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.

The Rebuilding Rams' Offseason

This gentleman seems non-plussed with the Rams cleaning house this offseason

[Note: This post is the 8th in our series of posts on each team's offseason.  After this post, we'll have covered one team from every division.  Past posts have discussed the Chiefs, Bucs, Titans, Bears, Browns, Redskins, and Bills.]

At 2-14, the Rams tied the Colts for the worst record in football last year.  Even though the Colts "won" the tiebreak (and with it, the right to select Andrew Luck #1 overall), the Rams were the worst team by Pythagorean expectation, with just 2.9 wins.  It didn't help that Sam Bradford missed 6 games due to injury.

Unsurprisingly, the "R" word looms large when looking at the Rams' offseason.  St. Louis got rid of 19 players this offseason, including 9 who started at least 8 games last year.  They added a few big names as well, but seem largely content to let a youth movement -- and a healthy Bradford -- determine their fate.

After the jump, a deeper dive into the Rams' rebuilding . . .

Recasting Any Given Sunday

"Ya find out life's this game of inches . . . so's football . . ."

We at the Backup Quarterback Blog had a few friends over for July 4th.  Prior to the evening's fireworks display, we were flipping between the various patriotic concerts and -- one of my favorite things of any July 4th -- old-school patriotic movies.  I happened to walk 2 guests into the living room during Bill Pullman's epic (?) speech in the 1996 movie Independence Day.  After we ceased all conversation and immediately fixated upon Pullman (portraying U.S. President Thomas J. Whitmore), conversation turned to the Twitter feed of Grantland's Bill Barnwell.  In Tweets throughout the day, Barnwell and his followers discussed the prospect of re-casting Independence Day using today's stars.  Among the highlights: LeBron James or Russell Westbrook as Will Smith's character, Vincent Kartheiser (Pete Campbell on Mad Men) as Jeff Goldblum, Will Farrell as Goldblum's character's father, and Bill Pullman's President Whitmore played by . . . Bill Pullman.

A few days later, we found ourselves flipping channels and stumbled upon Oliver Stone's 1999 football drama, Any Given Sunday.  Arguably our favorite football movie of all time ("The Program," "Little Giants," "Rudy," "Necessary Roughness," and "Varsity Blues" also merit consideration, with 'The Replacements" finishing in roughly 1,775th place), we thought we'd try the same exercise here -- recasting Any Given Sunday, except with current players, coaches, and other NFL-related personnel.  Mr. Stone, if you're looking to produce a remake, you can find our cast list after the jump . . .

The Chiefs' Offseason: Cleaning House

Great Googly Moogly, the Chiefs lost a lot of players this offseason

[Note: This is the 7th in our series of posts on the offseasons of each of the 32 teams.  Previously, we've covered the Bills, Redskins, Browns, Bears, Titans, and Bucs.  To even out the divisions, you'll see an NFC West team for installment #8.]

You may be surprised to remember that the Chiefs went 7-9 last year and were in the hunt to win the AFC West well into December.  This is probably due to the fact that they weren't a very good team last year; Pythagorean expectation only had them at only 4.5 wins.  They lost their starting QB (Matt Cassel) and their best RB (Jamaal Charles) to injury, and promptly fired their coach, Todd Haley, now offensive coordinator with the Steelers.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Chiefs cleaned house in the offseason.  Maybe more surprisingly, the players they brought in don't quite provide a match for the players they lost or got rid of.  In short, it appears new coach Romeo Crennel will face a big challenge in improving on last year's 7 win record.

The Bucs Offseason: A Rousing Success

[This is the sixth in our series of posts assessing the offseasons of each of the 32 teams.  Teams we've profiled so far:

Bills

Redskins

Browns

Bears

Titans

You'll notice we're bouncing around division by division.  Next up is an AFC West team.  Let us know which you want to see profiled.]

Judge Sapp would rule the Bucs offseason to be a rousing sucess

Tampa Bay floundered last year after a surprising 10-6 season in 2010.  This offseason, they cleaned house, getting rid of 15 players, tied for the most of the six teams we've profiled.  They also fired head coach Raheem Morris and brought in Greg Schiano from Rutgers.  The Bucs upgraded at several positions, and it's our view that they had one of the best offseasons of any team in the NFL.

The Titans' Offseason: An Unfilled Hole on Defense

The Titans have a big hole to fill with the departure of DJ Pau . . . er, Cortland Finnegan

The Titans, who finished on the cusp of the playoffs last year, saw some major defensive contributors depart this offseason.  They made a few additions, but are still left with at least one significant hole . . .

The Bears' Offseason: Marshall and Cutler, Together Again

Todd O'Connor and the Super Fans may enjoy Brandon Marshall even more than their Polish sausage

It was an active offseason for the Chicago Bears, the fourth team whose offseason wins and losses we profile here on the BQB.  The Bears made their biggest splash by trading for Brandon Marshall, but also picked up other strong players who should start and provide depth in 2012.  Don't forget, the Bears went 8-8 last year but started 7-3 before injuries to QB Jay Cutler and RB Matt Forte doomed the offense.

After the jump, why we're bullish on what the Bears did in the offseason:

The Browns: Quiet in Free Agency

The Browns are talkin' bout replacing Peyton Hillis with first rounder Trent Richardson

The Browns, who haven't made the playoffs in a decade and haven't won more than 5 games since 2007, were relatively quiet in free agency this year.  Most of the Browns' buzz centers around their 2 first round draft picks, Trent Richardson and Brandon Weeden.  Our take is that they pretty much blew the draft, but the potential exists for those players to be upgrades at offensive skill positions.  In free agency, they were far more quiet, and as we see below, may have upgraded slightly at DE but nowhere else.

The Dolphins on Hard Knocks: What Does it Mean for 2012?

Rex Ryan, Antonio Cromartie, and the Jets set a high bar for
the Dolphins,  the subject of this year's "Hard Knocks"

HBO announced yesterday that the Miami Dolphins will be featured on this year's installment of "Hard Knocks."  The Dolphins' new coach, Joe Philbin, raised some eyebrows yesterday when he claimed that going on Hard Knocks was a "football decision" rather than a marketing one.

We at The Backup Quarterback Blog have been bullish on the Dolphins so far this offseason, for a few reasons:

- They were 2 games better than their record last year
- They had the 4th best draft in the league
- They should get a bump from their new coach

Will appearing on Hard Knocks help the Dolphins?  We had a look at the past six participants on the show to find out.

The Redskins in Free Agency: A Middling Success

Native Haitian and former Colt Pierre Garcon heads the Redskins' free agent class

In the second of a series of looks at each team's offseason moves, we at the Backup Quarterback Blog profile the Washington Redskins.  (Check out our first installment on the Bills, as well as our methodology, here.)  The Redskins made the most headlines for mortgaging the future to trade up for Robert Griffin III, whom they selected second overall in this year's draft.  Aside from draft picks and undrafted free agents, the Skins lost and/or released 12 players and signed 13.   As we delve into the details below, there's reason for mild optimism inside the Beltway.