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The Panthers, Jets, Lions, Colts, and Browns are Natalie Miller’s five NFL teams who might make the playoffs after postseason droughts in 2022.
We see it every NFL season, where multiple teams who failed to make the playoffs the year before make the leap the following season and make noise in the postseason chase. Whether it’s due to more team chemistry, solid additions in free agency, key coaching additions, or rookies contributing at a high level.
Let’s take a look at five teams who very well may be playing in the postseason in just a few months after playoff droughts in the 2022 season.
Power Rankings! With training camps just around the corner, Natalie Miller takes stock of all 32 NFL teams.
Now that we have wrapped up the draft and the majority of free agency, we have a pretty safe view of how most rosters will fill out. Barring any sort of pre-season trade, which of course is always possible, it all comes down to trimming the fat off the rosters and settling some positional battles.
Training camps are just around the corner, preseason football starts in less than a month, and before you know it, the 2023 NFL regular season will be upon us. With all that in mind, it’s time to take stock of each NFL team, seeing where they stack up in the Training Camp edition of Touchdown Wire’s Power Rankings!
From Vita Vea to Chris Jones, here’s Doug Farrar’s list of the 11 best interior defensive linemen in the NFL today.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. That simple truth is important for the purposes of our list of the NFL’s best interior defensive linemen because we’re in a league where quick-game passing concepts are perhaps more prevalent than ever. And with those zero- and one-stop drops, and one- to three-level RPOs, your edge-rushers aren’t always going to get to the quarterback in time.
So, it behooves your NFL franchise to develop as much interior pressure as possible. That’s where the straight line comes in.
In a recent episode of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell,” Greg and I got into the traits for every player aligned to every gap along the defensive line, and those big guys getting to the quarterback made up a big part of that.
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The attributes required to make our list of the best interior definitive linemen coming into the 2023 season are as follows:
So, here’s our list of the 11 best interior defensive linemen in the NFL today. You can read the rest of our position lists linked below, leading up to our list of the 101 best players in the NFL today.
The NFL’s top 11 edge defenders
The NFL’s top 11 linebackers
The NFL’s top 11 slot defenders
The NFL’s top 11 cornerbacks
The NFL’s top 11 safeties
(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutions unless otherwise indicated).
From Patrick Mahomes to Sam Howell, Touchdown Wire’s Natalie Miller ranks the NFL’s current starting quarterbacks from 1-32.
It is that time of the offseason when we begin to ponder the questions that will linger in our minds until the first snap of the 2023 season. One of those questions, of course, is: Who is the best at the most important position in the entire sport?
Today we rank all the starting quarterbacks from Nos. 1-32. This includes rookies, who we will analyze given their college success and film.
From Dexter Lawrence to Nick Bosa, who are the best pass-rushers from every gap — wide-9 to nose tackle? Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar investigate.
Today’s NFL is about two things above all else — creating and defending explosive plays. In the effort to defend explosive plays, defenses align their pass-rushers all over the line of scrimmage in everything from stunts off of base fronts to overload fronts, where offensive linemen have to adjust more than they’d like to against numbers that don’t work for them.
Anything to get to the quarterback as quickly as possible.
Still, quarterback disruption is about more than just scheme — you also have to have a certain number of guys with the right tools and traits to blow things up from every gap.
In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg (of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup) and Doug (of Touchdown Wire) get into the traits needed to get after the quarterback from every gap — from 0-tech (right over the center) to wide-9 (far outside the offensive tackle).
Greg and Doug spent this week’s “Xs and Os” building the ideal defensive line with those specific traits, and here, we drill down to the best pass-rushers in the 2022 season from every gap. Who does it best, and what are the tools needed to do it?
You can watch this week’s “Xs and Os” right here:
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You can also subscribe to “The Xs and Os” podcast on Spotify…
…and on Apple Podcasts.
(All metrics courtesy of Sports Info Solutions and Pro Football Focus unless otherwise specified).
Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar picks the best pro football player to wear every jersey number — from Jim Otto (00) to Aaron Donald (99).
Football is a game of numbers, and that includes jersey numbers — which define players in our minds to a certain degree. Who can think of Hall of Fame center Jim Otto without thinking of his 00 jersey, or Warren Moon’s No. 1, or a host of legendary quarterbacks rocking the No. 12, and on and on.
In this specific exercise, we are determining the greatest player in pro football history to wear each jersey number from 00 to 99. Sometimes, the choices are eminently obvious, and other times… not so much. No. 8 had the duel between Steve Young and Troy Aikman, just as we saw in multiple NFC Championship games in the early 1990s. No. 21 had us deciding between LaDainian Tomlinson, Deion Sanders, Frank Gore, Charles Woodson, and Patrick Peterson. Yikes!
On and on it went, but we finally worked through each jersey number and each correspondingly greatest player, and here is that list for your perusal — with the honorable mentions that made this process quite tricky at times.
Football’s almost back! Here are training camp reporting dates for all 32 NFL teams — rookies and veterans.
Our long national nightmare — life without football — is nearly over. As the summer starts to turn, and the days get just a bit shorter, it’s time to start thinking about your favorite team’s new coaches, acquired free agents, and draft picks. Maybe this is the season for your team to hoist the Lombardi Trophy?
We all live in hope, which is what the season is about.
In just a few weeks, rookies will report to their new NFL facilities for their first training camps, with the veterans soon to follow. Here are the starting dates for all 32 teams — rookies and veterans.
Now that the 2023 NBA draft is done, what better time than now to run another 2024 NFL first-round mock draft?
Now that the 2023 NBA draft is in the bag, what better excuse can we at Touchdown Wire have to do another 2024 NFL mock draft? The 2023 college football season is still weeks away, and it’s the dead part of the NFL timeline, so while we don’t think we’ll see any insane deals like the one the Wizards and Suns pulled off (unless the Rams decide to get weird again), it is time to start thinking about what NFL teams will need after the 2023 season and after 2024 free agency.
This time, the draft positions are courtesy of the Pro Football Network mock draft simulator, with no first-round trades during the simulation.
Without further ado, here’s one version of how the first round of the 2024 NFL draft might look.
Touchdown Wire’s positional lists continue with Doug Farrar’s 11 best cornerbacks heading into the 2023 NFL season.
If you want to know how variable cornerback performance can be from year to year, consider the case of Atlanta Falcons cornerback A.J. Terrell. In 2021, Terrell was one of the NFL’s best cornerbacks, allowing 29 catches on 66 targets for 200 yards, 93 yards after the catch, three touchdowns, three interceptions, 13 pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 47.5. One season later, Terrell gave up 39 catches on 68 targets for 430 yards, 142 yards after the catch, a league-high nine touchdowns, no interceptions, eight pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 115.8.
Or consider the case of J.C. Jackson. The former Patriots star never allowed an opponent passer rating lower than 62.7 over four seasons in New England. Then, he signed a five-year, $82.5 million contract with the Chargers, and between schematic issues and injuries, Jackson allowed 198 catches on 27 targets for 370 yards, 72 yards after the catch, four touchdowns, no interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 152.4 — in just five games.
Why are CBs J.C. Jackson, William Jackson III, A.J. Terrell, and Amani Oruwariye struggling in 2022?
From year to year, cornerback performance can be as volatile as you can possibly imagine, for all kinds of reasons. The same cornerback on the same team in a system supposedly set up to help him succeed can see his performance fluctuate wildly from season to season.
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For those cornerbacks who made this year’s list — Patrick Surtain II, Marlon Humphrey, Darius Slay, Jaire Alexander, and Jalen Ramsey — it’s a case of beating the odds. This means that there are seven new players on this year’s list, which is about par for the course.
The criteria for inclusion on this year’s list were…
This is the second in our positional rankings series, which concludes with our list of the 101 best players in the NFL today.
(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutions unless otherwise indicated).
In this week’s Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar, the guys look to build the perfect secondary with ideal traits for every position.
If you were to create the ideal secondary for the modern NFL, most likely that secondary would have at least five pass defenders in its base coverages. Adding that slot defender, whether it’s a cornerback or a safety in “big nickel” (three-safety) packages, is a must against today’s 3×1 receiver sets. You’d also want outside cornerbacks who can play press-man coverage against an opponent’s top receivers, and safeties who don’t live by the old free and strong designations.
In this week’s edition of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg (of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup) and Doug (of Touchdown Wire) endeavor to build the perfect modern secondary, starting with the ideal traits for every position.
Let’s break that down, from cornerback to slot defender to safety.
You can watch this week’s “Xs and Os” right here:
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You can also listen to the Xs and Os podcast on Spotify:
…or on Apple podcasts.
