By Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw
The National Football League’s 2024 season begins on Thursday.
Many people have been making predictions about the season since the draft was held back in April. That intensified even more when the schedule came out this summer. And it’s been ratcheting up ever since training camp started the last week of July.
We must say that part of the prediction tsunami is because of the massive increase in betting and people looking for insider tips before they click on the gambling app on their phones and computers.
Regardless, more and more “experts” have emerged to put their two cents in on how you should spend your $20 at the virtual betting window.
The predictions range from who will win the Super Bowl, who will play in it, who will be the MVP of the league to over/under for teams’ win totals to more obscure things.
The irony of it is that the NFL is the league that is notoriously the hardest to predict. With free agency and the draft, it’s literally impossible to know for sure who is going to be good this season.
Yes, it’s true that we think the Chiefs and Baltimore will be top-shelf again. We see no real reason why the Niners and Lions won’t have really good seasons, but we can’t know that with 100 percent certainty.
Why?
Roster and coaching turnover.
Players succeed with one team and, for a multitude of reasons, are playing with another team the next year.
Sometimes it’s because the players see greener pastures and thicker paychecks with a different team, and sometimes it’s because the front office chooses not to pay players to stay and cut them loose instead.
So, there is a mystery in every season on where the surprise teams will pop up from — both those who turn out to be surprisingly good and those who slip below expectations.
Here are some things to watch.
The new kickoff rules will be visually strange to watch on TV.
In watching a couple of preseason games on different networks, it seems the plan is for cameras to be panned out wide to show us the kicker all the way to the returners at the other end. That will seem clunky at first, but we will adjust to it, and it will be fine.
The Bears have high hopes based on a defensive unit that figured it out in the back half of last season and made several moves to both keep their best players and increase their depth.
The problem with the Bears is two-fold: there is a rational fear of pinning all your hopes on a rookie quarterback and an offensive line that does not make you feel very confident.
Add to that the fact that the Bears are in a division with the Lions and Packers, and you see why the doubters are finding plenty of dirt to fling on Chicago.
The Colts should be better than in 2023 also.
But they are in a division with Houston, and CJ Stroud sent word to everyone last season that he’s for real and the Texans are ready to be in the hunt for a Super Bowl in February.
The Colts also have a quarterback in Anthony Richardson who only played a handful of games last season because he couldn’t figure out how to protect himself by sliding before contact or slipping out of bounds.
Can they count on Richardson to play in all 17 games, and is Joe Flacco able to do what Gardner Minshew did in case he gets hurt again?
And maybe it’s just me, but why is the NFL playing a game in Brazil on Friday?
Do a search of what’s going on there right now, and common words and phrases you will see associated with Brazil are “political unrest” and “unstable,” and social media platforms are being made illegal by the government.
All it would take is for one group of protestors to see the visit of high-profile Americans as their chance to become heroes for their rank-and-file and to spread their message to the world to put our people in danger.
We are knowingly and voluntarily sending people into a part of the world that is currently at least a little bit scary and could easily become the next international hot spot.
For what purpose? Owners and league reps searching for a new world marketplace to conquer.
I hope it doesn’t backfire.
Let’s enjoy the games. Let’s enjoy all the fun that the NFL gives each week from now until February. Let’s pray for safety for the players (and not just our favorites and those on our favorite team) and that it will be a good season.
And let’s all pray that Caleb Williams and Anthony Richardson don’t stink.
