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6/10/02
Email
Mike
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As a teacher, I spend the entire academic year looking forward to
summer (my time off). But as a football fan, I spend the entire
summer looking forward to the upcoming NFL season. It's only June,
and I already find myself impatient for the games to get underway.
It seems as if it's been an eternity since the Patriots (the Patriots!)
won the Super Bowl.
And it seems like several eternities since the games of Week 2 in
the 2001 season were postponed. I dimly recall a lot of impassioned
arguments from people about whether the games should have been postponed
or not. Some maintained that playing football would be disgraceful;
some maintained that altering our sports schedule was just another
way of giving in to the terrorists. I can't remember whether I thought
the games should be played or not, but I'm sure I wanted them to
be played.
I wanted to think and read and argue about Eddie George (whose disappointing
season had only just begun) and Marshall Faulk and Ricky Williams,
but instead I was thinking about whether the games for Week 2 would
be cancelled. And once they were cancelled, I was wondering about
whether they would be made up.
By the time the season was back to normal, the Patriots had walloped
the Colts twice, the Titans were on a monumental losing streak,
and Marty Schottenheimer's Redskins had managed, despite all odds,
to strike an even sorrier pose than the discombobulated Cardinals
and quarterback-controversy-mired Cowboys.
Not only could I not have predicted any of it, but I wasn't really
able to appreciate it as it unfolded before my eyes. The NFL never
fails to deliver surprises that sneak up on the fans, but because
of 9/11, I can't help thinking that a lot of those surprises ended
up sneaking past us. In any event, a lot of them managed to sneak
past me. The postponement of the Week 2 games threw off the pacing
of the entire season for me. I was in a bit of a daze until the
playoff picture was pretty well developed. I'm not complaining about
it or trying to minimize the significance of the terrorist attacks
by observing this; I'm merely reaching a conclusion that I was too
distracted to reach at the time. Pacing is important in the NFL-to
the players and coaches as well as the fans. When the entire League
gets a bye just one week into the season, things get screwy.
But there's another kind of pacing that is perhaps just as important,
the pacing that we fans do in anticipation of kickoff on opening
day. We pace in different ways. Some of us frantically attempt to
keep up with the off-season moves of our favorite teams. We study
salary caps and potential trades and all sorts of esoterica. Then
there are those who are more historically minded. They have acquired
the schedule for the games of the 2002 season and are already looking
over the stats of the last five meetings between their favorite
team and that team's opponents through the course of the upcoming
season. The vast majority of us, however, pace not by looking backward,
but by looking ahead. We take our minds off the fact that football
is still three months away by making predictions (knowing full well
that much of what we base our predictions on will change between
now and the time the season begins).
Most of us realize how difficult it is to make predictions with
any degree of accuracy even in the middle of the season (when we've
had a chance to see all the teams in action and everyone is still
alive for the playoffs). Such predictions may be unreliable, but
they are, to some degree at least, informed.
Preseason predictions are a different animal. We make predictions
concerning brand new coaches, brand new offensive schemes, sometimes
(as in the case of Houston) even brand new teams. We predict good
things for a defense simply because the new defensive end who has
been brought in, according to all the scouts, will be a good fit
(remember Kevin Carter?).
My brother and I usually spend at least one afternoon every summer
looking over every game on the NFL schedule so as to predict the
records for all the teams. We're never even close, but that doesn't
stop us. It's an excuse to think about the NFL. What's really amusing
to me about our predictions is that we usually lose track of them.
The paper that we write on ends up being folded up into a beer coaster
a few weeks into the season and gets thrown out.
Last year, however, we had to make our predictions via email. So
I have a record of my predictions. If I had a brain in my head (or
a shred of pride), I would simply delete this little record of my
own criminal ineptitude as a prognosticator. But the way I see it,
readers of NFL columns will have ample opportunities to see 'expert'
predictions concerning the 2002 season in the months to come. Few
of those experts, however, will bother to include the predictions
that they made last summer. And that's a shame-because the predictions
that we make in the summer are worth a few laughs at the very least.
Here's what I expected from the 2001 season last June.
I'm an idiot; I know that.
| AFC EAST |
PREDICTED/ACTUAL
FINISH |
WILDCARD |
| Indianapolis |
11-5
/ 6-10 |
No.1 |
| Miami Dolphins |
10-6
/ 11-5 |
|
| Buffalo Bills |
6-10
/ 3-13 |
|
| New England Patriots
|
5-11
/ 11-5 |
|
| New York Jets |
5-11
/ 10-6 |
|
| AFC CENTRAL |
PREDICTED/ACTUAL
FINISH |
WILDCARD |
| Baltimore Ravens
|
14-2
/ 10-6 |
No.1 |
| Tennessee Titans
|
13-3
/ 7-9 |
X |
| Pittsburgh Steelers
|
9-7
/ 13-3 |
|
| Jacksonville Jaguars
|
6-10
/ 6-10 |
|
| Cleveland Browns
|
3-13
/ 7-9 |
|
| Cincinnati Bengals
|
2-14
/ 6-10 |
|
| AFC WEST |
PREDICTED/ACTUAL
FINISH |
WILDCARD |
| Denver Broncos |
12-4
/ 8-8 |
No.1 |
| Oakland Raiders
|
12-4
/ 10-6 |
X |
| Kansas City Chiefs
|
12-4
/ 6-10 |
X |
| San Diego Chargers
|
6-10
/ 5-11 |
|
| Seattle Seahawks
|
5-11
/ 9-7 |
|
| NFC EAST |
PREDICTED/ACTUAL
FINISH |
WILDCARD |
| New York Giants
|
10-6
/ 7-9 |
No.1 |
| Philadelphia Eagles
|
10-6
/ 11-5 |
X |
| Washington Redskins
|
7-9
/ 8-8 |
|
| Dallas Cowboys |
4-12
/ 5-11 |
|
| Arizona Cardinals
|
2-14
/ 7-9 |
|
| NFC CENTRAL |
PREDICTED/ACTUAL
FINISH |
WILDCARD |
| Tampa Bay Buccaneers
|
13-3
/ 9-7 |
No.1 |
| Minnesota Vikings
|
11-5
/ 5-11 |
X |
| Detroit Lions |
7-9
/ 2-14 |
|
| Green Bay Packers
|
6-10
/ 12-4 |
|
| Chicago Bears |
5-11
/ 13-3 |
|
| NFC WEST |
PREDICTED/ACTUAL
FINISH |
WILDCARD |
| New Orleans Saints
|
12-4
/ 7-9 |
No.1 |
| St. Louis Rams |
12-4
/ 14-2 |
X |
| San Francisco 49ers
|
8-8
/ 12-4 |
|
| Atlanta Falcons
|
6-10
/ 7-9 |
|
| Carolina Panthers
|
5-11
/ 1-15 |
|
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Thank goodness for the Jaguars, the only team whose record actually
corresponded to my prediction.
Of the 12 teams that I predicted to make the playoffs, less
than half actually went (the Raiders, Ravens, Rams, Buccaneers,
and Eagles). Most embarrassing
is my worst-to-first ratio. I
had the Bears slated to finish last in the NFC Central (which they
won) and the Patriots slated to tie for last in the AFC East (and
we all know the story there).
So go ahead. Make
your summer predictions if doing so helps get you through the rest
of the off-season. But don’t throw them away once they’ve done
their part to distract you. Hang
onto them for next year. And
when you find yourself itching to think about football next season,
look over those predictions. They’re
not just a way to kill time; they’re an elaborate joke whose punchline
is the season as it actually plays out.
:: comments to mike
davis
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