For me I am optimistic about the season. to me Diggs was the missing ingredient aside from adding a veteran center.
I am optimistic also. I'll be much more optimistic when I see Amos practicing. Center is concerning, but not as concerning as CB. Still.
The only overhang for me about the season.
A. While i don't mind ignoring the national media in all its forms they've been right more than wrong about this team over the years -- granted it wasn't too hard betting against Washington -- and most of them think the team sucks. Now I think they are wrong. But lol I've been wrong before rejecting their thesis.
The National Media is wrong more than they're right. So is Vegas. I did this analysis, I'll see if I can find it and make a thread with it somewhere. The over/unders from Vegas are wildly inaccurate. I went back to 2020, and looked at pre-season over/unders vs. actual results. Something like 10% of the predictions were within 1 game, and like 40% were off by 3+ games. And that trend was true for just about every year. One year (I don't remember which) they were closer. But that was the outlier. (As an aside, this is why I think mustachio Warren Sharp is foolish to use Vegas odds as part of his strength of schedule analysis. If I can figure out the vegas odds are statistically inacurate, I don't know how on earth he doesn't see that and eliminate that component of his analysis. Maybe he gets sponsorship money from them? Who's to say? But it's a flawed way of doing schedule analysis.)
The National Media uses the Vegas over/unders a lot to generate overall opinions of who's good and who's not. It's a good litmus test, and it's easy. None of them are read in on all 32 teams, there just isn't time to fully know what's going on with each team.
Every year, you can find 5 teams the national media is high on, and they'll end up being terrible. And 5 teams they're not high on, and they'll end up in the playoffs. Every year. Same with Vegas odds.
The NFL is completely unpredictable week to week. Let alone before the season starts.
It might be tough, but it might be tough because there could be 3 contending teams in it. Would anybody be surprised if any of the Rams, 49ers or Seahawks won the NFC West, and 2 if not all 3 of those teams made the playoffs? No. Flip side, with a healthy Daniels and better defense, I could argue any of the Cowboys, Eagles or Commanders could win the east and any of or all of the three could make the playoffs. That makes it a tough division, but not just for us, for all 4 teams. Which means each team will probably take a few more losses than if the division wasn't even.
It's going to be tough on our opponents to play us for sure.
For me its about the start, I reject the idea of its OK to just hang in there in the first half and go on a run in the 2nd half. The division is too stacked and the NFC is too loaded for that IMO. They got a new scheme, many new players -- shock and awe just like in 2012 where they beat the Saints on the road. Beat either the Eagles or Dallas on the road, I expect them to take one of those games. Beat Seattle traveling across country for a 1 pm game. Beat the Colts in London. Beat the upstart Giants. now, you got a season. It's possible IMO, will see.
I agree with the fact that they need to start strong. Mostly because there are a bunch of division games early, and those count like 2 games. I also agree they can't just "survive" the first 7 games, they need to thrive in them. It's mostly likely going to take 11 wins to make the playoffs . I'm not saying that because the NFC is tough or not, that was the cutoff for the AFC last year, NFC was 12. 2024, AFC cutoff was 10, NFC was 11. 2023 AFC was 10, NFC was remarkably 9. If you sortof average all that together, 11 is most likely to get you in most years. And if you win 11 and don't get in, well, that's just bad luck in my opinion. And I don't think they can get to 11 wins by just going .500 through the first part of the schedule and then going on a run. I think they need to come out hot and win some big games against teams they might not be favored in, and then they can start being favored in some big games down the road.
We don't know how stacked the NFC is yet. It might be. Or it might not be. Every year, on average, 3 of the playoff teams from each conference don't make the playoffs the next year. And every year, that seems to surprise everybody. But that means if history over the last 50 years holds, 3 of: Seahawks, Bears, Eagles, Panthers, Rams, 49ers and Packers will not make the playoffs. Which 3? Who knows.
But the cutoff for the playoffs is likely 11 or 12 games. I could see the division winner having 11 wins this season if all the teams beat up on each other.
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