This is the eighth and final post of a two-week series I will be doing, discussing every team by division and how I see their 2008 NFL season playing out. Today, we are discussing the NFC West division, which is populated by the Arizona Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks and St. Louis Rams. Let’s get started!

Seattle Seahawks
Matt Hasselbeck has always played solid in the regular season, and I don’t expect that to change in 2008. He seems to be battling a back injury, but is scheduled to start the season opener at Buffalo.
The Seahawks lost Shaun Alexander, who’s production slowly deteriorated in ‘06 and ‘07 after an MVP season in 2005. They did, however, acquire Julius Jones from the Dallas Cowboys. He will have an immediate impact on the offense’s production, and can easily take some of the pressure off of Matt Hasselbeck so he’s not getting hit hard as often.
The defense will be one of the best in the league in 2008. Patrick Kerney was easily the best defensive lineman in 2007, passing even Jared Allen of the Chiefs (now Vikings). I expect the secondary to have a strong year, but the linebackers and D-Lineman will be the ones who win or lose the division for the Seahawks. Lofa Tatupu and Patrick Kerney should both have extraordinary seasons. As far as the regular season goes, the Seahawks are a team to watch out for.

Regular Season Prediction: 10-6, 1st in NFC West, #4 seed in NFC playoffs

Arizona Cardinals
The Cardinals are going old school and starting The Fossil, Kurt Warner, on opening day rather than Matt Leinart. I’m only gonna say one thing about Matt Leinart right now: trade him.
The Cards have not been good with Leinart at the helm, but when the Hermit comes on out of the hills, they seem to do excellent. Warner threw more touchdowns in the final 8 games last season than any other QB, including Tom Brady.
Edgerrin James is getting older, but is still a solid contributor to the offense, and you can safely bet on him rushing for 1,000+ yards this season, and 10-12 touchdowns. He is also one of the best catching backs in the league, and an pop moves on any defender on any day. If the offense stays in rhythm with him, and vice-versa, watch out for the Cardinals.
Larry Fitzgerald will have himself another sensational year, and I still haven’t heard much on the Boldin situation. If he does come back, the Cardinals will be the ones who win the NFC West, guaranteed. As long as Warner stays healthy, that is. If Boldin doesn’t come back, the Cards will still be in contention close to the end, and may even sneak out a few more wins than I’m giving them. But for now, I think Anquan Boldin is gonna get traded, which will hurt the offense, and cause them to miss the post-season.

Regular Season Prediction: 9-7, 2nd in NFC West, no playoffs

San Francisco 49ers
More and more people are jumping on the bandwagon of this team, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. One guy who hasn’t proven himself at the pro level (JT O’Sullivan) is expected to turn things around and win the division or a wild card berth. This makes absolutely no sense to me, if a former number 1 picks can’t get it done, what makes you think a guy who hasn’t proven anyone anything can? I may be wrong, but the chances of that on this particular topic are slim.
Frank Gore will be the offensive leader, and if they are going to finish above .500, his offensive teammates need to play at the level he’s played at the past two seasons. The wideouts are that offense are weak, and Isaac Bruce is the best one there. There were better options out there, but they neglected to be active in the off-season, and did nothing. Now, they are giving a brand new quarterback, who’s never played in San Fran before, no offensive receiving weapons, besides that of TE Vernon Davis. How he is expected to get them 10 wins again? Get real. Try half that.

Regular Season Prediction: 5-11, 3rd in NFC West, no playoffs

St. Louis Rams
The Rams are probably the most under-achieving team in the league. All the money they’re shelling out to the offense of Marc Bulger, Torry Holt, Steven Jackson, Orlando Pace, and they can only give them three wins?! That’s absolutely unacceptable.
Bulger signed a six-year deal prior to the 2007 season that would pay him bookoo bucks, and all he did was either get hurt or throw interceptions. I think Steven Jackson was hoping the Rams cut him so he could sign elsewhere with a team that is in a position to win sometime in the next decade. He doesn’t deserve to be on a team that does nothing but stink up the joint. He’s too good of a player.
The defense has nobody on it, and if they don’t do something in the next 3 days, they have no chance, because even if their offense does give the Rams the lead, the defense will give the lead up twice as fast.
It’s really disappointing to watch, and I hope they get their #### figured out, but I just don’t see it happening. In fact, I see them digressing from last year’s dismal 3-13 record. That’s hard to do.

Regular Season Prediction: 2-14, 4th in NFC West, no playoffs

Let me hear what you think! That’s a wrap on the previews, thanks for stopping by and reading what I have to say! Enjoy opening night tonight with Redskins versus Giants!

-Mike Greenspire

Rudi Johnson is apparently on the trading block in Cincinnati now that Chad Johnson has a severe shoulder injury.

Chad has a partially torn labrum in his left shoulder. He will be unable to extend his arm above his head without feeling intense pain if he decides to skip surgery and participate this season.

The best thing for him to do is sit out. Besides, you don’t want to play anyways, Chad. Or do you?

Well, after a good time of thinking about where Rudi could be traded to in order to bring the kind of wideout Chad is to the Bengals to replace 85, I have the answer!

Arizona.

Trade Rudi Johnson to the Arizona Cardinals in exchange for a 3rd-round pick in 2009 and of course, WR, Anquan Boldin. Boldin has been clear about his lack of appreciation of the Cardinals’ huge dollar amount signing of Larry Fitzgerald. Anquan thinks he’s worth that kind of money, too, and is there really any way to argue with him? He’s just as good as Fitzgerald, and deserves to get paid about as much.

So, last week, he requested the Cardinals trade him. Now, this isn’t gonna happen unless the right opportunity presents itself to Arizona ala Rudi Johnson. Rudi could do wonders for that offense and take the pressure off of Kurt Warner or Matt Leinart. Rudi would be critically important in taking pressure off Warner’s arm. I doubt Warner will be able to get through an entire 16+ game season injury-free. Edgerrin James is getting a little too old to be that sure-fire number 1 running back anymore, and if you were to have the rushing combination of Rudi and Edge, you would be unstoppable.

It all depends on how well this goes over with Wisenhunt and ownership in AZ. Leinart is not the ideal QB for Wisenhunt’s style of offense, and if Warner isn’t either, at least he’s more adjustable to a system after spending so many years in the league.

I would be confident heading into the season with Larry Fitzgerald as my only great wideout, and a duo in the backfield of James and Johnson. If this trade goes down, Warner has pressure on him to perform like he did the final 8 games of last season.

Warner is a $50 million guy, and management doesn’t want to see that guy sitting on the bench. The offensive line needs to keep guys away from him, and they need to implement a more potent Pittsburgh-like style of offense if Warner wants to stay healthy. Wisenhunt won a championship with the run-to-set-up-the-pass offense, and he needs to get Edge, and possibly Rudi to pound it up the gut and make Warner’s job that much easier. Maybe, if the Cardinals make a good decision and don’t blunder this time (like they always do), then we’ll start talking about a division title. However, even without Rudi, if Anquan settles himself down and decides to play, I still can see this team being NFC West champs. If Rudi were to come on board, it would make things that much more difficult for Seattle to match the power of that up-and-coming Cardinals offense.

Lemme hear your thoughts.

-Mike Greenspire

The NFC is a question mark as of right now, and as I see it, is completely up for grabs. So, I have decided to take the task of deciding the NFC’s team to beat this year. For the next week, I will be looking at each NFC team in alphabetical order to find out who really is the NFC favorite heading into the 2008 season.

I will rank each team’s chances on a 1-10 scale, 1 being the worst chance of winning the conference, 10 being the best chance of winning the conference. The team with the worst chance will get a 1, while the team with the best chance will get a 10.

Today, I will be discussing the Chicago Bears, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Arizona Cardinals and Dallas Cowboys.

Bears
The Bears have some huge question marks heading into the season. The biggest in my mind is the decision to flip a coin for the starting QB job. Rex Grossman won the toss, making bad even worse. Rex had 4 TDs and 7 INTs in 2007, as well as a 66.4 and only a 54.2% completion percentage.

To make things worse, they lost the only QB that actually did okay on their team, Brian Griese, who threw 10 TDs and 11 INTs. Kyle Orton had 3 TDs and 2 INTs. That’s stellar for a Bears QB, apparently.

The RB situation has been bad for years. Kevin Jones was a late off-season signing to fill the void left by Cedric Benson. Matt Forte was also taken in the draft, so the Bears have seemingly taken care of their running problem.

The wideout core is one of the weakest in the league. When you are forced to say that Marty Booker is your strongest wide receiver, there’s a problem. The offense will not do good without a young, break-free receiver.

The defense has to be th highlight of the Bears at this point because they are so poor in everything else. Brian Urlacher got a nice shiny new contract, and I expect him to play like he earned, like he always does. I think that this Bears D could well be one of the Top 10 in the nation this year.

So, now that I have covered the Bears, it’s time to give out my first ranking of Super Bowl berth possibility.

Scale: 4

Buccaneers
The Buccaneers are a good team on the rise, but Garcia has more than likely this one year left in him before he has to call it quits. Chris Simms hasn’t had the highlight-like career many expected of him, but I think if they gave him a chance to start with as good of a team the Bucs have assembled, he’ll do good. Better than 13 TDs at least, which is how many Garcia had last year.

The offense did better without star RB, Cadillac Williams last year, but I think that they will do much better this year with him. They also can apply that envied one-two punch that very few offensive systems have in the league. Williams, followed by breakout player, Earnest Graham, can definitely tear apart opposing defenses, which would take a lot of pressure off of the Tampa Bay QB. The addition of Warrick Dunn should help them out as well. The retirement of FB, Mike Alstott is bound to hurt their yards per carry.

The wideout core as some question marks in my mind. Joey Galloway isn’t getting any younger. Jerramy Stevens has always been a solid tight end, and you can trust throwing to him in a pinch. Ike Hilliard is starting to age, but is still a good wideout to throw way downfield to if need be.

The defense was ranked 2nd overall last year behind the Steelers. Finishing second to Pittsburgh’s D is nothing to be ashamed about, either. The Bucs could have picked up Jared Allen from the Chiefs, but decided not to, probably because of his alcoholic history. No matter, the defense is still one of the toughest in the NFL, and opposing offensive coordinators will be hard-pressed to beat them.

Scale: 6

Cardinals
The Cardinals QBs are both quite good, but apparently Matt Leinart is the starter. Now we will see what he is made of at the pro level. I think he has all the weapons to turn this team into a serious contender.

Larry Fitzgerald is an incredible receiver. I’m not totally sure what is going on right now with Anquan Bolden, but if he were to return, that would make the Cardinals a team to watch out for in the NFC.

Edge James is losing strength it seems, but I think it’s safe to expect another 1,000+ yard season from him.

The defense is still questionable, but if the Cards’ offense does enough, the defense won’t have to worry about being stellar.

Scale: 5

Cowboys
Dallas is probably the best team in the NFC, but the only thing holding them back is Tony Romo’s lack of concentration on football. Don’t anyone try to deny it or argue with it, he has too much focus on being a celebrity. He is dating Jessica Simpson, he tries out for the US Open Golf Championship, and he can’t seem to stay off TMZ during the season. If he gets his head where it should be, the Cowboys will win a playoff game.

The loss of Julius Jones will hurt the overall production of the offense, but not the morale in the locker room. He seemed like he would be a bad presence, and I’m sure that Seattle is glad to take another whiny overpaid baby onto their team (stab. LOL). Marion Barber is the best breakout running back in the league, except maybe Adrian Peterson, so don’t expect little form him this year. If the Cowboys get the #1 playoff seed, keep in mind, it’s because this guy ran hard all year. If they lost him and kept Jones, we’d be talking about whether or not Dallas would even win their division.

Terry Glenn was finally cut from the team last week after failing to come up with an agreed-upon contract that would cut his salary in three if he got injured, and he would only take one third. No matter, the Cowboys went 13-3 without him most of the year, this will not hurt them in the long run. As long as T.O. is on that team, they will be contenders.

Scale: 9

Lemme hear your thoughts. Keep your comments clean, please. I don't like having to listen to things like "Nice prediction, dumb ####..."

-Mike Greenspire