For the 3rd Division in my 2015 NFL Season Preview, we go for our first trip below the Mason-Dixon Line, and take a look at the AFC South, a race with only thoroughbred. In case you missed the last two previews, here’s what’s been covered thus far.
AFC EAST:
- New England Patriots – 12-4
- Miami Dolphins – 10-6
- Buffalo Bills – 9-7
- New York Jets – 6-10
AFC NORTH:
- Baltimore Ravens – 11-5
- Pittsburgh Steelers – 10-6
- Cincinnati Bengals – 8-8
- Cleveland Browns – 4-12
Tennessee Titans:
2014 Season: 2-14, 4th in AFC South
Offense: Rushing (26th), Passing (22nd), Total (29th)
Defense: Rushing (31st), Passing (15th), Total (27th)
The Titans were just atrocious last year, and I don’t expect much more from them this time around, even with last year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Marcus Mariota, at Quarterback. Mariota threw for 4,454 yards, 42 Touchdowns and only 4 interceptions in 15 games last season with the Oregon Ducks, but he’s going to be looking for a lifeline on that Titan Offense, because if there’s one team in the NFL who doesn’t have any proven offensive weapons, it’s Tennessee. The only player on the offense who could become a star is Dorial Green-Beckham, and he has to mature and buy into the system Ken Whisenhunt wants to use. Kendall Wright could also have a bounce-back season this year, with a decent Quarterback throwing him the ball, not career backup, Charlie Whitehurst, aka Clipboard Jesus.
Tennessee’s top ranked player in fantasy football is Bishop Sankey, 95th in ESPN’s fantasy rankings and at least 27 spots lower than any other teams highest ranked fantasy player. The rookie disappointed in 2014, averaging only 3.7 yards per carry. At least the Titans coaches knew they’re not going to get much at Sankey, because they went out and got Terrance West from Cleveland as soon as it was revealed that David Cobb would miss the entire 2015 season.
Mariota’s probably more worried about not getting sacked 60 times in 16 games this season anyway. Tennessee’s 2014 First-round pick, Taylor Lewan will protect Mariota’s blind side, and Right Guard Chance Warmack is a great interior blocker. The rest of the line however, is unfinished. The Titans are debating about which backup they should plug in at Right Tackle, there’s no one on the roster to replace their awful Center, Brian Schwenke, and Andy Levitre has been quite mediocre at Left Guard since signing a big contract a few seasons ago. There’s very little to like about the Tennessee Titans this season.
My Grandmother told me that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all, but for the purposes of this article, let’s dive into the abysmal Titans Defense.
Tennessee’s big free agent signing was DE/OLB Brian Orakpo, who improves himself by leaving a horrible situation in Washington, for a terrible one in Tennessee. Orakpo used to be an All-Pro, but the former All-American, Texas Longhorn, has had his injury troubles in recent years, which was likely the main reason why Tennessee was the only team willing to spend big bucks on him. Derrick Morgan also chose to re-sign, providing the Titans with a tremendous tandem on the D-Line.
A unit that also shows promise is Tennessee’s Defensive Backs, who signed CB Perrish Cox from San Francisco and S Da’Norris Searcy from Buffalo. Both players didn’t truly receive the recognition they deserved last season, Cox had 5 Interceptions and 18 passes defended in 2014, making him one of the few bright spots on a 49ers team that is slowly falling apart, while Searcy was a key cog in a Bills D that finished top 5 in the NFL.
Jurrell Casey is the only strong linebacker in Tennessee, coming up with 5 sacks, leading the Titans with 8 tackles for loss and being undoubtedly the team’s best run-stopper. The Titans other two starting linebackers, and I’ll admit it, I had to look up their names because Tennessee was that forgettable last year, Ropati Pitoitua and Sammie Lee Hill, looked lost most of the time, because they either couldn’t contain the run, or effectively rush the Quarterback.
I feel like I’m being a little negative here, but Tennessee is just atrocious and that’s the reality. The talent pools on both Offense and Defense for the Titans, are extremely shallow. This is certainly a development year in Memphis, just don’t destroy Mariota and the season will be considered a success. How many days until the 2016 NFL Draft?
2015 Prediction: 3-13
Jacksonville Jaguars:
2014 Season: 3-13, 3rd in AFC South
Offense: Rushing (21st), Passing (31st), Total (31st)
Defense: Rushing (27th), Passing (22nd), Total (26th)
Oh Jacksonville, sometimes I even forget you exist, because I’ve never met a single person that’s said they’re a Jaguars fan. It’s not as if I don’t like the Jaguars, I do! I remember the team that upset the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Wild-Card Round, led by Maurice Jones-Drew and David Garrard at QB! Those Jags were a joy to watch every Sunday. They just haven’t done ANYTHING since then, and they won’t for a little while longer.
It wasn’t even July when the Jaguars received the terrible news that their No. 3 overall selection in this year’s draft, Defensive End, Dante Fowler, Jr., tore his ACL. Jacksonville’s Defense isn’t where their troubles are however, and while the unit isn’t spectacular, it gets the job done. Defensive Tackle, Sen’Derrick Marks ended up with 9 sacks on the season, and despite also tearing his ACL in last year’s season finale, should be ready to go for week 1. Bringing in Jared Odrick from Miami was also a great pickup for Jacksonville, who should come in and help Jaguars fans be content with the fact that Fowler is missing the entire 2015 season.
While Fowler exits, the Jags get the return of their best inside linebacker, Paul Posluszny, coming off a chest injury that saw him miss more than half the season last year. Alongside Posluszny will be Telvin Smith, who had a great rookie campaign with 104 tackles, and hopes to avoid a dreaded sophomore slump.
Outside of the respectable Jonathan Cyprien, there isn’t much else in the secondary. Sergio Brown, a career special teamer, and the guy who got thrown out the club in Indianapolis last season, is starting, so that’s all you really need to know about that unit
On the other side of the ball, Blake Bortles now enters into his 2nd season head-manning the offense. Bortles basically got a free pass last season because A) The Jaguars were an atrocity in 2013, and B) He had virtually nobody to help him out.
Toby Gerhart was supposed to the cowbell for the Jags last year, but he wound up being a massive bust, only rushing for 326 yards in 14 games last season.
Jacksonville now looks to the rookie out of Alabama, T.J. Yeldon. I was initially extremely high on Yeldon this offseason, but after further contemplation, a couple of things have brought my expectations for him back down to earth. Denard Robinson will be there to step in for Yeldon the moment he starts becoming ineffective, and the offensive line that will be blocking for him, despite having names like Stefen Wisniewski, Zane Beadles and Luke Joeckel, was more porous than SpongeBob Squarepants. He can just ask Bortles how strong he thinks the Jaguars line is, because he was sacked a league-high 71 times last year, how strong the Jags are in the trenches. Yeldon won’t rush for 1,000 yards in his rookie season, but he’s not going to end up like Gerhart did.
Cecil Shorts leaving for Houston doesn’t help the offensive situation, meaning expectations are high for 2nd-year WR Allen Robinson. The 6’3 210-lb wideout looks to have turned the corner in his development, and will likely end up being a reliable deep threat in the Jaguars offense, and hopefully last season’s surprise for Jacksonville, undrafted-rookie Allen Hurns, will continue to produce at a clip similar to what he had last year, 51 receptions, 677 receiving yards, and 6 touchdowns.
Jacksonville’s big offseason signing this year was bringing over TE Julius Thomas and his 24 Touchdowns in the past 2 seasons from Denver, which finally gives Bortles a viable option in the red-zone. In typical Jacksonville fashion however, Thomas will miss the first three games of the season with a hand injury.
The Jags are a likeable squad, and they’ve got some quality pieces in Jacksonville which Head Coach Gus Bradley should be able to build around. The main goal for this season should be just to make sure the offensive line improves, and Bortles’ development isn’t stunted. They’re not ready to contend for playoffs yet, but give it until say 2017, and the Jags should be fighting for a wild-card spot.
2015 Prediction: 5-11
Houston Texans:
2014 Season: 9-7, 2nd in AFC South
Offense: Rushing (5th), Passing (24th), Total (17th)
Defense: Rushing (10th), Passing (21st), Total (16th)
Houston’s about as one-sided a team as you might find in the NFL, despite what last year’s numbers say. At Defensive End, Houston has the best Defensive player, and possibly the best All-Around player in the league (He was voted by the players, as the No.1 player in the annual NFL’s Top 100 players lists); J.J. Watt. Watt terrorized quarterbacks last season, collecting 20.5 sacks, becoming the first player since 1982 to record multiple seasons of more than 20 sacks. On top of that, Watt led the league in batted passes, fumbles recovered, tackles for loss, had an interception returned for a Touchdown, a forced fumble returned for a touchdown and 3 receiving touchdowns. What isn’t there to love about J.J. Watt.
Jadeveon Clowney is back and ready to shut up all his critics who had written him off and were disappointed they didn’t get to see more of him, because he missed most of last season with a knee injury. Vince Wilfork was also a big acquisition for the Defensive, who can still contribute and fill up holes, despite his age.
The Houston secondary’s big test will come against Andrew Luck and the Colts twice a year. Their top 3 corners from 2014, Kendrick Lewis, D.J. Swearinger, and Danieal Manning have all left, but the team’s dependable safeties Johnathan Joseph and Kareem Jackson are still kicking and the departing corners have replaced them with Rahim “The Dream” Moore from the Broncos, who’s terrific in coverage but weak in run support, and Stevie Brown from the Giants.
Scoring-wise, Houston will be incredibly lucky to average over 20 points through at least the first four games of their season. Arian Foster is out with a groin injury until at least late September, but Houston is just fine with that since they initially believed he’d be out for at least half the season. Foster has been the key cog in the Houston Offense dating back to 2010, when he took the league by storm shredded defenses for 1,616 yards. Each time since then, Foster has rushed for over 1,000 when playing more than half a season, so he’ll obviously be dearly missed in the Texan backfield. Alfred Blue will take the brunt of the load in his spot, and while Blue isn’t the worst option, he’s well below average as a starting RB in the NFL.
Houston could probably contend with Indianapolis if they had a semi-competent, proven QB at the helm. DeAndre Hopkins is a great talent at WR, but who in Houston is going to be able to get him the ball? Can Houston’s passing game do worse than last year’s?
Yes, because after Hopkins there’s not much to look at on the Houston depth chart. They’ve got two of Brady’s backups for Quarterbacks, Brian Hoyer, and Ryan Mallett. Don’t think it’s a coincidence that Head Coach Bill O’Brien took both these guys into Houston, O’Brien was the QB Coach in New England, and eventually became the Offensive Coordinator during the 2011 season, a year where the Patriots reached the Super Bowl.
Much like the Bills however, The Texans D will not take them to the top alone, because in this league you need a decent QB, if you want to succeed. Although they jumped out to a 6-3 start last year with Brian Hoyer as their starting QB, Cleveland was winning games in spite of him, and ended 2014 on a 1-6 stretch. Mallett’s never been a starter in the NFL, but having watched him play preseason football in New England, he never really showed any flashes of brilliance as a Patriots. Bill Belichick likely believed this too, otherwise taking Jimmy Garoppolo in the 2nd round of last-year’s draft wouldn’t make any sense.
The Texans might be for me, the most interesting team in the NFL this season. There’s a big radius for where this team could finish at season’s end. In a dream world, they come very close to challenging the Colts for the AFC South crown, but in a worst-case scenario the team goes 5-11 and the offense reeks of cow patties. I’m going to say it’s somewhere in between.
2015 Prediction: 7-9
Indianapolis Colts:
2014 Season: 11-5, AFC South Champions
#4 seed in AFC
Lost in AFC Championship Game to New England Patriots
Offense: Rushing (22nd), Passing (1st), Total (3rd)
Defense: Rushing (18th), Passing (12th), Total (11th)
Everyone knows that there’s only one team that deserves to win the AFC South this year, and it’s the Indianapolis Colts. If they don’t win this division, it will go down as one of the most disappointing seasons in NFL History.
Andrew Luck is ready to let everyone know that’s he’s currently the best Quarterback in the game. I guarantee that Luck will throw for 5,000 yards this year. Saying it out loud makes it seem like I just graduated from University with a degree in Hot Takeology, but if you surveyed a group of NFL analysts/experts/pundits, whatever you want to call them, a majority would probably agree with me. He wasn’t far off last season throwing for 4,761 yards, and the Colts were better in the Passing game than anyone else was.
Luck’s still got his #1 option; one of the most underrated receivers in football, T.Y. Hilton. Long-time Colt, Reggie Wayne, was released by the team and seems to be on the brink of retirement, but they’ve replaced one legend with another by going out and getting Andre Johnson. His recent statistical decline has shown that Johnson is no longer what he was for Houston in the late 2000s, but he fits perfectly into the Indianapolis Offense as a #2 option and is an upgrade over Wayne. The Colts also decided to make their strengths even stronger by drafting WR Phillip Dorsett in the first-round of the draft this year and the youngster from Miami has been pinned by many to come out of the gates flying. Indianapolis’ two Tight Ends, Coby Fleener and Dwayne Allen have also shown they can get into the end zone. With all these options, Luck won’t know who to throw the ball to.
Last year, if the Colts couldn’t get it done through the air, they couldn’t get it done at all. The rushing offense was non-existent for the Colts in 2014. Trent Richardson was supposed to be the work-horse that would make the Colts an unstoppable force. Instead, he rushed for 519 yards, averaged 3.3 yards per carry and quit on the team. Ahmad Bradshaw came in and tried to ignite some spark in the backfield but he broke his foot midway through the season, and Daniel Herron just wasn’t strong enough to make defenses honour the Colts run game. Indianapolis is going to try to fix that situation by bringing in another veteran, former 49ers running back, Frank Gore. For a while now, many have claimed that durability is the issue with Gore, and it’s only a matter of time before his production falls off a cliff. 32 is ancient for running backs in the NFL. The past 4 seasons though, Gore has proven the doubters wrong, playing in all 16 regular season games and rushing for over 1,000 yards each time. Gore’s presence alone, will open up opposing defenses enough for Andrew Luck to tear them to shreds.
As fantastic as the offense looks, not everything about this team is perfect. Outside of Tackle Anthony Castonzo, the O-Line looked sub-par in 2014, and it was a surprise that GM Ryan Grigson didn’t go out and improve this unit in the off-season
The Colts Defense that had 45 points put up on them in the AFC Championship Game last season also remains mostly intact. Indianapolis’ only major additions on defense were, DE Kendall Langford, OLB Trent Cole, and Safety Dwight Lowery. None of these 3 players seem to be game-changers; Cole maybe 4 years ago, Lowery was part of the worst secondary in the NFL last season in Atlanta, and Langford isn’t a standout. To make matters worse, Nose Tackle Arthur Jones is now going to spend all of 2015 on season-ending IR with an ankle injury, and who knows how well DE Robert Mathis will do coming off a torn achilles.
The only great part of the Colts D, is Cornerback Vontae Davis, and although every talks about whether it is Richard Sherman or Darrelle Revis that is the best corner in the league, Davis was arguably better than both. Indianapolis doesn’t need to worry about him, what they do need to think about is who their #2 corner will be, cause Greg Toler proved last year that he’s not capable of the task.
As much as I hate to say it, I’ve got mighty high expectations for the Colts this season, like many other analysts do. I think Andrew Luck will most certainly be in the MVP race throughout the season and lead the team to another season of being one of the top 3 offenses in the league. They’ll pick apart the weak cellar-dwellers in the South and bolster their record in the process. Colts win the AFC South for the 3rd year in a row, the real question is whether or not they can get back to their first Super Bowl since 2009.
2015 Prediction: 13-3
Almost done with the American Football Conference, only the West left, they’re next.
nolancattell 