10 Things is back for the fall as it is every football season, and we're talking football predictions. I usually do this before the season even begins, but because of time constraints, I'm doing this based off some early peeks at the college/nfl seasons.
Honestly, most of these haven't really been affected over the last two weeks anyway.
Check out how I did last year if you want. For a refresher, I successfully predicted the Colts' demise, UVA's resurgence, and the overrated nature of that "massive" Oklahoma-Florida State game, among other things. Otherwise, on to the forecasting:
1. USC will not run the table, and Matt Barkley will not win the Heisman. The Pac-12 has had some surprising outings so far, but Southern Cal is still clearly better than everyone. Better, however, doesn't always win football games. Oregon has the speed and style of play that will disrupt the shaky depth that Southern Cal seems to have. I don't know if it'll be regular season or Pac-12 Championship game, but the Ducks are gonna get the Trojans one of those days this season. The loss makes voters question Barkley as the best quarterback in the country. Someone nicknames the Oregon Ducks "the Heisman-killers."
2. The Redskins will finish last in the NFC East. Crazy impressive start for RG3. Washington finally has some great weapons. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, okay Skins fans? Washington has always played the Saints very strong for whatever reason, and the NFC East is freaking loaaaaaaadddddddddeeeeeedddddddd. Sound it out. That spells loaded. As in you might have six bullets in your revolver, but the other three teams have mounted machine guns up in forts, like at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan. Except this time, the Redskins aren't Tom Hanks; they're that guy that gets shot in the head after he takes his helmet off.
In all seriousness, the Skins will be a much improved team this year and a very tough out. But I'm not sure the schedule reflects that just yet.
3. Oklahoma is overrated... again. If any team not named the Oklahoma Sooners suffered the preseason losses that Oklahoma did, and then played like this team has for the first two weeks of the season, they would not still be ranked as the top team in the Big 12.
4. Matt Ryan will usher in the Greatest Show on Turf, part 2. This isn't an overreaction to a blowout win in Kansas City. I saw this coming about a month ago, maybe even farther back, when I started paying real close attention to Roddy White's twitter account. Granted, White has a very established reputation as a massive big mouth who exaggerates everything. Maybe it's living in Atlanta. (Interpret that however you like.) I don't know. But I bought into the things that were being said, and as more and more people started to indicate that the Falcons wanted to air it out more and more this season, I became a believer. Roddy White and Julio Jones might be two of the top 10 receivers in the entire NFL, so if Matt Ryan can take that step from above average to elite, this will be a very tough team to beat.
5. The East will end the West's recent dominance in the SEC Championship game. A little more on this later. In short: the West is stacked, the East is not, and one team has an incredibly easy path to the championship.
6. The overhyped Seattle Seahawks will get ugly, fast. I don't understand what the big deal is about Seattle this year. Their defense is above average, and that's only when they're at Qwest. Marshawn Lynch is a nice runningback, but who's his backup? Who is one decent receiver? Who is their freaking quarterback? Russell Wilson reminds me a LOT of Pat White, and much to my dismay, we all know how that ended.
7. The Rams and Bills will finish near .500. Jeff Fisher is an awesome coach, that much I know from a casual Tennessee fan's standpoint. The Bills will rebound from a blowout loss to the inept Jets. Both teams have the talent and the leadership to get near .500. I think the Rams finish 7-9 and the Bills finish 8-8.
8. Five rookie quarterbacks start the year; no more than three will finish. Clearly I'm not high on Russell Wilson, and B-Dubs looked absolutely terrible in his first start in Cleveland. I'd say just wait for him to mature, but... oh wait, he's a rookie about to turn 30. Tannehill has the physical presence to be a great quarterback, but needs some serious work on all the little things before he's an NFL-ready quarterback.
RG3 and Andrew Luck? They're the real deal, and will amass 10 wins between the two of them.
9. The Baltimore Ravens will win the Super Bowl, and Ray Lewis will retire after the season. I mean honestly, is this even that bold? I really like the Harbaugh bowl for the Super Bowl this year. Joe Flacco looked very, very on top of his stuff on Sunday. This team was one dropped pass away from playing for the Lombardy trophy last season; they're better than the patriots. It's time to show it.
10. The NCAA National Championship will be a rematch of the 2006 Sugar Bowl:
West Virginia vs Georgia.
After watching Geno Smith vs Marshall, I am convinced he's found it. He's found what Cam Newton, Nick Saban, and Tim Tebow all have had in their respective college games. He won't just search for ways to win; he will win.
This is a prediction that two weeks ago, I would not have made. Frankly, I thought the Big 12 was way too deep for a team to run the table and go undefeated. Oklahoma's flop didn't matter, as I thought we were a better team than them anyway, but games at Texas and Iowa State scared me. Now, I'm convinced we will take care of business on the road. As an additional 10B prediction, let me go on the record saying that the winner of Kansas State at West Virginia will win the Big 12. I do not believe Oklahoma has the talent. As another addition, Texas will beat Kansas State.
Meanwhile, all Georgia has to do to win the East, it seems, is win at South Carolina. In the championship game, I think Georgia has a good, not great defense with a couple elite playmakers that can turn the tide (all you actually need in college football). On offense, Georgia is vastly superior to all teams from the West that haven't lost to Louisiana-Monroe, and that balance helps them win the SEC championship. Regardless of whether there are better teams out there, the SEC's media darling status slides UG into the national championship game. And we've got a rematch of a classic game.
Oh yeah, and Geno Smith will win the Heisman. Because if I'm predicting WVU to play for the crystal trophy, might as well go all here right?
Actually, that's pretty realistic. Geno seems poised to follow very closely to the model Cam Newton and particularly RG3 have the past two years. So this one, I'm surprisingly sure of, or at least as sure as you can be about a Heisman after Week 2-- which as it turns out is pretty sure. I have predicted the last three Heisman winners before the end of September. In Griffin's case, I said after that Week 1 TCU game that he'd win.
So there it is. I'm sure a few of you want to bash the homer picks so... you know, go ahead with that. Just... can we stop with the Xbox Live text messages? Because that's weird.
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