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Its great to be the New England Patriots with Tom Brady at quarterback, even with Brady set to serve a four-game suspension. Its greater still considering the Patriots face the NFLs weakest lineup of opposing quarterbacks.Plugging results from our 2016 QB Tier Rankings survey into the regular-season schedules for every team showed New England at one end and the Denver Broncos at the other. The quarterbacks Denver faces this season averaged 2.3 on the five-tier scale, roughly the equivalent of facing Matt Ryan every week. The Patriots opposing quarterbacks averaged about 3.1 in voting from 42 league insiders, more in line with Teddy Bridgewater or Ryan Tannehill.A few important notes before we get to the rankings: The San Francisco 49ers have not yet named a starting quarterback, so I averaged the ratings for Colin Kaepernick (3.83) and Blaine Gabbert (3.93) when calculating results for their opponents. I assumed Mark Sanchez (4.14) would start for Denver, figuring the rating for Trevor Siemian would be similar. Like Siemian, Patriots backup quarterback?Jimmy Garoppolo was not part of the survey. I assigned a 4.0 rating for teams facing the Patriots during Bradys suspension, which places Garoppolo between Gabbert and Sanchez.Heres a ranking of all 32 teams opposing quarterback lineups, starting with the toughest QB schedules:DOUBLE MATT DIVISIONThe first six teams listed face opposing quarterbacks with average tier ratings between 2.29 and 2.41, similar to playing QBs in the Matt Ryan to Matthew Stafford range.1. Denver BroncosOpposing QB average: 2.29Good news: Three of the four highest-rated QBs on the Broncos schedule -- Tom Brady, Cam Newton and Andrew Luck -- must visit Denver.Bad news: The Broncos play a league-low two games against QBs ranked outside the top 20 in average tier ranking. The lowest-rated QB on the defending Super Bowl champions schedule is Brock Osweiler, whom the Broncos allowed to reach the free-agent market and sign with Houston. . Ivanovic was leading 7-5, 1-0 when Hantuchova withdrew after falling 0-40 behind in the second game. The match started slowly for Ivanovic, who surrendered her first two serves as Hantuchova took a 5-3 lead. . The defending champion beat Gael Monfils of France 7-6 (6), 6-3, while second-seeded Andy Murray of Britain dispatched Edouard Roger-Vasselin, also of France, 6-3, 6-3. Making his first appearance since injuring his wrist a month ago, Del Potro had difficulty with his service games in the first set. . Supported by three-run homers from Jayson Werth and Wilson Ramos, the young right-hander went seven strong innings in the Washington Nationals 8-4 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday night. . Self was acquired from the Buffalo Bandits in a trade for Alex Hill midway through last season, and made his debut in Rochester on March 16, 2013. . Coach Mike Munchak says Fokou stretched ligaments in his left knee Oct. 13 against Seattle, which could keep out up to five weeks even though the linebacker didnt need surgery. The Bengals made a costly, and ultimately decisive, mistake on the Giants final drive of ?a 21-20 Cincinnati loss Monday night.On the play that sealed the game coming out of the two-minute warning, Giants running back Rashad Jennings should have been allowed to run for a touchdown and not get tackled. Once Jennings gained enough yards for a first down, the only way Cincinnati could have gotten the ball back would have been to allow the score. Otherwise, as we saw, the Giants could simply kneel out the clock.The Giants may have been aware of this tactic since the Patriots used it against them at the end of Super Bowl XLVI. But in this case, had Jennings been aware of the ruse and taken a knee prior to scoring, the Bengals still would have been no worse off than iff he were tackled -- New York would still have been able to go to the victory formation.dddddddddddd?Assume the score happened with 1:50 left to play, and that the Giants kicked the extra point to go up by eight points (28-20). Now Cincinnati has nearly two minutes to score a touchdown and execute a two-point conversion to tie. The Bengals would have less than a 5 percent chance of winning according to our win probability model, which would require scoring, successfully going for two and then winning in overtime. Those might not seem like great odds, but either way, the Bengals squandered them.Click here for more from ESPN Analytics.? ' ' '
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