Earlier this week, we released our list of three teams that would likely outperform “expectations.” As we mentioned, it’s valuable to have a professional, neutral organization such as sportsbooks defining expectations. Before gambling, fans, media and the whims of ownership set the bar, which led us to the kind of place we are now: a perpetual cycle of hiring, firing and making the same mistakes.
One day, I would like to see ownership utilize some of the analytics at the disposal of gambling companies to determine a realistic outcome for their coaching staff—combining roster strength, age, schedule difficulties, net rest days, travel and other determining factors instead of making human beings the grist for their own short-sightedness. Until then, we’re lucky to do the dirty work and hope that someone is listening.
Cardinals under 4.5 wins
I’m on record this preseason in saying that I think the Cardinals are a heavy favorite to secure the No. 1 pick. I think they are certainly on the more respectable side of what I’ve termed the Cleveland Browns Tanking Line™. Since the NFL has unofficially blessed cash payments to coaches as incentive to attain higher draft picks, the good old fashioned strategic bottoming out of a roster doesn’t seem all that nefarious now, does it?
I’ve had this discussion with Albert Breer on The MMQB Podcast a few times, and hitting the under here is the absolute best-case scenario for Arizona moving forward. The best problem for the Cardinals to have in 2024 would be choosing between a healthy Kyler Murray or Caleb Williams and Drake Maye. There are good and bad ways to lose, which, to me, create the dividing line between something we’d call a rebuild and something we’d call a tank. We’ll see what the Cardinals end up choosing. Had I been the recipient of such a drubbing at the hands of the NFLPA player survey, I would certainly take the optics of this season to heart if I were in a position to make decisions.
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Anyway, the reasons you’d bet the over on this are … confounding to me. The only legitimate one I could muster would be a very staunch confidence in new head coach Jonathan Gannon and, by extension, his coordinators Drew Petzing (offense, most recently of the Browns) and Nick Rallis (defense, most recently of the Eagles). When I was putting together my initial coaching list of 2022 last year, Rallis was generating some serious buzz as one of the youngest position coaches in the NFL. Indeed, he’s a coordinator before his 30th birthday. This is a good, young, flexible staff, but is it the kind of staff that elevates a team theoretically quarterbacked by Colt McCoy for the beginning part of the season? We’ll see.
Working against that 4.5 win total are a myriad of factors: For one, outside of the season opener in which the Cardinals are working a bit with the element of surprise, I see large swaths of the schedule where penciling in a win seems crazy. Starting on Sept. 24, the Cardinals host the Cowboys, travel to the 49ers, host the Bengals, travel to the Rams and Seahawks, host the Ravens and travel to the Browns, just as the weather is starting to turn. Three of those teams are legitimate Super Bowl contenders. While I assume Gannon is great (he clowned a few good offenses last year from the McVay and Shanahan trees in big spots), he’s coaching a defense unlike the one he inherited in Philadelphia, with far less of an ability to generate interior pressure that sets up his speed rushers outside. He also doesn’t have much in the way of edge rushing right now.
Arizona’s division is also a gauntlet. The improved Seahawks and front-running 49ers are obvious threats. But as I mentioned in our companion piece, I think the Rams did an intellectual overhaul of their organization as well. They will be as difficult an opponent as anyone for teams this year.
Buccaneers under 6.5 wins
If I had to pick another team that was going to contend with the Cardinals for the 2024 No. 1 pick right now, it would be the Buccaneers. Like Arizona, this is an absolute necessity in the post–Tom Brady era. Tampa Bay’s evaluators should understand that it took the greatest quarterback—and, perhaps, the greatest gameplanner—in NFL history to take the Bucs roster and lift it over the championship hump. That core of talented players are now three years older. I think, based on their lack of urgency to replace Brady, that they have their eye on 2024 and beyond.
This is a more difficult projection based on a few factors. One is Todd Bowles. The coach got absolutely railroaded in his time leading the Jets, working with a general manager who spent valuable capital and free agency money on a bedrock of unusable talent. Bowles was always going to be cautious about a second (and likely final) opportunity. He’s far too good of a coach to not go down swinging—just watch the Buccaneers defense in the Super Bowl a few years back.
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Bowles also coaches in a division where there isn’t a week in and week out threat. The Buccaneers vs. a rookie quarterback with the Panthers, Derek Carr with the Saints (in a New Orleans that is installing a Gruden-lite offense) and the Falcons are all winnable games. Atlanta, who I would project to win the division at this point, could be particularly vulnerable to the Bucs given Tampa Bay’s defensive personnel and potential stoutness against the run; it will pair first-round pick Calijah Kancey with an already established front.
Like Bowles, Baker Mayfield is in a similar position. This has to work out for him. While the NFL is fickle, and perhaps another opportunity comes down the road (Lovie Smith, Pete Carroll, Wade Phillips, Marty Schottenheimer and Bill Parcells all had three or more head coaching opportunities and are considered top-tier NFL coaches), Mayfield, like Bowles, could end up being judged based on how the Bucs manage the remnants of this roster. This is my one reason to edge them closer to six wins.
Working against Tampa Bay is the obvious option: Their receiving corps is talented but aging; their offensive line struggled last year with the fastest-release quarterback in the NFL; and if they were struggling to keep defenders out of Brady’s face, what happens to Mayfield, who, in his last full season as a starter was 0.3 seconds slower in getting rid of the ball on average than Brady? Tampa Bay may end up losing the vertical element of their offense without Brady.
And, if I were in ownership, I would have a serious conversation with my general manager about how well positioned the Buccaneers are to be a font of trade activity before the deadline, especially if the early season doesn’t go according to plan. Before the 2023 trade deadline, Tampa Bay plays five teams (six if I’m being generous) in seven weeks that could be considered virtual locks for a playoff spot. That is absolutely a factor in performance down the stretch. This is already a season where the club is carrying copious amounts of dead money, but it could move on from the remaining useful players on their roster without as much of a financial headache.
Texans under 6.5 wins
I think we need to be somewhat realistic about the Texans. As high as I am on this new coaching staff, we’re asking a rookie quarterback to take on the intricacies of a rule-based offensive system that is largely foreign in the NCAA landscape, with a few exceptions. Justin Fields only started to embrace elements of the system in his second year with the Bears, but most of the quarterbacks who have taken off with versions of the Kyle Shanahan–system are veterans. Trey Lance and Zach Wilson, on the other hand, were two of the more high-profile rookies who started out in the offense, though their lack of success could be largely conditional. I’m also not pigeonholing new coordinator Bobby Slowik who, like Luke Getsy in Chicago, will likely be adaptable with his scheme and find ways for C.J. Stroud to win early.
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The Texans are on a lower-tier talent wise. They have rookie players projected to start at center, edge rusher, and quarterback. Their highest-ceilinged defensive player is Derek Stingley, last year’s No. 3 pick who is adjusting to a new system and will still be rookie-ish. For all of those reasons, I have a hard time imagining that a team opening the season against the Ravens (and with their first obviously winnable game not until November, against the Cardinals) would be a seven-win team—especially when the Browns, Titans and Raiders, three teams that were better in 2022 than the Texans should be in ’23, barely reached that mark. Still, the division is weaker and, thus, provides an opening. DeMeco Ryans is dynamic, but, as is evidenced by the six-year contract he received from the Texans, this isn’t the kind of job one takes without some long-term certainty.
The length of Ryans’s contract shouldn’t be dismissed. Yes, he was a hot candidate and had options which improved his bargaining power. But this was at a time when the coaching contract market was being depressed a bit, following the boom in salaries post Matt Rhule, when his seven-year, $60 million deal jolted the market for first-time NFL head coaches. My assumption is that Ryans knew what kind of project this was going to be. Even though the Texans went all in on draft night, it was a kind of all-in maneuver that will likely be a slower-yield investment.
