Over the course of this long, miserable offseason, I’ve occasionally indulged in checking out various rankings articles, team projections, fantasy football forecasts, and various and sundry other bits of offseason filler. Many of you probably do the same. But as I did, something kept jumping out at me: An assumption, repeated time and again no matter the name on the byline, that just seemed... wrong.
First, I’ve got to hand it to “neutral” or national analysts. Those men and women put a ton of work into evaluating and covering literally thousands of players every year. They’re spreading themselves out over 32 teams, 32 front offices, 32 head coaches, 96 coordinators, over 300 games of film, and a legion of other factors that are in play.