AFC East 2006 Preview
AFC PREVIEWS and PROJECTIONS
Eastern Division:
1) New England: The Pats will win another divisional crown by default as both the Jets and Bills are once again in rebuild mode with new head coaches, however, rebuilt Miami with HC Nick Saban who is in his second year, could give the Patriots a battle for the crown if new QB Duante Culpepper returns to form. The Patriots had five wins last year by 7 or less points including three wins by 5 or less points meaning that the loss of kicker Adam Vinatieri to the Colts could be huge. Projected record: 11-5
**Look to play AGAINST the Patriots at home in week 3 versus visiting Denver, it’s a revenge game for New England which lost 27-13 at Denver in last years playoffs and the public will surely be backing the Patriots heavily in the rematch, a check of this years schedule shows that Denver will be fully focused when they visit due to having a bye week on tap following their game at New England, meanwhile, a check of last seasons results show Denver was a perfect 3-0 ATS as a road doggie.
2) Miami: The Dolphins won their last six straight games to finish 9-7 straight up last season and posted a mark of 4-2 ATS in those final six games after starting the year with a shoddy 3-7 straight up and ATS record, needless to say HC Nick Saban’s teachings must have finally taken hold. The phins finally have a quality QB under center with the addition of Duante Culpepper to the roster which means that you can look for the Dolphins to use last years season ending run as a spring board for good things to happen this year. Projected record: 11-5
**Look to play ON the Dolphins in their season opener at Pittsburgh, Miami HC Nick Saban brought former Buffalo HC Mike Mularkey on board to run the offense this year and brought former Houston HC Dom Capers on board to run the defense this year, both Mularkey and Capers were offensive and defensive coordinators with Pittsburgh and know the Steeler schemes inside and out, watch the spread in this game because historically speaking Miami is a perfect 7-0 ATS when installed as doggies of 6 points or more.
3) NY Jets: The Jets were terrible last year having won a mere 4 games with each win coming at home, a closer look see reveals just how bad these Jets were last year as three of the Jets four wins came against non-playoff bound teams that finished the season with a combined record of 18-30 straight up! A closer look see at the Jets results from a year ago reveals that 7 of their 8 road losses were by 10 points or more and that the Jets average road game last year was a loss by a staggering 15.5 points! Needless to say Jet HC Herm Edwards is now gone and with Kansas City, enter new HC Eric Mangini who is an inexperienced first time headman who only has one year experience under his belt as a coordinator! Jet QB Chad Pennington is trying to come back from this second shoulder injury which prompted the Jets to acquire QB Patrick Ramsey from the Skins as an insurance policy. Projected record: 3-13
**Look to play AGAINST the Jets in their season opener at Tenn. Entering this early season contest the Jet players will still be trying to digest new schemes on both offense and defense while the Titans will have a huge edge with veteran HC Jeff Fisher over rookie HC Eric Mangini and historically speaking the Titans have posted a nice 3-1 straight up and ATS mark in their last four home openers.
4) Buffalo: They say variety is the spice of life, apparently the Bills believe that as they emulated the Jets by bringing in a new GM who in turn brought in a new HC, former HC Marv Levy is the new GM and former Chicago HC Dick Jauron is the new HC brought in after Buffalo’s disappointing 5-11 straight up record last year, unbelievably so, Dick Jauron becomes the Bills 5th head coach in the past 10 years! Buffalo never did figure out their QB problem last year with regard to who the main man was and will once again try to choose between J.P. Losman and Kelly Holcomb, to add a little spice the Bills brought in Craig Nall who was Brett Favre’s long time back up QB in Green Bay, someone better do something because these Bills lost 7 of 8 road games last season with the average loss by a eye opening 13.9 point differential!! Projected record: 3-13
** Look to play AGAINST Buffalo on October 22nd at home when New England comes to town, this contest will be the second seasonal meeting between these divisional rivals, because the game is in Buffalo the Patriots will probably be laying 4 or 5 points as the favorite as they have done each of the past two seasons when visiting, but that’s okay because a check of the ole history book reveals that New England is a mind blowing 16-2-1 ATS versus Buffalo in the second seasonal get together and the Patriots have defeated these Bills 5 of the last 6 times they visited in straight up fashion.