Quote Originally Posted by DoctorSuccess:
Between those two, I would take Buffalo. Atlanta plays well in their home openers and have double revenge. Baltimore had a lot of guys injured last year and many of them will sit out the preseason. They could be rusty in Week One.
I'm not a big proponent of 'double revenge' tbh. I find teams often split their div games if they are closely matched but when one team can beat the other twice, they often can beat them 3 or 4 times in a row as they just 'have their number' as they say.
Atlanta lost 8 of their last 11, 2 of those wins were over Tennessee by 3, and to Jax by 6 in a game they got outgained. The 3rd was to a Carolina team that was looooong overdue their 1st loss.
My mian concern is Winston seems to start slow both in seasons and i games. And their defense always seemed to lack the ability to get stops on key 3rd downs.
Baltimore tanked even worse than Atlanta and they don't have a guy like Julio to stretch the field. Also Buffalo's QB took much better care of the ball, they had the 5th least INTs per game. Baltimore surprisingly had the 2nd most. Buffalo was pretty good at causing turnovers while Tampa didn't get any INTs in the last 3 games and rarely won the turnover battle in their games overall.
Baltimore, TB and Buffalo were the 3 worst teams in the league in penalties. I remember watching TB especially they always got penalties at the worst times, like on 3rd down, or in the red zone.
So those angles, combined with the new coach for TB makes me like Buffalo more as well. They had the top rushing offense last year also.
And the clincher is that ATL plays at Oakland week 2, with NO and Car on deck. So a West coast trip to an improved Oakland squad who will be playing their home opener, is the only non-division game in the first four weeks for ATL so that is a major go against spot and I'll eait for that. It actually might be my first large play of the season especially if ATL wins and Oak loses week 1. Because ATL went 8-8 last year and all 8 losses were in the last 11 games. That doesn't bode well for the start of this year.
As for TB, they lost their last 4 and start on the road their first 2. Maybe their home opener in wk 3 vs the Rams will be a good spot to play on them.
So thank you for weighing in all, I concur with Buffalo.