Season Preview

Category: Football

Last season in the AFC East, the unexpected, well, didn’t happen. No one beat out the New England Patriots to break the red, white, and blue stranglehold on the title. The New York Jets and Buffalo Bills showed major improvement over their performances of the previous season, and the Miami Dolphins were, well, the Miami Dolphins. How will it all shake out this year?

From bottom to top, the AFC East in the 2007-08 season:

Buffalo Bills: This team went into the last game of the year in Baltimore with a chance to finish at a more-than-respectable 8-8, and gave the heavily favored Ravens a good run for it that day. However, this season, the Bills didn’t seem too keen on improving for the future, allowing RB Willis McGahee to leave for those Ravens, LB Takeo Spikes to Philadelphia, and LB London Fletcher to Washington. Sure, they drafted one of the top running backs available in Marshawn Lynch, but the learning curve is steep in this division, and QB J.P. Losman and WR Lee Evans need more help than that. Prediction: 5-11, fourth place

Miami Dolphins: Nick Saban jilted the Dolphins like they were the fallback date for the cheerleading captain, and Alabama was the newly-single quarterback that’s taking him to the dance. Now Cam Cameron will have to deal with the empty cupboards he left behind. Daunte Culpepper is gone, replaced by a possibly just-as-fragile Trent Green at quarterback, and neither is the answer, long or short-term. The team will have to lean even harder now on NFL Defensive Player of the Year Jason Taylor and his mates for support, and they’ll keep the season from being a laugh riot. But there’ll still be quite a few chuckles. Prediction: 6-10, third place

New York Jets: Year Two of the Eric Mangini Project is upon us, and Gang Green has every reason to be hopeful this season, as a team that came from nowhere last year to win a wild-card berth looks good, with a  upgrade at running back (Thomas Jones) to take pressure off QB Chad Pennington and his duct-taped arm. The defense is solid, and the team as a whole has had time to gel. A few more players on defense to help LB Jonathan Vilma are needed, though, to overcome the top dogs in this division, but you just have the feeling Mangini and the Jets are knocking on the door, and thisclose to kicking it in.
Prediction: 10-6, second place, wild card team

New England Patriots: QB Tom Brady is one of those guys that a lot of people don’t know how to take. He’s got everything (looks, success, women), which normally inspires envy, but he’s just got enough of an aw-shucks demeanor that you can’t quite hate him, unless of course you’re wearing Jets green or Colts blue. Now, Mr. Everything has good targets to hit (WR’s Randy Moss, Donte Stallworth, Wes Welker and Troy Brown) when he won with no one to throw to before, which makes him that much more dangerous. And with the always great defense adding Baltimore All-Pro Adalius Thomas, this team is heading for the top yet again. On second thought, maybe you can hate Brady. Maybe. A little. Prediction: 13-3, division champion

So, yet again, it’s New England’s division to lose, and while success of competitors inspires improvement of self, it seems only the Jets are interested in a hunt this year.