Football is coming
As training camps open, USA TODAY Sports looks at 17 story lines to watch for the ’17 season,
1. What can the Patriots do for an encore?
New England has reached a record nine Super Bowls, seven during the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady era. One more Lombardi Trophy would give the Pats six, tying the Pittsburgh Steelers for most, and make Brady, who has a record four Super Bowl MVPs, the first player with six rings.
The Patriots seem uniquely armed, even by their standards, to potentially mount a new title march with rare flair. Brady has finally escaped the pall of Deflategate and will enter the season with several new weapons (WR Brandin Cooks, TE Dwayne Allen and RBs Mike Gillislee and Rex Burkhead among them) and presumably TE Rob Gronkowski back at full strength. CB Stephon Gilmore and DE Kony Ealy are among the defensive newcomers, while MLB Dont’a Hightower returned after free agent flirtations elsewhere.
Bottom line, despite parting with proven players such as TE Martellus Bennett and RB LeGarrette Blount, this roster looks fully loaded and might be good enough to pull off a perfect season.
2. Can anyone in the AFC realistically challenge New England?
The Patriots might be vulnerable ... if Brady gets suspended ... or tears another knee ligament ... or Belichick decides to coach the Naval Academy lacrosse team. But barring that?
The X factor might be the Oakland Raiders. If QB Derek Carr reaches the postseason in one piece, RB Marshawn Lynch can still tap that Beast Mode button and the defense takes a step up in class, the Silver & Black might have a chance.
3. How do the Atlanta Falcons respond?
The Carolina Panthers suffered a massive Super Bowl hangover in 2016, falling to 6-10 after going 15-1. Now the Falcons appear in need of a greasy breakfast and cold shower after watching a 25-point third-quarter lead evaporate as the Patriots’ blitzkrieg prevented Atlanta from finally winning the Super Bowl.
History isn’t on the Falcons’ side: No team has lost the Super Bowl and returned the next season since the 1990s Buffalo Bills did it three times.
4. MVP! MVP!
Brady, Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers had passed the MVP hardware around for years until Cam Newton emerged as a surprise winner in 2015. Then Falcons QB Matt Ryan stunned the NFL in 2016 with a recordsetting campaign, suddenly attaining superstardom in his ninth season. So who’s got next?
Maybe the award remains in the loaded NFC South — awash with new weapons, Jameis Winston might be primed for his own star turn, or perhaps stat machine Drew Brees will finally win it in his 17th year. Two-time winners Brady and Rodgers will surely be in the running; the Steelers have a troika of candidates (Le’Veon Bell, Antonio Brown and Ben Roethlisberger) capable of huge individual seasons; perhaps an elite pass rusher such as Von Miller or Khalil Mack might break offensive players’ three-decade stranglehold on the award.
5. Sophomore slump? Or surge?
Ezekiel Elliott and Dak Prescott were almost unarguably the greatest rookie tandem in NFL history, launching the Dallas Cowboys back to relevance. So now what? No one will be sleep- ing on Prescott, the 2016 offensive rookie of the year. And the NFC East champs’ reliance on him and Elliott is bound to increase amid the club’s defensive shake-up. The Cowboys are almost sure to face a tougher challenge from the Philadelphia Eagles and QB Carson Wentz, who has been armed with playmakers he lacked in an up-anddown freshman season.
6. Young guns
Some of the greatest quarterbacks the league has seen — Brady, Brees, Roethlisberger, Eli Manning, Philip Rivers — are approaching 40. But it appears there are maturing youngsters worthy of eventually succeeding them.
After being the draft’s top two picks, respectively, in 2015, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Jameis Winston and the Tennessee Titans’ Marcus Mariota seem to have their teams on the cusp of contention. The Raiders’ revival can largely be credited to Carr. Prescott and Wentz seem primed to lead for years, but it’s time for the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Blake Bortles to finally prove he can do the same.
7. Rookie coaches
Five teams will deploy head coaches who have no experience beyond the coordinator level. Sean McVay — 30 at the time of his hiring, making him the youngest head man in modern NFL history — must get QB Jared Goff on the right track while keeping the Rams relevant in the fickle Los Angeles market, especially since Anthony Lynn inherits a more talented Chargers roster on the other side of the town.
Vance Joseph takes over the Denver Broncos, who come with significant expectations one season removed from winning the Super Bowl. The Buffalo Bills’ Sean McDermott and the San Francisco 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan, armed with a six-year deal, should enjoy more patience after quickly beginning the process of reshaping their teams in accordance with their respective philosophies.
8. Hot seat
Grace periods could be over for the Chicago Bears’ John Fox, who apparently doesn’t see eye to eye with general manager Ryan Pace anyway, and Todd Bowles after a year of turmoil and regression with the New York Jets. After narrowly avoiding a winless season in 2016, Hue Jackson needs to get the Cleveland Browns moving forward, and Jim Caldwell might have to prove he can get the Detroit Lions further than one-and-done in the playoffs.
9. Change of venue
Two NFL teams will be in new stadiums. As the Chargers migrate from San Diego to Los Angeles, they’ll move into suburban Carson’s StubHub Center for the next two seasons. It’s a facility designed for soccer, and though capacity will be expanded from 27,000 to 30,000 for NFL games, that’s still less than half of what most of the league’s buildings hold. The situation is drastically different in Atlanta, where the Falcons will defend their NFC crown at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, with its innovative oculus roof, halo video board and 100yard bar.
10. Contract year
The NFL’s financial landscape is in constant flux. But as things stand now, Kirk Cousins could be the prize of free agency next year — assuming the Washington Redskins don’t franchise him for a third consecutive year at what would be a financially insane $34 million-plus. Jimmy Garoppolo is scheduled to go free, though the Patriots could use the same tag-and-trade approach they used with Matt Cassel in 2009. Several other quarterbacks are heading into the final year of their current contracts (Brees, Sam Bradford, Matthew Stafford).
11. Comeback trail
Several high-profile running backs could vie for comeback player of the year honors. Adrian Peterson (New Orleans Saints) and Jamaal Charles (Broncos) hope to prove they can still be effective while learning the ropes for their new teams. The same goes for Lynch, though early reports out of Oakland suggest he looks spry after enjoying a year of retirement.
On the quarterback front, Newton and the Indianapolis Colts’ Andrew Luck will be handled with kid gloves this summer as they recover from shoulder surgeries. Carr and Ryan Tannehill of the Miami Dolphins are expected to be fully functional in training camp after late-season injuries left each of their team’s playoff hopes dead on arrival. Mariota also is nearly recovered from a broken leg.
12. Newcomers
Perhaps no team got a better infusion of talent this offseason than the Jaguars, who lured DL Calais Campbell and CB A.J. Bouye in free agency before drafting Fournette and OL Cam Robinson. WRs DeSean Jackson (Bucs), Terrelle Pryor (Redskins) and Brandon Marshall (New York Giants) are among those who could be impact free agents. Other rookies who seem likely to make early splashes include RBs Christian McCaffrey (Panthers) and Dalvin Cook (Minnesota Vikings), TEs O.J. Howard (Bucs) and Evan Engram (Giants) and WRs Corey Davis (Titans), Mike Williams (Chargers) and John Ross (Cincinnati Bengals).
13. It’s analytics, baby
Cleveland continues the league’s most fascinating rebuild with an analytics-based approach that arguably has produced as many dividends as questions. One year after passing on the chance to take Wentz, the Browns also chose not to pick Deshaun Watson in the first round to shore up their perennial quarterback di- lemma, though DeShone Kizer’s value with selection No. 52 this year was apparently too good to ignore.
14. Red flags not a stop sign?
It has been three years since Ray Rice was thrown out of the NFL for slugging his then-fiancée in an Atlantic City elevator. However, at least five players accused of violence against women just got drafted. The jury — figurative for now — remains out on Raiders first-rounder Gareon Conley, accused of rape days before the draft, something he’s denied. The bone-breaking punch Bengals second-rounder Joe Mixon threw at a woman in 2014 was captured on video. Jaguars fourth-rounder Dede Westbrook and Browns sixth-rounder Caleb Brantley have arrests on their records, while Cowboys third-rounder Jourdan Lewis was accused of one count of domestic violence but found not guilty in a Michigan court Tuesday.
15. Broken records?
Every year, somebody gets the statheads excited.
Before finishing with 1,631 rushing yards (in 15 games), Elliott seemed to have a shot at 2,000 yards as a rookie. That should remain the case going forward — if he’s available all season — as he operates behind the league’s best line for an offense that will likely have to pile up yards and points as it compensates for what’s expected to be a shaky defense.
Brees has surpassed 5,000 passing yards five times — no other quarterback has done it twice — and is always a threat to reclaim the season record from Peyton Manning (5,477).
The Steelers’ Brown, the Falcons’ Julio Jones and the Giants’ Odell Beckham Jr. seem like the best candidates to become the first 2,000-yard receiver, a onceunthinkable plateau.
16. Sam Darnold sweepstakes
None of the quarterbacks picked this year was considered a can’t-miss prospect or even necessarily ready to play in 2017. But that probably won’t be the case in the 2018 draft, where the buzz around Southern California’s Sam Darnold is growing.
17. TV
The spotlight always shines brightest on quarterbacks, and that will remain the case — literally — for Tony Romo and Jay Cutler as they transition from the field to the broadcast booth. With no experience, will Romo prove worthy of supplanting longtime CBS lead analyst Phil Simms? And after seeing his body language and personality parsed for years, will Cutler prove a fit in a three-man booth — not always a smooth setup by definition — for Fox? If there’s anything fans have less patience with than an ineffective quarterback, it might be an ineffective analyst.