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The Guardian
Belichick’s exit plan and a JJ Watt trade: NFL subplots to watch in 2021
Will Aaron Rodgers leave Green Bay after an MVP-caliber season? Will Bill Belichick leave New England before it gets ugly? No shortage of meaty NFL storylines in 2021 The overall NFL attitude toward 2020 can be succinctly summed up: What pandemic? While other leagues were paralyzed, considered canceling their seasons, entered complex bubbles, or faced existential crises, the NFL moved on. With the kind of bravado that is only given to the biggest, baddest, and most-viewed on the block. Some precautions were taken. The preseason was over. The commands of the mask were in fashion. But the bottom line was this: no matter the lineup, no matter how ridiculous the show, no matter the health consequences, soccer will be played. And overall, it was a success. Covid has the potential to embarrass the league in Week 17, the final week of the season, and we don’t yet know the extent of the health consequences, but for the most part the league fulfilled its wish: the season will be completed at weather. . As the calendar shifts from 2020 to 2021, here are some subplots to keep an eye on. Aaron Rodgers’ Future From now on, Rodgers will likely have his name engraved on the MVP trophy. Voters love the narrative, and the Rodgers Revenge Tour is a better narrative than “isn’t Patrick Mahomes absolutely terrific?” It’s Michael Jordan syndrome. (Voters actually gave Karl Malone an MVP award during Jordan’s prime. That’s a real thing that happened.) But it wasn’t so long ago that the Packers drafted Jordan Love in the first round of the draft, that Rodgers’ future was up in the air. , that the team had obviously selected his replacement, that it was just a matter of when not if Rodgers would leave. Rodgers has been excellent this season. His game has evolved. The off-script improvised jazz artist is still there, but he’s married it to the on-script beat that defined his early years as a starter. It is a deadly combination. The power to decide your future now resides with Rodgers. He is performing at an MVP level and could guide the Packers to another Super Bowl title. Green Bay will want to keep the 38-year-old until he really starts to decline. But will Rodgers take matters into his own hands this offseason? How upset was he really about the love selection? With possible quarterback starts in hot spots like New England, Los Angeles and San Francisco, could Rodgers look to make his way out of title city as the final act of this year’s tour? A franchise sale: The NFL as a whole has done a decent job of vaccinating itself against the financial losses that have plagued most sports leagues during the pandemic. Instead of boosting games or adding weeks, the NFL shortened its preseason and steamrolled whenever there was a sign of a health scare. We are playing football! Who is ready to play? Who is watching? We will play them on Monday nights and Tuesday nights and Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings, to hell with the quality of the games or the health of the players, that was a lucrative strategy for the league, for so much that any league is making money in the Covid era. But the league is still made up of old-school owners who made most of their money the old-school way. While several owners have supported the financial hit at their sports institution, many have suffered significant losses at their non-sports businesses. You just have to look at the NBA to see how even the tech-savvy and self-described “ smart ” sport owners have been affected by the pandemic: Tilman Fertitta, the NBA’s last owner, who paid a record $ 2.2 billion dollars for the Houston Rockets franchise in 2017, earn money at casinos and restaurants. His operation has been reduced to 4% during the pandemic and he has been forced to take his company public, in addition to accepting an operating loan from the league. There are similar problems in the upper house of the NFL. Some owners feel the financial costs much more than others, particularly those whose wealth is based on owning an NFL franchise. (The NFL remains the sports league with the most ‘inherited’ owner families.) No one will shed a tear for the fattest of fat cats, but NFL franchises are notoriously difficult to drive away owners because they print money. The pandemic has changed that. The year 2021 could usher in a band of new owners, as current owners who have been hardest hit by the pandemic try to recover funds. Will there be people who take Cam Newton? Newton’s one-year plan in New England was clear: come up with the smartest, most creative, and most consistent organization in sport; show that he still had a lot of juice left, that he just needed a break; and then sign a mega deal this upcoming offseason, either restocking with New England or elsewhere. But as much as Bill Belichick has tried to sell the Patriots-Cam Newton experience to the media and fans this season as a success, it hasn’t worked. The Patriots offensive staff has been creative and approachable, working around Newton’s idiosyncrasies and lack of precision. But too often when Newton has leaned back and tried to play with some kind of rhythm, it seems like he’s trying to throw a medicine ball, Newton’s health is the issue here. He no longer has the same kind of speed on his fastball, and his throwing accuracy, which was regular even in the best of times, has now completely dropped. Perhaps the Patriots will convince themselves of Newton for another season as a bridge to whatever the future of the team’s quarterback may be. Maybe they tell themselves that you looked fine before your Covid diagnosis. Perhaps Belichick thinks Newton, even with his flaws, will be fine once the Patriots can get back the pieces of their roster that were lost this season due to COVID. But that seems unlikely. It seems that Newton, the great pioneer, the paradigm shifter, finally gets shot. And if Belichick is not willing to enjoy another season, will some other team? And if not, what does Newton do? Backing out? Sit another year and hope to heal? It’s hard to imagine Newton making the rounds as a year-long hired gunman on a tank-ready rebuilding crew. Is this all for Bill Belichick? Belichick doesn’t appear to be slowing down. But, at some point, Belichick will leave the Patriots job. Belichick tried to roll things back for one more push this season, putting together a roster that was missing the core of its defense due to Covid defections and lacking a quarterback given Tom Brady’s move to Florida. Is Belichick, in his advanced age, post-Covid, ready and willing after a year to start another rebuild? He doesn’t have a quarterback, and the backbone of the roster that delivered the last Super Bowl is beginning to creak: Most have either already or are expected to come out of this offseason. Plus: Belichick’s staff is expected to be separated again during the offseason, both on the coaches ‘side and in the Patriots’ main office. Could you choose to leave before things get ugly? The rise of Justin Fields The Jaguars have secured the No. 1 pick in the upcoming draft. The selection is expected to be Trevor Lawrence, Clemson’s only ever quarterback prospect. But as always in a draft cycle, expect there to be a run over Justin Fields, the Ohio State quarterback who would be the best safe pick in a traditional year. And if former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer ends up as Jacksonville’s head coach, watch out. The talk will increase. Leaks will flow. Commercial offers will come. Lawrence should be the first choice, but there is a chance that Jacksonville will switch places with the Jets (for a meaningful run). A JJ Watt Trade JJ Watt and the Houston Texans are synonymous. But if Houston is looking to build some kind of assets to improve its roster this offseason, moving Watt is one of the only ways. The Texans have little to no draft capital and have one of the worst league sheets in the league. They also have a messy roster that is the walking incarnation of the fractured headquarters that oversaw its construction for the past five seasons. Yet there, in the middle of it all, is Deshaun Watson, one of the most talented quarterbacks in the league. Having a great quarterback fixes a lot of things. So for the Texans to jump back into the fray, even with the gaps in the roster and the lack of flexibility in the market, it might take five to six smart moves. One way to open up some kind of flexibility, to increase the margin for error when attempting to make such moves, would be to leave Watt while he still has value. It would be a difficult move from a financial and cultural point of view, but it would also be one. Be smart. And it would allow Watt to have an opportunity with a different organization, where he may have a chance over the next 24 months to advance beyond the divisional round. New TV deals As noted in The Guardian’s 2021 Bold Predictions article, the current round of NFL TV rights deals will expire in 2022. As sports continue to be the only place networks can be trusted to produce a large live audience, and as the NFL continues to reign as the largest provider of live content (eight of the top 10 most-viewed individual broadcasts of the 2020s were football games or post-games) it is expected that the bidding is intense and expensive. traditional transmission partners. Or it could deliver a more favorable deal to ESPN / Disney, with the possibility of Disney snagging a coveted Super Bowl and shifting its broadcasts to ABC. Or it could offer larger packages to a streaming customer, like Amazon Prime, in hopes of getting ahead of the live sports streaming curve or trying to make up for some of the revenue the league and its owners lost in 2020.
