Champing At The Bit
The NFL has announced its 2005 schedule (for team-by-team schedules, go here) and, baby, I’m licking my chops. Just 148 days to go (and only 10 until the draft, which is very exciting).
Both the Patriots and the Raiders have four prime time games on their schedules. So, given that one of those, the September 8 season opener, will pit the teams against each other, that’s seven extra exciting night games for me. And I think the fact that the defending champs will play both the first and last night game of the season (they play the Jets in the Meadowlands the day after Christmas), is pretty neat.
The rest of the Monday Night Football schedule don’t look so bad, either. I mean, I’ll be a bit surprised if the New Orleans/Atlanta matchup still means anything (other than possibly affecting the Falcons playoff seeding) come December 12 and I’ll be absolutely shocked if Green Bay (which has fallen apart during the off-season) has anything left to play for when they travel to Baltimore December 19, but that Pats-Jets game could turn out to be huge. And Pittsburgh-Indianapolis (November 27), Indy-New England (November 7), Baltimore-Pittsburgh (Halloween) and the proper MNF opener (that is, the first game on an actual Monday night) September 12 between Philadelphia and Atlanta should be spectacular.
A lot of the Sunday night games look great, too. I can’t wait to see the reception Eli Manning gets when the Giants travel to San Diego September 25. The San Francisco-Arizona matchup in Mexico City October 2 should be an interesting spectacle, even if it promises to be a pretty awful game (I think Arizona should be just improved enough to put a hurting on the still-rebuilding Niners). And it’ll be interesting to see Romeo Crennel lead his Cleveland Browns against their bitter rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers November 13. If that game were scheduled early in the season, I’d be expecting a bit of a train wreck, but by week 10, the Browns ought to be fairly well adapted to Romeo’s system. The Steelers still have probably too much firepower for the Cleveland (Romeo and Phil Savage are obviously building for 2006 or 2007), but Crennel’s Ds have given Bill Cowher’s Steelers fits in the past — and quarterbacks who have big rookie years often stumble a bit in their sophomore campaigns — so you never know.
Thanksgiving looks a bit disappointing to me. I mean, I believe Detroit will be a much better team this year than last, but it looks to me like Atlanta’s improving, too, and I can’t imagine the Falcons will have too much trouble running away with that game. Denver at Dallas should be better if the Cowboys find a way to protect Drew Bledsoe, since Denver’s deteriorating secondary won’t be able to keep up with the Dallas wideouts if Drew has time to find them. But I expect Denver to have a lot of offensive success this season, so if their pass rush can be effective, they could have it put away early.
Looks like a suitably tough schedule for the defending champs to me. I don’t see a true no-questions-about-it gimme on the slate, though I can’t imagine the New Orleans, Kansas City and Tampa Bay games will be the toughest the Pats have ever played. And I’m not expecting Nick Saban to have his Dolphins in good enough shape to present too much of a challenge to New England even as late as January 1. (Still, the Fins shouldn’t have beat the Pats last season, so, you know, anything’s possible).
Looks to me like the Pats should finish somewhere between 12-4 and 15-1. How the Raiders will do has everything to do with whether Kerry Collins can get the job done and whether the defense figures out how to play football. I’m gonna guess 8-8, maybe 9-7, which wouldn’t be as horrible as last year, but doesn’t get you into the playoffs.
But you know what? Why am I making predictions now? There’s still a draft, months of training and potential transactions, and a pre-season to go. We’ll see.
