Hogs Haven 2022 Season Predictions Revisited

With weeks to go until training camp, the fodder for football discussions is thinner than Brian Davis’ credibility. Bill has done an admirable job of stoking the conversational fires, but I’ve struggled to come up with topics I can really dig into during this lull in the NFL calendar.

In the meantime, this seems like as good an opportunity as any to revisit last season’s predictions by past and current writers at Hogs Haven, which is what follows below. The full details of our 2022 predictions can be found here.

In September 2022, twelve writers cast their votes for everything from division winners to playoff teams, Super Bowl Champ to worst team in the league, winners of the various individual player awards, and finally, Commanders-specific predictions.

How’d We Do

In total, the writers made selections in 27 categories. To give you a sense of our collective wisdom, the runaway winner, James Dorsett, hit correctly on 9 of them. Two writers, Ken Meringolo and myself, tied with 8 correct.

There was only a single category that all writers got correct: The Buffalo Bills as winner of the AFC East.

There were also a several team categories that we all got wrong, including the AFC South winner, AFC Champion and, necessarily, the Super Bowl champion. The Bills were the overwhelming favorites for both of the final two categories. Below are the tallies correct for each of the categories:

• NFC East (Eagles) - 9
• NFC North (Vikings) - 3
• NFC South (Buccaneers) - 11
• NFC West (49ers) - 2
• NFC Wild Card (Cowboys) - 4
• NFC Wild Card (Giants) - 0
• NFC Wild Card (Seahawks) - 0
• NFC Champion (Eagles) - 1 (James Dorsett)
• AFC East (Bills) - 12
• AFC North (Bengals) - 5
• AFC South (Jaguars) - 0
• AFC West (Chiefs) - 5
• AFC Wild Card (Ravens) - 3
• AFC Wild Card (Chargers) - 4
• AFC Wild Card (Dolphins) - 3
• Super Bowl Champ (Chiefs) - 0
• 1st Pick in the Draft (Bears) - 3

The player categories were a bloodbath, with only 3 correct predictions out of 84 guesses, and no individual writer getting more than one player prediction correct. The results are below.

• Comeback Player of the Year (Geno Smith) - 0
• Coach of the Year (Brian Daboll) - 0
• Offensive Rookie of the Year (Garrett Wilson) - 0
• Defensive Rookie of the Year - (Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner) - 2 (Scott Jennings and Ken Meringolo)
• Offensive Player of the Year (Justin Jefferson) - 1 (James Dorsett)
• Defensive Player of the Year (Nick Bosa) - 0
• Most Valuable Player (Patrick Mahomes) - 0

In terms of Commanders’ specific predictions, the presence of a tie was something that none of the writer’s predicted. Three writers, however, predicted either 9-8 (Bill-in-Bangkok and James Dorsett) or 8-9 (myself).

Having nursed a bit of a grudge since Matt wrote his “Hogs Haven Writers’ Bias-Corrected 2022 Commanders’ Win-Loss Record Prediction” article last offseason, I thought it would be fun go back and cross check writer record predictions against his correction factor. Below the table from his article and his “corrected predictions.”

Having received the second highest “homer correction” - behind only notorious homer Ken Meringolo - last year’s actual Commanders’ performance left me feeling pretty vindicated.

Meanwhile, Matt’s overcorrection proved overly pessimistic in every case except one - the revision of Mark Tyler’s starry-eyed 11 win prediction.

Should Matt run his exercise again this year, with the 2022 data, it appears that almost every writer’s “bias score” will decrease, with the possible exception of Scott Jennings, who cynicism about the team’s fortunes appears to be - somehow - overly pessimistic.

Finally, five writers thought the Commanders’ would make the playoffs - and four of them thought Washington would win a playoff game. They were all wrong.

Predictions for the 2023 season will be posted in early September. Until then, enjoy the offseason, and get your own prognostications in order!