Sorry to break up this pessimism party, but what about our schedule makes you think 8-8 is our result?
The thing we must remember is, it's all about match-ups. Now, bargaining that the offensive line improves its play and Matt Leinart becomes a more mature quarterback, we will win the ten games against the Redskins, Seahawks, Rams, Lions, Browns, Buccaneers, and 49ers by default. Statistically, that is seven teams on the wrong half of the points allowed chart. They gave up 343, 381, 356, 353, 398, 376 and 412 points. Even if two of the defenses improve, and my money would be on Tampa Bay and either Seattle or San Francisco, that's still five or six games I like my chances on if just our offense performs.
I really only see three sure losses, and I think we'll lose two more to go 11-5.
I think the Saints are a loss, Bengals are a loss, and we'll split with the Seahawks.
The other two could be the Rams and maybe the Steelers.
Here's the lowdown on defense. Our defense will hopefully have top notch corners who can make picks because of our 13 projected opposing QB's, five had INT% rankings of
32. Ben Roethlisberger 4.9% who our coach should know pretty well
30. Charlie Frye 4.3%
23. Jon Kitna 3.7% who was sacked 62 times this year
21. Alex Smith 3.6% who is 0 for 4 trying to beat the Cardinals
18. Michael Vick 3.4%, who was 31st in completion percentage
This doesn't include young Jason Campbell or Chris Simms, or the bad in the red zone Jake Delhomme or the fumble prone Steve McNair, Drew Brees, or Matt Hasselbeck each of which cost his team at least one game with turnovers.
Simply put, Marc Bulger, Carson Palmer, Drew Brees and Matt Hasselback are the only elite QB's I see on the schedule. The game against the Ravens and the two against the Seahawks are the only games against playoff teams from 2006.
