NFL: Grading Each Team’s First Half

The first half of the NFL season is over — how did your favorite team grade out?

A significant portion of NFL teams have played eight games during the 2014 season, and as such, we are at the “virtual” halfway point in advance of Week 9. As always, it has been a wild and crazy ride to this point, and with big-time momentum swings from all corners of the league, the job of evaluating the 32 teams has been exceedingly difficult on a week-by-week basis. At the same time, however, we now are blessed with a great deal of data on each of the league’s teams, and we can begin to formulate lasting opinions that are based on both statistics and what we have seen with our own eyes.

In that vein, we will be handing out “first half” grades to each and every outfit in this space. It is important to weigh preseason expectations as a method of evaluating context, and fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint) for me, there is published evidence of where I believed each team would end up at the conclusion of the 2014 season. The worst team in the league is not guaranteed to garner the worst grade, and even teams that largely without blemish shouldn’t be penciled in for “A+” evaluations.

Let’s unveil this season’s report card, and for the benefit of ease, the teams are listed in alphabetical order.