The Ebb and Flow of the 2013 NFL Season

The Denver Broncos came out of the blocks at the beginning of September and annihilated the defend champs. They looked maybe even better than the 16-0 Patriots of 2007 on offence. We now expect them to finish out 3-4 and hobble into the post season as a wild card behind a 2-14 team from last year, the incredibly fortunate KC Chiefs. We are not sure if Alex Smith can win a Superbowl, although playing against an NFC team should help, and we expect them to finish out 3-4 as well but we have expected the Chiefs to lose more than a couple of games but they didn't lose any.  New England opened the season in a last minute squeaker over Buffalo, against a rookie QB making his first NFL start ever no less, and it was feared that they would dig themselves into too massive of a hole with all new receivers among 14 rookies making the roster. With something like 60% of Brady's targets either gone to Denver, injured or charged with murder and then Vereen and Amendola getting hurt the season looked lost. Now they are favourites for one of the post seasons byes and could earn top seed with a little help from San Diego, Indy and even Denver.

The San Francisco 49ers opened the season much like Denver putting a beat down on the Packers with Kaepernick passing for over 400 yards however 9 weeks later it turns out that Kaepernick has passed for less than 100 yards as often as he has passed for more than 100 something yards, once each (46 and 238) and last week could not even muster enough offence to score a TD or surmount Carolina's 10 points (this is for a whole game). The Giants couldn't win a single game in September and October but may finish November and even December without losing a single game. Injuries and week-to-week ups and downs account for some of this but the ever increasing disparity due to bad salary cap decisions coming home to roost have magnified the disparity in schedules to heights never before attained. It is so bad that the Kansas City Chiefs, through no fault of their own, could finish at 14-2 without beating a team with a winning record. Strange times indeed.