Every year, despite predictions and logic, at least one NFL team seems to make a startling jump. St. Louis, 1999; Baltimore, 2000; Seattle, 2005; Chicago, 2005; and last year's Cinderella, New Orleans. And the key too all of these teams? Pretty much nobody saw any of them breaking out — in fact, you could saw we were all sleeping on them.
For me, there are two basic types of sleepers: teams from the middle rising up to elite status and teams from the league's dregs climbing way up somewhere between heartwarmingly competitive and "CBS/FOX research staffs better look up the last time that city won a championship." And while it's true not many fans get excited just to see their 6-8 team hanging on as the last entry when the TV announcers show the playoff picture late in the season, in some NFL cities just feeling the breeze of the playoffs somewhere off in the distance counts as a major breakthrough.
With that in mind, I've used the process of elimination to determine who this year's sleeper(s) will be. I've used these ironclad criteria for picking the 2007 pigskin Cinderella:
1. True sleepers underperformed last year, either posting a bad record or achieving poorer results than expected. Wake up: New England, New York Jets, Baltimore, Indianapolis, San Diego, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, New Orleans, Seattle, Philadelphia, and New York Giants.
This list should look very familiar. These are the 2006 season's playoff teams, save Denver replacing Kansas City. Sorry to rehash this, Bronco fans (actually I'm not; consider this about .005% of my personal payback for 1986, 1987, and 1989), but it still boggles my mind that Denver lost at home to San Francisco in Week 17, giving the Chiefs Denver's annual spot as Peyton Manning's sacrificial lamb in the wildcard round. Given the more positive outlook and recent history of the Broncos, we'll just pretend the Colts drove over a blue and orange speed bump on the way to the Super Bowl rather than red and gold (although the way Peyton played in that game, let's call it a gentle idling).
Other cases could be made to include Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, or Jacksonville, and maybe even to exclude the Giants. The three AFC teams can hit the snooze button at this stage because a successful trip to the Super Bowl would be a pretty significant upgrade over missing the playoffs last season. Yes, recent history past last year matters, but we'll get to that later.
The Giants were the team that I was most hesitant to eliminate at this point. After all, they did post a dominating 8-8 record in a weak NFC and seemed determined to implode their season at every possible turning point. But this is a roster with tons of name-brand talent. And don't forget that not a soul will be willing to credit Eli Manning with any further success this year. If a playoff team from the previous season improves the next year and is met with "it's about time," assume that they're not a sleeper.
2. True sleepers have to pass the Madden Alternate Universe Test. Wake up: Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Jacksonville, and Carolina.
Have you ever been playing through about three or four seasons of a Madden franchise, only to see the same team posting a 14-2 record and get at least to the conference title game every year? (This also goes for Madden's NCAA counterpart, where I've seen Fresno State run off back-to-back national titles) I always seem to run into this, but many times, it is a team that you would never in this universe believe could be that dominant. This is the Madden Alternate Universe Test.
If I told you the Bengals would dominate the AFC for the next 3–5 years, would you blink? Obviously, nobody dominates football today the way the Cowboys and 49ers did in the 1990s or Pittsburgh did in the 1970s. But if Marvin Lewis uncovered a few unforeseen defensive playmakers (and a stash of Get-Out-of-Jail-Free cards), this would be possible, right? The same goes for the Steelers, Jags, and Panthers. If you plowed through a few seasons of Madden and saw repeat championships from any of those franchises, you could believe that happened in the same universe that we live in now. To be a sleeper, this kind of make-believe dominance has to be considered only possible in an alternate reality.
3. True sleepers need to still have their sleeper virginity or something close to it. Wake up: Arizona and Detroit.
"Arizona's primed for a big year with a cache of offensive talent and relatively weak division." "The Lions have a ton of young talent at wide receiver and a mix of vets and developing playmakers at key positions." If you can't remember if you read quotes like these about a team since the last presidential election, then that team can't be a sleeper. Sorry, Peter King, but you don't get credit if Detroit makes a run this year, as you've picked Detroit since seemingly before your beloved Starbucks was born.
4. True sleepers don't have quarterback-dog issues to deal with. Wake up: Atlanta.
I don't mean to get preachy here, but when your projected starting QB pleads to killing dogs and your replacement starting QB has been a dog, your 7–9 team isn't making any sort of leap to elite status. Maybe that's just me.
That leaves us with 13 possible sleepers. It's far easier for the lowly teams to become marginally above mediocre than it is for the middling to become stellar. So let's try to weed out some of the middle of the pack who would have to challenge for conference titles to be considered sleepers.
5. True sleepers trying to move from the two-story colonial to the nine-bathroom mansion need to have held their current real estate for a while. Wake up: Tennessee and San Francisco.
Call this the Seattle model. Here are the Seahawks' records from 2001 through 2004, the year before they went to the Super Bowl: 9-7, 7-9, 10-6, and 9-7. Granted, the last two resulted in playoff appearances (both losses), but Seattle owned mediocrity during that span. Then, presto, in 2005, they won 13 games and held serve as the NFC's top team. On a side note, it's also worth reminiscing that the Seahawks were in the AFC West through 2001. It's hard to imagine Seattle gaining steam as steadily as they did while swimming in the same pool as Denver, L.T., and the Dick Vermeil Chiefs.
Anyway, sorry to the Titans and 49ers, but the road to the top is paved with gradual improvement or supernatural fortune (such as Reggie Bush falling from the sky) — there is no in-between. My second example to back this up is the tragic, personal tale of the 2001/2002 Browns. Tabbed by many, including the all-knowing John Madden, no less, as a sleeper, the Browns peaked by posting 7-9 in 2001 and 9-7 in 2002 (including a playoff berth despite being basically the ninth best team in the AFC, which led to Kelly Holcomb's 400+ yards and Dennis Northcutt's drop, and ... sorry). And after that? Well, let's just say the Browns have added three top-six picks in the interim. The moral of the story: Tennessee and San Francisco aren't going to improve on 2006 by more than a game or two. That's not what a sleeper does.
6. True sleepers rise up to fill power vacuums, and there aren't any Tuscan villas or country club memberships for sale in the AFC. Wake up: Miami, Buffalo, and Kansas City.
In case hours of TV, yards of print, and terabytes of electronic publication haven't gotten the point across, the AFC is a tad better than the NFC right now. So for any of the remaining mediocre AFC teams to improve enough to deserve sleeperdom, they would have to join the ranks of Indy, San Diego, and New England (and possibly Baltimore/Cincy/Pittsburgh) as viable dozen-win teams. Feel like rolling the dice on that outcome?
Similarly, nature abhors a vacuum, and right now, the NFC is sucking very hard. Just ask the 2005, three-win New Orleans Saints. Therefore, if anyone is going to jump up to be a Super Bowl contender from out of the blue, it has to be in the NFC.
7. True sleepers reflect the fact that turnovers are the most over-looked, under-appreciated stat in the game. Wake up: St. Louis and Minnesota.
Want an easy way to turn the standings upside down, potential sleeper? Stop ending your own possessions by giving the ball away and start ending the other guys' by taking it away. Now last year's biggest sleeper, New Orleans, was hardly the king of turnover margin, coming in at –2. So why do I bring this up? Because it's a heck of an improvement over their 2005 turnover margin of –21. Adding Drew Brees and Reggie Bush is helpful; shifting 19 possessions 180 degrees in your favor is season-altering. The 2005 Bears, who turned the previous year's 5-11 into 11-5? They swung turnover margin from –8 to +6 during that span.
So, okay, better turnover margin means more wins. And if we know a team's change in turnovers, we can figure out if they reached the lofts of late January. Of course, at the point of the season where we know a team's turnover margin, hello, we also know its win-loss record, which I think is the best predictor of improvement in wins.
So how can we predict change in turnover margin? Well, I'll leave to the tea-leaf readers to try to guess how rookie quarterbacks and newly-formed 3-4 defenses will affect turnovers. I'm happy to settle for some simple answers from common sense. Specifically, teams already near the top of the league in turnover margin probably aren't going to make leaps even further forward (that would be you, St. Louis at +12 and Minnesota at +6). To give some perspective, last year's leader was Baltimore at +15.
That leaves us with six teams, three in each conference: Cleveland, Oakland, Houston, Washington, Tampa Bay, and Green Bay. For the first five of those teams, it's hard to imagine 2007 being worse than 2006. In fact, those five teams all earned top-eight draft picks last year (and it could have been top-seven had Houston not lost out on tiebreakers). So they're all going to achieve at least as much, as little as it was, as last year. The question is which will achieve way more than last year.
In looking at the sleepers of the past decade or so, it becomes evident that in none of those cases did the addition of one individual completely shift the team's performance. For every Drew Brees that lifts a New Orleans team, there's a Trent Dilfer who certainly didn't earn a Canton reservation. Ditto that for head coaches: Lovie Smith certainly turned around the Bears, but what about Mike Holmgren, who was on the verge of being fired in Seattle? However, in all of the cases, one of the team's units showed a dominant level of performance. Baltimore and Chicago rode brutally stingy defenses deep into the winter. St. Louis, New Orleans, and (to some extent) Seattle put points on the board better than most.
So what does that have to do with our remaining six sleeper candidates? How about rule No. 8:
8. True sleepers can lean on the dominant performance on one side of the ball. Wake up: Cleveland, Oakland, Washington, and Tampa Bay.
Admittedly, this is the most subjective of the sleeper rules. But looking at these teams, it's pretty evident to anyone who watched the NFL last year and followed the ensuing offseason that Cleveland and Oakland's offenses and defenses won't be approaching dominance anytime soon. Tampa Bay and Washington make stronger cases, but the Bucs' D and Washington's O are both old. Jeff Garcia gives Jon Gruden a viable signal caller, but who will he light-up the scoreboard with? And the Redskins' defense has shouldered quite a load of late, but do you think they'd like to have Champ Bailey back? Sorry, no breakouts here.
So that leaves us with two Cinderellas: Green Bay and Houston. The Texans make sense in some ways. Remember the importance of turnovers? Well, Houston was -5 last year, which ranked 13th in the AFC. If they can jump up to the break-even point, that would help a bunch. They've also added an experienced back in Ahman Green to an offense that quietly ran pretty well with former hobbit Samkon Gado and the Ron Dayne Trayne. And if Matt Schaub realizes the potential he showed as a backup, it's not unrealistic to see nine wins for Houston.
But what about Green Bay? Well the Pack was also -5 in turnovers. And they have young weapons (yeah, that's a stretch) on offense in Brandon Jackson and Greg Jennings. But let's not kid ourselves. Nobody has more control over this team than Brett Favre. When Favre is on, he's one of the game's all-time legends. And even in his advanced age, Favre has had high points. In fact, 2004 may have been his best season. But the most glaring factor in turning around that turnover margin is Favre's decision-making. Favre has to cut about five picks off of his 2006 total of 18 (which was the exact number of TDs he threw, too). So tell me if this sounds familiar, Cheeseheads: in 2007, where Brett Favre goes, the Packers go. That shouldn't make anybody sleep easy in Green Bay.
So the final verdict? Consider this a medium-high endorsement of Houston and puzzled, lukewarm nod to Green Bay maybe making a jump. But truthfully, none of these teams looks like a lock to reverse its fortunes drastically. And you know what? That's exactly what we love about this league. Somebody we've mostly written off will have a legit shot. Happy Opening Weekend, everybody.
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