The 2024 NFL season begins tonight, so it’s time to lay out our predictions on who will be good, who will be bad, who will win the Super Bowl, and which individual players will shine.
Let’s start with playoff seeding.
NFC playoff seeds
The individual awards
• MVP: Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs: (Yawn.)
• Offensive Player of the Year: CeeDee Lamb, Cowboys: There have been years in which the MVP was also the Offensive Player of the Year, making this sort of a dumb category. The NFL should do “Best Quarterback,” “Best Offensive Non-Quarterback,” and Defensive Player of the Year,” and then vote on the MVP between those three guys. But whatever, nobody listens to me.
Last year we correctly pegged Christian McCaffrey for this award. This year, give me Lamb, who is going to get like a million targets this season in a pass-happy Cowboys offense that doesn’t have a good running back situation or other scary options in the passing game.
• Defensive Player of the Year: T.J. Watt, Steelers: I picked Watt last year, and he had 19 sacks, four forced fumbles, an INT, eight batted passes, and three fumble recoveries (one for a TD). He finished second in voting, behind Myles Garrett, who had 14 sacks, four forced fumbles, three batted passes, and one recovery.
Let’s go with Watt again.
• Offensive Rookie of the Year: Jayden Daniels, Commanders: Caleb Williams has better offensive weapons to work with in Chicago, but I liked Daniels more as a prospect, and he’s going to make a lot of plays with his legs.
• Defensive Rookie of the Year: Quinyon Mitchell, Eagles: The first defensive player taken in the 2024 draft went 15th overall! Throughout training camp, I watched as Mitchell earned a starting role at corner. He’s tough, instinctive, and he has ideal size/athleticism traits. I think he’ll be good right away, and he’ll likely stay on the field all game. He should have plenty of opportunities to make plays as opposing quarterbacks will test him.
• Comeback Player of the Year: Joe Burrow, Bengals: Burrow battled through tough injuries for the games he played in during the 2023 season, before he was finally knocked out for good in November. He feels like a pretty safe bet — proven player, injuries wrecked his previous season and his team didn’t make the playoffs.
• Breakout Player of the Year: Anthony Richardson, Colts: I still find it funny that Geno Smith won “Comeback Player of the Year” a couple years ago even though he didn’t come back from anything. A more accurate description of that type of player would be “Breakout Player of the Year.” Anyway, we’ll add it here even if it’s not a real NFL award. I’ll go with Richardson, who showed promise as a rookie, but suffered a season-ending injury in September.
• Coach of the Year: Shane Steichen, Colts: This award typically goes to the coach of the team that exceeds expectations and also goes to the playoffs. Last year it went to Kevin Stefanski, whose offense finished 28th in DVOA, but his team made the playoffs because of Jim Schwartz’s defense, which finished 2nd in DVOA. So, you know, I don’t think many of the voters of this award (or any of the others for that matter) go much beyond the surface level when casting their ballots. Anyway, based on my above playoff predictions, let’s go with Steichen to fit the typical Head Coach of the Year parameters.
