NFL Free Agency update

I actually posted this on our Facebook page quite a few days ago, and never brought it back to the house, so to speak... Here's a great piece on the current state of the NFL free agency madness, with some definitive winners (like the Raiders and Buccaneers) and losers (look'n at you, SF and Cleveland...). Denver's still up in the air - if they still have the time to get a qualified quarterback, they'll be fine. If...

UPS and DOWNS for Tuesday, the first week of November!

As the college football playoff committee puts out its rankings tonight, and Following Football has done the same over the last two days for all 285 pro and college teams we cover, it's a great time to look at which teams have had a surprisingly UP season, and which ones have been startlingly DOWN...

WHO'S UP? Well, what about the Cincinnati Bengals and the Carolina Panthers? Everyone who saw both of them at 7-0 starting November raise your hands. OK, we've identified the liars in the room...

WHO'S DOWN? It's not hard to find struggling teams in the NFL, but a couple we saw in the playoffs last year are the Baltimore Ravens and the Detroit Lions. Tough schedule, sure - close games, yes - but somewhere in there, you've got to stand up and win a couple of those games.

WHO'S UP? Three "usual suspects": the Green Bay Packers, the Denver Broncos, and the New England Patriots. Remarkable to watch Peyton be Peyton again, but Rodgers and Brady have left no doubt that they're still at the top of their games. And all three have defenses to get them the ball.

WHO'S DOWN? Again, who do you expect? The Tennessee Titans, of course, who just fired another coach...the Cleveland Browns, who continue to put up with Manziel for some odd reason...the Chicago Bears weren't expected to do much, and still haven't lived up to expectations... and even with their shiny new QB, the Tampa Bay Bucs are barely better than they were at this point last year.

WHO'S UP? There are signs of life in Oakland...in Minnesota...in Atlanta...in St. Louis. Parity is always the stated goal of the NFL admin, but what you really want is the feeling as a fan base that any year could be THE YEAR!

WHO'S DOWN? When you've got a fan base like the Sasktachewan RoughRiders do, arguably the best in the Canadian Football League, and you were expecting to be contending for the Grey Cup, when you were right on the heels of the eventual champion Calgary Stampeders all season...and you go a miserable two and fifteen heading into the final week of the season...yeah, the green is blue this year. The Riders were actually eliminated from playoff contention six weeks ago...in a league where 2/3 of the teams make the playoffs. THAT'S impressive in its badness.

WHO'S UP? When you went 2-16 last year in your first campaign as an expansion franchise, you can be forgiven if a successful second season in your mind was, say, six wins. Looking at the two expansion clubs in the AFL (Gold Coast and GWS), they went through about that - two bad years, then two mediocre years. But instead, the Ottawa RedBlacks are one win away from an Eastern Division championship in their second year - already guaranteed a winning record at 11-6, all they need to do is win OR not lose by more than five points at home on Saturday to the Hamilton Ti-Cats...not the first choice of opponents in this situation, especially since it's the Ti-Cats who will earn the title if you fail. But just to have this opportunity in your sophomore campaign! CONGRATULATIONS, OTTAWA!

WHO'S DOWN? My attention span for Canadian football once the American season hit full steam in late September. It was frustrating, because I knew I didn't have the time or energy to stay abreast of every single thing in the NFL, NCAA, and the CFL - and as the footy season was reaching its climax down under, it was the mid-to-late weeks of the Canadian season that got the short shrift. To our readers, I apologize. But of course, all we can do is our best, and we'll continue to do that for you.

WHO'S UP? At the moment, we have our top four "theoretically playoff bound" FBS teams (in the humble opinion of Following Football ACNC!) - LSU, Clemson, Alabama, Notre Dame. To most observers we've heard, the first two names are almost indisputable at the moment (things change quickly in college football, though!), and the other two could be replaced by any of close to a dozen teams: TCU, Baylor, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St, Michigan St, Ohio St, Florida, Stanford, Iowa, Utah, even Memphis or Toledo. (Probably not Idaho, though.)

WHO'S DOWN? Which teams thought they'd be in the mix at this point and aren't? There are some obvious candidates: Georgia, Auburn, Oregon, USC, Tennessee, There are some others whose fan bases might have thought it feasible - but that's another story.

WHO'S UP? There are some remarkable positive stories this fall of teams who weren't expected to fare as successfully as they have, as there are every year. That doesn't make them any less worth applauding: Florida (new head coach Jim McElwain has them sitting at #7 on the Following Football ranking at the moment; finished the 2014 season at #34), Michigan (Harbaugh took a team who finished at #67 last year, bottom half of the FBS, and has them at #14 right now), Houston (up from #69 last year to an undefeated 8-0 at #21 and looking at a possible New Year's bowl); and Temple (similar story arc, moving from #79 to current #22, having just taken Notre Dame to the brink). There are lower eschelon stories as well: Southern Miss moved from tier S up to its current tier L; Tulsa has bounded from tier T up to tier N this year. Vanderbilt from tier R up to its present place in tier I; and Northwestern, who beat Stanford to start the year, Duke for its only legitimate defeat (ahem, Miami), and moved from last year's tier M and #78 all the way into tier G and position #35.

WHO'S DOWN? And then... there are the sob stories. The ones you tsk tsk about behind their backs. The ones who (in your opinion) deserve a bad year every once in a while... How about Texas? Charlie Strong's first year looked promising! But with a blowout, embarrassing loss to Notre Dame (well, ok), embarrassing near-misses against California and OK State (hmmm...), a bad loss at TCU (eww...), a surprise win in the Shootout (hey! Maybe...) followed by definitive losses to two foes they used to pick their teeth with the last two weeks: K-State and Iowa State. Read that again. Iowa State! The Texas offense was not only shut out, they never got past the ISU 40 yard line.

But that pales next to Nebraska, who fired a coach who gave them nine wins a season every year - AGAIN. A decade ago, they fired Frank Solich because he wasn't Tom Osborne. The man they hired to replace him...was no Frank Solich. Disaster - they didn't even make .500! In desperation, they brought in NU guy Bo Pelini - colorful, successful, nine wins a season, just like Solich (who went on to be one of the most successful coaches in MAC history). Seven years of Pelini NOT being Tom Osborne was enough for the faithful, and they brought in Mike Riley, a very nice man with a mediocre program at Oregon State, who has produced a mediocre program at Nebraska, finding exciting ways to lose close games to good teams and sometimes to bad teams like Purdue last weekend.

South Carolina was doing badly enough that the Head Ball Coach simply walked away into retirement. Central Florida saw the same story with Head Resume Inflator in the lead walking role. Whether the story ends the same way at Virginia Tech in Frank Beamer's last year remains to be seen. It looks like Minnesota's going to be hanged if they allow Jerry Kill's epilepsy-induced retirement to end the same way, thankfully.

WHAT'S NEXT? Who knows? And isn't that the beauty of football? It's the best reality show there is - all the drama, the competition, the tension of the staged TV events, except it's actual reality! There IS no script! Maybe Texas turns it around! Maybe Florida nosedives the rest of the way! Maybe Jim Harbaugh takes Michigan to four miraculous victories against Ohio State, Iowa in the B1G title game, the semifinal and the NC game, and the Blue rule the nation! Or...just as unlikely...maybe they lose every game from here on out, including a 59-0 shutout by the Buckeyes. That's the point - we can't know ahead of time! So sit back, turn on the TV, go to a game if you're close enough, and enjoy the ride!

THURSDAY THOUGHTS: Responsibility and Integrity of the Game

What is the responsibility of a team to put out its best players for a regular season game, even when it's not otherwise in their best interest to do so?

It seems to happen in a game or two every year, regardless of sport. End of season, one team with something to play for, the other not so much - either because they've got their playoff spot locked up, or they're just biding their time having already been eliminated. (You see it in the NBA mid-year sometimes, when a coach will rest older stars after a tough stretch of games.) Does the second team have an obligation to put a competitive team out there in such a game - either "for the paying customers" or, more usually, "for the integrity of the game"?

As the last round of the AFL season approaches this weekend, there are a couple of games in which this very question arises. Fremantle, having already locked up home field advantage, has no statistical reason to play its stars, and every motivation to rest them for next week's critical opening playoff game. As many as ten of its best players may sit out Saturday's game against ninth place Port Adelaide; fortunately, this game ended up having no bearing on playoff positions, as Port cannot break into the top eight under any circumstances. It did change the betting line from a fairly even game in Adelaide to the current line of almost fifty points in Port's favor, though. Oddly, where it's going to have an impact is in the WAFL, where Fremantle's "minor league feeder team", the Peel Thunder, plays. Peel is in its opening playoff round this weekend...but needs to supply up to ten players to the Dockers to fill out their roster against Port, leaving it undermanned in a playoff game. Business is business, but that seems terribly unfair to the team you've partnered with!

The more punitive scenario this week happens in Melbourne, where Friday's Richmond/North Melbourne match has been sullied (my words) by North's decision to rest up to ten of ITS players this weekend in anticipation of playing the Tigers again next week in an elimination final. By essentially conceding this game (and foregoing, by the way, the potential possibility of moving up as high as sixth if Western were to lose big, and therefore earning a home game themselves!), North has also prevented the Adelaide Crows from the possibility of passing Richmond and thus earning themselves a home game next week, a fact which has the Crows management understandably incensed. The Kangaroos' defense hinges on the fact that they've had two short weeks of preparation in a row (Sunday to Saturday, Saturday to Friday) and the players have been impacted by that: a defensible argument, admittedly. Broadcaster and retired superstar Wayne Carey sported a frightening thought on afl.com.au's "Pick A Winner" broadcast Thursday:

"The Kangaroos now can put in 8-10 players that are not going to play finals footy. They can go out and maim Richmond players," Carey said on AFL.com.au's Pick A Winner.

"They can go hard, they can be told by Brad Scott 'Go out there, hit this side as hard as you can, because it looks like we'll be playing them again next week'.

"I think the AFL really opened up a can of worms here and watch this space."

Carey said the Roos resting players was "a completely different situation" to minor premiers Fremantle sparing up to 11 regular players a final round trip to face Port Adelaide, because the Dockers-Power clash won't affect finals positions.

"Whereas I think this does manipulate where the Kangaroos and obviously the Tigers and Adelaide (finish), so it does have some bearing on the finals," Carey said.

"This rule has to change, because now the one game that had something riding on it all of a sudden has been manipulated by resting players."

(By the way, Carey was a North Melbourne player himself, so this isn't about bias...)

Another situation that happens along these lines is whether or not bottom of the ladder teams need to play their top line players at the end of the season when competing against sides that have "something to play for" or, as is generally accepted, run some youngsters through the mill after their own elimination from contention to see what the potential is for next year and beyond. Very few people question that use of a roster, and in fact if your first team isn't getting the job done, it's often the case that injecting that fresh blood into the lineup will improve the performance of the team anyway!

But what if you're in a system (like virtually every major professional sport is) where your draft order is determined by the reverse order of finish? Doesn't it behoove teams like Brisbane, Carlton, and Gold Coast in the AFL to lose as many games as they can to secure the highest draft position they can? In America, it's the NBA which has suffered under the strongest perception of this tanking prospect (I can think of 76 situations off the top of my head...). and it's what drove the league into the lottery system thirty years ago - a solution which hasn't solved the problem. To their credit, it's hard to make an argument that any of the three AFL teams named has overtly tanked this last month or so - they're just not very good, to be honest. But how do you draw the line?

It brings to mind the high school basketball tournament where both teams tried to lose a game at the same time to avoid playing the top seeded team...and if you click on the link, you'll see just how comical it got. Justifiably, both teams were suspended and removed from the tournament.

But it goes back to sportsmanship, and how you choose to answer the question, "What do we as a team owe the sport, owe the league, and owe our own integrity?"

It seems everyone has a different answer. Many people feel completely justified in the Al Davis / Oakland Raiders approach, "Just Win, Baby!"...which, ironically, doesn't always include the need to try to win; as long as you're doing what's in YOUR best interest, that's all that matters.

I disagree.

There's a risk any time you take the field, yes, but you cannot "turn it on and off" like a switch - ask the Manning Colts in those years when they ran up those 13-1 records and coasted the last couple of games...and proceeded to lose game one of the playoffs to a team who was still in competition mode. If you have legitimately injured players, by all means, rest them. But NEVER tell your players to give less than their best on the field - that's when injuries occur. If you're charging full price for your tickets, your fans deserve a full price game. (Which brings up the travesty of charging full price for pre-season tickets, but that's a subject you can already tell which side of the fence we'll fall on...)

In the end, morals and good sportsmanship MUST win out. If other teams are depending on you to play a fair and competitive game, you need to do so - despite legislative opinion to the contrary, pro sports leagues are ONE entity, working out of a dozen or three franchises, and anything one does that hurts the entirety of the league is a mistake. If that needs to be "legislated" by a commissioner or governing body, you shouldn't be running a sports team: you haven't learned the basics of "sports-man-ship" yet.

UPS AND DOWNS for AUGUST WEEK 2

Welcome to Following Football 2.0 - updated format, updated focus, better prepared to service you, the eclectic football fan! UP FIRST, most appropriately, our Tuesday column stretching across three countries and four versions of the sport... UPS AND DOWNS for the second week of August, 2015!

UP - the OTTAWA REDBLACKS, winners of just two games last year in their inaugural CFL season, are already 4-2 in this young season, tied for the best record in the Eastern Division. They've done it with their retread, 40-year old QB Henry Burris, who's held up while most other teams are on starter number two or three behind center, and a team that's willing to keep fighting when they've been behind, winning in 4Q comebacks a couple of times already.

DOWN - the NEW JERSEY JETS, who just reached a new level of Jet-ness by putting their starting QB Geno Smith (already embattled and getting booed in PRACTICE by those wonderfully supportive New Yack "fans") on the IR for 6-10 weeks...after having his jaw broken in two places from a SUCKER PUNCH from a TEAMMATE, I.K. Enemkpali (rephrase that: FORMER teammate - at least the Jets had that much sense!) over a debt Smith apparently owed the backup linebacker for a plane ticket he never used. All parties seem to be content with the resolution, but...I mean, WTF? The Oakland Raiders called, and said the Jets are stealing their schtik!

UP - the RACIAL SENSITIVITY OF AUSTRALIAN FOOTY FANS, after continued ugly booing incidents over the last few months of indiginous star Adam Goodes, which finally drove him from the sport for a week in July. That was met with outrage from throughout the AFL community, drowning out the few confederate-wannabes who claimed it wasn't about race (hmmm...), after which Goodes returned to the Sydney Swans for their game at Geelong last Saturday, where he was met with (in the opinion of the pollyannish announcers) all positive reactions. (I'm not nearly as convinced, myself...) So, we'll see where this goes from here. Australia, you know, has a much worse race issue history than even the US - aborigines were hunted for sport by the white settlers at first.

DOWN - the PUBLIC OPINION OF TOM BRADY OR ROGER GOODELL, depending on which side you choose to take in the somehow-still-ongoing "DeFlateGate" ridiculousness. We side with Goodell for once - you flipping DESTROYED your phone? What kind of idiot are you? And you would then have us believe you HABITUALLY do that, Tom? First of all, if so, you're on a Tom Cruise level of crazy, but even so, why would you do that NOW, knowing how guilty it makes you look, unless (of course) you ARE guilty, which Occam's Razor now says you are. And do you realize, Mister former Hall Of Fame quarterback, how hard it is to make ROGER FLIPP'N GOODELL look like the voice of REASON? That takes a Lance Armstrong level of paranoia and delusion. Congratulations. You turned what should've been a slap on the hand fine (had you said, Oops, didn't think anyone would notice, my bad, before the Super Bowl) into, literally, a federal case, and a four week suspension, and a black mark on your career that will be paragraph two in your obituary.

Mourning one of the greats today...

Kenny Stabler, "The Snake", died yesterday from complications from colon cancer. The other article linked here from ESPN includes what little has been made public (completely appropriate, in our opinion: those details are none of our business), but also does a good job encapsulating the affect Stabler and those 1970's Raiders had on football fans of that era, like us here at Following Football. 

The Raiders of the '70s were the Bad Boys of football - actually, they shaped the franchise for the next forty years in that image - like the Detroit Pistons of the early '90s, the Miami Heat of a few years ago, the Miami Hurricanes of the 80s. We need those "bad guys", the counter culture going against the grain of the corporate NFL or NCAA or NBA or whomever. You want the image of 32 franchises, working independently, or you want a corporation that doles out 32 subdivisions of itself to artificially compete? You need to have someone who doesn't toe the line - whatever you think of the Belechick Patriots, we need them in the league. Or someone like them, since the Raiders aren't really relevant at the moment. 

That's another key - they've got to be good. And the Stabler Raiders were good, alright. They went to several playoffs in a row during his tenure there, including a Super Bowl victory at the end of the 1976 season over the Vikings. His teammates were and are fiercely loyal to their old field general, as the two articles linked show.

On a side note, this little tidbit was tucked away at the end of an article: 

Stabler's brain and spinal cord were donated to Boston University's Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center to support research into degenerative brain disease among athletes, according to the family.

Boston U's Encephalopathy Center has the brains of several dozen football players (all deceased, duh!) and has developed a great wealth of data on the damage football players take playing the game - we never want to tell people what to do with their lives, but we want players to know up front what they're getting into.
 

Bo knows soccer...which is why he never played it...

Tried to watch the Germany/England third place game in the Women's World Cup. Gave up and switched over to the ESPN 30-for-30 on the legendary Bo Jackson, the greatest athlete of the last hundred years. (We can discuss Jim Thorpe another day.) The Wikipedia article hits most of the high points of the ESPN piece by Michael Bonaglio, which reminds us how incredible Bo was.

Jeremy Schaap of ESPN says something in the piece which is both revealing and sad:
 "Bo came along at exactly the right time...(besides the birth of cable sports, which let us see his highlights every night,) If someone with his size, speed, and strength came along today, we'd always suspect he was on steroids or growth hormones or something. Not with Bo, not then."

Will we ever have that sheer wonder over an athlete again? Or will we simply wonder what drugs he's on? (Is that why we can be thrilled with American Pharoah? We know the horse isn't on drugs?) That's tragic.

Oh. I did eventually go back for the end of the futbol game. An hour later, it was still 0-0. (Excuse me: "nil-nil".) Then England got a penalty shot, which in the women's game is virtually unstoppable, which makes perfect sense in a game where there's virtually never any other score. So, England won, 1-0, on a single penalty shot, negating the rest of the match. Remind me again why I should watch soccer?

An update on the NFL minicamps...

John Clayton is as knowledgeable about the inner workings of the 32 NFL teams as any human alive (although there are times when I suspect Peter King is close, and Adam Schefter does a great job, too). Many reporters are more experienced with one or two specific teams, and if that's what you need you go to the specialists - but as a generalist myself, Clayton's my man. Here is a great summary of the OTA's off ESPN.com from the man himself, including good news for Marcus Mariota and Jamies Winston fans.

And then to the specialists: here is where you'll find thirty-two "offseason grade" reports from thirty-two reporters dedicated to those teams - personally, I'd ignore the "grades", which are a click-bait device to begin with.

Here's the latest on the NFL's "Race To LA" - I think I'll make that a tag! - from MMQB. Apparently, San Diego and Oakland together have purchased the land needed in Carson (part of LA, just south of downtown) to build a joint stadium, all while saying it's their "back-up plan". Protestors in Oakland are wondering why the owner (Al Davis' son Mark) would hire Carmen Policy to spearhead the Carson project if it wasn't his first priority.

So, who's going to end up in LA? As with virtually every comments section on the 'Net, the rational commentary devolves into a dick-showing contest, but many of the commenters think like I do - why are we compelled to bring ANY team to LA? Los Angeles just isn't a pro football city! If one team needs a new home, and all three of those (including the St. Louis Rams) have a legit history in LA, that's fine. But it seems to me as if there are loyal enough fan bases of a good enough size in St. Louis and San Diego to make those locales work, and to make new stadium deals work if need be. Oakland, however, was left behind thirty-five years ago for LA for a reason. The Oakland Coliseum is a POS. That city doesn't have the finances to do what Davis wants, or for that matter what the NFL wants.

Move the Raiders - and just the Raiders - to Los Angeles, or more accurately Carson, CA. (And in twenty years or so, they can move back...)

Peter King with a salient recap of where the Los Angeles NFL situation is right now...

...which is, "Who the bleep knows?"

In his Monday Morning Quarter Back weekly column, he spends a great deal of time on the pros and cons of each of the three teams who might move to LA (Rams, Raiders, Chargers), and the communities they currently reside in and what they're doing to keep their teams, and what the owners are thinking (IF they're thinking aloud, which isn't happening much in the Midwest), and what the various stadium and stadium proposal ideas are like.

The major conclusion, as he says early in the piece, is as follows:

"I’m like everybody else with this Los Angeles thing. I’m on page 24 of a 300-page book, and it’s not all that interesting so far. But I hear the end is compelling, so I’d rather speed past the next 230 pages and go straight to the climax. Tell me what the end game is."

So...how many teams do we want in Los Angeles?

One? Two? Three?

None?

For some reason, after twenty barren years in the second-largest metropolis in the country, there's suddenly a rush to fill a void that most of us don't even notice. 

It's not as if the NFL hasn't flourished in the last twenty years, or that any of its current problems are affected or would be solved by having at least one team return to L.A.

But suddenly, the San Diego Chargers AND the Oakland Raiders are threatening to bolt their current stadia (that's the plural of 'stadium', erudite readers), and the St. Louis Rams are talking about doing the same thing and returning to its original stomping grounds. Admittedly, all three stadia (go out and use the word twice today - that's your homework assignment) are in poor shape, although the Edward Jones Dome and Qualcomm Stadium are the Taj Mahal in comparison to the dump that the Raiders and Athletics share in Oakland. 

There's a huge issue if the Chargers and Raiders follow through with the shared stadium deal they're discussing, but it's hard to see this being the deal-breaker if money talks loudly enough.

Our question is - WHY? Every one of these teams has been in their current homes for a minimum of twenty years; the Chargers for almost fifty. Los Angeles is NOT hurting for things to do on a Sunday afternoon: that's why the Raiders and Rams left in the FIRST place! Between living in the sun and surf capital of the nation, Hollywood, and everything else SoCal has going for it, who has time to watch football? The USC and UCLA football teams can testify to this (so can their basketball teams, for that matter) - when they're not good/borderline great, they're nothing in that town. Do you really think the current Rams or Raiders would succeed financially there? Really?

Stick with stability. Fix the stadium issues where you are (WITH PRIVATE MONEY!), and stay put - your loyal fans there will thank you tenfold.

From Jim Steeg, via Peter King, about coach Don Shula

“Back in the seventies, the Dolphins were going to play the Raiders in Oakland. They practiced at the Oakland Coliseum on Saturday, and in the locker room Larry Csonka found laying there the Raiders’ game plan for the next day’s game. He gave it to [Dolphins offensive line coach] Monte Clark to give to Don Shula, which Monte did.

“The next day the Dolphins got beat by the Raiders. Csonka went to Monte and asked, ‘How did we lose? We had their game plan.’

“Monte’s response: ‘I gave it to Don and he threw it in the trash. He said, ‘We do not cheat!' "

Looking through the NFL final standings,...

...there are, as always, some curious records within the records. Here are a few of them...

8-0 at home) Both Green Bay and Denver were not only perfect at home, but 11-0 overall on grass this season (and thus 1-4 on turf!).

8-0 on the road) Strangely, Dallas went just 4-4 in their luxurious digs, but undefeated on the road.

0-8 on the road) Two young teams, Oakland and Jacksonville, managed three wins at home but went winless on the road. Not that weird...

0-8 at home) But the only two wins Tampa Bay got this year were away from home, at Washington (okay) and at Pittsburgh (arguably the biggest upset of the year). Tampa was also the only team to go 0-6 in their division (and in the worst division in football, no less).

The definition of average) Not only did the Miami Dolphins go 8-8, but they were 4-4 at home, 4-4 on the road, 3-3 in the division and 6-6 in the conference (and thus 2-2 against the NFC). Their point differential was just fifteen points to the good, too; San Diego, on the other hand, wound up scoring 348 points and allowing 348 points as well, though they went 9-7.

6-0 in the division) Indianapolis and Denver both went lossless within their division, and won the division with ease. (Had Atlanta held home field today, they would've won the division by going 6-0 in the division and 1-9 everywhere else!)

Overtime champs) Oddly, Minnesota was the only club to win two overtime games this season, going 2-0 (defeating the Jets and Buccaneers).

Carolina "wins" the NFC South) despite scoring 35 fewer points than their opponents, and despite losing every game between Columbus Day (Oct 12) and Pearl Harbor Day (Dec 7). In fact, no team in the division had a winning record at home OR on the road this year.

Looking at the way divisions played each other, the NFC East went 12-4 over the AFC South (and Dallas and Philly both went 4-0); the AFC North managed to go 12-3-1 over the NFC South (with Cincinnati and Baltimore combining to go 7-0-1); and the NFC West went 12-4 against the NFC East (the Rams only went 1-3, though, beating Washington, while the other three teams went 11-1 against their eastern brethren).

Finally, Buffalo may regret its 1-3 record against the AFC West, while the New England Pats went 4-0 against the same teams. The two clubs went 8-4 in all their other games, so those interdivision matchups cost the Bills the division!

About NFL Week 16...

Pride before a fall...before the Seattle/Arizona game, Following Football is 2-0 outpredicting the casinos: Baltimore lost outright to Houston, and San Diego not only took the 49ers to OT despite their great start last night, they won outright.

But more than that, if you used our predictions to bet against the spread in this week's games, you'd've gone 10-2 with two games that were washes and two still to go!

(Therefore, we're about to look like fools in these last two games!)

UPDATE: Yup. Seattle just annihilated the team with the fourth string QB. NOT really a surprise, but it won't show up on a pure performance based model. So, we fall to 10-3 against the spread this week (w Denver/Cincy to go), and we went 2-1 outpredicting the casinos, moving to 37-34-3 for the year.

The Oakland Raiders look like they're starting to gel a little bit, don't they? Sure, they're just 3-12, but the wins against KC, SF, and now Buffalo all had some guts involved in them... The Houston Texans may not be playoff bound, but they're sure campaigning for an MVP candidate! The visual of the bloodied JJ Watt dominating the Ravens' offense will stick with the voters... The Indianapolis Colts look like the very definition of "pretenders"... The Jacksonville/Tennessee game Thursday night was a pathetic battle of 2-12 teams doomed to failure today and the impending future, containing no real stars worth watching, still managed to beat the last ever episode of The Colbert Report and every other show on cable Thursday night, So...still think that the NFL is an endangered species?

(Maybe, but not in the next few years...)

Playoffs are getting clearer...the Eagles are out, and all that's left to really determine in the NFC besides seeding is the "winner" of the South division, which will come from the winner of the game Sunday between two six-win teams, Atlanta and Carolina. Meanwhile, the AFC still has a host of eight and nine win teams fighting over a dwindling number of slots, now that the Pittsburgh Steelers hit ten wins and clinched a spot of some sort. So, two places remain, facing the Steelers, Patriots, Broncos, and Colts.

UPDATE: It's really hard to watch the Seattle Seahawks decimate the Arizona Cardinals, 35-6 as the clock is running out, and NOT think they're the favorite to repeat as Super Bowl champions in the same stadium they won in tonight. Hop onto ESPN.com and take a look at Marshawn Lynch's impossible run for a 79-yard touchdown, as well as Russell Wilson's sick TD run towards the end of the game. You won't be disappointed.

...AND, what about the "wooden spoon"? Who gets the first draft pick?

Six teams have a shot at the worst record in the NFL: Tennessee, Oakland, Jacksonville, and Tampa all have 2-12 records, with the New York Jets and Washington one game up at 3-11. 

Projecting the last two games, the key may be the Tennessee at Jacksonville debacle this Thursday night - talk about a bad game. This season has shown that teams simply are not ready to play on Thursday nights, and the game is either a blowout (with one unprepared team) or a sludge match (with two). Add to that two BAD teams to begin with, and look out, America! You've been warned!

Regardless, the winner of that game probably takes themselves out of contention, because they'll each be heavy underdogs against division heavyweights Indy and Houston in week 17, even with extra time to prepare. Meanwhile, Oakland will be the underdog week 17 at Denver UNLESS they rest everybody for the playoff run (possible), but they'd still lose in more likelihood. This week's game, hosting Buffalo, may be more winnable. And Tampa Bay has two games that are at home, but against teams that need to win for their own playoff ambitions (Green Bay, New Orleans). All other things equal, we'd bet on the Buccaneers being the most likely to finish 2-14. But, if Tennessee loses both games, they ARE the #1 pick.

We never covered how the predictions went this weekend...

...so here we go!

FBS games: Oregon beat Arizona BIG, 51-13 (point Vegas)...Marshall barely edged La-Tech (point us)...Connecticut not only lost to the spread but lost outright to previously winless SMU, 27-20 (point us)...Alabama whupped Missouri in the end, 42-13 (point them)...and we were correct to choose Ohio St over Wisconsin (they squeaked by the Badgers 59-0! - point us!) ----- Score: Vegas 2, FF 3!

FCS games: There were two on our "disagreement" list - we were correct in thinking that Sam Houston would give Jacksonville St fits; they did, and won 37-26. However, Illinois St handled Northern Iowa with ease, 41-21. So ------ Score: Vegas 3, FF 4!

NFL games: Going down the five games we marked (wish we'd thought to mark the Detroit/Tampa discrepancy; we would've won that one!)... St. Louis blanked the Redskins, 24-0 (point them)...the Giants wiped out the Titans, 36-7 (and knocked Tennessee to the Bottom slot, H32; point them)...we were right to think the Saints were in trouble, but even we didn't expect the offensive ineptitude we saw from a Drew Brees-led offense (point us)... Although Arizona won, they only won by three, so by a hair, (point Vegas)...and the Raiders dispatched their cross-bay rivals with ease, 24-13; (point FF). ------ FINAL Score: Vegas 6, FF 6. (Like I said...wished we'd claimed that Detroit game!)

Our pro football tiers and rankings for Week 14...

The biggest change at the top of the rankings is the emergence of the defending champs in Tier A, the Seattle Seahawks. Their threat is real - just ask Arizona and San Francisco!

At the other end of the spectrum, the Oakland Raiders have worked their way out of the dungeon, and left the Tennessee Titans at the bottom, following their evisceration at the hands of the New Jersey Giants. 

In between, the continuing demise of the 49ers and the Saints mystifies, and the continued bunched success of the AFC North invites a host of "what ifs?" for folks like us to ponder!

FF rank	Team	Div	OvRecord	ConfRc	DvRec
A1	Green Bay Packers	N-N	9-3	6-3	4-1
A2	New England Patriots	A-E	10-3	7-2	2-1
A3	Denver Broncos	A-W	10-3	8-1	4-0
A4	Seattle Seahawks	N-W	9-4	6-2	2-1
B5	Indianapolis Colts	A-S	9-4	7-3	4-0
B6	Philadelphia Eagles	N-E	9-4	5-4	3-0
B7	Dallas Cowboys	N-E	9-4	6-4	2-2
B8	Arizona Cardinals	N-W	10-3	7-2	2-1
C09	Detroit Lions	N-N	9-4	7-2	3-0
C10	Baltimore Ravens	A-N	8-5	4-5	2-3
C11	Pittsburgh Steelers	A-N	8-5	7-3	3-2
C12	Cincinnati Bengals	A-N	8-4-1	5-4	2-2
D13	San Diego Chargers	A-W	8-5	6-4	2-2
D14	Miami Dolphins	A-E	7-6	6-4	3-1
D15	Houston Texans	A-S	7-6	6-3	2-1
D16	Kansas City Chiefs	A-W	7-6	5-4	1-3
E17	Buffalo Bills	A-E	7-6	4-6	3-2
E18	Cleveland Browns	A-N	7-6	4-6	2-2
E19	St. Louis Rams	N-W	6-7	4-5	2-2
E20	San Francisco 49ers	N-W	7-6	6-4	1-3
F21	Minnesota Vikings	N-N	6-7	5-5	0-4
F22	Atlanta Falcons	N-S	5-7	5-4	4-0
F23	Carolina Panthers	N-S	4-8-1	4-6	2-2
F24	New Orleans Saints	N-S	5-8	4-5	2-2
G25	Chicago Bears	N-N	5-8	4-5	1-3
G26	New York Giants	N-E	4-9	2-7	1-3
G27	Washington Redskins	N-E	3-10	1-8	1-2
G28	New York Jets	A-E	2-11	2-7	0-4
H29	Oakland Raiders	A-W	2-11	1-8	1-3
H30	Tampa Buccaneers	N-S	2-11	1-8	0-4
H31	Jacksonville Jaguars	A-S	2-11	1-8	0-3
H32	Tennessee Titans	A-S	2-11	2-7	1-3

Mr. Harbaugh? A little friendly advice...

If your job is already in jeopardy, if rumors linking you to Michigan and every other available job are still running rampant, if your team looks so bad against Seattle last week that your owner apologizes to the fans, and then if your San Francisco 49ers lose to the stinkpot across the bay that is the Oakland Raiders, giving them their biggest victory (a mere eleven points) in two years? 

Don't walk straight to the Oakland Raiders majority owner Mark Davis after the game for a "chat". Bad mojo.

From Gregg Easterbrook and "TMQ"...

As always, we urge you to read Tuesday Morning Quarterback, aka "TMQ", on ESPN.com every (let me guess!) Tuesday morning. Here are his ten "stats of the week"...

Stats Of The Week No. 1: At Lambeau Field, Aaron Rodgers is on a streak of 33 touchdown passes to zero interceptions, including playoffs.

Stats Of The Week No. 2: Atlanta, which goes to Lambeau Field on the next "Monday Night Football," is an NFL-worst .278 -- 10-26 -- in Monday games.

Stats Of The Week No. 3: Niners possession results at home versus Seattle: Punt, punt, interception, punt, punt, punt, end of half, field goal, interception, end of game.

Stats Of The Week No. 4: After going 453 games without a punt block for a touchdown, Minnesota did it twice in the same half versus Carolina.

Stats Of The Week No. 5: Since the start of 2013, the Chiefs are 3-7 in their division, 15-4 versus all other teams, including playoffs.

Stats Of The Week No. 6: The 49ers are 1-3 in their division. In the three previous seasons, they were 13-5-1 including playoffs.

Stats Of The Week No. 7: The Raiders have not won on the road since Nov. 17, 2013.

Stats of the Week No. 8: Boise State is on a 91-4 run when playing on blue.

Stats Of The Week No. 9: Defensive end J.J. Watt has more touchdown receptions (three) than the entire Kansas City wide receiver corps (none).

Stats Of The Week No. 10: The 2-10 Buccaneers are alive for the first overall draft pick -- and also alive to win their division and host a playoff game.

Time of Possession is SO IMPORTANT!

Oakland leads the Rams in t.o.p. after three quarters, holding the ball over 28 minutes compared to less than 17 for St. Louis.

St. Louis scored touchdowns on their first five possessions (you'd think that'd be rare, but it's the sixth time since Week 10), added a field goal on number six, and leads Oakland 38-0. 

So much for time of possession.

Ray Rice wins his appeal - CAN play immediately. WILL HE?

The news is breaking just now via the good ol' NFLPA that Ray Rice has won his appeal and is immediately eligible to sign with ANY team in the league. (The Ravens released him pretty much the moment the video broke.)

Here's the question: WHO is going to sign a ticking bomb named Ray Rice?

POST your opinion in the comments: which NFL team is most likely to sign Rice? 

(We'll tell you our choice - the obvious one, in our minds: the Oakland Raiders.)