Bucs, ’Boys kicking it off in 2021
Breaking down NFL’S first 17-game season
Bucs and Brady vs. the Cowboys? Yee-haw! The 2021 NFL season will kick off on the same grass turf where the 2020 season ended — at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.
That’s where quarterback Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers three months ago crushed the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV. And that’s where Brady and the Bucs will begin defence of their league championship on Thursday, Sept. 9.
Against the Dallas Cowboys.
This marquee matchup begins the ’21 NFL season.
The league and its teams on Wednesday morning began announcing this year’s schedule, in drips and drabs, before dates and times of all 272 regular-season games went public by evening.
For the first time in NFL history, each team will play 17 games, up one apiece. Sixteen-game seasons had been the norm since 1978.
In conjunction, the number of annual pre-season games for each team will drop from four to three, starting in August.
Each team’s regular-season home and away opponents already had been known. Wednesday’s schedule release merely slotted them into dates and times.
BLOCKBUSTER BUCS GAMES
The Cowboys expect to have their starting quarterback of the past five years, Dak Prescott, back in action. His 2020 season ended in early October, when his right ankle got mangled on an innocent-looking tackle. Seventh months later, Prescott already is throwing in careful workouts.
Brady, meantime, will be age 44 come kickoff against the Cowboys. He’ll be fresh off his seventh Super Bowl championship and fifth Super Bowl MVP award — both unmatched by any other NFL player.
No defending Super Bowl champion since 1977 has returned all 22 starters the following September, as the Buccaneers are projected to do. Not only that, but the Bucs return nearly all impact backup performers as well. They’ll be a strong favourite to repeat as league champ.
But as big as that opener against America’s Team is, the Bucs three weeks later will play in what likely will be the most hyped game of this or any other regular season.
Talk about a monster matchup. In all seriousness, name any regular-season game in any pro sport in modern times with the interest this one is sure to generate: Brady and the Bucs at New England in Week 4 — a Sunday-nighter, on Oct. 3.
Yeah, in New England, at his former longtime home, Gillette Stadium.
How badly do you think Brady wants to beat Bill Belichick? And vice versa?
What’s more, the NFL’S timing might enable Brady to break Drew Brees’ NFL career passing-yards record that night.
No game will be hyped more than this one. Rightly so.
BILLS-STEELERS OPENER
There had been speculation the Buccaneers would kick off the coming NFL season — as defending champs now typically do, on the Thursday night following Labour Day — against either the Cowboys or the Buffalo Bills, arguably the only two marquee matchups on Tampa Bay’s home schedule this year.
Probably it would have been the highest-profile regular-season game for the Bills since their Super Bowl years in the early 1990s. Instead, the defending AFC East champions will open the season at home three days later — on Sunday, Sept. 12 at 1 p.m. EDT — against the Pittsburgh Steelers, the defending AFC North champions.
The Bills’ 48-year-old home has been renamed Highmark Stadium.
OTHER SCHEDULE TAKE-AWAYS
❚ The Sunday-nighter in Week 5, Oct. 10, pits Buffalo at Kansas City in a rematch of January’s AFC title game. That’s Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, thank you very much.
❚ There will be only two London games this season, both at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium: New York Jets “at” Atlanta on Sunday, Oct. 10 and Miami “at” Jacksonville seven days later. Both games start at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
❚ The U.S. Thanksgiving Day triple-header on Thursday, Nov. 25 features Chicago at Detroit, followed by Las Vegas at Dallas, then Buffalo at New Orleans.
❚ Brady is back on Buffalo’s schedule. The Bills visit the Bucs on Dec. 12. Maybe that venue will help the Bills, because the only Bills starting QB this century who has had more career victories in Buffalo than visiting Brady (16, all with AFC East rival New England) is current starter Josh Allen (18, plus two playoff wins).
❚ The NFL lists five potential matchups for two games on Saturday, Dec. 18: Carolina at Buffalo, Las Vegas at Cleveland, New England at Indianapolis, Jets at Miami and Washington at Philadelphia. The three reject games will be slotted into the Sunday, Dec. 19 lineup.
❚ There’s a Thursday night game on Dec. 23 but no Christmas Eve game. Christmas Day falls on a Saturday this year, and NFL schedule-makers are gifting us with an NFL doubleheader to justify ignoring the fam’ for the last half of the day: Cleveland at Green Bay (4:30 p.m. EST) followed by Indianapolis at Arizona (8:15 p.m. EST). And there’ll be no point joining the spouse on a Boxing Day shopping spree, as there will be 12 games that Sunday, with Miami at New Orleans a day later on Monday night.
❚ The Browns and Steelers are the final combatants this season on Monday Night Football, Jan. 3.