Sports NFL Thread: 2022-2023 Season

TheValkyries

proudly reppin' 2 superbowl wins since DEFLATEGATE
WaterBomb i do your bidding.

Preseason action is underway! All the off-season trades have teams loaded up with offensive talent all over the league! Belichick motioned in his 183 pound rookie WR to block as a fullback!! Nature is healing… What’s the new addition to your team you’re most excited about?
 

Camden

Hey, it's me!
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Bucs fan chiming in. I was worried about Jensen getting hurt because he's Brady's mercenary and super tough all around. Thankfully Hainsey is functional enough to be a good center.

I feel pretty confident in saying that Tampa has the best receiving core in the league. We might not necessarily have a 1st team All-Pro receiver, but our depth is ridiculous. Evans/Godwin/Julio are all great wideouts and Gage/Miller are clutch in the slot. even our WR backups are pretty good, like Grayson and Perriman. Brate and Rudolph are perfectly fine TEs, though we're admittedly missing Gronk. I'm hoping that one of Otten/Kieft/Bug Howard break out as a great TE2 or even potential TE1 in the future.

I think our defense is going to have an amazing year if healthy. Our front line of Hicks/Vea/Gholston is a stone wall that won't let anyone run through. JPP is gone so JTS finally gets his chance to start. He's a tough dude that gives no fucks but his form is questionable and he's penalty-prone. I'm also not sold on Devin White. Despite the praise he receives from the media he has been atrocious for us. He's good at making the tackle, but he is the absolute drizzling shits in coverage. He can't stop a pass to save his fucking life and poor 32 year old perennially underappreciated talent Lavonte David has to make up for it despite his injuries. I think despite the issues last season, our secondary is pretty good if healthy, especially Antoine Winfield Jr. who is secretly one of the best safeties in the entire league.

Despite my complaints I'm excited for this season overall. I think we're a playoff shoe-in and could possibly show up in the NFC title game. Superbowl? Maybe, but I'll wait and see how we fare during the season first.

Last minute edit: We just signed Carl Nassib again. Our LBGTQ rep is back! Yea we're doing great.
 
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phoopes

I did it again
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Seems like the fantasy football thread is mostly about Smogon fantasy football (I won't be participating, I have two IRL leagues and that'll be enough for me). But one of my leagues is an auction draft. Any tips? I've never done one before.

On the more football fan side of things, I'm an Eagles fan and predicting a division championship this year, I think the Cowboys got worse and the Giants and Commanders didn't really improve much at all from what I can tell. Meanwhile, I'm super excited about our additions, and even if I don't think we'll make a deep playoff run, I think it'll be a fun season.
 

Stallion

Tree Young
is a Tiering Contributoris a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis a Three-Time Past WCoP Champion
WaterBomb i do your bidding.

Preseason action is underway! All the off-season trades have teams loaded up with offensive talent all over the league! Belichick motioned in his 183 pound rookie WR to block as a fullback!! Nature is healing… What’s the new addition to your team you’re most excited about?
The new addition I'm most excited about is the addition of warm bodies. I just want the worst team-wide single season injury run in NFL history to never happen to us again.
 

bdt2002

Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs superfan
is a Pre-Contributor
I was wondering when this thread was going to pop up. I've been watching the NFL a lot more consistently for about two and a half years now, largely due to me enjoying it more as a spectator activity than a few of the other major leagues.

A fun fact about me- I'm actually a decently big Seattle Seahawks fan despite living nowhere near there. (Yes, I know they got rid of Russ and Wagner. I still love watching both of them, though.) The reason for this is because of when I played flag football for a year as a younger child. The league's teams were all of the NFL ones, and my dumb a** was under the impression that this was the real deal NFL, but just a flag football division or... something. Hey, we all had the weirdest ideas as a kid. Something about the idea of "Hey, guys, I play for the Seahawks!" must have stuck with me, because I never figured out what happened to the flag football league after that one year, and I didn't even know what Seattle was for another few years.

Um, so... uh, where was I? Oh, yeah. I absolutely love looking at football stats, college level and professional, in my free time, and I'd like to think I have a surprisingly good track record of predicting teams and the games they play in. On rare occasions I've been able to call specific players having a break-out run, too. (Still hilarious that people were sleeping on Johnathan Taylor last year at one point.) I'm ready for the new season, and... wait. I feel like I'm forgetting something.

1660693439355.png


My playoff bracket predictions record from last year: 8-3, 8-4 if counting the Chiefs/Bills divisional game (Not sure what to do about this one because of the whole "Bills didn't get a drive in OT" situation")

Playoff bracket record calls against the spread: 9-3 (My pick for the Bills/Chiefs game was Bills win but don't cover)

My playoff bracket record in games involving the 49ers: 0-3 (all three losses ATS)

...let me put this into perspective. I'm a long-ways-away Seattle fan for over a decade now, and a division rival from an entirely different state from either me or Seattle just cost me a perfect bracket against the spread. If anything I'm actually thankful for the Chiefs getting that overtime win in the long run, because if they hadn't done so... well, you can imagine how that would have gone.
 
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WaterBomb i do your bidding.

Preseason action is underway! All the off-season trades have teams loaded up with offensive talent all over the league! Belichick motioned in his 183 pound rookie WR to block as a fullback!! Nature is healing… What’s the new addition to your team you’re most excited about?
8.7.22_EaglesOpenPractice_ColleenC.2656fa5c.fill-735x490.jpg


Somehow we went from starting pocket lint and a half-eaten gummy bear at WR to slotting AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith at WR in 2 years. Howie is a goddamn genius. Plus we can re-use our Wentz shirts burred deep within our closet and turn them into Brown jerseys!
 
Just checked the updated power rankings, and somehow my team fell from 31 to 32. That is fine though, my expectations are low; I am only expecting like two wins. In a way I’m actually kind of relieved I can just watch my team play with no expectations and see kyle pitts and some younger dudes ball out God willing.
 

Astra

talk to me nice
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little late to the party but as a lions fan i'm glad to see that they were chosen for hard knocks, the team looks like hella fun to be apart of especially with the amount of actual playing experience the coaching staff has and literally just campbell as a whole

also very excited to see hutchinson in action, dude's a beast
 
I think if our o-line can at least be middle of the pack and Baker pans out, the Panthers could be a wildcard team. It sounds like a lot of false hope but I think our roster has a lot of talent. Our offensive weapons are quite nice (assuming CMC stays healthy) and our secondary should perform well. A little thin on the defensive line and some question marks outside of Shaq at linebacker, but I believe we can be sneaky good this season.

Or we could just shit the bed in true Panther fashion ! But we are due a good season this year, we tend to alternate (at least before the last few years).
 
For maybe the first time in history the media is using a player's marital issues as a reason to predict a team's downfall.
 

bdt2002

Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs superfan
is a Pre-Contributor
None of you gave me advice and now I have the worst roster in the league :(
I'm going to be honest... I completely forgot about this. Now I feel like crap. I could have helped had I remembered... but here's the thing, though- you can still win fantasy games with a quote "bad" roster by taking advantage of some of the game's lesser-known strategies. At the end of the day, though, there is still luck involved with this kind of thing, so it's up to you about how you wish to go about this.

I think if our o-line can at least be middle of the pack and Baker pans out, the Panthers could be a wildcard team. It sounds like a lot of false hope but I think our roster has a lot of talent. Our offensive weapons are quite nice (assuming CMC stays healthy) and our secondary should perform well. A little thin on the defensive line and some question marks outside of Shaq at linebacker, but I believe we can be sneaky good this season.

Or we could just shit the bed in true Panther fashion ! But we are due a good season this year, we tend to alternate (at least before the last few years).
My outlook for Carolina is more optimistic than some people might be projecting. If I were to put them on a tier list, I'd say I have them as a C or C- tier team this season, a slight upgrade from the D tier they would have finished at last season off of a 5-12 regular season record. Before their seven-game losing streak (longest active regular season losing streak as of Week 18 of the 2021 season), they were sitting semi-comfortably at .500, and during that streak of games they were up against teams like the Dolphins, the Bills, and God forbid they played both of their Buccaneers games during that span.

Fast forward to the 2022 preseason, and I've already seen signs of improvement from the roster. Their most notable moment I've come across is that they knocked off the Bills 21-0 in the third week of preseason games, snapping the second-longest winning streak of preseason games by any team in the league (9 wins), only behind the Ravens' famous 23-game preseason win streak dating back to the 2016 season. With Mayfield at the helm, McCaffrey back healthy (at least for the time being), and a relatively easy schedule ahead of them, I have them in my "Got Better" list of teams so far. Depending on how the offensive line and the defense both play on a game-to-game basis (I don't know much about either group), give me 8-9 for the folks in Carolina, with a floor of 6-11 and a ceiling of 10-7.
 
Season predictions: (I have predicted 4 of the last 7 superbowl winners btw)

NFC:

East: Eagles
North: Vikings
West: Rams
South: Bucs

Wildcards:
49ers
Packers
Cowboys

NFC Championship: Bucs over Vikings

AFC

East: Bills
North: Ravens
West: Chargers
South: Colts

Wildcards:
Chiefs
Bengals
Broncos

AFC Championship

Chargers over Chiefs

Superbowl:

Bucs over Chargers

MVP: Justin Herbert
DPOY: Micah Parsons

Rookie of the year: Aidan Hutchinson

Random predictions:

-Broncos hype falls flat and they are a fringe playoff team outclassed by chargers and chiefs
-The hype around the Saints disappears when they suck due to losing a top 5 head coach and replacing him with a dude with a sub .250 winning%
-Saquon Barkley gets traded midseason for a 6th rd pick
-The lights go out mid game when the Bucs play the seahawks in Germany because of the energy crisis there.
-Julio Jones has more TDs than AJ Brown
-Gronk doesn't un-retire
 

bdt2002

Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs superfan
is a Pre-Contributor
https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/401437654

Well, we've made it. The NFL kickoff game came to a close about 40 minutes ago or something like that. What have we learned? Well... not much, honestly. It's next to impossible to judge how an entire season can go based off of just one game. I can safely say that I did not have Buffalo doing this good, but the question for Bills fans will be if this kind of momentum can keep up during the rest of the season. Gabriel Davis and Stefon Diggs did usual Davis & Diggs things, and I'm very slowly starting to come around to the idea that Josh Allen can once again perform at the top level of quarterback play. As for Los Angeles, I think this game serves as a nice wake-up call, but if I'm being honest, this might be a little too good of one. Matthew Stafford's still playing through his elbow injury, and the excessive amount of turnovers isn't a good sign for a Rams receiving core that's going to have to play against more and more backfield man coverage through-out the season. For this team to succeed again, they'll likely need to work on getting open in such a way to where Stafford can make easier throws while their defensive roster continues to get some of that early season rust out.
 

Astra

talk to me nice
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detroit may have lost but they've definitely shown a lot of improvement considering that they lost by almost 40 point last time they faced philly, just need to iron out some simple things like receivers actually catching the ball

also not last in division FUCK THE PACKERS
 

Voltage

OTTN5
is a Pre-Contributor
Really looking forward to the next few Vikings games (crazy I know): Eagles, Lions, Saints, and Bears all in the next four weeks. Winning at least three of these would be huge, especially after the very convincing Week 1 win against the Packers. Eagles and Lions both looked very competitive, and with the short turnaround from the Saints game to the Bears game, I don't expect the vikes to get them all. But at the same time, wew winning week 1 was huge for the Vikings and the best part was that it looked like the team was operating with so much less friction compared to previous years. O'Connell's offensive scheme seems to be an excellent fit for all of our offensive weapons. I am also in love with Jefferson.

If the Vikings can go into their bye 5-1 or even 4-2, that would be excellent.


detroit may have lost but they've definitely shown a lot of improvement considering that they lost by almost 40 point last time they faced philly, just need to iron out some simple things like receivers actually catching the ball

also not last in division FUCK THE PACKERS
FTP
 

bdt2002

Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs superfan
is a Pre-Contributor
1663016305222.png


Tie games in the NFL are controversial, to say the least. I can only think of two times when the fanbase generally agreed that a tied game would be fun to see. There was last year's Week 18 matchup between the Chargers and the Raiders that everyone who wasn't a Steelers fan wanted to see, and there was the 2012 games between the 49ers and the Rams, whose first game ended in a tie and whose second game could have made history for the entire league. The tier list I've made above is a collective list of how many tie games NFL teams have been in since the introduction of overtime in the 1974 season. Teams located further to the left in each tier, excluding the "No Ties" list, reached the tier they currently sit in more recently than teams further to the right in descending order.

I must say, as controversial as they are, the statistics behind the games like Sunday's 20-20 AFC South matchup are incredibly fascinating to me, and I think the meme-ability of a rare sports occurrence makes up for what could have been. Some teams even have what I'll be referring to as a tienasty, a play on "dynasty" that pretty much means they had so many ties during a smaller period of time.

Here's some other fun facts about NFL tie games that you may not have known. (Yes, I know I keep editing this post and adding to it, there's just so many of these I keep forgetting):

  • Since the introduction of overtime, no NFL team has ever finished a season with multiple ties on their W-L-T record
    • For anyone who's curious, the 2018 Cleveland Browns currently hold or are tied the record for most overtime games played in a regular season after having already tied in a previous one, with three; the team's overtime W-L-T record ended as 1-2-1
  • The 1988-89 Kansas City Chiefs are so far the only teams to finish with an overtime tie on their W-L-T record in consecutive seasons
    • The 2021-22 Pittsburgh Steelers just recently had a chance to do this as well, but could not get it done against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday; this conveniently keeps all of my below points still intact
    • Coincidentally, both tie games for the Chiefs were road games
  • All four of the Cincinnati Bengals's tie games happened:
    • In the 21st century
    • Against NFC teams
    • In even-numbered years
  • So far, there are only two pairs of NFL teams that have overtime ties against each other, and they are:
    • The Green Bay Packers & the Minnesota Vikings (1978, 2013, 2018)
      • Coincidentally, all three tie games were home games for the Packers
    • The Cincinnati Bengals & the Philadelphia Eagles (2008, 2020)
    • As mentioned above, the 2012 San Francisco 49ers & St. Louis Rams are excluded from this list because their second game did not end in a tie despite both of the teams' meetings going into overtime that year
  • Since the 2012 NFL season, which implemented the field goal rule change into regular season overtime games, there has been one tie game every season so far except for the 2015 and 2017 seasons
    • Suspiciously, the advent of multiple ties in their following seasons (2016 and 2018) helps keep the average at one tie per season
  • The last three of the four total times multiple overtime tie games occurred in a season (1997, 2016, 2018) had said games happen in consecutive weeks
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFL_tied_games
Source: https://www.espn.com/nfl/standings/_/season/2018/view/expanded
2022 Week 1 Colts/Texans game:
https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/401437637
 
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