Tag Archives: 2022 NFL season

NFL

NFL All-Rookie Team 2022/23:

January 17, 2023 hallachhalil Leave a comment

Since I managed to predict five or six Wildcard games correctly and therefore already broke down all but one of the Divisional Round matchups in my preview of the full 2023 playoffs, I decided to once again put together my all-rookie team at this point, where I fill out a full starting lineup of 11 offensive and defensive players each, along with a group of four specialists. I listed seven key backups on each side of the ball, plus three more honorable mentions, who largely didn’t get a chance to put together a full body of work, along with a couple of names who I thought deserved to be mentioned.

For the purposes of this list, I only considered regular season performance. If I felt compelled to do so, I may have mentioned what a couple of these players did in the Wildcard Round, but it’s not taken into account in terms of the players I chose.

Here’s my squad:

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NFL

Predicting the full 2023 NFL playoffs:

January 12, 2023 hallachhalil Leave a comment

With Super Wildcard Weekend upon us, it was time for me to give you my full predictions, leading all the way up to Super Bowl LVII. I analyze all 14 teams, break down each matchups schematically and give my reasoning for who I think advances.

Of course the very first thing I saw once I finished recording were the news on Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa already being ruled out for this weekend. So a couple of my thoughts on him are irrelevant for now, but it doesn’t really change anything.

NFL

Most dominant elements of the 2022/23 NFL Playoffs:

January 5, 2023 hallachhalil Leave a comment

I struggled to just let this write-up flow as I was typing it up, once I had collected all the information, due to the remaining uncertainty about the health of Bills safety Damar Hamlin. This is a major challenge for all parties involved and what actually happens on the field seems secondary right now, but NFL life goes on and maybe just talking some ball will be welcome change for people, who don’t quite know how to deal with all of this. Plus, we’re continuing to get positive news about the young man, thankfully. I actually couldn’t state some things definitely, as it pertains to the effect of remaining regular season games on the final playoff picture.

There’s one more week left in the 2022 regular season, to finalize the playoff picture and upcoming matchups, along with whatever the NFL does with the Bills-Bengals matchup. Before we get into those and the specific X’s and O’s, I wanted to look at all the teams in the running and talk about the ten biggest strengths or most dangerous elements across them. All but one of these groups associated with them have already clinched a playoff spot, along with the Dolphins, who will host the Jets in basically a pick’em this Sunday and need a win in combination with the Bills beating the Patriots – a matchup that still brings some questions with how relevant it will be for playoff seeding. Still, therefore Miami actually has a slightly higher chance at a Wildcard spot than their division rivals.

So without any further proclamations, here are the ten elements that stood out most to me from this pool:

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NFL

The five biggest questions (and answers) for the 2022/23 NFL playoff race:

December 21, 2022 hallachhalil Leave a comment

We’re just three weeks away from the regular season being wrapped up and as I went through the remaining schedule, there’s literally just one game left with zero playoff implications and two others that by all likelihood will have no impact at all. Therefore, I decided to break down a bunch of these different scenarios, by formulating five questions that are most prevalent as it pertains to the ultimate playoff picture, and handing out my predictions for how I believe things will play out.

Once again, I want to thank playoffpredictors.com, for helping me not go completely insane as I went through this exercise, working through all the different possibilities and having to go down the steps of tie-breaking procedures, depending on two or three teams having the same record, etc.

I decided to not make a separate point for “who will earn the final Wildcard berth in the AFC”, since the Chargers have a playoff probability of about 80+ percent and the Ravens sit above 98% right now. So really it should be a three-headed race between the AFC East teams not named Buffalo, and since I don’t have much belief in the Patriots, this will most likely come down the season finale between the Dolphins and Jets, as the atter would hold the head-to-head tiebreaker with a win and same record ultimately. A paragraph was enough to cover this and maybe I’ll do a full preview of that contest anyway, if things break the right way.

Now let’s get to my five actual questions:

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NFL

Mid-2022 NFL season awards:

November 9, 2022 hallachhalil Leave a comment

After the first quarter of the season, we put together a power ranking of all 32 NFL teams. So once again, it felt appropriate to revisit my predictions for all the major awards and give you my top three names for each of them, as we’ve finished up the first half of the year now. Some of those I still look in very much the same way, while the rookies and coaches particularly are quite different than I expected

With the NFL adding a 17th game last season and therefore an 18th week, now the mid-way point has moved to past week nine. That means some of the players listed here have already played in each of those weeks, while others have only had the chance to participate in eight contests. Due to that, I will use per-game stats more frequently than totals, in order to allow us to make easier comparisons between names.

Here’s who I’d give each award if the season ended today:

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NFL

Power Rankings after the first quarter of the 2022 NFL season:

October 5, 2022 hallachhalil Leave a comment

Similar to what I did last week, with the top five college players at each position a month into the season, I wanted to take a look at the landscape of the NFL, only from a team perspective, ranking them from number one all the way to 32. Due to the addition of a 17^th game last year, the quarter-pole isn’t quite exact, but I think this a great time to give a resumé on what we’ve seen so far.

These are not “power ratings”, but rather rankings based on my film study, putting performances into context and using (advanced) statistics to support my case. Therefore you will see teams with worse records or even those who have lost to others in their direct matchups, be higher up than those other squads.

This is what I came up with:

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NFL

What’s wrong with the 0-2 Bengals?

September 23, 2022 hallachhalil Leave a comment

After breaking onto the scene and representing the AFC in Super Bowl LVI, the Cincinnati Bengals have struggled so far in 2022 and are still looking for their first win. I decided to dive into the tape, in order to analyze their issues in pass protections, how offensive tendencies have been holding them back and why they’ve only scored 27 combined points through two games.

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Three takeaways from each NFL week one game (of 2022):

September 15, 2022 hallachhalil Leave a comment

Week one of the 2022 season is in the books and there’s a lot to talk about. Once again, I wanted to come up with three statements/discussion points for all 16 games. However, I didn’t just write about the stuff I picked up whilst seeing some plays pop up, but rather due my excitement for the NFL being back, I committed myself to really digging into the tape and statistics of every contests. That’s why this is only coming out on the day week two is already about to start again, even if I wanted it to be published earlier.

Now, week one can be a giant liar and we have to take everything with a grain of salt in the grand scheme of things, but I feel pretty strongly about some of these takeaways and believe they can paint a good picture on the league’s current landscape. I’ll talk about individual players, position groups and teams as a whole, trying to understand what we saw in this first slate of games and what it means going forward.

Let’s dive into these games:

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NFL

Predicting the entire 2022 NFL season:

September 4, 2022 hallachhalil Leave a comment

Less than a week away from the 2022 NFL season kickoff game between the Bills and Rams, it’s time for me to once again predict the entire year, going through every single award, presenting my playoff picture and projecting forward who will square off in Super Bowl LVII.

As far as the awards are concerned, I will go through my top three candidates for each honor, explaining why I believe they will receive votes, along with just listing a couple of honorable mentions at the end of each paragraph.

To determine playoff seeding, I actually had to go a step further and yet again predict all 272 games, work through tiebreakers to figure out how exactly these teams stack up and then put them in order, so I could ultimately pick my winners for each matchup, leading up the eventual NFC and AFC representatives in the big game at the end of the season in Arizona.

(I added the Excel sheet with ever single game picked at the very bottom, if you’re interested.)

Here’s how I believe things will shake out:

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