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00:03Yesterday around the National Football League, we had a
00:06conversation of a long-standing trend in the NFL. 19 of the
00:10last 21 years, a team that has finished dead last in a
00:14division. One season has won the divisional crown the very
00:18next year. How about the opposite trend? A team finishing
00:21in first, making its way down to the basement and finishing
00:25in last. We start in the NFC. Here were the divisional
00:29champs from a year ago. In the NFC South, Baker Mayfield
00:33leading the Buccaneers to the third consecutive divisional
00:36title. We know the trend in the NFC East that we will discuss.
00:40The Cowboys taking home their second NFC East crown in the
00:43last three seasons. The Lions winning a divisional
00:46championship for the first time in three decades and the
00:49Niners dominant in the NFC West with a 12-5 record. DRS of
00:54the four divisional champs around the NFC from a season
00:58ago. In your estimation, who has the best chance of now
01:01finishing dead last in 2024? Yeah, this is a much tougher
01:05question because you're looking at some quality teams here,
01:08but also outside of you just saying, Ben, like, well, I
01:11think the Cowboys will be in dead last because Dax is going
01:13to get hurt. CD Lamb's not going to play. Michael Parsons
01:16going to sit this one out. They're going to fire their
01:17head coach. You see where I'm going with this? It's hard to
01:19say to yourself, starting with the Buccaneers who won the
01:22division last year. If there was one team that maybe could end
01:26up on the bottom as opposed to top, it probably would be the
01:29Buccaneers. But also, you knew that you do know what that
01:32means. That means the Carolina Panthers will be a better team
01:35than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers entering into the season, which
01:37makes it tough. Again, outside of, well, Baker Mayfield goes
01:40off the rails. He gets hurt. Godwin gets hurt. Evan gets
01:43hurt. He can't play that game. So it is tough. The Cowboys at
01:4612-5. We know you can basically print the script every year
01:49without devastating injuries. The Cowboys are talented. They
01:52have a solid quarterback. They have a lot of weapons. There's
01:54no reason that they would finish below the Giants or, let's
01:57just say, the Washington Commanders without injuries. Take
01:59a look at the Lions. Now, the Lions might be one that's
02:02interesting because, again, I'm not just being a contrarian
02:05saying, I'm going to go against the Lions because they were
02:07good last year. They can't be good. That doesn't make any
02:09sense. They are talented. They kept their offensive
02:11coordinator. Let's just say Ben Johnson moved on. Maybe you
02:14could say, like, ooh, he was the catalyst maybe to that
02:16football team being so good on offense. Maybe we don't have
02:19the trust in a new offensive coordinator, but he's back
02:21there. Jared Goff got a new deal. You know, Amiraf St.
02:24Brown got a new deal. That is a team on the rise. It's hard to
02:27believe that they would finish last, but there's a lot of
02:30good football teams in that division, and if you're just
02:32writing off the Minnesota Vikings outside of if J.J.
02:35McCarthy starts or maybe you don't get a good season out of
02:37anybody else at quarterback, you might be saying to yourself,
02:40that's the team that should be in last place, but again,
02:42there's a lot of talent there. The 49ers, what are you
02:45expecting here? Trent Williams to sit out. IU gets traded
02:48away. Christian McCaffrey's calf never heals. They wind up in
02:51last place. This is a lot tougher to decipher. If you
02:54said, Donnie, you had to go with one team here. You can't
02:57cop out and say, I don't like any of them. I guess it would
03:00be the Buccaneers, but again, that means Carolina needs to
03:03finish ahead of them, which is going to be a tall task.
03:07So from the odds perspective, I think it's very clear it is
03:10Tampa Bay, but from the historical perspective, would it
03:14shock us to see Detroit in last in the NFC North based on 30
03:19plus years? No, it shouldn't, but based on the expectation
03:24this year, if the Lions finished in last in the division, a
03:27division, that's not supposed to be overly bad. The Vikings
03:31win total is seven and a half. The under has a small bit of
03:35the juice, but yes, it would be shocking if Detroit was in
03:39dead last. Now, I'm not picking the Cowboys to win the NFC
03:42East once again. And how could you the last 19 years around
03:46the NFC East? We have not seen a repeat divisional champion
03:50since the Eagles in 2004 and the Cowboys won the division
03:55as season ago, Philadelphia. Now the odds on favorite to win
03:58the NFC East. Everything at the star is bad. Jerry Jones
04:03doesn't want to pay CD lamb. He is not going to pay more than
04:07likely Dak Prescott and Mike McCarthy is on the warmest seat
04:10you have ever seen in the final year of his contract, but
04:14Donnie even two years ago when the Eagles had the best record
04:17in the NFL 14 and three and won the NFC East, where were the
04:21Cowboys? Not eight and nine, not six and 11. They were 12 and
04:25five. They've won 12 games each of the past three regular
04:28seasons. So no, I do not believe Dallas is going to finish in
04:31last in the NFC East. So now you must go to the odds. The
04:36Buccaneers win total is only seven and a half. The over has
04:39the juice. Tampa won the division with a nine and eight
04:42record a year ago. The NFC South now features the Falcons
04:46who are expected to win double-digit games and are an
04:49odds-on favorite to take home the divisional title. So the
04:53idea of the NFC South being one of the worst divisions in
04:57football might stand true for everybody else, but to win the
05:00divisional crown, not necessarily the case DRS as I
05:05look at the Buccaneers though, and you look at the divisional
05:07prices plus 310 second best number for Tampa, New Orleans
05:12third best price at plus 380. If you went back to two years
05:17ago, when the Buccaneers and Tom Brady's final NFL season
05:21won the division, albeit with a losing record, Tampa was eight
05:25and nine. Everybody else, New Orleans, Atlanta and Carolina
05:30seven and ten. So technically they tied for second or tied
05:34for last. That would be a reality. I think for the
05:38Buccaneers, if we are going to see a divisional champ from a
05:41season ago, finish in dead last this year. Yeah, and also you're
05:46taking a look at Atlanta. It looks like, you know, Kirk
05:48Cousins, that quarterback may be solving that situation here.
05:50Hopefully don't get any more injured in the preseason as we
05:53already pointed out losing Rondell Moore, but also last
05:55year for me like New Orleans Saints were my squad like out
05:58of a team total over and also thought they could win that
06:00division. They get Carson. They're just missing a
06:02competent quarterback, which he is and they were so
06:05disappointing last year all the way through and maybe Dave
06:08Canalis was the elixir for your boy Baker being a very good
06:12quarterback last year. He's no longer there. So maybe take a
06:15look at that Detroit angle that we were playing if they had
06:18lost their offensive coordinator. Maybe things would
06:20change. We'll see what happens and we're not expecting doomsday
06:23Bakers are solid NFL quarterback. They have talent
06:25around them, but I just wish that maybe Carolina had a
06:28slightly better season last year. We can buy in and say
06:31okay bounce back for New Orleans competent performance
06:34by Atlanta and Carolina can somehow come around that seven
06:37or eight win range, which could push the Buccaneers to that
06:40lower level. We'll see how it plays out here. But again, this
06:43is why we're talking about it. It's very hard to say one of
06:46these teams going to be behind a very bad team, but it's the
06:49NFL parody is King and to be quite honest, one of these
06:52teams probably will wind up in the basement in the division.
06:54It's just hard to visualize at this point right now before we
06:57get to the regular season.
06:59Very difficult to predict to say the least and there's not
07:02necessarily a market involved or correlated to this outside
07:06of win totals or divisional prices. It is interesting in
07:10the NFC South both the Bucks and the Saints seven and a half
07:14to win total both have heavy juice on the over but even that
07:18would be a losing record. You have the same conversation
07:22first to worst in the AFC net. Is it possible for a team who
07:27won a division around the National Football League a
07:29season ago to finish last this upcoming year in 2024. We did
07:34first to worst in the NFC. Now we turn our attention to the
07:38other conference and the AFC the champions of the AFC East
07:42now going on four straight years. It's the Buffalo Bills
07:46a slight favorite to win this division for a fifth
07:49consecutive season. Although the price in the gap in front
07:53of the New York Jets shortening as we speak plus 165
07:58the Ravens the champs of the AFC North a season ago, but
08:02in the most competitive division in football not going
08:05to be easy to go back to back the Texans the favorites to
08:09win the AFC South. They did so last year out of nowhere. And
08:14if you talk divisional dominance, it starts with Kansas
08:17City eight straight titles in the AFC West minus 230 to make
08:22that nine in a row the best price of any team to win any
08:25division all around the National Football League Donnie. We
08:29asked you to the NFC. You got to do it in the AFC. If we
08:33asked you to pick one one divisional champ from last year
08:36to finish in last who would it be? Well, number one, we're
08:40just going to remove the AFC West and the Kansas City
08:42Chiefs because if Patrick Wilhelms is there just healthy
08:45there's no way shape or form. They're going to be anywhere
08:47near last place. So let's just remove them from the equation.
08:50Let's go over the other teams the Buffalo Bills in the AFC
08:52East. I do have decent expectations for them. This still
08:56is a tough division because why we're expecting the Jets to
08:59have a bounce back performance this year with Aaron Rodgers
09:01a quarterback and also Miami always flying high in the
09:04regular season, which leaves us with the New England Patriots
09:07that we don't have high expectations for which is why
09:10it's so hard to say the Buffalo Bills will be in the basement
09:12because that means that the New England Patriots will finish
09:15ahead of them the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC North one of
09:18my favorite regular season football teams as long as Lamar
09:21Jackson is there. And again, we're anticipating these guys
09:24particularly the quarterbacks being healthy for the season.
09:26There's no way I'm voting. They're not even though they have
09:29the toughest road and that division is going to be hell on
09:32wheels. But Lamar Jackson the regular season is damn sure
09:35unstoppable. I don't think they're finishing last which
09:38brings me to the Texans here. If we're being honest, there is
09:41a chance that they can regress. I'm not saying they're going
09:44to do that. Every time you bring up the Texans for me. I'm
09:46high on them. But you also have some uncertainties. They're
09:49saying okay new players on the team new expectations. How do
09:53you handle it as opposed to last year? Hey, let's just see
09:55what we can do. Oh my goodness. We took the NFL by storm.
09:58That's not going to happen this year defensive coordinators
10:00get better in the offseason of pretty finding out with CJ
10:03Stroud doesn't want to do well. Also, what do we take a look
10:05at the Indianapolis Colts? They could have lightning in a
10:07bottle with Richardson at quarterback here as opposed to
10:10last year watching Gardner Minshew. That's something to
10:12watch out for. I mean a little bit higher on the Titans than
10:15most people are but already getting injured with Hopkins
10:18early in the season when does he come back that throws a wrench
10:21into it. So just to make a tough decision once again, maybe
10:24it is just about the odds at a plus 105 to win that division,
10:27but I'd go with the Texans. It's not a slight on the Texans.
10:30This is just a hard question to answer with what we know based
10:33on what we saw last year and expectations heading into 2024
10:38very very difficult to answer or even try to make an argument
10:43for I asked you to make a pick. I'm not sure there's a great
10:47pick here from the odds perspective in the AFC. I think
10:52there was an argument to be had about Tampa Bay based on the
10:55odds plus 310 just a win total of seven and a half in the NFC
11:00South, but that would need the Carolina Panthers to have a
11:03year above expectation with a win total of five and a half
11:08where really is that argument in the AFC Donnie? If anything
11:12I actually think it's in the AFC North. Here's why I say it's
11:16expected to be the best division in football. It's the most
11:18competitive division in football last year even without Joe
11:22Burrow for seven games in the regular season. The Bengals were
11:26still nine and eight everybody in the AFC North finishing with
11:30a winning record. Is there a chance these teams split their
11:34divisional matchups all six and there's great parity in the
11:37division. I would believe so now Baltimore would be so below
11:41expectation even finishing with just nine wins, but it's not
11:46like predicting a team to regress to the point of 5 and
11:4912. If all four teams in the AFC North were to be above 500
11:54which could happen. Maybe Baltimore is on a slide. I don't
11:58really think so. I am not a believer in the Titans. Thus. I
12:03don't think the Texans drop below Tennessee and a lot of
12:06people expect the bills to take a step back from where they
12:09have been the last half decade in the AFC East and around the
12:12National Football League. I don't know if I'm buying that
12:14as much but maybe they take a step back and don't win the
12:17division. They're not going to be worse than the New England
12:19Patriots in the AFC East. Yeah, as it all breaks down, there
12:23is some valid points to be made where you can say, hey, just
12:25came in last place with nine wins, which could be the
12:28Baltimore Ravens. So there's something to be said for that.
12:30The one thing that we do know in that division, you don't have
12:33anybody that's supposed to be in last place per se like the
12:36other divisions have technically.