2nd
Reasons I Think I Like Peter King
Peter King, sports (and particularly NFL) writer extraordinaire, comes to the rescue again.
The best thing that happened to Sirius NFL Radio this off-season was Peter King joining the morning show twice a week. I always switch over at 8am to see if he’ll be on, because he is not only more informed than average, he’s less bombastic than most of the hosts and also less dogmatic. Sure, some issues (like spygate or visiting Iraq) become his personal dogma and he can go on a bit, but the fact is he will debate and question the regular hosts in ways and on topics that aren’t usually challenged.
Believe it or not his weekly column, Monday Morning QuarterBack (MMQB) — which can balloon to 7 rambling pages during the season, is not my favorite. He has great access and decent insight, but I couldn’t care less about his Starbucks addiction or his weekly travel incidents, and the format of listing random thoughts in bullet lists seems pretty lazy.
But he’s really good on the radio. And today he led off the show with a fantastic bashing of one of the regular hosts who made a terrible assertion the day before. Randy Cross responded to a caller that the Steelers were by far the class of the AFC North and would win 12 or 13 games in 2008. A couple months ago everyone was loving the Browns and picking them, and now the pendulum has swung back. Peter set everyone straight and eliminated the rhetoric by calling it a “flat footed race” between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and 10 or 11 wins will take the division. I couldn’t agree more.
The Browns are clearly in ascendancy, and while some of it might be flukey (Derek Anderson?), some of it is quite real (the O line). This off-season some serious free-agent pickups showed that they will improve on the D line this year or next. And I happen to feel a lot of players, now fresh into starting roles, are going to be fine in the defensive backfield (Eric Wright, Brandon McDonald, Sean Jones). Yes, we’re still woefully thin there but D line improvement will also help.
In PA they could be a team in decline. Part of this is wishful thinking but I can make a case. Everyone acknowledged far too many sacks and poor line performance last year. I believe when Polamalu was out for a stretch of 3 or 4 games their defense had a lot of problems and they clearly weren’t as strong. What does everyone like? Fast Willie Parker, Najeh Davenport, and Vernon Haynes seems a pretty potent run offense — performance declined when Parker was injured but I don’t think it’s a weakness. They also have a top 10 receiver in Ward and a pretty great #2 in Santonio Holmes than many believe will emerge this year. So what were their biggest acquisitions? Mewelde Moore and Rasheed Mendenhall at RB and Limas Sweed at WR. They lost their best lineman (guard Alan Faneca) and marginally improved their center (Hartwig).
So they haven’t improved areas of weakness. We have.
I still give them a slight nod for what they’ve shown on the field and we have yet to, but there’s no reason to think only the Steelers can play. And as for 12 or 13 wins, Randy Cross clearly had not examined strength of schedule. Many times you can discount strength of schedule, but I don’t think that’s the case here. The two divisions the AFC North plays are expected to be tough. The NFC East is perennially strong and deep, and usually three could be playoff caliber (NYG, WAS, DAL, PHI). The AFC South has one great team (IND), two that battle to make the playoffs regularly (JAX, TEN), and one everyone thinks was better last year and should improve this year (HOU). Pittsburgh also gets to play the Patriots and the Chargers (the Browns get the Bills and Broncos).
Again, the Brownies have every chance to win the division, in my opinion. And hardly any chance at all to take a wildcard.