The NFL Previewed in Song, Part II: The AFC South

Welcome back to our preview of the exciting professional season that is almost—almost!—upon us. Today we'll be looking at the AFC South, the secret elephant burial grounds of the NFL. Read Part I's breakdown of the AFC East here.

This song is very "Indianapolis" in that it is called "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and pretty sedate. It's also relevant because Andrew Luck looks like someone who enjoys prog rock, which is to say he has a head that seems sort of oddly shaped. Prog rock is meant for weird looking white boys and men who own at least one shirt with a dragon on it, and without looking into Luck's wardrobe, I'm pretty confident he's got some D&D-looking stuff in there.

The Colts are extremely, uh, fortunate to have Luck. He's a talented quarterback who, hmm, caught a lot of breaks in his first two seasons and led them to identical 11-5 finishes and the playoffs in consecutive years. He has a 14-2 record in games that are decided by eight points or fewer, which is due to a whole host of factors, but the media narrative is that he's "clutch," a "gamer," a "quarterback who can beat the Chiefs when he's down by 28 points in the playoffs." Of course, Luck sort of put himself in the position of having to be a gamer that game by throwing three interceptions, and the week after his clutch comeback he got picked off four times at Foxboro while the Colts got destroyed by the Patriots, but—well, the important thing is Luck is great.

It's the rest of the team that is going to have to step up if the Colts want to go from "good" to "might win the Super Bowl." Mainly, running back Trent Richardson is going to have to gain about 40 percent more yards per carry, the new guys on the offensive line will have to gel together, and the defense will have to suddenly become more talented and adjust to Robert Mathis's four-game suspension for improperly using fertility drugs. It'll be fun, as always, to watch Luck do those things with his arm and legs that only he can, and that'll be enough to get them to the second round of the playoffs, but like all things, even prog rock tracks, the Colts season must come to an end—and it almost certainly will when they have to play a postseason game in Denver or New England.

Prediction: 11-5

-David Matthews

A year ago, the Texans were as happy as an empanada truck parading down the street with a broken speaker system. "Bwappa bwappa bwuppo bwuppo bwahh!" the sports media crowed about the promise of the 2013 team. "Bwuppo bwahhh bwahhhhhhhh!" Since then… man. I mean, Jesus, what a train of awful: Matt Schaub threw the ball to the wrong team all the dang time, the offensive line couldn't protect him, injuries killed a 2013 season that was already on life support, Andre Johnson and Arian Foster continued to age, Johnson demanded to be traded before later deciding he'd stay, Ryan Fitzpatrick is now the quarterback… Instead of, "Bwuuuu bwuu bwappa" it's been more like, "BWUH BWUH, bmuph bmuph bmuph."

The only bright spot from last year was the team's abysmal 2-14 record, which let them draft Jadeveon Clowney and gave them another athletic giant in their front seven. And as the old NFL adage goes, "Just put a bunch of terrifying freaks who want to kill the quarterback on your front line and your defense will at least be OK."

The other bright spot is that AFC South teams are playing NFC East and AFC North teams this year, which means get ready for a bunch of unwatchable games between mediocre and outright lousy squads. Ready for the Texans' season opener against Washington? How about their Week 11 tilt against the Browns in Cleveland, or the Week 16 matchup against the Baltimore Ravens? Those games don't make for appointment television, but that schedule includes a lot of winnable games provided the Texans remain relatively healthy. In all likelihood it'll be a messy, incomprehensible mumble of a season, but with Clowney in there the Texans may be more of a bwuuuh buppo bwahaha buuuu than you think.

Prediction: 8-8

-Harry Cheadle

The italicized preamble to FOX Sports' Ken Hornack's Jacksonville Jaguars season preview states that "every team looks great on paper in July," which isn't true. It's particularly untrue of the Jags, who look like a 5-11 team on paper. ("They drafted as wisely as any team," sorta-beams Hornack.) There are a lot of projections for this team that argue they're going to be awful, but in an encouraging way, giving us a narrative: The Jags are a Team on the Rise and therefore worth keeping tabs on.

Unfortunately, there is no encouraging way to be awful in football, because it is a sport about running over people. The Jaguars will get run over a lot. They'll be entertaining in the way of cringe humor—or, in other words, sad.

We come to sports for what we can't get in our everyday lives. You already know what it's like to have forgotten to put money on your transit card, to get fired, to go to a party and be unable to relate to strangers. The central appeal of sports is watching people who are exceptional at difficult things. The Jaguars are not quite exceptional enough to avoid losing prodigiously and depressingly. To follow them is to watch a reality show about yourself.

Chad VanGaalen, in his queasy-sweet ode to self-conscious pubic hair maintenance, sings: "Maybe if I shave my pussy/ Then you'll love me baby/ Will you love me?/ I'm really feeling ugly." The sentiment is Jaguarianly insecure—what north Florida would think if it were self-conscious about its Floridian-ness. It's almost sweet to imagine the Jaguars as some stuttering but sympathetic mess, but this is the NFL. Be heartless. You shouldn't love the Jaguars, even if they shave their pussies—OK, the analogy breaks down here—because there are some 25 NFL teams that will be interesting in one fashion or another this season. You should pay attention to them, not Jacksonville. Nothing can save the 2014 Jags. Not even metaphorically linoleum-smooth genitals.

Prediction: 5-11

-Colin McGowan

Building a winning NFL team is a goddamn nightmare. Players wash out, they get hurt, they are publicly revealed to be suicidal. Running backs have incredible, record-setting seasons and are ineffective a couple short years later. A number of things have to break just right in order for a team to become a playoff team, and more things have to line up before a playoff team can win a Super Bowl.

No team knows that better than the Tennessee Titans, who are currently hoping that Jake Locker makes a leap and becomes the kind of quarterback you can build a franchise around. If he gets injured or his accuracy dips, it's the Charlie Whitehurst show and it'll be another couple miserable seasons waiting around for a ball-thrower to reveal himself. Thanks to rules that favor the passing game, if you don't have a top-tier quarterback you better have an insane defense, and even then you need a guy who is at least efficient and capable of a few great throws a game, a la Russell Wilson or Joe Flacco during the brief period when Joe Flacco could make great throws. So it's Locker or bust for the Titans.

Which isn't a terrible place to be! The Titans have a soft schedule and they're in the AFC, where every team with a pulse is a playoff contender, and Locker is fully capable of having a great couple games against the Colts or the Texans and turning everything around. (Seriously! He showed flashes last year when he wasn't hurt! I promise!) But no one is expecting great things from the Titans this season. They've probably got another year at least of assembling parts and praying for Locker's legs to stay unbroken. That's life when you're trying to build something though—sometimes you find yourself in a ska-flavored rock cover of "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" and you have to just power through the fucking thing.

Prediction: 7-9

-Harry Cheadle