Missing from your statement is "at times" was mostly in the first half of the season. The Eagles 'D' improved markedly as the season wore on. While their D isn't exactly a strength overall, I think the arc of improvement it followed last year will continue this year, and help keep them in games.
In general you're right, they did get better throughout the year, but it's hard to get the Minnesota game out of my head. They dropped 48 points in one of the last games to the Matt Cassel-led Vikings....that is just not a sign of improvement.
And thanks!
Super...Bowl. Two words. It's not hard. What the fuck is wrong with you people?
Oh, and, barring injuries or alien abductions, Seahawks are going to repeat. Maybe the best team I've ever seen.
Settle down sport, if I want to say Superbowl, I will. Not a big deal. My team has won 5 of them, yours has 1, no need to act like it's some sacred thing no one else understands.
That said, I'm dealing with someone that thinks that short of an injury or alien abduction, not only is he positive a team will repeat, they might be the best ever. I'm sorry, I mean no offense here, but that is nonsense and shows nothing but either blind fanboyism or ignorance. This is the NFL. There is no sure thing. Worse teams get beat by better teams every single week, and if the "best" team on paper won the Superbowl every year, Eli Manning would not have any rings on his fingers.
Not only is it about staying healthy, as you alluded to, it's also about being hot at the right time. It's nearly impossible to be hot for 19 straight games in the NFL - and even if you are, the team you're playing might just get a couple of lucky bounces their way, which can be all it takes.
I say this as a guy who does an NFL prediction thread every year, even - there is no sure thing in the NFL. There is never, ever, a guaranteed winner. There never will be.
All that aside....come on dude. The Seahawks are very good, but one of the best ever? I would even say that last year's Seahawks are better than this year's, at least on paper, which immediately nullifies that statement.
Slightly curious, OP. How do you propose that the total games you predict to be won is so much different than the total games you predict to be lost?
It's only off by one, hardly "so much different", and it's off by one because after my initial count on Wednesday, I counted 257-255, and adjusted two teams, which was a mistake - obviously I only needed to adjust one, and the end result was making it 255-257.
That said, I invite you to read the first paragraph of the OP before trying to press this issue further. Even if I had made the adjustment correctly and ended up 256-256, it's still fully possible, likely even, that I'd have come up with impossible records, because I don't do game-by-game picks. I'm really not concerned - the purpose of this thread is to come up with a general idea of what I think about the different teams, not an exact course of events. As I said to with Mr Angina or whatever his name is, it's impossible to predict 100% of the things that will happen in an NFL season, so why get worked up over such small details in week 1?
If it makes you feel better, in my 2nd pass the 2nd adjustment (that I shouldn't have made) was to give the Jags one more win. So in your mind, imagine I'd picked them to win 6 games instead of 7. That would make some of the earlier posters happier, too.