Look to the East

Are the Patriots vulnerable? Well, yes, of course. Who isn’t? Aside from Wolverine, of course.

 

Enter “are the Patriots vulnerable” into the Google Machine and you will return approximately 1,770,000 results in 0.16 seconds, indirect proof once again that haters gonna hate. Most fans of the Bills, Jets and Phins had probably reconciled themselves to waiting for Tom Brady to retire but the unusually turbulent off-season in New England has the fans and players on those other AFC East teams thinking the formerly unthinkable: The road to the AFC Championship won’t be passing through Foxborough, MA in 2013.

Christmas comes in August for the NFL. It is a time of hope, faith and a belief in miracles. I get that. Welker, Lloyd and Hernandez are gone. The return of Rob Gronkowski, the best player on the Pats not named Tom Brady, is uncertain. So what if the Patriots still have Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, the best offensive line in the NFL, a top 10 rushing attack and a young, fast, athletic defense? Quoting “Argo,” this is still the worst best team the Patriots have had since 2006.

You could argue that inconsistent quarterback play was the only thing keeping the Bills from competing for the AFC East title. To resolve this issue, the Bill brought in Kevin Kolb to replace Ryan Fitzpatrick. Wait, what? Okay, Kolb is two years younger and he’s never appeared in more than 9 games in a season so there’s a lot more tread on the tires and yeah that’s about all I got, so okay, really no way to make sense of the Kolb for Fitzpatrick exchange. Making EJ Manuel the first QB taken in the 2013 draft had Pigskin Pundits and Bobbleheads chattering but how significant was the difference between Manuel, Geno Smith and Matt Barkley, anyway? Having said that, I don’t foresee a GOAT debate involving Manuel and Smith five years from now, either. Anyway, the Bills have put together a promising if enigmatic roster but the new head coach/new system/new QB disruptors will prove to be too much to overcome in 2013.

If you’re a Jets’ fan, you know your team manages to implode at the worst possible time. (Like they did last Thanksgiving night, on national television, against their hated divisional rivals. Good times.) Of course, the Jets of the Rex Ryan era have believed they were better than the Patriots on an annual basis. You can’t say you’re going to the Super Bowl and think you’re the second best team in your own division. The bold predictions as to whose fingerprints would be smudged on the Lombardi Trophy next February have been quieted by the reality of a diminished running game, mediocre quarterback play, worse than mediocre safety play and an aging linebacking corps. The NYJ didn’t completely clean house after they failed to make the playoffs for the first time under Ryan’s leadership but they did hire a new a new COO in John Idzik and draft a QB of One Possible Future in Geno Smith. Recent chatter about how New York will pick its starting QB leads me to believe Smith – not Mark Sanchez – will be under center Week 1 unless he makes several career limiting moves in preseason action. Sanchez is still Ryan’s guy. Smith is new GM Idzik’s guy and his insistence that naming the starting QB is a “collective” decision should tell us all we need to know about what we’ll see when the Jets line up on offense in 2013.

It’s the smart play, of course. Geno Smith is either the QB of the Future for Gang Green or he isn’t and if he isn’t, it would be better to fail fast.

Overall, the Jets are a mess. The return of #1 WR Santonio Holmes is uncertain; enough so that the Jets got into the Way Back Machine and signed Braylon Edwards. The rest of their WR depth chart is a list of Those Guys You’ve Never Heard Of. Their best running back is Chris Ivory, a guy the New Orleans Saints couldn’t use. They lost top TE Dustin Keller to the Dolphins and replaced him with Not Your Father’s Kellen Winslow, who has already predicted he would register 100 receptions this season, a bold calculation regardless of who starts at QB. As long as Ryan is their HC, we can expect the Jets to field a respectable defense but they would need to be historically good to carry the offense in 2013.

The Dolphins are obviously in the Patriots’ rear view (and as we all know, objects in the rear view are closer than they appear). They have a good, young QB in Ryan Tannehill and they’ve surrounded him with plenty of toys this offseason, with speedy WR Mike Wallace the marquee free agent signee on offense. Miami also added free agents Dannell Ellerbe, Philip Wheeler, Brent Grimes and first round draft pick Dion Jordon to bolster the Cameron Wake-led defense. They’ve clearly won the offseason. From this vantage point, the Dolphins look a bit like the Cowboys in their devotion to playmakers at the expense of their offensive line, which may be the worst unit in the league outside of Arizona. The fantasy-friendly combination of Tannehill to Wallace won’t become a reality if the offensive line can’t give Wallace time to get deep and Tannehill a clean pocket to throw him the ball.

As weaknesses go, offensive line is rather significant. Will Ryan Tannehill’s athleticism be enough to overcome that? I’ll say often enough to keep the Dolphins in the playoff hunt but not enough to take the AFC East.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not sleeping on the Dolphins.

But I’m still going with the Patriots beating the Cowboys in the Super Bowl this year.

Again.

You were expecting something different?