Offseason Review: NFC East

In an effort to get our team offseason reviews done by the Giants-Cowboys game, we're combining the remaining teams in each division in a single post.  Today, we look at the NFC East.  We covered the Redskins back in May and look at the other three teams below.

For those of you who haven't been following along:

1. We're looking only at roster changes from year-to-year; Aaron Rodgers is the best player in the game, but the Packers don't get credit for having him on their roster because he was on it last year.  The Broncos, on the other hand, get credit for acquiring Peyton Manning.

2. We're not considering rookies -- neither draft picks nor undrafted free agents.  You can see our draft rankings here and we'll consider them in our mega-NFL preview in a few weeks.

3. The two main quantitative metrics are "starts gained or lost" and "value gained or lost."  Starts are straightforward -- if a player started a game in 2011 and left the team, that's a negative; if a player started a game in 2011 and joined the team, that's a positive.  So if a team loses a player who started 8 games but gains one who started 10 games, that's a net of +2.

4. "Value" is defined using a weighted version of Pro Football Reference's AV ratings, considering the past 3 years in increasing order of importance:

Value = 2009 AV + 2 x 2010 AV + 3 x 2011 AV

5. That's where the quantitative ends and the qualitative begins; we opine on what the numbers mean for each team at the end of every post.

With that out of the way, who got better and worse in the NFC East?  The 4 teams are listed after the jump in order of most improved to least improved.

The Bengals' offseason: Optimism, but few big moves

Bengals fans haven't been this excited in August since the days of the Ickey Shuffle . . .

[11th in a series of posts looking at many of the NFL's 32 teams and their offseasons.  Past posts: Vikings, Jets, Rams, Chiefs, Bucs, Titans, Bears, Browns, Redskins, and Bills.]

Optimism abounds in Cincinnati, where the Bengals are looking for back-to-back playoff appearances for the first time since Boomer Esiason and Ickey Woods roamed the backfield.

The Bengals were a legitimate playoff team last year, as evidenced by their Pythagorean expectation of 8.5 wins in what turned out to be a 9-7 season.  Against teams other than the Ravens and Steelers, Cincinnati went an impressive 9-3.  QB Andy Dalton had an impressive rookie campaign, and fellow second-year pro AJ Green is making Bengals fans quickly forget about the days they started Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocino at WR.  Lastly, we thought they had the best draft of any team in the league.

So did the Bengals back it up in free agency?  Truth is, they were pretty quiet.  Details after the jump.

The Vikings Offseason: They Needed Help, They Didn't Get Any



How I Met Your Mother's Marshall Eriksen (right) drowns his sorrows on the Vikings' offseason

[10th in a series of posts on the offseasons of each of the NFL teams.  We'll try like crazy to get to all 32 teams, but realistically, we might not get there. 
Past posts:  Jets, Rams, Chiefs, Bucs, Titans, Bears, Browns, Redskins, and Bills.]

The Vikings struggled mightily last year.  The "Donovan McNabb at QB" experimented was an abject failure, and the Vikings stumbled to a 3-13 record.

The bright side?  They have a lot of young talent, especially on offense, led by RB Adrian Peterson (coming off an injury), WR Percy Harvin, and first rounders from last year (QB Christian Ponder) and this year (OT Matt Kalil).  And the numbers suggest they weren't quite as bad as their record indicates.  Though they only won 3 games, Pythagorean expectation suggests they should have won 5.8 games, making them the most unlucky team in the league -- they went a whopping 2-9 in one-score games last year.

The Vikes seem content to roll with their youth movement.  As a result, at least on paper, they didn't add much in the offseason.  More after the jump . . .

Assessing Ron Jaworski's QB Rankings

Jaws released his ranking of the NFL's top 30 quarterbacks last month

ESPN analyst and former Eagles QB Ron Jaworski completed his much-hyped list of the NFL's top 30 quarterbacks last month when he named Aaron Rodgers the top QB in football.

Jaws based his a lot of his opinion on the "eye test," or what he saw in a player from watching film.  This is totally appropraite given Jaws' background as an NFL QB, as he's well-positioned to assess a player's technique or prowess in a particular aspect of football (playing against the rush, checking down, throwing the deep ball, etc.).  Nonetheless, we thought it might be interesting to compare his rankings to the weighted AV ratings we've been using in our team previews.  As a reminder, those ratings are based on on the yearly AV metric from our friends at Pro Football Reference, using the following formula:

2009 AV + 2 x 2010 AV + 3 x 2011 AV

You can see the two rankings side-by-side after the jump.

Do Preseason Results Matter?

Hoyer!  Daniel!  It's NFL Preseason football!

Conventional wisdom holds that preseason football is utterly meaningless.  Players and fans alike have called for the reduction of the preseason schedule to two or even no games, and most would argue that only 3 things make for a good preseason:

1. Avoiding major injuries
2. Deciding roster spots for second- and third-stringers
3. Getting the first team offense and defense into some semblance of a rhythm (without violating #1 above)

But do results matter at all?  Winning and losing can be habit-forming, and they can also be something intrinsic to team chemistry.  I'm reminded of this game from the last week of 2004, which pitted the Steelers and the Bills.  The Steelers were 14-1 and had locked home field advantage, while the Bills needed a win to make the playoffs.  Pittsburgh, despite playing such luminaries as Brian St. Pierre at QB and then-unheralded Willie Parker at RB and James Harrison at LB, won, despite having nothing on the line.  The argument is that a culture of winning had been instilled throughout the season, regardless of who was on the field.

Would such an argument apply to preseason football as well?  Does winning those games set a precedent for the regular season, even if most of the games are decided by third- and fourth-stringers?

The Jets' Offseason: Keeping the Core Intact

"They call that a brawl!?  I'll show 'em a fight!"

[Continuing our series on each NFL team's offseason moves.  Previous posts can be found here: Rams,  Chiefs, Bucs, Titans, Bears, Browns, Redskins, and Bills.]

With the Jets embroiled in controversy once again -- training camp brawls, cornerbacks with 12 kids by 8 baby-mama's claiming to be the second-best wide receiver on the roster, etc. -- the team that readies itself for the NFL season at camp in Cortland, NY looks strikingly similar to the one that went 8-8 in 2011.  After advancing to 2 straight AFC Championship Games in '09 and '10 and after starting 8-5 in '11 despite a streaky start to the season, the Jets tumbled down the stretch last year, being outscored 93-50 in 3 straight losses.

All the buzz this summer was around the Jets trading for Tim Tebow, but in reality, the Jets mostly stood pat this offseason.  After the jump, a look at who they acquired, lost, and, most importantly, held onto.