10 things you need to know about the new season
The 99th NFL season kicks off on Thursday night, with the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles hosting the Atlanta Falcons. John Kryk shares 10 things fans need to know about new rules, new coaches and young quarterbacks.
1. The young guns
Every year we all obsess over the passers, and rightly so.
Yet this season seems different. Not that most top-10 passers still aren’t the old guys, playing as well as ever into their mid- to late 30s and even early 40s.
Rather, it’s the promising new wave of quarterbacks everyone’s buzzing about.
This year there’s a batch of intriguing rookies. By season’s end, it’s possible, even likely, that four rookie QBs will start: Cleveland’s No. 1 overall draft pick Baker Mayfield, the New York Jets’ Sam Darnold (the No. 3 pick), Buffalo’s Josh Allen (No. 7) and Arizona’s Josh Rosen (No. 10). Only Darnold is expected to start this week, though.
That’s on top of four Week 1 starters from the 2017 draft class (Chicago’s Mitchell Trubisky, Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, Houston’s Deshaun Watson and Buffalo’s placeholder for Allen, Nathan Peterman), plus the three studs from 2016 (the Los Angeles Rams’ Jared Goff, Philadelphia’s Carson Wentz and Dak Prescott in Dallas), although Wentz won’t start in Week 1 as he impatiently awaits full recovery from a torn ACL suffered late last season.
All together, nearly a third of the league’s starting QBs are between the ages of 21 and 25.
How these young guns progress is the most intriguing storyline of the season.
2. New coaches
Gruuuuden’s back. That would be Jon Gruden, who has returned to the NFL head-coaching ranks with the Oakland Raiders after a decade up, up and away in ESPN’s Monday Night Football beautiful broadcast booth.
After a tumultuous off-season in Oakland — which culminated Saturday with the team trading away one of the NFL’s premier edge rushers in holdout Khalil Mack — Gruden probably is looking forward to the regular season more than anyone. It’s fitting he returns on a Monday night.
Gruden is one of seven new head coaches in 2018. The others? In the NFC: Pat Shurmur, New York Giants; Matt Patricia, Detroit Lions; Matt Nagy, Chicago Bears; and Steve Wilks, Arizona Cardinals. In the AFC: Mike Vrabel, Tennessee Titans and Frank Reich, Indianapolis Colts are the new guys.
Shurmur is the only one besides Gruden who has NFL head-coaching experience. There will be growing pains.
3. Biggest new rule “Completing the catch to the ground” is dead in the NFL. Hallelujah!
League owners in March approved a streamlined catch rule that no longer includes thick language describing the despised requirement that a pass catcher maintain firm possession of the ball throughout the process of falling to the ground. That is, no more “surviving the ground.”
The new rule requires only (a) control of the ball, ( b) either two feet down, or any body part down except the hands, and (c) “performs any act common to the game (e.g., tuck the ball away, extend it forward, take an additional step, turn upfield, or avoid or ward off an opponent), or he maintains control of the ball long enough to do so.”
In short, secure it in bounds and do almost anything after that and it’s a catch. But secure it in bounds and immediately drop it or lose it if hit, and it’s incomplete.
Will there still be confusion? Yes. But not nearly as much as before.
4. Second-biggest new rule
In a landmark rule change aimed to protect NFL players as much from themselves as from others, owners in March approved a rule banning all players in all situations from lowering their helmet to initiate contact with another player, anywhere on his body.
The rule reads simply: “Lowering the head to initiate contact with the helmet is a foul.” The penalty is 15 yards, and if egregious, an ejection.
Outrage swirled halfway through the pre-season schedule in August when 50 flags were thrown (40 against defenders) in 33 games. So the league suddenly softened the rule, announcing that incidental infractions would not be flagged. Over the last half of the pre-season schedule only 20 penalties were called. At that rate, 10 or fewer such penalties a week would be called, less than one per game.
5. Other new rules
In a one-year experiment to try to lower the number of concussions on football’s most dangerous play, the kickoff return, new alignment, movement and blocking restrictions go into effect, including these: kickoff team players must stand still when the ball is kicked, all within a yard of the kickoff line, with five flanking the kicker on either side and at least two on each side situated outside the numbers; eight receiving team players must line up within a zone 10 to 25 yards beyond the kickoff line; and wedge blocks are now banned.
Teams who win on the last play of a game no longer have to attempt the superfluous conversion.
Bringing touchbacks out to the 25-yard line, instead of the 20, is now permanent.
And a player who commits a flagrant act missed by on-field officials can now be ejected by league officiating leaders at central replay command.
6. Cable, satellite too
You might have missed the early-August announcement that the vast majority of Canadian NFL fans willing to pay to watch any game live have cable and satellite options again in 2018.
As Postmedia first reported in March, DAZN — the global webstreaming giant that last summer bought both as-it-happens and on-demand rights to all NFL games in Canada — has sublicensed its service this season to domestic cable and satellite providers.
Rogers, Bell, Shaw and SaskTel plus other smaller companies are on board, thereby covering most of Canada.
The U.K.-based DAZN (pronounced Da-ZONE) provides a live and on-demand sports streaming service, along the lines of Netflix. It offers no cable or satellite viewing options; rather, only a streaming feed to webconnected digital devices such as smart TVs, tablets, smartphones and games consoles.
DAZN’s exclusivity meant thousands of Canadians hoping at the outset last season to purchase the package via their cable or satellite provider — as in previous years — were out of luck. But when DAZN’s streaming service proved a disaster for many upset subscribers, the company by Canadian Thanksgiving quickly struck cable and satellite sub-licensing deals.
This year DAZN has done so from the get-go. And it insists there are “substantial platform improvements” to its streaming feed.
7. Achievable milestones
Drew Brees of New Orleans needs just 1,496 pass yards to break Peyton Manning ’s NFL career record of 70,445, and just 79 completions to break Brett Favre’s NFL record of 6,300.
With 21 TD passes, New England’s Tom Brady would break Manning ’s NFL record of 579 career scoring tosses for regular season and playoffs combined. And Brady needs just 12 TD passes to join Manning and Favre in the 500 club.
With 48 catches, Arizona’s Larry Fitzgerald would break Jerry Rice’s NFL record (1,281) for most career catches with one team.
Cleveland’s Jarvis Landry needs just 27 catches to break Fitzgerald’s NFL record (426) for most catches in a player’s first five years.
New England PK Stephen Gostkowski could become the first player in NFL history to lead the league in scoring six times. Currently he’s tied with Don Hutson and Gino Cappelletti at five.
Indianapolis PK Adam Vinatieri needs just seven field goals to break Morten Andersen’s NFL record of 565, and just 58 points to break Andersen’s league mark for most career points scored (2,544).
8. Five can’t-miss games Week 1: Sunday night, Bears at Packers: Mr. Rodgers, meet Mr. Mack. You’ll be seeing him twice a year from now on.
Week 2: Sunday night, Giants at Cowboys: Typically a close one. Both have tough openers, so the loser could drop to 0-2.
Week 3: Sunday afternoon late game, Chargers at Rams: The battle of Los Angeles, and a matchup some see as an early Super Bowl matchup.
Week 5: Sunday afternoon early game, Falcons at Steelers: Two of the best QBs, two of the best WRs. Shapes up as a track meet. Week 5: Sunday afternoon late game, Vikings at Eagles: Rematch of last January’s one-sided NFC championship game, in the same setting.
9. Champs and chumps
Can Philadelphia repeat even as NFC East champion, let alone as unexpected Super Bowl champions? And, at the distant other end of the NFL competence spectrum, can the Cleveland Browns actually win a game in 2018?
The Eagles have most of their star players back, and a few good additions to boot, including WR Mike Wallace and DE Michael Bennett. With Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles performing shockingly poorly at QB in the pre-season, the faster Wentz can return, the better.
As for the Browns — losers of all 16 games last season and, incredibly, 41 of their past 43 games dating back to October 2015 — with their influx of talent over the past two off-seasons, you’ve just got to think they’ll win more than a few games in ’18. Right?
Well, maybe. Head coach Hue Jackson for some reason retained his job for a third year, after a not-so-glowing 1-31 start. The likeliest first win for the re-re-re-retooling Browns is in Week 3, at home on a Thursday night against just the re-reretooling New York Jets.
If Cleveland is 0-3 after that, Browns fans will just automatically snuggle against Wile E. Coyote under his rickety umbrella at the base of the canyon and wait for the gargantuan boulder to drop. Again.
10. Important dates
The trade deadline is Oct. 30 … Christmas Day is on a Tuesday this year, so in Week 16 there are 15 games on the Saturday and Sunday before, and just one (Denver at Oakland) on Christmas Eve … All Week 17 regularseason finales are on Sunday, Dec. 30 … And your playoff dates: Jan. 5-6 (wild-card games), Jan. 12-13 (divisional games), Jan. 20 (conference championships) and Feb. 3 (Super Bowl LIII … that’s 53 … at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta).