Non Saints Storylines for 2021 NFL Season (1 Viewer)

Hard to peg teams going through a QB change or QB drama. I think itll take about a half season to see what they look like after they begin to settle in. Like TB and the bucs last season. We are definitely in that group of teams.
 
What happens with Aaron Rodgers?

Is this the year Tom Brady falls off a cliff or is the genie from the lamp he rubbed still granting wishes?

Are Cleveland and Buffalo legit good for real now or was last year just a fluke?

Which team/QB wins the Matt Stafford-Jared Goff Trade?

Will Atlanta be drafting top 5 or top 10?

Sadly this is now non Saints - How will Drew Brees be in the booth?
I will take a crack:

What happens with Aaron Rodgers? - I think he sits out the season

Is this the year Tom Brady falls off a cliff or is the genie from the lamp he rubbed still granting wishes? - I think he falls off the cliff

Are Cleveland and Buffalo legit good for real now or was last year just a fluke? - Buffalo is definitely legit. Cleveland is gonna Cleveland but I think they are still good for 8-9 or 9-8

Which team/QB wins the Matt Stafford-Jared Goff Trade? Well since Stafford plays for the Rams and Goff for the Lions...I'm gonna go with Stafford. I still think he has gas in the tank.

Will Atlanta be drafting top 5 or top 10? Top 5

Sadly this is now non Saints - How will Drew Brees be in the booth? - As with everything he does I think he will be good. I just hope he lets more of his personality shine through and not be robotic, generic, etc. Some of the up and coming guys could take some notes from Romo in this regard.
 
Can Bill Belichick and the Patriots bounce back?
I could see them, at best, improving to be a 10-7, 11-6 sort of WC team if they win a few close games or maybe end up splitting one of their intra-division rivalry games. They still have a very good defense, and the Pats FO and Belicheck did a good job in being aggressive in the early, initial days of FA off-season attracting good, FA players. But, I believe, Pats fans also realize that the great, glory days and the heady achievements of the past two decades are history now and their in a bit of a rebuild mode, now. That means the franchise has been relegated back to what it was originally in mid-90's, when Robert Kraft first bought and took control of the team before the previous owner tried to relocate them to St. Louis and his team's HC, Bill Parcells, openly didnt respect him and labeled Kraft, "Harvard" in team-related conversations. I still think to this day, Parcells doesn't respect Kraft, his family, or what the team's FO has accomplished over his ownership tenure, seeing him more as being consistently extremely lucky then a great owner. Kraft and the Patriots are sort of facing a similar situation they faced back in 1994 and NE Pats fans have to reconstruct their expectations or hopes about what kind of success they can expect to have, realistically.

Bill Belicheck, when he's forced to build up his own team without inheriting an already good team and being the luckiest SOB NFL HC of all-time in having a-then-unknown backup QB come in and gradually dominate the NFL East and the American sports cultural world for the next 20 years, is an OK so-so HC. In Cleveland, like so many of his predecessors, he had a bumbling, arrogant, elitist meddling owner who thought he knew it all in Art Modell constantly screw him over and even worse, the old Browns FO and ownership was cheap, and vindictive and dictated a bitter man who strangely couldn't understand why the people, sports fans in Cleveland never liked him or gave him this undying adulation that Paul Brown or Jim Brown always, and still, enthusiastically, enjoy.
 
I will take a crack:

What happens with Aaron Rodgers? - I think he sits out the season

Is this the year Tom Brady falls off a cliff or is the genie from the lamp he rubbed still granting wishes? - I think he falls off the cliff

Are Cleveland and Buffalo legit good for real now or was last year just a fluke? - Buffalo is definitely legit. Cleveland is gonna Cleveland but I think they are still good for 8-9 or 9-8

Which team/QB wins the Matt Stafford-Jared Goff Trade? Well since Stafford plays for the Rams and Goff for the Lions...I'm gonna go with Stafford. I still think he has gas in the tank.

Will Atlanta be drafting top 5 or top 10? Top 5

Sadly this is now non Saints - How will Drew Brees be in the booth? - As with everything he does I think he will be good. I just hope he lets more of his personality shine through and not be robotic, generic, etc. Some of the up and coming guys could take some notes from Romo in this regard.
Romo's success is that he has more of a natural. "flow-like" progression in terms of in-game commentary. He doesn't try to come across as too technical, or cerebral on-air because that means an NCAAF/NFL announcer is covering games like his mind is still playing the game, like Jason Witten back in 2017 with MNF.

Brees' gifts from his playing days thst as an on-air announcer that IMHO, will make him different than Romo is that he "sees"--reads NFL/NCAAF defenses so well, he can point out how an opposing offense will likely run an entire offensive drive if A-B-C then D happens. He's very good at taking the fundamentals and then experimenting with them in multiple various football-related scenarios. His football IQ is way higher than Romo's. The trick is, how does he take complex offensive shifts, audibles, different defensive adjustments during course of games and make the verbiage more relatable to the common TV football fan.
 
I dont see Buffalo ever getting relocated. Known people from Buffalo and they say that the population strongly supports the Bills.

I doubt city officials will let it get to the point where the team has to relocate. Without Bills football, im sure the towns economy would suffer in ways not imagined or thought of.
GODdell could give two bleeps about small-market teams. We've seen this with the Saints since the bounty fiasco.
 
Jacksonville. How are they going to perform this year with Lawrence at the helm? Will he be a difference maker? Is he all college hype or will his skill-set translate well in the NFL?
 
Which NFCW team will win the division in 2021? Can Seattle repeat?

SF will certainly be healthier than they were in 2020 with so many key season-ending injuries. QB play remains the wild card in Santa Clara. The defense should return to be the team's forte.

The Rams have have a more complete QB in Stafford howbeit they couldn't keep all their stud players from 2020 due to the tight cap constraint.

The Cardinals strengthened their defense with the addition of JJ Watt and got better on offense with the additions of AJ Green and Rodney Hudson (although Larry Fitzgerald remains unsigned).

And Seattle made similar moves with the additions of rookie 2nd round WR D'Wayne Eskridge, TE Gerald Everett (from LAR) and G Gabe Jackson on offense, and the additions of DE Kerry Hyder and CB Ahkello Witherspoon (both from SF) and Aldon Smith on defense.

On paper, the NFCW should be the best division in the NFL in 2021.
 
I can't remember a year with more intrigue at the QB position. You have the dramatic scene playing out in Green Bay, Brady versus time, the Watson saga in Houston, etc. We're entering a new era of QBs with talented young guys all over the league.

The biggest story has to be what happens with Rodgers and Green Bay. I don't like the Packers and I can't stand Aaron Rodgers. He's up there with Cam Newton on my most disliked player list. My hope is that Rodgers walks and Green Bay is left with Jordan Love and egg on their face. We've seen what the Packers look like without Rodgers and it wasn't a pretty sight. Let Aaron go host Jeopardy and let the Packers fall back to earth after three decades of first ballot HoF play at QB.

And it will be interesting to watch this player empowerment movement play out in the NFL. Things could get dicey for several teams.

I don’t have anything against Love but if there is anything balanced and right in the world, he will be a bust for them. They went from Favre to Rodgers and that just isn’t right. San Fran did it with Montana and Young but that was back when you could still just buy dynasties. These days, there is no way you could pay a Steve Young caliber player to ride the bench for that long.
 
I don’t have anything against Love but if there is anything balanced and right in the world, he will be a bust for them. They went from Favre to Rodgers and that just isn’t right. San Fran did it with Montana and Young but that was back when you could still just buy dynasties. These days, there is no way you could pay a Steve Young caliber player to ride the bench for that long.
I would argue the Niners late-80's, early 90's transition from Montana to Young was, in hindsight, far more productive, in terms of wins, division titles, and SB wins then what occurred in 1980 when Danny White took over from recently retired, future HOF QB Roger Staubach. Nothing against White, he did the very best, imaginable job he could, considering who's figurative shoes he was being asked to fill--but occasionally, when I re-watch old NFL Films clips, yearly highlights, game or big-play highlights from some of those same early 80's Cowboys teams, they don't look convinced #11 would be able to first reach A SB, much less win one. I look at Landry's facial mannerisms, White's old Cowboys teammates individual expressions in-locker room, on the sidelines, their's a sense that there's probably 3-4 better NFC QB's and White ain't one of them. Landry, privately IMHO, has his doubts about White's ability to win huge close playoff games. I know Dallas' GM, Tex Shramm, has his doubts from day one and these concerns grew and became all too apparent after the 1981 "Catch" game. For an entire generation of Cowboys fans from late 60's-early 80's who were intelligent, and sensible, they knew the "Catch" was the end of their run, those fans more stubborn and bull-headed came around to same conclusion by 1985 or 1986.

But in Steve Young's first three seasons as Niners QB, he won, IIRC, 1-2 MVP trophies but he went 0-2 to Cowboys in consecutive NFCCGs, if he doesn't win that NFCCG in 1994 or SB XXIX, most NFL fans, pundits, commentators likely view Young as 49ers Danny White and Young's career, and Niners playoff run, likely ends a few years earlier then it did and there's a good possibility Steve Young isn't in the HOF, right now. Winning SB XXIX, and being named game's MVP, IIRC, solidly established on that path towards eventual NFL immortality.
I still think Young probably should've taken Niners to one more SB appearance, but rise of Favre's Packers by the late-90's sort of short-curcuited any more 49ers wins.

Also, essentially, Niners had to screw Montana over, kind of, to finally give Young his chance to be a Pro-Bowl QB, but Leonard Marshall and one of the most brutal defensive hits in NFL history(the hit was so vicious, Montana had a difficult time breathing, it was that severe) made it easier to justify after the Niners lost the 1990 NFCCG to New York Giants. That sort of gave Siefert, and Niners FO, the opening they were looking for to eventually replace Montana. And people today, don't know that in the late-80's, there was a league-wide perception that Montana's time was up in Bay Area and he and Walsh would be traded away or fired. Bill Walsh almost got fired after the 1987 season and the painful, disappointing flat way it ended when Minnesota just walked in to Candlestick Park and flat out manhandled the NFC's #1 seeded team.

I also don't believe that if Bill Walsh had stayed Niners HC instead of retiring after the 1988 season, he trades Montana away or ever lets Young become starter. Walsh may have traded for Young in 1986, but I don't know he was convinced he had the nerve, focus, attention, and patience required to be a true West Coast Offensive-styled QB. In his early Niners days, Young was erratic, jumpy, impatient, mistake-prone, and while he was known for his awe-inspiring theatrics, being a proto-Micheal Vick, in of itself, doesn't win SBs.
 
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