2014 New York Jets - ESPN's Dumb Game-By-Game Predictions

Using Advanced Football Analytics (formerly NFL Stats), ESPN's projection for the Jets upcoming season is a 7-9 record.  As a Jets fan this is not something that is particularly enjoyable to read, yet at the same time, if someone asked me if I would be surprised if the Jets finished 7-9 I'd say no.

It's not so much the record that bothers me.  It's when I looked at it game by game that the ridiculousness started to stand out.  Look at some of these scores:

-The Jets are going to be outscored 63-17 in their 10th and 11th games at home against Pittsburgh and then in Buffalo?  They are more than capable of losing those games but that doesn't sound right to me.

-Did Advanced Football Analytics predict and some devastating injuries before the Nov. 9 game vs. Pittsburgh?  I thought that was a pretty favorable part of their schedule.  In their last 4 games they have Minnesota, Tennessee and Miami who are not good football teams and it's their game against New England at home.  Not only were they predicted to lose those games; they are predicted to allow over 30 points to both Tennessee and Miami.  3 out of 4 of those games are on the road.  I'm not saying they will win any of them but all of a sudden they are going to go from giving up 17 points a game in their first 9 games to giving up almost 30 in their last 7?  And in those 9 games they average giving up 17 points a game they are play Green Bay, Chicago Detroit, Denver and New England in there and in their last 7 they play Buffalo, Miami (twice) and Tennessee.  These don't make any sense.

I hate game by game projections before a season starts.  I get that the guys who write the season previews have to provide content but it's probably the most useless information you can provide.

*the image to the left will link you to ESPN's NFL Preview

Goodbye Bracketbusters

The storm that is conference realignment in college sports has left a lot of destruction in it's path but one of the least talked about casualties of all these changes is the ending of ESPN's Bracketbuster event.  This February 22 and 23rd will be the 10th and final edition of the event.  It started as an 18 team event that swelled to as high as 142 teams last year.

I'm sure I'm a little more biased towards this event as University at Buffalo graduate who attended most of the home games when I was there as well as making the trek to Cleveland for the MAC Conference tournament whether or not Buffalo even advanced to the Gund.  After college I moved back to Long Island so it was tough to get to see many games so the potential of getting a game on ESPN was always exciting.  It gave me a reason to care about their RPI despite a zero percent chance of an at-large NCAA Tournament birth.  I believe that this is the 9th year that Buffalo is participating.  They were far away from a televised game this year but in their 9 years they were good enough to get three of them televised.  So that was always a treat.

The spirit of the event was to get the mid-major schools a chance for one more opportunity to get a  quality win before the season ended.  A lot of these higher quality mid-majors are the class of their conference and probably wouldn't have another opportunity for another good win once non-conference season ends.  In a few instances it was really useful and really worked.  Look at VCU's run to the Final Four in 2011.  If they don't get that win at Wichita State during Bracketbuster weekend then they don't even make the tournament.

The other benefit of Bracketbusters was getting rare exposure to see some of the mid-major tournament teams before the brackets come out.  Look at last year's tournament teams.  Wichita State, New Mexico State, Long Beach State, Davidson, Iona, VCU, Ohio, Creighton, South Dakota State, Murray State, UNC-Asheville and St. Mary's all got televised games.  Three of those teams won a game in the tournament and Ohio went to the Sweet 16.  If you watched the UNC-Asheville/Ohio game, you're on the Walter Offutt and DJ Cooper bandwagon before someone like Digger Phelps and Dick Vitale tell you Ohio is potential upset pick.  Maybe you know who J.P. Primm and Matt Dickey were before they almost became the first 16 seed to beat a 1 seed (Syracuse).  

It was a great and useful event and it's a shame it's ending.

NFL Schedule Announcement!!!...Who cares?

ESPN really needs to stop making the NFL schedule announcement a bigger deal than it is. In all honesty, I am a huge football fan but if nobody mentioned the NFL schedule to me I'm not sure I would even think about it until training camp started. The only thing that's borderline interesting is who is going to play the first prime time game of the year (and even still, I hate that game). Now we'll see a bunch of people waste their time analyzing next year's schedule based on last season's records which will be completely useless information with all the parity in the NFL today.

I get the NFL Network doing something for it. That network is probably starved for content during the off season. And I'm sure there are people who aren't MLB, NHL and NBA fans who might get up for a little football news in April but for ESPN to spend anything over a minute per SportsCenter on it seems unnecessary.