Just A Reminder

Even thought the Packers looked fantastic last night, I thought this would be a good time to remind everyone that pre-season games don't mean much of anything, and that everyone should keep their expectations in check.

While I think this team has the potential to be elite, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-4, they also have a much tougher schedule than last year* and I can easily imagine them going 8-8 (or worse) and missing the playoffs. And if that happens it's entirely possible that they are still a good team.


*I've told this to a lot of people and I invariably get back a response to the effect of "How do you know? The NFL is really unpredictable and while this looks like a tough schedule now it may not by the end of the season."

It's true that this schedule may not be as tough as I think it will be, but I feel like people are ignoring last year's schedule, and we do know concretely that that was a truly simple schedule. Perhaps the schedule this year will not be "difficult", but it is hard to imagine a schedule including the Jets, Patriots, Giants, Falcons, Cowboys, Eagles and Redskins will be as putrid as a schedule that included St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Cleveland, and Seattle. (And a resting Arizona Cardinals team.) Detroit will also almost certainly be better (as they say, you can't fall off the floor). So Buffalo is terrible, and maybe the 49ers will regress since Alex Smith is still awful, and maybe the Falcons aren't as good as people think, and maybe either Kevin Kolb or Donovan McNabb struggles, and maybe Chad Henne kills Miami, and Maybe Revis misses the first 8 games.

These things are all possible, but while there was very little chance of St. Louis or Cleveland or Seattle or Tampa Bay (even though they won, they were still terrible) putting together a decent team, there is a good chance the several of the 2010 group will.