I spent the entire offseason carefully researching these teams. Now I’ve seen them play three times in the preseason. So at this point, I’m pretty firm on what I expect them to do on the field when the season starts a week from Thursday.
Even without Julian Edelman, the Patriots still look like the class of the field. I’ve got their offense way above everyone else. Packers, Saints and Falcons are the other teams with some potential to score 50-plus touchdowns.
After those four, I’ve got eight other offenses scoring 41-plus touchdowns: Steelers, Raiders, Cowboys, Seahawks, Titans, Cardinals, Panthers and Chargers.
Down at the bottom, I’ve got the Jets and Jaguars. A couple of teams usually score something like 25-26 touchdowns, and they look like the frontrunners to have those kind of offenses. But a few other seemingly awful teams look like they’ll be decent at times. Rams, Browns and 49ers all seem to be headed in the right direction – still below-average offenses, but not as poor as what most people are expecting.
Offenses that seem to be on the way down: Ravens and Bills.
Below are my projections. The individual player projections all flow out of these numbers.
As usual with this kind of thing, let me know where you think I’m going wrong.
| PROJECTED OFFENSIVE TOUCHDOWNS | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Team | Pass | Run | Total |
| New England | 37.3 | 17.3 | 54.6 |
| Green Bay | 38.7 | 11.2 | 49.9 |
| New Orleans | 33.1 | 16.8 | 49.9 |
| Atlanta | 33.0 | 14.6 | 47.5 |
| Pittsburgh | 32.8 | 13.1 | 45.9 |
| Oakland | 29.8 | 14.7 | 44.5 |
| Dallas | 26.4 | 18.1 | 44.5 |
| Seattle | 30.1 | 13.4 | 43.5 |
| Tennessee | 27.7 | 15.5 | 43.2 |
| Arizona | 25.6 | 16.0 | 41.6 |
| Carolina | 24.0 | 17.4 | 41.4 |
| LA Chargers | 31.2 | 9.9 | 41.1 |
| Tampa Bay | 29.1 | 10.4 | 39.5 |
| Washington | 27.0 | 11.8 | 38.8 |
| Cincinnati | 24.8 | 13.9 | 38.7 |
| NY Giants | 30.6 | 7.4 | 37.9 |
| Philadelphia | 21.3 | 16.0 | 37.3 |
| Miami | 24.5 | 12.6 | 37.1 |
| Detroit | 27.7 | 8.5 | 36.2 |
| Kansas City | 21.4 | 14.2 | 35.7 |
| Indianapolis | 28.0 | 7.5 | 35.5 |
| Denver | 22.4 | 12.0 | 34.4 |
| Houston | 20.3 | 14.1 | 34.4 |
| Minnesota | 21.1 | 10.9 | 32.0 |
| San Francisco | 20.8 | 10.7 | 31.5 |
| Buffalo | 16.8 | 14.4 | 31.2 |
| Chicago | 19.0 | 12.0 | 31.0 |
| Baltimore | 20.8 | 9.9 | 30.7 |
| Cleveland | 17.6 | 12.8 | 30.4 |
| LA Rams | 19.2 | 11.2 | 30.4 |
| Jacksonville | 17.0 | 11.4 | 28.3 |
| NY Jets | 17.1 | 10.1 | 27.2 |
—Ian Allan