King Kaufman's Sports Daily
NFC preview: The Eagles won't be as bad, the Seahawks might not be as good and the Giants just can't repeat.
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Sept. 6, 2006 | The 2006 NFL season opens Thursday under a cloud of doubt and steroid suspicion.
Oh, wait. No it doesn't. That's just baseball.
The same fan culture and media that are ready to rewrite the record books and pillory any slugger who looks good in Under Armour or hits four home runs in a week as a probable juicer, the same Congress that drags baseball in for regular show trials and admonishments about the youth of our nation: A group shrug at men the size of buildings running 4.5 40s and NFL team doctors going to the pokey for handing out steroid prescriptions like aspirin samples to active players.
Works for me. I don't get it, but it's more fun to talk about pinpoint passing than syringes, more interesting to think about how somebody might stop Peyton Manning, which is theoretically possible, than to think about how we might stop elite professional athletes from trying to cheat, which is not.
So we turn to Part 1 of our annual ridiculous and almost certainly disastrous NFL predictions, the NFC. It's been the lesser conference the last few seasons, and while I think it will be so again this year, I also think the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way. We'll assay the AFC Thursday, which is Opening Day, the Miami Dolphins and Pittsburgh Steelers kicking off in prime time after some bad entertainment.
In one of this column's more pointless traditions, we swim against the tide and go west to east. Teams are listed in order of predicted finish, with 2005 standing in parentheses.)
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NFC WEST [PERMALINK]
Seattle Seahawks (13-3, first place in 2005): The conference champions are banged up coming out of preseason, especially at wide receiver. They lost Steve Hutchinson off the offensive line, which is a huge loss, and also said goodbye to receiver Joe Jurevicius and half their starting secondary. Watch out for running back Shaun Alexander not being quite as good without Hutchinson, and that's not to mention the Madden curse. The defense has been upgraded, with linebacker Julian Peterson the big add.
The Seahawks are still the favorite in a weak division and there's no real reason to think they'll take a big step back, except that Super Bowl teams often do, especially Super Bowl losers. But unless Alexander can repeat his record-breaking season -- and how often does that happen? -- and quarterback Matt Hasselbeck can be as sharp as he was late last year, they could take a small step back.
Next page: Why the Giants won't win the East. Plus: Should the Packers have just cut Brett Favre?