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9 Predictions To Start The 2014 NFL Season

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The 2014 NFL season is nine days from kickoff next Thursday night, when the Seattle Seahawks hoist their Super Bowl banner for the NBC audience against the Green Bay Packers. It’s time then, for the Notebook Nine, the nine key predictions I’m taking into the season. In the NFL’s case, they make doing nine easy—just one pick for each of the eight divisions, and then an overarching Super Bowl pick. Here we go…

NFL Analysis: Final 2013 Predictions

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TheSportsNotebook’s NFL analysis has been going full-bore through the month of August, completing previews on all 32 teams individually, as well as a separate overview on each of the eight divisions, exploring their betting odds, recent history and including links to the team previews of its members. Now it’s time to tie everything together into one last preseason preview.

NFL Analysis: AFC East Preview

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Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the Patriot Machine come into the 2013 NFL season as a heavy favorite to secure yet another AFC East crown. The oddsmakers in Las Vegas have posted them as a 5-13 favorite. The math is such that you if you want to bet against the Patriots in this division, you need not pick a challenger. You could bet the three rivals at equal levels and turn a profit so long as one of them came through.

NFL Predictions: Final Preseason Extravaganza

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We’ve been running NFL team previews here for the last month at TheSportsNotebook, including projections on whether teams would hit their Las Vegas over/under number for wins. We’ve also had contributor Isaac Huss weigh in with key storylines and predictions for both the NFC & AFC, and then yesterday Isaac laid out why he thought the New England Patriots would win the Super Bowl. Now it’s time for me to jump in with my own final set of picks.

Super Bowl Prediction: The Case For The New England Patriots

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Preseason predictions are an inexact science, to say the least. Obviously, that’s why you play the games- what’s important is not which team some random dude thinks is going to win the Super Bowl, we care about who actually goes out and wins the damn thing.

So why bother reading an article about which team some random dude thinks is going to win the Super Bowl? Because we have nothing better to do before the teams actually start playing, that’s why.

In case you do have better things to do, here’s the cliffs notes version: The Packers, in my mind, were the best team in the NFC over the course of the entire season a year ago. That being said, it was obvious that the Giants were the better team in the end, but they’ve lost significant players.

The Patriots came thisclose, again, to beating the Giants in the Super Bowl, and there’s no reason to believe they can’t get right back there again. So how did I choose between the Packers and the Patriots? Well, I’m a Vikings fan, so I can’t choose the Packers, and that left the Patriots. Juuuuust kidding. Mostly.

So the rest of this article will flesh out just why I think the Patriots the best pick to win the Super Bowl this year, and why the Packers the next best choice.

NFL Team Previews: Detroit Lions

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The Detroit Lions finally broke through last year. Matthew Stafford stayed healthy at quarterback, the team won 10 games and made the playoffs for the first time since 1999 and posted its first winning record since 2000. Now NFL fans are wondering if Detroit can take the next step—this is an organization that has never been to the Super Bowl, much less won it, and their last title was in 1957. Is this the year in Motown? TheSportsNotebook takes a close look at the Lions to find out…