Our Own Midterm Midtacular

It’s week 10 and every team has played exactly 8 games. So I think it’s time for a halftime look at how the season has been going and if I look stupid in my predictions yet.

In the AFC, I picked the Colts to win it all and they’ve been great. No, they haven’t been blowing people out all the time, but they’re undefeated again. Plus, they just beat the other two best teams in the conference, back to back, ON THE ROAD! Yikes. The obvious question is if they will fade down the stretch and lose momentum like they did last year. I think last year, they really had two problems: they got distracted after getting a big lead and then with Tony Dungy’s son, and they ran into a Steelers team that had incredible momentum. I think they’ll be more focused this year, and they probably won’t have to deal with a hot team like that.

Of course, for all their regular season success, they’ll likely have to get by the Patriots in the postseason. The Pats have the easiest road to the playoffs because this division sucks. Sorry, good doctor, but the Jets aren’t even that good, and the fact that they’re 4-4 right now speaks more about how bad their competition is.

The Broncos have looked great defensively, and that should be enough, though their offense sucks. The only thing they have going for them is recent success against New England. The Ravens have asserted control of the north and with the Bengals and Steelers looking down, should have an easy time. The Chargers have a solid team and Rivers has been pretty good, so I think they’ll be in it with ease.

The only really interesting races here are for home field and the last playoff spot. Those five teams I mentioned are all in, I’m calling now, without any problems. I don’t know who will win the west, be it Broncos or Chargers, but both will get to 10 wins. The real question is how these five teams finish for seedings. Plus, who amongst the Jaguars, Chiefs, and Bengals will step it up for that last playoff spot. My money is on Jacksonville, since they have the best defense and a relatively easy division.

Here’s my halfway prediction of how things go here:

Indy 14-2
New England 12-4
Denver 11-5
Baltimore 10-6
San Diego 10-6
Jacksonville 9-7

In the playoffs, I’m still going with the Colts, especially since they’ll be at home. But I think about the Pats, Chargers, and Ravens, and it won’t be easy. I said before the season that the Ravens were my dark horse team, and I can see them causing havoc in the playoffs.

The NFC is much uglier. I hoped that the Eagles would get a great start before now, when their schedule gets tough. I picked the Panthers to win the conference easily, as did many experts.

Right now? They’re both 4-4. Uuuuuuhggghghgggggggggggggggggggghghhghhh…..

The Bears looked great initially, but have had some bad games of late, and against bad teams, which is troubling. The Giants looked bad at first, but have been doing good, but then again, they have injuries all over the place. Same with the Seahawks.

The Rams and Vikings looked frisky, but they’re both 4-4. The Cowboys have been up and down more than Michael Irvin was when he did all that crack in Dallas. The Redskins suck, but somehow I think they remain dangerous. The Falcons, who I also picked as a sleeper, have looked great at times, awful at others. The Bucs just completely fell off. Thus, all the predicted contenders have serious problems.

The only team besides maybe the Bears that has to be feeling good right now is New Orleans, coming through big. I didn’t think they were for real, but they kept winning games and making me look dumb. I’m still scared to pick them, because they’re inexperienced in parts and this franchise has a terrible history of falling apart late (see 2002). Plus, they’ve been playing on a lot of emotion. But they look great so far, and their offense is as good as any in the conference right now with the multiple weapons and Brees doing great. I just don’t know.

So perhaps my two pet teams, one I love and one I respect, still have a chance. I think I can pencil the Bears and Giants in. The Seahawks should win their awful division. They haven’t been that bad without their stars, and I’m losing trust in the Rams. The Falcons should be good with Vick improving, and they can get to 9 or 10 wins with their schedule, but they can’t have any more games like last week. And that takes care of each division winner.

But who will the wild cards be? Screw it, I was confident before the season and I’m not bailing yet. Some team always makes a run in the second half. I think our boys can do it this year. I’ll probably be wrong, but I’m sticking to my guns here. In all honesty, I do believe that there will be a huge logjam for those last two spots, and I see a bunch of teams finishing win 8 or 9 wins and it all coming down to tiebreakers. It’s happened a lot in recent NFC seasons, so why not now? The Eagles, Saints, Panthers, Cowboys, Rams and Vikings will all be neck and neck during the last weeks of the season. It’ll be fun to watch.

I know I was despondent last week, but now I’m not so glum about the Birds’ chances. They need to go 5-3 to get to 9 wins, which will be tough, but it’s not impossible anymore. They can take Tennessee and Washington, the latter twice, I hope. They can probably get back at Dallas or the Giants, both of whom have problems. That leaves them with games at Indianapolis, and at home vs. Carolina and Atlanta. All tough, but they can probably squeeze one out of there. That would get them to 9 and it would probably work.

Carolina’s schedule is fairly easy too, as long as they take care of business against their division. If they can beat the Saints, not only will they gain ground on New Orleans, they’ll have the tiebreaker advantage over them. I think they’ll get to 10 wins, actually. I’ll be disappointed if they don’t.

New Orleans has a tough road, so I’ll continue to doubt them. I don’t mind if they prove me wrong, because they’re a great story and fun to watch. It’s just that their second half is brutal. St. Louis has a fairly easy schedule, but they lost to the 49ers and they can’t mess up like that. The Vikings might have the easiest schedule, but they’ve looked like crap lately and losing to the 49ers is also not a good sign for them. Dallas has a rough schedule. There’s way too much craziness in Dallas this season for them to have any success.

My guess is that the Eagles sneak in with 9 wins, while the Rams and Vikings also get close but don’t make it, possibly by a tiebreaker. The Saints and Cowboys aren’t making it. I can say that.

NFC predictions:

Chicago 12-4
N.Y. Giants 11-5
Atlanta 10-6
Seattle 9-7 (at least, probably 10)
Carolina 10-6
Philly 9-7

In the playoffs, I won’t be too certain about the Bears or Giants. They have flaws. It should also be noted that the Panthers destroyed BOTH of them last year in the playoffs, ON THE ROAD. Carolina comes in this scenario with a lot of momentum. They’ll avenge that loss to Seattle last year, because the Seahawks aren’t nearly as good now. They can get through those top teams.

Wait a minute! I just picked Carolina and Indianapolis to meet …. again! Did I learn nothing from the first half of the season?

Yes. I have. But I still say the Colts will beat the Panthers in the Super Bowl. Call me stubborn.

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By the way, the press has been buzzing out here over the whole 49ers debacle. The most likely scenario, it seems, is that they move a few miles down the road to Santa Clara. That really wouldn’t be such a huge deal. You see, I think football is more about areas than cities. You could put an NFL team almost anywhere and they would succeed. When you only have one game per week, on a weekend, people can travel from all over the place to get there. They won’t have to rely on public transportation as much. It’s all about tailgating.

This is how teams in small markets survive (also, albeit, with the salary cap and revenue sharing). For example, Green Bay is a small city, but they get people from all over the state of Wisconsin, and all corners of the Midwest every week to fill Lambeau. Jacksonville and Tampa survive because all of Florida is football crazy. The Eagles are in a major city, but they also get a lot of people from the middle and eastern parts of PA, South Jersey, and Delaware.

Thus, you can put a team in the suburbs or the epicenter of a state without too many big cities (like Carolina, which serves two states) and do well. Football stadiums need space. Again, the Eagles didn’t get a new location for the new stadium because they need space, and they need to be accessible to I-76 and I-95. This is also why the Jets and Giants play in Northern Jersey as opposed to the city. The Jets, in fact, have tried several times to get a stadium in New York proper, but there’s just no space.

So, if the Niners move to Santa Clara, it really won’t change much. I love San Francisco, and it’s one of the few west coast cities that has a great sports tradition (that’s a whole other rant in itself), but the reality is that it’s crowded and hard to get around in. I just tried it a few weeks ago. It’s more like an Eastern city; much more than Los Angeles is. Most likely, the Niners get a large percentage of their fans from all over the Bay Area, especially the suburbs and fancy new towns like Palo Alto and so forth. The city itself doesn’t provide too much support anymore. And everyone drives out here, even more than back home. So, moving it out seems like a perfectly reasonable solution. They still have all those bay area people, and it will be warmer and nicer than Candlestick.

Now, I don’t like it when pro teams blackmail citizens with the threat of moving to get funding for new stadiums. The NFL is actually the worst league at doing this, which I’ve ranted about before (see Insurance Runs: Maybe Bud is not Paul's bitch? ). I won’t go into that here. But this is not moving a team across the country. It’s the same area. They’ll still be the 49ers, though they may say California or Bay Area as opposed to San Francisco.

I don’t see what the problem is. Football is on a higher plane than other sports right now. Baseball and basketball generally need stadiums in urban cities that will attract people nightly instead of weekly. They usually go for the big markets with public transportation, or with the NBA, small markets without any other pro team in town (Portland, Salt Lake City, Orlando, Sacramento). Football is better suited in open areas. You need that space.

Okay, that's the most likely solution. But what if they do move more than that? I already spoke on here a few weeks ago about the prospect of teams that could move to L.A. I didn’t include the 49ers then, and I don’t know if I should now. But if they consider it, I’m not going to be as happy, even though I will have a team to watch here. There are a million rants I could go on about this (how this city has terrible fans, how the bay actually has good fans, how misery equals good fans, why the NFL is more evil than you think, why I hate life, why it doesn’t work geographically, and so on and so on). I could do this for hours. But I won’t here, because I already have many times and I’m sure I will again in the futch.

No, I’m just going to focus on one aspect of that possible move: names.

Names?

You see, LA has terrible names for teams. This is because most of them started elsewhere and moved here, much like our entire population. The Dodgers started in Brooklyn, where trolleys were the rage at the turn of the century. The Lakers started in Minnesota, known as the land of a thousand lakes. Even the Clippers were named because they used to be in San Diego, where the naval yard had those old clipper ships. Here, none of them really make sense, at all, but they stuck because they were catchy. AND, sadly, the only teams to originate here (Angels and Mighty Ducks) had their names exploited by their ruthless Disney owners for lame, clichéd, family-friendly sports movies. Suck.

I suppose it’s difficult to come up with a proper name for a team out here. I’ve tried, and it’s hard to emulate life in So Cal in a catchy name. The Tacos? Meh, though I like the marketing prospects. The Traffic? Lame. Spectator Slowing? Ble chhh. That’s almost annoying as the phenomenon itself. The Palms? Sounds like they should be playing at a casino. The Mexican Moustaches? The Migrants? The Gueros? The Riots? The Gauchos? The Racist Cops? The Guys Standing in Front of Home Depot Looking for Work? The People Brought onto 24 Because They Were Shorter Than Kiefer? The Executives with the Prefix “Stein” in Their Last Names? Very, very un-P.C. (but true). The Interchanges? The Highways? The Sun? The Smog? The Box Offices? The Actors? The Comedians? The Oscars? The Stars? The Lattes? Way too generic and weak. The Monologues? Too vaginal.

If the 49ers move here, this creates some interesting choices. They were named after the gold rush of 1849, which brought a lot of people to the bay area, so it would again be strange. But then, it also helped the entire state become a true state, so it technically could be used at any location in California and be somewhat relevant. I like Niners. It’s a catchy name. We have the Sixers back home, and honestly, these are the only numbers that sound good as teams. The oners? Twoers? Fourers? Seveners? Eighters? Eleveners? Nothing else really works well besides 6 and 9.

Hmm…. 6 and 9….

You know, I was thinking about this and a hilarious thought popped into my head. If the 49ers did indeed move down here, most people would just call them the Niners and that would be fine. Niners, Dodgers, Lakers, Clippers. It fits. But over time, I’m sure that most writers and fans would eventually succumb to the joke (I can hear it already) that Niners is actually short for 69ers. And no, people, that’s not a chorological number.

But then, I realized that this obscene joke that would undoubtedly perpetuate itself here would actually be one of the few nicknames that has relevance to the area. Suppose they build the stadium in the valley, which has been thrown around as a possibility. Wouldn’t this name make as much sense as anything else? I mean, many other teams rely on local industries and traditions for names. For example, in Green Bay, they packed meats. In Pittsburgh, they made steel. In Seattle, they make sonic planes. In Houston, they launch rockets and astro(nauts, which is their actual full name). In Orlando, they have the Magic Kingdom, where Walt devours Cuban children. In Colorado, there are the rockies in full view. In Milwaukee, they have beer brewers. And so on and so on.

So………..

In Van Nuys, they make porn.

And that is the one and only reason I would like the 49ers to move to Los Angeles. So we can call them the 69ers and it will finally be the team name that fits this city perfectly. Other than that, no, stay up north.

With that in mind, let’s get ready for the second half!