No, Colin Kaepernick Did Not Have One of the Best Five Rookie Seasons Ever, the Browns Were Not Good, and the Steelers Did Not Win the Super Bowl

Since last May 25th, I have written close to 1,000 posts, some news, some analysis, some opinion. I picked many individual games in both college basketball and the NFL, and made fantasy rankings. There were of course hits and misses, though the record was good. I’ll focus more on bigger pieces. Hey, everyone needs some mulligans. Here are some of mine.

Colin Kaepernick, as it turned out, did not produce the best numbers of the rookies playing in first year coach Jim Harbaugh’s system and only having to beat out Alex Smith. Kaepernick didn’t play much in 2011. He did manage 0 touchdowns and 5 interceptions in the preseason, though. Oh, well, at least no other rookies did anything either.

I also tried to project which franchise would win the most games over the next five years, by looking back at characteristics of the franchises that achieved this honor in the past. I picked four teams as my guesses, and while Green Bay and New England were good choices, they weren’t shocks in year one, having the two highest win totals in Vegas. I threw in Tampa Bay as my longshot guess, thanks to the presence of a young quarterback already on the roster. Remember when Raheem Morris was a hot young coach?

The other team I mentioned was the old bug-a-boo, the San Diego Chargers. In “San Diego may have failed in 2010, but it shouldn’t carry over”, I argued in favor of the Chargers bouncing back based on point differentials. Again, they fumbled their way to a just-miss with Norv Turner as coach at 8-8. Then, I posted that Norv Turner was going to be fired based on a report out of San Diego. Norv Turner was not fired. Don’t listen to me on San Diego, basically.

The pinnacle, though, was calling the Cleveland Browns my sleeper team in the preseason write-ups. Most of those “thoughts” I did on teams last year turned out to be pretty good, but man. I guess the positive is that I didn’t take the Browns to the Super Bowl. That was reserved for a dinged up Pittsburgh team at the outset of the playoffs, based on their profile, where I changed from my preseason pick of the Packers over Patriots.

I also told you not to believe in curses when it came to Peyton Hillis and the Madden Curse. For the record, I still don’t believe in a Madden Curse, though I am a proponent of the “Don’t say nice things about the Browns” curse.

I had concerns about the Colts’ roster and advised to take the under, but I didn’t think the impact of losing Peyton Manning would be as drastic as it was. I also did not peg the Colts as the team most likely to get the #1 pick and win the Andrew Luck Sweepstakes after week one.

I also must say that I was wrong and Ron Borges was right. Tom Brady was too old to win a Super Bowl. Never mind that he had another MVP caliber season and they got there. A younger Brady doesn’t miss that connection with Wes Welker.

I compared Reggie Bush to Pizza. Bush then went out and played better than Pizza over the last few weeks. I didn’t think the Rams should get as much as they did in the trade of the #2 pick. I told you not to pick Kentucky to be contrarian, though to be fair, I came out of the March Madness with positive value on my entries and you could have done worse than having Ohio State and Kansas also in the Final Four. I’m sure I cost you a bracket you were otherwise going to win with your own brilliant picks, though.

Hey, I once thought Zubaz were cool, that Live would be the best band of a generation, and that Koren Robinson would be a star. We can’t be right on everything.

[photo via US Presswire]