It’s been a few weeks now since I made my initial predictions for the forthcoming NFL season. The pre-season is essentially underway and the teams and players have been hard at camp.

I’ll be taking a Final Look just before the regular season starts, and we’ll all be making our predictions at that time too. So with not much having happened (really) in the last two months, this is just a checkpoint to see if I want to move any teams about and to remind everyone how we see things at the moment.

NFC East

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Well, this remains a hard division to call and not just as my team are here. The Cowboys were unspectacular against the Bengals in the Hall of Fame game. But it’s hard to read much into any of the early pre-season games. Things have been very quiet from the Giants, which leaves me a little nervous and the Eagles are full of themselves at the moment.

In all honesty, I get the feeling I could place these four teams in any order and it would make sense. So no movement for now.

Predictions (originally made 20th May 2010, no change on 11th August 2010)

# Team
1 Dallas Cowboys
2 Washington Redskins
3 New York Giants
4 Philadelphia Eagles

NFC West

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The 49ers are still looking good, and are full of confidence. We’re taking a closer look at them each week in our Wembley Watch series, as we look  forward to welcoming the 49ers to the UK. If there’s any change here, it would be to move the Seahawks above the Cardinals but I think that would be brave at this point. So again, no move in this division.

Predictions (made 27th May 2010, no change on August 2010)

# Team
1 San Francisco 49ers
2 Arizona Cardinals
3 Seattle Seahawks
4 St. Louis Rams

NFC North

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I moved the Packers above the Vikings here based on Brett Favre’s retirement announcement… sort of. If that’s not the case, then there’s a strong argument to move them back into first place. Either way, I think it will be close.

The Bears and Lions are still 3rd and 4th… I can’t see that changing this year.

Predictions (made 2nd June, revised 3rd August 2010)

# Team
1 Green Bay Packers
2 Minnesota Vikings
3 Chicago Bears
4 Detroit Lions

NFC South

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Tricky again here. The Falcons have Michael Jenkins and Jerious Norwood out at the moment, with Jenkins looking like he’ll miss the start of the season. I’d like to see more from the Panthers before I move them up above the Falcons. And I don’t envisage changing 1st and 4th place at all – the Saints have a quiet confidence about them that will take some real beating to knock out of them and the Bucs are still in rebuilding mode.

Predictions (made 7th June 2010, no change 11th August 2010)

# Team
1 New Orleans Saints
2 Atlanta Falcons
3 Carolina Panthers
4 Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Image Credit: MPR529