MLB Best Bets – Free (Wednesday 9/11)
Daniel Kelley
Bryan Knowles: Welcome back to our preseason series of division-by-division over/under reviews!
Today, we’re wrapping up the NFC, heading out West to find the defending conference champions and a whole lot more questions than we had 10 days ago.
Even with the drama of the Where In The World is Brandon Aiyuk soap opera continuing, now optioned into its second week and still going strong, this is still the most predictable division in football from top to bottom. There may be teams more likely to win their division than the 49ers, and teams more likely to finish last than the Cardinals, but I feel like if I had to pick one division to sort top to bottom, win-place-and-show style, I’d settle on the NFC West.
Cale Clinton: That being said, the 49ers might be starting to look over their shoulder at the rest of the competition. The Rams now have two legitimate offensive weapons and are making first-round picks for the first time in nearly a decade. The Seahawks hiring of Mike Macdonald puts them on the forefront of what seems like the next league-wide defensive scheme trend. The Cardinals aren’t anything special yet, but the Kyler Murray-to-Marvin Harrison Jr. connection just smells like a late-Sunday Red Zone spoiler waiting to happen. These are problems for the future, but we’ll likely see the first inklings of competition this season.
Bryan: Agreed on most counts. This is a division that could easily send three teams to the playoffs, and not because the NFC is the weaker conference!
…And not just because the NFC is the weaker conference, at any rate.
Well, weaker conference or not, let’s get on with it and dive into the team that’s been the favorite one to cover for random blue-checks on social media over the last two weeks…
San Francisco 49ers (11.5)
Bryan: Alright, let me take off the red-and-gold colored classes for a moment and rank the things that are giving me agita as a 49ers fan at the moment.
Cale: Good. At least one of us is going to be critical of this team, because I sure won’t be.
Bryan: First off is the offensive line. Had San Francisco handled Chris Jones in the Super Bowl, they would be the defending champions right now – Jones wreaked havoc all game long. In response, the 49ers … didn’t do much. The only new addition to the starting lineup is potentially third-round pick Dominick Puni, who’s getting a lot of work in camp. It’s an interesting strategy to look at your biggest hole and do nothing about it.
Second is health. The reason Puni is getting a bunch of work is because no one else is healthy enough to get any work in. The 49ers had to cancel their group practices with the Saints because they didn’t have enough healthy bodies to actually run them – at least a dozen 49ers are dealing with soft tissue injuries of some sort or another, not to mention the players holding out – we’ll get to that. The 49ers have had to bring back guys like Matt Breida just to have enough people in uniform to complete preseason games. While I think the correlation between San Francisco’s injuries and their losing streak last year is overstated, the 49ers were the fourth-healthiest team in the league last year, and while each individual injury they’re working through now is unlikely to become a long-term issue, bad health can strike at any time. It’s not like Christian McCaffrey exactly has a perfect bill of health on his resume, you know?
Third, and only third, you get to the holdouts of Brandon Aiyuk and, to a much lesser extent, Trent Williams. The Aiyuk saga remains ongoing as we write this, and will probably have taken 17 more turns by the time you read this. But the idea that the 49ers might lose out on one of the top 10 receivers in football over a matter of a couple million dollars a year seems crazy on the face of it. Skill position weapons of McCaffery, Deebo Samuel and George Kittle would still be among the very best in the league, but the 49ers went from very good offense to historic numbers because of the ability to stretch the field with Brock Purdy, and the primary target on those deep balls was Aiyuk. Williams is arguably more important to the team, being the one great offensive lineman they have, but his deal will likely be easily sorted once the Aiyuk situation is handled.
Fourth is the defense, which had occasional bouts of forget-how-to-tackle-itis last year. They fired their defensive coordinator and promoted Nick Sorenson and brought in Brandon Staley to advise after apparently failing to convince Bill Belichick to join. (you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, I guess?) Dre Greenlaw is missing to start the season, Talanoa Hufanga might join him, and the depth behind Nick Bosa at pass rusher is less than ideal. If the offense does dip down because of jettisoning their best receiver and not patching up the offensive line, then will the defense be able to rise to the challenge?
Cale: I see you. I hear you. There’s just something different about the 49ers. As currently constructed, they just feel inevitable to run the conference in the regular season.
Until the Mike Macdonald’s pressure-heavy, shell-disguising defense becomes the hot, new trend around the NFL, Shanahan’s offense is going to reign supreme. Players will continue to find space, Purdy will continue to connect with elite athletes in YAC-ready positions, and San Francisco will likely lock in its fourth straight season with a top-ten offensive DVOA. Even with the Aiyuk matter unresolved, there are still All-Pro talents at running back, receiver, and tight end to keep this team afloat. While the aforementioned interior offensive line issues concern me, Chris Jones-type performances feel more situational headache than Achilles heel. Plus, the biggest in-division exploiter of this deficiency – Aaron Donald – just hit retirement.
Their defense has somehow been a model of consistency despite a concerted brain drain on that side of the ball. Sorenson will be San Francisco’s fourth defensive coordinator since 2020. These have also been great coordinators to boot. Robert Saleh turned the Jets into a perennial top-five defense by DVOA, while DeMeco Ryans is well on his way to turning the Texans defense around. That kind of track record tells me the 49ers have a good track record of hiring on the defensive side of the ball. It also reminds me that the 49ers core defensive talent is just that strong. That opposite edge seemingly always shuffles (out goes Chase Young, in comes Leonard Floyd), but as long as Nick Bosa and Javon Hargrave are on the field, the pass rush is going to be fine. Fred Warner might be one of the most impactful off-ball linebackers in the league, and the secondary has a solid starting lineup of Ward, Lenoir, and a returning Hufanga. Few defenses can boast that kind of top-end talent, and those attention-grabbers make life easier for the rest of the depth chart.
Bryan: All that being said, I mean, come on, over. This is the best team in the NFC, and while I’m sure someone will rise to the challenge and make it so it’s not a runaway, it’s not clear who that team will be just yet. Everything I’ve listed is a real concern, but every team has real concerns, and “oh no, they might only have three All-Pro weapons on offense and two of the best players at their respective positions on defense!” is the kind of problem that has 90% of the league staring daggers into your back. San Francisco has reached the NFC Championship every year they’ve had a starting quarterback stay healthy since Kyle Shanahan took over, and even one year where they didn’t. They are the Almanac‘s favorite to win the Super Bowl for a reason, and I’m excited to see in what way Shanahan blows a late playoff lead this year.
Cale: I will admit, it’s easy to overthink this. I almost want to be a contrarian and take the under on this. Every reason you listed above is a potential red flag. How much longer can this offensive line hold up with 36-year-old Trent Williams being the focal point? How big of a potential loss is Aiyuk? Does a lack of defensive depth end up costing San Francisco games? All that fails to factor in the injury luck San Francisco was able to sustain in 2023 – especially on the offensive side of the ball – or whether the rest of the NFC West has begun to close the gap on San Francisco. All those questions add up to lost games. Plus, 11.5 specifically is an especially high number. It’s the highest win total in the NFC.
In a 17-game schedule, though, 12 wins is surprisingly attainable. 16 teams have hit 12 wins or higher since the schedules changed in 2021. 10 of those have come from the NFC, and San Francisco has achieved it in back-to-back seasons. Let’s make it a three-peat. No team in the conference has the top-end talent that San Francisco boasts. The coaching advantage on both sides of the ball makes it even more certain. Over.
Los Angeles Rams (8.5)
Bryan: Speaking of NFC West teams that have already had injury issues! Puka Nacua has a ruptured bursa, three-fifths of the offensive line is week-to-week with a variety of ailments, Ernest Jones and Braden Fiske have been held out of practice. The top of the NFC West needs to figure out that you’re supposed to hit a critical mass of injuries in November, not August. Honestly.
The Rams are hoping that their second-half offensive surge was real and replicable; a product of their all-time great rookie class taking steps forward and the roster suddenly getting healthy again. Los Angeles’ offense jumped from a DVOA of 0.3% in the first half to 24.3% in the second half, one of the 10 largest bumps of the last decade, leading to a hot streak which, in turn, led to a playoff berth. The trouble is, second-half performance is not more predictive than first-half performance, so you have to look at the whole picture when trying to evaluate a team. The logic for that run continuing into 2024 is solid enough – teams are better when healthy and young players get better with more experience – but history is filled with teams who thought their hot second halves were harbingers of future success, including ones with very logical stories explaining why they’d be the exception to regression, and yet still found themselves tumbling back towards average.
Cale: The Rams’ second-half surge better be replicable if these injuries actually bleed into the rest of the season. I was getting very excited about the idea of Puka Nacua playing with a healthy Cooper Kupp. I don’t think Kupp will ever recapture the magic of his triple-crown season in 2021, but he is definitely better than what he showed in 2023. Nacua’s early injury also highlights just how shallow the Rams are at receiver. Obviously landing two players of Kupp and Nacua’s caliber is a rarity, but put anything behind them and this offense strikes a lot more fear into me. Jordan Whittington has made some nice plays in preseason, but he’s not helping these Rams return to a top-10 level of play. Blake Corum is undeniably a fun piece, though, especially with Kyren Williams. If that line holds, the run game could be as exciting as it’s been since Todd Gurley took the field.
Bryan: I do tend to believe in Sean McVay’s offense, though. As long as at least one of Nacua or Cooper Kupp is healthy, and Matthew Stafford doesn’t age out of usefulness, and the line is at least at 80% strength, I think the offense will be good enough. And when everything is running smoothly, it’s a top-10 unit at a minimum, with the potential to go higher. Expecting everything to run smoothly is probably overly optimistic, but again, when you have a coach as good at adapting on the fly as McVay, you can get around hiccups here and there.
The defensive side of the ball is where the real risk is. Losing the best interior lineman of all time in Aaron Donald is rough; the Rams could combine all four of the draft picks they used to replace him into one guy and they still might not be able to replicate his dominance. Losing one player on defense usually isn’t a huge deal, but Donald changed the way opposing offenses worked; it changed the blocking math and gave everyone around him easier assignments. You’re losing 40 pass pressures, you’re losing a nigh-guaranteed double team on every snap, you’re losing a top-tier run stuffer. As much as Kobie Turner and Byron Young flashed as rookies, they’ll now have to repeat that while drawing more attention from defensive coordinators. That’s a tough task, and we haven’t even gotten into the still in-progress secondary.
Cale: This is a young group, way too young to reliably pivot this team back to baseline. I do like the pieces in place. Bryan mentioned Turner and Young. Now add the Florida State duo of Jared Verse and Braden Fiske. I don’t know which is the biggest vote of confidence: Los Angeles actually using their first-round pick for the first time since 2016 on Verse, or McVay saying they would have given up whatever it took to trade up for Fiske in the second round? Regardless, this now is shaping out to be a strong core for a pass rush. It is too early to say whether it will translate immediately, but I like the long-term projections.
The secondary feels a little more cobbled together. Cobie Durant continues to look solid, entering his third year as a Rams home-grown product. He will look good opposite free agent Darious Williams, although a healthy Tre’Davious White would really take this group to another level. Kamren Curl and John Johnson will provide some solid veteran presence allowing Kamren Kinchens time to develop. At its core, though, this is new faces in a Rams defense that couldn’t force a single incompletion against Jared Goff’s Lions in the playoffs. That same defense finished 26th in DVOA when guarding WR1s. None of these pieces on their own revolutionize this defense. Perhaps their collective presence can elevate the unit, it’s just a tough sell for me.
Bryan: It’s possible the Rams are a better football team with worse results in 2024, consolidating their actual improvements while not having quite the same good fortune as they did down the stretch. Then again, a 9-7 season isn’t that much to ask for if things go well. I’ll take a cautious over here and have the Rams in the midst of the wildcard hunt.
Cale: If the Rams sat at the same win total as the Cardinals and Seahawks, I would be more inclined to take the over. They are not. No matter how slight, Vegas holds Los Angeles in a tier above an Arizona team that just picked fourth overall in the draft and a Seahawks team going through a coaching overhaul.
I don’t see it. The Rams are still going through a transformation, they just still have Matthew Stafford and Sean McVay at the helm to make it more palatable. The offensive line is in the midst of a renaissance, but all these injuries scare me. We’ve seen what this Rams offense looks like without an offensive line. It’s not pretty. The defense has some exciting pieces, but I do not think this is a unit that can really seal victories for Los Angeles on its own. The Rams are going to boil down to Stafford, Kupp, and Nacua. A team so reliant on so few stars just scares me too much – especially against a top-five schedule in difficulty. It’s an under for me.
Arizona Cardinals (7.5)
Bryan: I want to take you back to a magical time; a time of myth and legend – October 2021. For a brief, shining moment, Kliff Kingsbury looked like the next great offensive mind in the NFL, Rondale Moore was an effective offensive weapon, and Kyler Murray was your leader in the clubhouse for MVP. The Cardinals were 7-1, but more importantly, Murray was fifth in the league with a 32.1% passing DVOA, was on pace to set records in passing plus/minus and CPOE, and was flummoxing defenses with his legs. That’s the kind of guy you sign to a massive contract; that’s the kind of guy you build your franchise around. That’s the kind of guy that Murray maybe no longer is?
Since missing three games with a hamstring injury in 2021, Murray failed to put up back-to-back games with a positive passing DVOA until Week 17 and 18 of last season – and remember, one of those games was against the Philadelphia Eagles who were actively on fire, which the computer doesn’t know about. The list of excuses is length, with both relevant and silly entries – injuries to himself, injuries to his teammates, the Hindenburgesque collapse of the Kingsbury empire, battles over his preparation times and study habits, and four different Call of Duty releases. At some point, though, if you’re The Guy, surely you have to overcome the excuses and produce, regardless of the chaos around you? I’m not asking for MVP-quality play! Just a stretch, somewhere, somewhen, where you can be expected to be consistently better than Baker Mayfield.
The frustrating thing is, we’ve seen flashes of the old Murray. Stretches for drives, halves, and even an occasional game or two where we see the guy who was one of the most thrilling players in the league. Go back and watch the second half of that Eagles game from last year; Murray is a near picture-perfect 13-for-14 for 133 yards and a trio of touchdowns after dinking-and-dunking his way through the first half. This isn’t a case like Anthony Richardson, where we’re waiting to see if he’ll ever reach his potential – this is someone we know can be that good, and just hasn’t been. To that end, adding protection like Jonah Williams and a weapon like WR Cardinals [name redacted due to ongoing Fanside litigation] should help put Murray in the best chance he’s had to produce since 2021, but at a certain point, I’ll believe it when I see it, you know?
Cale: Bryan, I get where you’re coming from on this. I really do. At some point, the guy has to show up. Need I remind you, though, that Murray had DeAndre Hopkins to throw to two years ago? This was a Hopkins still finishing top-20 in DYAR and top-ten in DVOA mind you. After returning from a torn ACL (to an all-new coaching staff, mind you), who did Murray have to work with in the passing game? Marquise Brown, whose 68th-ranked DVOA and DYAR were his highest since 2020. Rondale Moore just had the worst year of his career by pretty much any metric. Rookie Michael Wilson might have had the best season of any Cardinals receiver last year, and he couldn’t find any chemistry with a returning Murray. 2023 was an abysmal situation. If Trey McBride hadn’t hit his stride, Arizona might have had the worst receiving corps in football.
At least now Murray has weapons to work with. McBride is looking like he’s on the cusp of that top-ten offensive tight end territory. Michael Wilson gets to build off a hot rookie season and get some chemistry going with Murray. I am (irrationally) all in on Greg Dortch despite seeing him in a limited role thus far in his career. All those guys with promising backgrounds then get pushed down the defense’s priority list because of Marvin Harrison Jr. Harrison is the most highly-touted receiver in a class chock-full of elite talents at the position. Giving Murray a legitimate weapon will be a massive boon in the long term, but Harrison is the kind of player that can jumpstart an offense immediately.
Bryan: While I’m unsure about the offense, I am quite sure about the defense – it’s no good! This was a team that sorely lacked talent at basically every level last season, and even the solid players they had (i.e. Budda Baker) had off years. Adding Darius Robinson will help, I’m sure! And when they get nine more first-round picks to fill in the rest of the gaps, that might make a halfway-functioning defense. They were dead last in the NFL a year ago, and while I do think drafting Robinson and Max Melton and bringing in Sean Murphy-Bunting will vault them over some of the other teams at the bottom, they’ve improved from terrible to merely very bad. Having a questionable defense in this division, of all divisions, seems like a death warrant for the year.
Cale: Yeah, there is no sugar-coating this defense. It was pretty awful this past year, and they won’t be good in 2024 either. I like some of the pieces, though! Beefing up the interior with Justin Jones, Bilal Nichols and Khyiris Tonga creates a rotation well-equipped to stop the run. Zaven Collins’ best work as a professional has come under Gannon during his transition to edge rusher. Dennis Gardeck is having a bit of a late-career renaissance as well. In the secondary, there are a ton of young corners looking to find footing underneath Jalen Thompson and Budda Baker. There is little chance of this defense doing anything meaningful this season, but I will bravely say there are worse defenses in the league!
Bryan: We have the line listed at 7.5, but there’s plenty of dissent among the bookies on this one – you can get 7 or even 6.5 if you shop around with the Prop Shop. If you really want to take the over here, I highly, highly advise pushing the line as low as you can get it for safety’s sake. You could talk me into 7-10 and taking the over on the lowest line available, but even then I’d be biting my fingernails the whole way through. With a questionable offense and a less-than-questionable defense, I’m quite happy taking the under at 7.5.
Cale: Honestly, if the Cardinals weren’t playing a top-10 strength of schedule by DVOA, I’d really consider taking the over. Getting this prop down to 6.5 puts you pretty much squarely in line with our projections with this team. I could see Arizona eking out a win or two that they aren’t supposed to on paper. I could also see a Cardinals defense with 30-something games of Gannon’s system under their belt and a well-developed Murray-to-Harrison connection playing spoiler for some unlucky playoff hopeful at the end of their year. Arizona just isn’t getting that eighth win consistently or reliably whenever I think about their schedule. Under, but I like the general idea of where this team is headed under Gannon & Co.
Seattle Seahawks (7.5)
Bryan: If I had to face Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan twice a year, I’d probably go out and find the best defensive mind I could get, too.
While it’s going to be weird looking at a Seahawks team without Pete Carroll, I actually really like the Mike Macdonald hire. His Ravens defense put up single-game DVOA ratings of -68.3% against Shanahan in San Francisco, -43.2% against Mike McDaniel in Miami and -36.4% and -31.4% against Bobby Slowik in Houston. Why not bring in someone who is not only the hottest name on that side of the ball, but with a track record of success against the very style of offense you have to play four times a year? Don’t fight fire with fire, especially when the pickings are slim enough to be considering an offensive-minded assistant who once waxed McVay’s car or brought Shanahan coffee. Fight fire with water. That’s what it’s there for!
It will take time for Macdonald to put his full imprint on this defense, of course. Seattle has basically gutted the entire middle of the lineup – all-new middle linebackers and safeties, a first-round defensive tackle and so on and so forth. The Ravens had some pretty specific physical requirements from their players – our look at snap-weighted size this offseason shows just how much of an outlier Baltimore was from the rest of the league. In addition, Macdonald’s defenses are much more about positional diversity and interchangeability than Carroll’s ever were, and you can’t just wave a magic wand and retrofit a roster overnight. It seems likely that there will be some early season growing pains, even if I expect to see some significant positive improvement by the end of the year.
Cale: Time is absolutely the name of the game with this defense. Let’s rewind to just under two years ago: Week 2, Baltimore hosting Miami. The Dolphins hung 42 points and 461 passing yards on the Ravens in Macdonald’s first real test as defensive coordinator. That defense improved dramatically as the season went on. Baltimore went from the 14th defense by DVOA in Weeks 1-9 to the second-best defense Week 10 and on. That growth got expedited by the fact Macdonald had been on the Ravens staff since 2014 (with a one-year hiatus to be Michigan’s DC in 2021).
The system he installed in Baltimore is complicated, creating generalized, interchangeable pressure packages that force every member of the defense to know the call’s assignments for every position. Macdonald had safeties rolled up on the line of scrimmage, defensive tackles dropping into coverage at rates not seen anywhere else in the NFL, and linebackers wearing every hat a defensive football player can wear. Having all that to install while also disguising defensive shells pre-snap is a massive ask for a one-year install. The fact that Macdonald and the Seahawks were able to overhaul this defense with the likes of Tyrel Dodson, Jerome Baker, Rayshawn Jenkins, K’Von Wallace may give them a head start, but best-case scenario feels like a second-half come-on for the Seahawks defense. Until then, trotting Byron Murphy, Leonard Williams, Boye Mafe, and Uchenna Nwosu out would get me pumped regardless of the coordinator calling plays.
Bryan: The offense is intriguing, too. I’m excited to see what Ryan Grubb can do with the trio of DK Metcalf, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Tyler Lockett; Grubb got the most out of having three dynamic receivers on the field basically at all times at Washington, so it should be exciting to see what he can do with the talent afforded to him here – probably a more interesting scheme than anything we got from Shane Waldron or Brian Scottenheimer. There’s a deep running back room, too, and Geno Smith is … well, Geno Smith is the walking personification of ‘fine.’ He can run the offense and keep things on schedule, and if the offense he’s running allows him to take some more deep shots every now and again, so much the better. I also expect them to line up five human beings at offensive line, which is about the best thing I can say about that. But hey, baby steps, right?
Cale: I’d go as far as to say Geno Smith is good. He is by no means a world-beater but sustaining top-15 DYAR and DVOA in back to back seasons is impressive. He did that while lowering his total number of interception-worthy throws and decreasing his adjusted sack rate. Smith is getting more comfortable, continuing to build rapport with a real strong receiving trio, and now has living, breathing humans on the offensive line. That little wrinkle benefits Smith and the Kenneth Walker/Zach Charbonnet running back tandem, which I am getting pretty excited about this season. Getting the Seattle run game back to form will help unlock what could be a very versatile pass game.
Bryan: The question, then, is whether or not Seattle’s new philosophies and mindset will gel sooner rather than later – and with an over/under below .500, I’m comfortable taking the punt on ‘sooner.’ Seattle desperately needed a reset, and they did about as good of a job as I can imagine getting one. This isn’t a team bottoming out and starting over; this is a team in the middle of a shift. And in the NFC, that still leaves you as a fringe playoff contentender. Over.
Cale: Even if it takes some time for the installs to click, Seattle has a pretty easy runway to work out the kinks. Getting Denver, New England, and the Giants as three of the first five games gives the Seahawks defense ample time to settle in while the offense gets humming. There’s a solid chance the Seahawks are 3-2 through five weeks (I am less confident in their chances against Miami and Detroit). This was a nine-win team in 2023, and they played just as hard a schedule as the one they did last year. The schemes will take a bit to click, especially on defense, but an over feels very safe.
