NFL Preview: NFC West
Leading up to the NFL season kickoff, Nick Tedeschi and Cliff Bingham will break down each division and offer recommended bets with the last offering being a look at the playoff picture and overall Super Bowl wagers. It is a must for every fan.
PART 6: NFC WEST
Nick Tedeschi
There is little more depressing than being a San Francisco 49ers fan and knowing that you are in the worst division in football year after year but cannot somehow even pinch it. Blerg.
I am going to waste very little time on this division, treating it with the contempt it deserves. Hell, Seattle won the division and made it to the playoffs with a 7-9 record, taking the title of worst playoff team ever.
All teams are rubbish and my forecast has every team winning between 6 and 8 games, suggesting another year of sub-mediocrity exists.
I can’t get worked up about Seattle. They have followed the Daniel Snyder model this year in a season without pre-season workouts. They have a garbage quarterback, a questionable running game, no offensive line and a defence that routinely gets towelled. No everywhere else but in the NFC West, they have to be some chance. I’ve got them on seven wins.
Against better judgement, I think the San Francisco 49ers can finally, ye gods, finally reach the playoffs. Jim Harbaugh may be straight in from college but he did a great job at Stanford and his name isn’t Mike Singletary, one of the worst head coaches the NFL has ever seen. The Niners at least have a few things to them: outstanding run defence, a top linebacker in Patrick Willis, a capable ground game with Frank Gore and an upgrade in the secondary with Carlos Rogers. They have a rubbish receiving corps, a terribly inept quarterback, a putrid offensive line but hey, this is the NFC West and those faults aren’t enough to rule you out of a divisional title run.
St Louis seem to be on the up after some horrid years. Sam Bradford is a quarterback with a bright future but he slipped under the radar last season. A sophomore slump wouldn’t surprise. The worry is the below average defence that had a good run with injuries last year. They are a seven, eight win team. That may be enough.
Arizona have signed Kevin Kolb, giving them a major upgrade at quarterback but he remains unproven. If he can hit something with Larry Fitzgerald, that would be a start. But the running game is poor and one of the worst defences in the league certainly doesn’t appear to have improved any. Seven wins is probably their limit.
Predicted finish: San Francisco 8-8, St Louis 8-8, Seattle 7-9, Arizona 6-10
Recommended Bets
· 0.5 units on San Francisco to win the division at $3.45 (Pinnacle)
Cliff Bingham
Last year the toilet that is occasionally known as the NFC West went a collective 7-9 against the almost-as-bad AFC West, 3-13 against the NFC South and 3-5 against the rest of the NFC. Unsurprisingly, they ran stone motherless last in my divisional power rankings. This year they get the AFC North (predicting 5-11, and they might be lucky to win five) and the NFC East (also predicting 5-11), so as a collective I think the NFC West will not make any ground whatsoever on their crappy 25-win total from 2010.
By sheer process of elimination, St Louis look the best bet to take the divisional title this season. They lost their first two games of 2010 (and four overall) by less than a touchdown – given that they were fielding a rookie quarterback in Sam Bradford and second year head coach in Steve Spagnuolo, a little extra experience this season may help them clinch a few more of the close ones. Their points differential (minus 39) and total points conceded (328) were quite respectable for a team just below mid-tier. More to the point, they jumped from a 6-42 record over the three previous seasons to 7-9 and a tiebreaker loss of the NFC West title last season – a tremendous leap for the franchise. It wouldn’t take an awful lot to propel them to 9-7 and the division championship this year.
San Francisco get similar ‘upside potential’ tick marks to the Rams on points differential (minus 41), total points conceded (346) and record in games decided by less than a touchdown (one win out of five matches). My concerns with the 49ers revolve around (1) new head coach Jim Harbaugh having no NFL experience – NFL coaches coming direct from the college football environment have a low success rate; and (2) the return of Alex Smith as quarterback. Add into the mix the signing of a wide receiver with notoriously bad hands in Braylon Edwards and I can’t give them a record any better than .500 this season.
For a team that has done almost nothing in its entire franchise history when Kurt Warner hasn’t been involved (the one playoff win under Jake Plummer’s leadership notwithstanding), the Cardinals are receiving significant hype as a 2011 sleeper. I can’t buy into it, primarily because I can’t buy into the Kevin Kolb era. As noted earlier, Philadelphia are notorious for knowing when is the right time to let players go. More jarring though is the rumour that the Bengals showed no interest in Kolb – instead preferring to go with Bruce Gradkowski. Miami didn’t exactly offer to shell their team in order to acquire Kolb either. Ditto Seattle, who signed Tarvaris Jackson (we’re getting to him) To recap, a savvy team let him go and multiple desperate teams didn’t pursue him with much vigour. Star receiver Larry Fitzgerald may be in for another season of frustration and anger.
Speaking of frustration and anger, here come Seattle fans, who one year after making the playoffs with a 7-9 record now have a quarterback who was benched for an ageing and clearly injured Brett Favre last season and overlooked for an almost certainly washed up Donovan McNabb this season. Now throw this into the mix – of their nine regular season losses last year, the smallest margin was 15 points! Yep, a team lost a total of nine games by over two touchdowns last season and starts this year with a downgrade at quarterback. Oh, and they are the defending NFC West champions. Call me crazy, but I think the run of huge losses is more likely to continue than the run of NFC West titles.
Predicted finish: St Louis 9-7, San Francisco 7-9, Arizona 5-11, Seattle 4-12
Recommended Bets
· 1 unit on St Louis to win the NFC West at $2.70
· 2 units on St Louis to win more than 7 games at $1.73
· 1 unit on Arizona to win less than 6.5 games at $2.25
