The end of the NFL season draws nigh and after a truly crushing week 16, I feel like I’m ready to face the sport again.

The 9-3 Eagles went rapidly to 9-6 after a blow out by the Seahawks, a near blowout by the Cowboys and one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen against Washington. The loss to the Cowboys was so bad that one of my neighbours complained to the Council after my shouting, banging the table and punching the sofa was deemed to be excessive. My excuse was to blame some combination of Cary Williams, Bradley Fletcher and Bill Davis for constantly leaving Dez Bryant open but apparently that wasn’t a sufficient justification for Leathermarket JMB.

While the game theoretically ended the Eagles season, we were still technically alive against Washington the following week, until that was over in excruciating fashion. Then my 11-3 fantasy team lost in the Championship after its lowest output of the year, thanks to AJ Green. I feel its worth noting some of these incidents, as it may colour my upcoming selections.

Everyone knows the Pro Bowl is a joke, the fans, the players and the coaches would tell you the same. Even the NFL knows it sucks and tries every year to shake things up to make it better. In particular, the large number of selected players makes it a joke. However, the list of All-Pro candidates is perhaps too small, so I’ve devised a system of picking a starting 11 from each conference, to try to combine the best of both worlds. We’ll see how this shakes out as I make my selections for the year. I’ll also be up-front and forewarn you that my Offensive Line knowledge is pretty limited as far as things go.

Following the O-line caveat, I literally just went off the lists of pre-selected names for the Pro Bowl as well as some expert picks, combined with any few things that I saw this year. For example, Andrew Whitworth has been great for a few years so he gets my vote. Fairly impossible to argue against selecting most of the Dallas line as much as it pains me to do so. Also, my pick of Alex Mack is pretty ridiculous too, since he’s been out with a season-ending injury since week 7 meaning he played less than half of a season. Mostly this pick is due to the fact I very much dislike the Pouncey brothers and refuse to select either of them given their personal history of being complete and utter morons. I went with Mack because its clear how much the Browns missed him in the run game after he got injured, so in my mind was even more valuable to his team. #Analysis.

Other potentially controversial selections based on actual Pro Bowl votes and other overall consensus include Matt Forte over Marshawn Lynch and Lesean McCoy (to a lesser extent) because he set a new record in receptions by a RB while figuratively and literally carrying the Bears offense for most of the year. Greg Olsen over Jimmy Graham because the latter sucked for the last quarter of the season and did very little to get his team into the playoffs. Picking the AFC QB was also difficult considering the options between Brady, Peyton Manning, Ben Roethlisberger and Andrew Luck. Ultimately I felt it came down to Roethlisberger and Brady and I gave the advantage to Tommy as he was working with less and ended up with the no.1 seed in the division. Ben also padded his stats against a few weak opponents that made his numbers look better.

Unfortunately, I was forced to take Jeremy Maclin off the list in favour of Dez Bryant. Dez destroyed the Eagles and set new records in TD receptions for the Cowboys. This makes me feel dirty, let’s move on.

Ahh, much better, the defensive side of the ball where no Dallas player comes close to getting on the list. Set the teams up in a 4-3 defence as they are the most common and generic. In the end, I had to sub out specific CB and S positions into a more generic Defensive Back (DB) allocation, in order to squeeze in a few additional players. The biggest oversight here is the lack of Earl Thomas in the NFC team. He’s 100% the best Safety in the league but I thought it best to give some props to the next tier of guys, who really stepped up this year. In particular, Antoine Bethea was ridiculous this year, he was all over the field making plays and I watched him straight dominate some teams.

The rest of the Seattle D is just a joy to watch unless its your team up against them. It feels like its impossible to move the ball consistently or get big plays against them. Every throw is a check-down, short of the line of scrimmage and the receiver instantly gets blown up. Super scary. Bobby Wagner missed a few games this year, but again, his absence was noticeable in the way Seattle played over that stretch. He went off injured in the 2nd quarter of the Dallas game and came back noticeably slower. Seattle went on to lose that game, while Wagner sat for another 5 games, with the team losing another 2 of that stretch, starting the season at just 6-4. Since he game back, they won the next 6, locked up the #1 seed and made the talk about Seattle not looking right during that rough stretch (Russell Wilson not ‘black enough‘) seem like a distant memory.

Definitely had to give some recognition to Fletcher Cox and Connor Barwin from the Eagles. Cox has been making plays all year, encouraging to see after the Eagles switched from his natural 4-3 to a 3-4 defence two years ago. That has benefitted Barwin a lot, who now had the lanes to get after the QB, as well as batting balls and covering TEs. Led the NFC in sacks. Cheers.

Other notes: JJ Watt = MVP, credit Jim Schwartz for turning the Buffalo D-line into one of the most feared units in football, Vontae Davis putting his physical attributes together to become one of the best CBs in the league, Chris Harris super underrated, CJ Mosley = the most typical Ravens draft pick of all time.

Playoffs are upon us now but for many teams, the countdown to the next meaningful game begins: September 13 2015.

Sigh only 36 weeks and 3 days to go.