball seven more times in 2017 than they had the previous season, but they produced 346 fewer yards on the ground and averaged only 3.4 yards per carry as a team. Those numbers figure to significantly improve with Johnson back in the line-up. Arizona also upgraded its offensive line with the free agent additions of guard Justin Pugh (via the Giants) and tackle Andre Smith (via the Bengals), but thanks to injuries last year to tackle D.J. Humphries and guard Mike Iupati, and the subsequent loss of center A.Q. Shipley to an ACL tear this preseason, the team’s current projected starting five up front started a total of just six games for the Cardinals last year. That’s a frightening lack of continuity for any offense, let alone one that struggled a season ago. The team also continues to be incredibly reliant on future Hall of Fame receiver Larry Fitzgerald to make the passing game go — last year, at 34 years of age, Fitz managed an astonishing 76 more receptions, 648 more yards, and two more touchdowns than his next runner-up on the Cardinals’ leader-board in all three categories, and the team has to start developing complimentary pieces in the receiving corps in support of whoever ends up taking the majority of the snaps at quarterback. Defensively, a lot of teams could do worse than to start with Arizona’s two best players — edge rusher Chandler Jones, who led the NFL with 17 sacks a season ago, and Patrick Peterson, who has long been considered one of the top five cornerbacks in the league. There are some solid second-tier players in the unit as well. The biggest problem here may also be a significant lack of continuity — the hiring of Steve Wilks as head coach brought with it a change to a 4–3 base defensive front, and with it the attendant personnel shifts that come with such a makeover. The Cardinals currently project to start just four players who were in the starting line-up for more than half the season in 2017, and three of those four will have at least somewhat different roles in the new defense. The team was very solid on this side of the ball last year, ranking in the top half of the league or better in total defense, rushing defense, passing defense and interceptions, and Wilks actually improved the Panthers defense considerably in his only year as their coordinator, but there are a lot of moving pieces here that will need to come together quickly for Arizona to improve as a unit. More than likely this is going to be a multi-year process as Wilks continues to get the players he wants for his scheme. Whether the Cardinals want to talk about what it really means or not, change is the operative word in Arizona in 2018. But that’s what happens when championship windows slam shut.

Projection: Mediocrity

Los Angeles Rams — No one makes noise in the NFL anymore quite like the Rams. In 2016, the franchise returned professional football to Los Angeles for the first time in 21 years. In 2017 they completed one of the greatest single-season turnarounds in league history, becoming the first team ever to go from last in the league in points scored in one season to first in the league the next, while increasing their win total by seven games to finish 11–5 and capture an NFC West Division title in Sean McVay’s first season as head coach. But even the past two years couldn’t have prepared onlookers for the fireworks of this past offseason. Instead of standing pat with their talented young core of 23-year-old quarterback Jared Goff, 24-year-old running back Todd Gurley, and 27-year-old defensive tackle Aaron Donald, a trio of stars who would probably be capable of keeping the team relevant in upcoming postseason discussions all by themselves over the next half-decade, the Rams went all-in on the short-track to the Super Bowl with one of the most star-studded offseason personnel hauls in recent memory. When the dust had settled, the Rams had acquired wide receiver Brandin Cooks in a trade with the Patriots, lured defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh away from the Dolphins via the free agent market, and traded for cornerbacks Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib in deals with the Chiefs and Broncos, respectively. Cooks gives the number one scoring offense in football a field-stretching element that simply didn’t exist in its repertoire a season ago. Suh will team with Donald to create one of the scariest interior defensive line pairings in recent NFL history. Peters and Talib may now form the best cornerback tandem in the entire league. The Rams deserve credit for not resting on their laurels after being thoroughly outclassed by the Falcons in their 26–13 Wild Card Playoff Game loss, but the changes also significantly alter the dynamic of a team that had quickly achieved success under McVay, and they don’t come without a great deal of risk. Cooks is in the strange position of seeing two different organizations essentially give up on him in consecutive off-seasons even though he is just 24 years old. Suh, Peters and Talib all arrive with reputations for negative behavior that ended up outweighing their significant value on the field in the eyes of their previous teams. The Rams’ aggressiveness in the trade market, dating back to their deal with the Titans to move up for Goff in 2016, has stripped the team of several premium draft picks over the past three years and hindered their ability to build quality depth now and in the future. The defense will be integrating six new starters, an almost unheard-of amount of turnover for a team coming off a playoff season. All of these factors will need to be accounted for during the coming season in order for the Rams to reach the Super Bowl, and make no mistake about it — the approach here will be criticized if it falls short of bringing a championship to Los Angeles. For all of the change that defined the past offseason for the Rams, the continuity the team sought to preserve in its offense was all the more noteworthy as a result. The chance to add Cooks was too good of an opportunity for the Rams to pass up, as he immediately will step in as the most talented wide receiver on the roster, but the team otherwise returns 10 of 11 starters from 2017. One glance at the NFL leader-boards reveals why — Los Angeles finished in the top ten of every core offensive team statistic except red zone touchdown percentage. Jared Goff took an absolute quantum leap in his development in his first season under McVay, improving his quarterback rating from 63.6 as a rookie to 100.5 in his second year. Todd Gurley emerged as a legitimate MVP candidate, finding a previously untapped level of proficiency in the passing game and finishing with just a shade under 2,100 yards from scrimmage and 19 touchdowns. Both players were seemingly at significant cross-roads before finding themselves in the team’s offense last year, but there is no reason to think that either player won’t continue to be a significant building block for Los Angeles going forward, and it will be interesting to see if Cooks’ career will undergo a similar type of renaissance in 2018. The rest of the offense, from the line to the remaining skill position talent, profiles much more as solid than spectacular, and it will be integral to see what type of production McVay can scheme out of the players at his disposal. Don’t expect the offense to be as prolific as it was in 2017 — the Rams’ 29.9 points per game is tied for the 27th best mark in NFL history, and it is rare for an offense to maintain that high a level of productivity over consecutive seasons. That will put more of an onus on the defense to jell quickly despite all of the new pieces that have been added. The Rams were a bit more of a mixed bag statistically on this side of the ball in 2017 — they finished just 19th in total yards and a putrid 28th against the rush, but they also ranked 13th against the pass, 12th in points allowed, tied for 6th in interceptions, 4th in sacks, and 5th in opponent’s passer rating. It’s fair to question whether or not such a significant overhaul of the defense was required given some of the productivity the Rams exhibited against the pass a season ago, but the three big-ticket acquisitions are all definite talent upgrades compared to their 2017 counterparts with the team. Suh hasn’t been a truly dominant player for several seasons, but he should help lead this defense to significant improvement in the running game in 2018, and he will team up with Donald to be an overwhelming mismatch for most interior offensive lines on a weekly basis. Peters, who leads the NFL with 19 interceptions since entering the league in 2015, will ensure that the Rams maintain their edge in the turnover department as well. Both the front end and back end of this defense will have the potential to be elite, but that potential came at a price — starting linebackers Alec Ogletree, Robert Quinn and Connor Barwin all had to be jettisoned in the offseason in order for the team to absorb the incoming talent. Quinn and Barwin combined for 15.5 sacks last season, and Ogletree was long considered one of the leaders of the team’s defense. The current projected starters for 2018 — Matt Longacre, Samson Ebukam, Cory Littleton and Mark Barron — comprise one of the more nondescript collections of linebacking talent for a potential playoff team in recent memory, and the dearth of talent here could be doubly problematic given the importance of the position in a 3–4 defensive scheme. Wade Phillips is unquestionably one of the best defensive coordinators in the National Football League, but he will need to bring all of his coaching acumen to bear to get championship-level productivity out of all three levels of this unit. The question then becomes — if this defense is in fact flawed despite all of its new additions, and the offense could potentially be worse than it was a season ago, do the Rams have a legitimate chance to win the championship they have gone all-in to try and capture in 2018? We ask similar questions every year about teams that make a lot of moves all at once to try and accelerate their path to a title. Individual talent is important, of course, but sports aren’t really about collections of individual talent — they are about collections of talent that are able to subsume their individual goals for team goals, and who are able to come together in the most difficult and challenging moments. Did the Rams add those types of players in the offseason? Did they pay the price for glory or for disappointment? Los Angeles is about to make a lot of noise once again, but you can count me as someone who has significant doubts as to their championship expectations.

Projection: Playoff Contender

San Francisco — Jimmy Garoppolo has been one of the great unanswered questions in the NFL at the quarterback position for the better part of two seasons now. Two years ago, he stepped into the vacuum left by Tom Brady’s personal conduct suspension and teased the Patriots with his potential for a little less than a game and a half before getting knocked out of his second start against the Dolphins with a sprained shoulder. Prior to the injury, Garoppolo looked solid and efficient in leading New England to a road victory over Arizona in his first-ever professional start on the opening weekend of the season, and he followed that up by appearing surgically sublime in tearing Miami’s defense to shreds to the tune of 232 yards passing and three touchdown passes in less than two quarters of action. The questions that followed were obvious enough, although the answers were not — had Garoppolo’s brief emergence cleared up the succession plan in New England, or complicated it? After not even lasting six quarters in his first professional action in two plus seasons, was Garoppolo capable of staying healthy over a full season as a leading man? If Brady was serious about playing into his mid-40s, would the Patriots consider trading their talented backup after investing so much time in him, and what was he worth if they did? Preseason reports out of New England at the start of 2017 indicated that the Pats were in fact not looking to deal Garoppolo at any price, and that the team had turned down offers involving first-round draft picks for their backup. So it was hard to find any answers that made a whole lot of sense when the Patriots shipped Garoppolo out of town for just a second-round draft pick in the middle of the season last year, after reportedly professing an unwillingness to trade him previously, and after having already dealt away the other young developmental passer on their roster — Jacoby Brissett — before the start of the season. Did the Patriots wait until the last possible moment to cut bait on Garoppolo and then take the best deal they could find? Was the widely reported power struggle between Brady and Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft over the team’s future at the position the real precipitating factor? Did the team see something — and to be sure, I have never seen anything that says this is the case — they didn’t like in the quarterback? Did they trade him to a franchise and a head coach who they believed would put him in the best possible position to succeed after Garoppolo played the good soldier for three and a half seasons in New England, as was speculated in many thought pieces after the trade? When Garoppolo got to San Francisco, the question wasn’t if he would start, it was when. Once he did, the question was whether or not what the franchise was witnessing was too good to be true. The 49ers were 1–10 without Garoppolo as their starter and 5–0 with him in the line-up. They averaged 28.8 points on offense and surrendered just 19.8 on defense in those five contests, after scoring 17 per game and giving up 25.8 in all others. Garoppolo compiled a stellar 96.2 quarterback rating after his predecessors, C.J. Beathard and Brian Hoyer, managed just a 69.2 and 74.1 rating, respectively, as the prior starters. The only real question left at that point was whether or not Garoppolo had cemented his status as a franchise-level quarterback. With the 49ers signing him to a five-year, $137.5 million contract this offseason, the organization clearly feels like the answer to that question is in the affirmative. So, is the team right — is Jimmy G a franchise quarterback? Is it crazy to commit that type of money to a player with seven total starts and 272 professional passes to his name? Garoppolo’s performance has been pretty much off the charts in those 272 passes — he has completed 67.3% of his throws for 2,250 yards with 12 touchdowns and 5 interceptions. His career quarterback rating now stands at 99.7, and he has never lost a start. His wins and numbers last year weren’t just piled up against bad competition that had already checked out for the season — they included victories over Tennessee and Jacksonville when both those teams were jockeying for playoff positions, and the win over the Jaguars saw the ‘Niners put up 44 points against the number two defense in football. Garoppolo has looked mobile, accurate and in complete control of his team’s offense in pretty much every single game in which he has played meaningful snaps during his young career. If you look up reports about what his teammates in New England said about him even prior to the trade with San Francisco, you will see several that indicate a belief that Garoppolo was unquestionably a star in the making. Players don’t just say those types of things for the sake of saying them — they see and recognize significant talent when it is present in other players. Garoppolo also spent the formative years of his NFL career soaking up the experience of playing for the best head coach in football, and playing behind the best player to ever play the quarterback position. There is no way the environment in New England didn’t alter his development in a very positive way. I believe Garoppolo very much is a franchise signal caller, and if that is the case, he makes the 49ers a contender this year even if the rest of the roster carries some definite flaws. The team’s overall talent level on offense is decidedly average. The 49ers will be breaking in three new starters on their offensive line, and the team inked veteran Alfred Morris late in the off-season after realizing the depth chart still left a lot to be desired at the running back position, and that was before free agent addition Jerrick McKinnon was also lost for the year to an ACL tear. Pierre Garcon and Marquise Goodwin are solid wide receivers, but neither is the type to keep opposing defensive coordinators awake at night before games. Projected starting tight end Garret Celek has never exceeded 350 yards receiving in a season. San Francisco’s offense was 12th in yardage but 20th in scoring in 2017, and they don’t appear to have added any real difference-making skill position players via free agency or the draft to try and close that gap. Defensively the 49ers were fairly bad across the board last year, ranking in the 20s in every single core statistical area. The pedigree of their defensive line is significant, with three former number-one picks projecting as starters, and the team inked former Seahawk Richard Sherman in free agency to provide a veteran presence — and a potential lock-down corner, if he can return 100% from an Achilles injury — in the secondary. If the team maintains the defensive gains they achieved in the final five games last year while Garoppolo was leading the offense, San Francisco is going to scare a lot of people. That probably isn’t very likely to happen, but it’s reasonable to expect better play on defense in 2018. But it all goes back to the 49ers new leading man in the end. It seems hard to believe, after all that’s been said about him, that we are about to see Garoppolo start 16 games as a professional for the first time in his career. If those 16 games look anything like the ones he has played so far, the ‘Niners are going to be a tough out for anyone.

Projection: Playoff Contender

Seattle — The Seattle Seahawks are hanging by a thread to their championship team of 2013, and the name of that thread is Russell Wilson. These aren’t your father’s Seahawks, or maybe even your son’s Seahawks for that matter. The defense, which has been the identity of the franchise for most of the past decade, projects to start only three players in 2018 that were a part of the team’s Super Bowl run just five short years ago. Seattle is feeling the pain of that transition — the team hasn’t increased its season win total now for four consecutive seasons. Wilson remains the constant and the talisman of the entire team. As long as he is in the starting lineup, the Seahawks have a chance to win every single game they play. Wilson was as good as he has ever been in 2017, finishing 17 yards shy of a third consecutive 4,000-yard passing season, and tossing 34 touchdowns against 11 interceptions. He also led the team in every single rushing category — attempts, yards, average and touchdowns. Overall, he was involved in all but one of the team’s offensive touchdowns during the season. Unfortunately for Seattle, that type of statistical dominance speaks to a general lack of difference-making talent throughout the rest of the roster. The rest of the Seahawks backs and receivers managed a total of just 1,043 yards rushing on 314 carries (a 3.3-yard average) with only a single touchdown on the ground. The next three leaders in rushing attempts for the team combined to manage a measly 2.95 yards per rush on 195 total carries. Doug Baldwin was good once again at receiver, and Paul Richardson was decent, but tight end Jimmy Graham never truly ended up clicking in this offense the way Seattle hoped that he would, and number two wide out Tyler Lockett has seen his yardage totals drop in back-to-back seasons after a promising rookie season in 2015. Richardson and Graham both left in free agency, which means the offense may be decidedly top-heavy once again. Former Cardinals wide receiver Jaron Brown and ex-Panthers tight end Ed Dickson were signed in free agency as potential replacements, but those two players have combined to exceed 500 yards receiving only a single time in 13 combined seasons in the NFL, and Dickson will miss at least the first six games of the year after being placed on the reserve/non-football injury list with quadriceps and groin issues. Seattle did prioritize the running attack in the draft, selecting San Diego State running back Rashaad Penny with the number 27 overall pick. Penny was tremendously productive in college in 2017, leading the nation with 2,248 rushing yards and scoring 23 touchdowns on 289 carries. His draft slot would seem to indicate that he lacks elite physical traits as a pro prospect, but he should be a step up from the flotsam that Seattle rolled out at the position a year ago, provided he can eliminate the weight-gain and injury issues that have marred his preseason. Don’t count out Chris Carson as a potential bell-cow in the running back mix either, now that he has been awarded the top spot on the depth chart entering the season — the former seventh-round pick in the 2017 draft piled up 208 rushing yards and 4.2 yards per carry before breaking his ankle in the team’s week four victory over the Colts, and if he can stay healthy this year it’s likely that the competition with Penny will benefit the performance of both backs. The Seahawks also tabbed Brian Schottenheimer as the new coordinator for their offense, and Seattle fans may be a bit disheartened to learn that he has never coordinated a top ten offense in yardage, and only once previously achieved a top ten ranking in points scored, in nine previous years in the same role with the Jets and the Rams. Schottenheimer’s offenses have always been more effective in the running game than the passing game, however, and the formula here seems fairly obvious — trust that Wilson has become advanced enough as a passer over the past few seasons to trump whatever the limitations may be of Schottenheimer’s scheme, while also returning to a bit more of the run/pass balance that made Seattle’s offense more effective early in their star quarterback’s career. This was a borderline playoff-level offense in 2017, and it’s reasonable to expect a similar level of productivity from Wilson and company this year. It’s also reasonable to expect that Seattle’s defense is more likely to determine the ultimate fate of the team in 2018. Franchise mainstays Michael Bennett, Richard Sherman, and Kam Chancellor are all gone, as is talented one-year rental Sheldon Richardson. Earl Thomas, who is currently locked in a contract stand-off with the team that has resulted in his holding out the entire preseason, may follow them out the door before opening weekend. That is a tremendous amount of talent to have to replace in one offseason, and most of the individuals that Seattle brought in via free agency and the draft are simply not the same caliber of player as those who were shown the door. Two of the better linebackers in football still remain — Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright, although Wright has battled some injuries this preseason as well — but otherwise the Seahawks may spend a significant part of the season trying to determine which of their young players can be potential foundational pieces of the next great Seattle defense. Edge rusher Frank Clark has totaled 19 sacks in two seasons as a part-time starter and may be on the verge of a breakout year. Tackle Jarran Reed is a potentially elite run-stuffer. The secondary received a tremendous infusion of youth via four selections in the 2017 NFL Draft, but only one of those players — cornerback Shaquill Griffin — was a starter last year, and it’s fair to say that the back line of the Seattle defense will be in the midst of major transitioning of its personnel for at least another season. I would expect the Seahawks defense to take a bit of a step back in 2018, and this would be emblematic of a much longer trend — since allowing 231 points in 2013, Seattle’s defense has surrendered more points every single year since then, topping out with the 332 points they gave up a season ago. New defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. never finished better than 20th in points or yardage allowed in three seasons leading the Oakland defense from 2015 to 2017, and he will need to figure out how to do more with less in his new role as well. With Seattle’s defense in a transition year, and with a lack of difference-making talent on offense outside of their quarterback, the Seahawks are back in the position of needing Wilson to be super-human again in order for the team to have any shot at a postseason berth. Wilson has shown time and again that he is capable of being that good. But Seattle would be better served to use the 2018 season as a way to come to terms with the fact that the 2013 Seahawks are gone for good. A new chapter needs to be written.

Projection: Mediocrity

Predicted Finish

1. San Francisco

2. Los Angeles

3. Seattle

4. Arizona