I’m looking forward to Seattle being able to start the season with an easy game. 
Meanwhile, the Giants (and the rest of the NFC East) face a good news/bad news situation: We get to play the AFC South, woohoo! What’s the catch? Also the NFC West. At least the 17th game is against the Browns.
Hey, at least the Cardinals are part of that.
Zing!
Yeah, they’re already talking about whether the Pats reach double digit wins or not this season…
I do think that Drake Maye is the real deal (and he was an MVP candidate for a reason). I think they have talent. I think that team has potential. If Vrabel can figure out his personal issues and put that behind him, he has a chance to make that team special. I don’t think they are there yet, and they made it to the Super Bowl via a lot of luck. Not just luck; a totally crap team could not have done it. And they aren’t that bad.
But they had a very soft schedule that allowed them to make the postseason, and once there they had an impressive defensive win over the Chargers, then faced the Texans as that team was having an offensive collapse (seriously, CJ Stroud was garbage in that game), and then faced a Broncos team that lost its QB.
I don’t get the feeling that the Patriots are going to be dramatically different on day 1 of this season; they got new O linemen to address a glaring issue, but that will probably need to be developed. It’s still going to be a flawed team, and Seattle didn’t lose all that much from the inevitable Super Bowl attrition this offseason. So, I expect it won’t be all that different than what happened in the SB. Who knows, maybe a fired-up New England will come wanting revenge, and they’ll be better than expected.
I have the feeling that over the next couple of years they are going to be solidly on top of their division. I don’t know what’s going on in Buffalo; they seemed to regress last year, and firing their head coach was not a good look. The Dolphins still suck, and there might be hope that the Giants will get better with Dart and Harbaugh, but that will also be a work in progress. Patriots fans should be optimistic.
Wrong New York team, as far as being AFC East competition. 
Yes, brain fart on my part. I don’t know why I got the Jets and Giants mixed up. They are absolutely not the same team, not lately at least. The Giants have real hope, the Jets are still the Jets, doing Jets stuff. Their job is to make things easy for the rest of the division.
The Patriots had no business being in the Super Bowl last year, being in the first year of a complete rebuild. They got extremely lucky with a soft schedule and good breaks in the post-season. The schedule this year is much, much harder (on paper). There is no question in my mind they will regress toward the mean.
That said, Vrabel is a great coach despite the current personal distractions, and Drake Maye is legit. Assuming the usual caveats about injuries, they should be in playoff contention. I’m thinking 10 wins and a wild-card spot is a reasonable guess.
I agree. They are going to be a team to watch out for.
I’m not a fan of teams’ “schedule release videos” in the first place, but the 49ers put out an AI slopfest that’s so bad I wonder if a human was involved at all.
It’s now official: Rodgers is returning to the Steelers on a one-year contract, to play under his one-time Packers coach, Mike McCarthy.
He is 42, and will be the league’s oldest player this season.
so early?? I thought for sure he’d stretch it out till, I don’t know, training camp
Kansas City Chiefs WR Rashee Rice has apparently violated his parole stemming from his involvement in a car accident that left multiple people injured two years ago.
He’s been taken into custody for 30 days, meaning he’ll miss the start of OTAs and the mandatory minicamp.
Complete ineptitude from the NFL
It’s always helpful to explain what you’re linking to, at least a little bit, to help out your fellow Dopers, especially as one can’t see the content of your link without signing into Instagram.
In short: Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s trophy for winning Offensive Player of the Year last season reads “Defensive Player of the Year.”
Don’t they say that the best offense is a good defense?
That’s really offensive.
At the 2018 Olympics, the U.S. won the gold medal in men’s curling. On the podium, the team were given the medals for women’s curling. It got sorted out pretty quickly, and I expect this will, too.
Speaking of Aaron Rodgers, he’s announced that he’s retiring after the upcoming season.
Rodgers, though, added that he thought his career in Pittsburgh was over after former Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin resigned following the team’s wild-card playoff loss to the Houston Texans in January.
“When he said he was stepping away, that was an emotional moment just because we all love him so much and care about him, and I thought that was probably it for me in Pittsburgh,” Rodgers said. “But when the decision was made to hire Mike, I started opening my mind back up to coming back.”
Am I the only one struggling to believe that any of the above is sincere?