I do not beleive that this team is going to be in the .500 range. One of two things is going to happen with this team, it is either going to make a decent playoff push or it is going to fold up like a cheap suit. This unit is either going to find ways to grow and win or it will end up another prune and rebuild at years end.
There is no middle ground this season and no excuse, find ways to win games or exit stage left. Miami is either going to have a winning season or end up less than 6-10.
Disagree, this team is not going to win less than 8 games barring major injuries to key players. Tannehill and Philbin are both average at worst which means its highly likely we finish at least average. Plus we still have Grimes, Wake, basically 14 rookies and Tannehill himself should be quite a bit better in his third season.
Bad gamblers tend to panic over short term results, you see it all the time especially in the stock market, which is why its no surprise to see us ranked 31st by some and many predictions suggesting a 2011 type season. But Vegas, the professional gamblers, actually has us trending up.
Think about this:
- week 16 the forum was looking ahead to the playoffs and the feeling was we could make some noise, with good reason too seeing as we had already beaten most of the playoff teams.
- 10-6 was right there for us and would have most definitely happened with 2 more good performances from Tannehill. But it wouldn't have felt like we deserved 10-6, it felt like we were a 6-10 team, 10-6 would have came out of nowhere. To me that is a sign we might have a good team. I often wonder at which specific moment Seahawk fans realized they have a great team, I know week 4 into 2012 a lot were questioning everything about the franchise, maybe some of them still don't believe they have one of the elite teams of the NFL? Its easy for an outsider to see they've become elite but when you are on the inside the change can feel so gradual that you just might miss it.
- The departure of Ireland should give the players a morale boost if you are to believe some of the stories from former players as to the hatred towards him. Hickey doesn't even have to be better, the change alone should be like lifting a giant stone off the teams shoulders. I think Hickey is a lot better though at least in the way he deals with the players, we'll see about the talent evaluation, can't be much worse though.
So Vegas has it right, the team is trending up but we still have a giant obstacle in our path in the Patriots. In my opinion if you could run the season out over millions of iterations while 6 wins or less would be possible I think we would finish with 8 or 9 wins the vast majority of the time, like 80%, and 7 and 10+ wins would account for about 15%. So 6 wins or less comes into play only like 5% of the time for me.
