1. I wish this was only an annual posting. I wish I could say that I was only wrong about five or six things in a calendar year. Instead, I find myself dedicated to clearing the air a bit more frequently. Given I tend to beat a loud drum around here when it comes to some of my predictions, it is only fair that I collect these incredibly bad calls and serve them up to you for your well-deserved chance to say, "I told you so." They really do add up quickly...damn.
2. "Green Bay will go undefeated and win the Super Bowl."Green Bay did not go undefeated, and has the slimmest of chances to bring home back-to-back Lombardi Trophies. To me, this was the safest of all the bold calls to make back in August. Their loss to Kansas City though was as shocking as it was predictable--of course a down-on-their-luck team was going to play the best game of their season against a Packers team coasting into the playoffs. The loss to the New York Giants was not as shocking, and closed me out. The Packers are still very stacked and are a candidate to run the table next year, though I am unsure if I would predict it.
3. "The Pro Bowl is going to be awesome."It took exactly one offensive play for me to become bored by the Pro Bowl this year. The week before the Super Bowl is the first week without an actual NFL football game (that counts) since the end of the preseason. It features the stars of the game. What could be one of the greatest exhibitions of football has turned into one of the biggest mockeries of the game. Granted, nobody wants to see one of the best players in the league get hurt in the Pro Bowl, but the effort on display last night was atrocious. If the NFL is going to serve up a bunch of millionaires playing at half speed and expect people to love it, they are sorely mistaken. I am not sure how you fix this. Maybe only rookies should be playing. Maybe it should just be a flag football tournament, with one team representing each division. The winning division would win two primetime Thursday Night games in the following season. I don't know...but something needs to change. This is not the golden age of All-Star games, I know, but we have to be able to do better.
4. "Leonard Hankerson will be a starting receiver on opening day in 2011." Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhh, that one has bitten me a little. I got really carried away last preseason after talking to Hank the Tank and seeing him work in practice and on film. It was all there...but he was clearly behind the guys who started ahead of him. He did manage to speed up his learning curve a little during the season, which is a testament to his work ethic, since backups have to make so much more out of limited reps during the week. Either way, I was wrong...but watch out for 2012!!
5. "The Redskins will go 10-6."On one hand, I always predict 10-6 because you just never know what year the Redskins will magically break out. On the other hand, it has made me very, very wrong for...ahem...a while. Part of me thinks that the sun will shine on this dog's butt at some point, but I am not sure if I can sustain my string of 10-6 predictions until that happens. Sure, it was a best-case scenario prediction, and I tend to gravitate toward the rosy side of the street, but I might have to temper my bias in 2012.
6. Playoff predictions: my playoff predictions have stunk out loud.I was ready to ride Tebowmania all the way to the Super Bowl--and be the only one to have predicted it since Week 15! That was dumb. I had Green Bay making it all the way of course, which did not work out so well. I also predicted the HarBowl featuring the Ravens and 49ers in Indianapolis. That was dumb. The good news is I have no real horse in this race on Sunday. There is no team I feel any obligation to continue to pick, since I had them both losing in the conference championships. I think that will help me actually win some money this weekend. We shall see.