NFL IS LIVE AND KICKING
As the start of the NFL season arrives, let’s do an exercise in positive thinking. Repeat after me: “I am clueless.” Aren’t you feeling better already? But really, although it might seem like we know the gist of what’s going to happen in the NFL over the next five months — the Chiefs will be great again, the Bears will not again, etc. — the truth is we don’t. At all.
This time last year, the 49ers and Titans were afterthoughts. One team ended up in the Super Bowl, the other in the AFC title game.
The Chiefs delivered on their promise, but about their encore? Since the Steelers dynasty of the 1970s, only four Super Bowl winners have repeated — and none since Tom Brady was in his mid-20s. He’s older than Methuselah now and, in case you hadn’t heard, no longer with the Patriots, which means we have no idea about them anymore, either.
Maybe the Bears will return to their 2018 form, and maybe that’ll put them in position to pull a Miami Heat or a New York Islanders. Whether or not factors related to the pandemic have leveled the playing fields in the NBA and NHL, the fact is those leagues have been bonkers since returning to action. Why not the NFL, too?
Football is here. Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes will make us feel, at once, excited and aggravated as their teams ring in the season Thursday at the home of the champs. And then Mitch Trubisky will do whatever he’s going to do to us when the Bears play Sunday in Detroit.
Torture us? Thrill us? One or the other, definitely. Or both. Or neither.
Here’s what’s happening: