NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.
SI ranks the NFL teams going into next season. The team ranked number one is only a surprise in that they are not the Super Bowl Champion Steelers. No, it is the New England Patriots with Tom Brady back at quarterback and the knee behaving just fine.

The Steelers are ranked number two and the New York Giants are ranked number 3.

Now the big surprise is the Chicago Bears. The Bears, uhh, excuse me, Dah Bears, have always had a great defense with Brian Urlacher and the boys, but now they finally have a quarterback to go with them. Jay Cutler will make the difference and SI has ranked them number 4.

Jay Cutler will help the Bears to the North Division title

Just don’t tell Peyton Manning about this.

How good of a leader can Cutler be, coming in with the knock that he chafes on some teammates. It’ll be interesting to see if he meshes well with Brian Urlacher; I don’t take for granted that he will. Because of the Cutler factor and because I don’t love the defense the way I did two or three years ago, I didn’t want to leap the Bears over so many other teams. But then I went back and looked at their 2008 numbers. The bedrock stats for a good defense, I’ve always thought, are opponents yards per rush, turnovers forced and opponents’ yards per pass. The yards per rush, 3.4, was excellent, third-best in the league. Turnovers forced, 32, was very good, second in the league. And yards per pass play by foes, 6.20, was eighth in the league. All good. If Cutler can lead an offense that puts up 400 points, only a point and a fraction more than a year ago, the Bears should win 12.

source

Photo source Newscom

Be sure to check out my companion blog at NBA Obsessed.

As always, any NFL Football related comments are welcome.

More blogs about football.

NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.
Tis a sad day for us Michigan State Spartans, as the New York Giants replace a Spartan alum with a Wolverine alum. Yeah, Braylon Edwards was from that school down the road called Michigan. Oh, and while he was at Michigan, he managed to thump my Spartans with regularity.

Braylon will have some pretty big shoes to fill, although the exact size of Plaxico Burress’s shoes are unknown at this time.

Braylon explaining how big Plax's shoes are

The Giants are in win right now mode and think Braylon is just the ticket.

Burress was a key contributor for the Giants however, and he caught the game-winning pass in Super Bowl XLII. The Giants won just one game after his suspension and lost in their first playoff game in January.

“The Giants are motivated, they’re trying to win right now,” Yahoo’s NFL insider told the site. “Edwards is a bigger guy that (Giants QB) Eli (Manning) wants to throw to, like he had with Plaxico. The Giants know they can’t leave Eli with no great receivers. They saw what happened last year.”

source

Photo source Newscom

Be sure to check out my companion blog at NBA Obsessed.

As always, any NFL Football related comments are welcome.

More blogs about football.