Over the last twenty seasons there have been twenty teams that have had a playoff drought of five or more seasons. The longest droughts in that time are 17 years for the Bills and the Browns with the Bills drought broken in 2017 and the Browns broken last season. The up and coming 49ers have had two such droughts in the last 20 seasons totaling 13 years with the last drought broken in 2019.The elite teams on the list are the Chiefs with a five year drought from 1998 to 2002, and the Saints with a five year drought from 2001 to 2005. A team with a lot of potential for 2020 is the Buccaneers. The Bucs just broke a 12 year drought last season.
The twelve teams that have not had a playoff drought of five years over the last twenty seasons are the
AFC East: Patriots
AFC West: None
AFC North: Ravens, Bengals, Steelers
AFC South: Colts
NFC East: Cowboys, Giants, Eagles
NFC West: Seahawks
NFC North: Packers, Vikings
NFC South: Falcons
The Bengals are the only team on this list that could fall off it this season if they fail to make the playoffs. No other team would make the list this season. After the Bengals the Giants would be the next team to fall off the list but they have two seasons before that would happen.
The site sportsbettingdime.com averages betting odds from multiple sports betting sites. They have the Bengals as tie with the Jaguars as the favorite teams to miss the playoffs at -1200. By comparison the Giants are -550 to miss the playoffs. That ranks as tie for the seventh favorite team to miss the playoffs. The Jaguars, Bengals, Jets, Dolphins and Washington all are more favored to miss the playoffs.The Giants are tie with the Panthers.
The Giants have a good starting roster. They have the player talent and the coaching experience to make a run for the playoffs, There will be an extra playoff team this season from each conference. The Giants projected starting roster is
QB: Daniel Jones
RB: Saquon Barkley
WR: Sterling Shepard, Golden Tate and Darius Slayton
TE: Evan Engram
OL: Andrew Thomas, Will Hernandez, Jon Halapio, Kevin Zeitler and Cameron Fleming
DE: Leonard Williams, Dexter Lawrence
NT: Dalvin Tomlinson
OLB: Markus Golden, Lorenzo Carter
ILB: Blake Martinez, Ryan Connelly
CB: James Bradberry, Logan Ryan
S: Jabrill Peppers, Julian Love
These are good players. The only weak link could be at Center (Jon Halapio) and Right Tackle (Cam Fleming) on the offensive line. The rest of the starters are solid. Daniel Jones is coming off a great rookie season. Sure he has to have better ball security. Otherwise he was very good. Jones had the most passing touchdowns in a single game by a rookie quarterback and was the first rookie to have three games with four touchdown passes and no interceptions. He set Giants rookie quarterback records for
- Highest completion percentage
- Most passing yards
- Most passing touchdowns
- Highest Passer Rating
- Most passing yards per game
- Most 4th quarter comebacks (tie)
- Most Game winning drives.
The offensive skills positions are another solid group. All of those players were rated above 70 by Pro Football Focus for 2019 with the exception of Evan Engram.However when healthy Engram is still a top talented tight end. Only Kelce (77), Kittle (65), Gronkowski (65), Ertz (64) and Waller (61) have averaged more receiving yards per game than Engram (52) among all tight ends since 2017.
The interior defensive line is a good group. Leonard Williams and Dexter Lawrence made PFF’s top 25 interior defensive linemen entering the 2020 season. Dalvin Tomlinson graded at 78.2 by PFF for the 2019 season. On the edge Markus Golden was eighth in quarterback pressures last season. Him and Lorenzo Carter are two of only 53 players at all positions that had 23+ pressures last season.
In his last three seasons of his four year NFL career Martinez has led the Packers in solo tackles each year. His solo tackle team market share has ranged from 12.6% to 14.7% in 2019. His solo tackles ranged from 91 to 97 those seasons. For comparison recently retired Luke Kuechly is regarded as one of the all time great linebackers.Kuechly’s solo tackles averaged 86 per season and ranged from 71 to 103.
In his last two seasons at Wisconsin (2017, 2018) Connelly had 12% team market share of solo tackles in each of the two seasons. In his senior 2018 season Connelly only gave up 46 total yards after the catch which was 1st in the draft class and only 0.38 yards per cover snap which was tie for 6th. In his four games of his Giant rookie season Connelly allowed only a 22.6 passer rating when targeted which was seven times. He allowed only 4 completions for 19 yards and had two interceptions.
In 2019 the defensive backs allowed passer ratings of a low 70.1 for James Bradberry to 81, 84 and 88.7 for Love, Peppers and Ryan respectively. Ryan was third in the league in passes defended and 13th in interceptions.
The Giants offensive coordinator, Jason Garrett, has 13 years experience as an OC or head coach and was a 2016 NFL coach of the year. The defensive coordinator, Patrick Graham, has 11 years of NFL coaching experience with four teams. He has coached in the playoffs in eight of those seasons and has been part of teams that have won seven division titles, two conference championships and one Super Bowl. Joe Judge, the head coach, has eight years coaching special teams for the Patriots and contributed to three Super Bowl championships. The offensive line coach, Marc Colombo, coached the Dallas offensive line for four years. The Dallas offensive line was regarded as one of the best in the league.
The NFL will have one extra playoff team in each conference this season. The Giants have the starting players and coaches that can be one of those teams.
