NFL 2024: Chiefs’ threepeat quest, Aaron Rodgers’ return some of the stories to watch this season
It seems like it was just yesterday the Chiefs tasted victory in Las Vegas, but the NFL is already back and it’s not just the champs dominating the headlines ahead of the league’s biggest season ever.
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It feels like just yesterday that the world’s media descended on Las Vegas to watch Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift embrace at Allegiant Stadium after Super Bowl 58.
Lost in the shuffle of the world’s biggest story, Kelce’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs claimed their second-straight Vince Lombardi trophy and third in five years, cementing themselves as a dynasty.
Now, the ever-expanding, ever-evolving and always-dominating NFL is back in a big way, ready to launch its biggest season yet, with history at stake.
But it’s not just the Chiefs who will dominate the headlines across the season, with so many storylines at play for the world’s biggest league.
While some are chasing GOATs, others are trying to follow in their footsteps, and some are trying to rewrite history to capture what was.
BEAR WITNESS TO A NEW DAWN
Given the fact that both their NBA and NFL teams have mired in mediocrity for a decade, you may not know that Chicago is one of the five biggest sports markets in America.
The Bears are a franchise steeped in history, an NFL powerhouse during the 80s, its blood runs deep with the mantra that defence wins championships.
Since those 80s teams however, that has not really gotten them anywhere aside from a Super Bowl loss in 2006.
Enter Caleb Williams. The NFL’s newest prototype at the quarterback position, following in the footsteps of the man who wears 15 for the Chiefs.
Williams is enigmatic, thrilling to watch, terrifying to defend, but for all his hype, it remains stuck in the back of Bears’ fans minds that they have not had a true franchise quarterback since Sid Luckman in the 1940s.
And even number 1 draft picks don’t always stick the landing.
The Bears are however, in the enviable position of having had their pick of the litter, yet were far from the worst team in football in 2023.
Now, Williams walks into a loaded roster on offence, with stars like DJ Moore, Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze to work with.
With coach Matt Eberflus on the hot seat, the Bears are ready to fire, if Williams can somehow ignore the history of a downtrodden franchise.
VICE-PRESIDENTIAL POWER PLAYS
Speaking of coaches on the hot seat, the New York Jets, whether good or bad, will dominate the media cycle this season.
Even without Aaron Rodgers on the field last season, the Jets were always headline makers for better or for worse.
Their coach, Robert Saleh, walks into his fourth season with expectations not seen in New York in decades, but is he good enough to overcome them?
Possibly not, with his star quarterback spending his off-season floating out the possibility of being a running mate for Robert F. Kennedy Jnr, missing mandatory minicamp to go to Egypt and a host of other bizarre statements.
If Caleb Williams is enigmatic, then Rodgers is an enigma tied up in mystery surrounded by secrecy, yet simultaneously holding nothing back.
Rodgers has not played at an MVP level in two seasons, and one of those he spent rehabbing a torn achilles, yet at the same time telling the New York media he’d be in the mix to play if the Jets made the postseason.
Rodgers’ beauty and grace spinning the football subdues though, it subdued this writer into falling in love with the sport.
It subdued the Jets to take a chance on an ageing veteran when his old side Green Bay was happy to move on with his protege Jordan Love.
A re-motivated Aaron Rodgers, Garrett Wilson, Breece Hall, a revamped O-line and one of the best defensive units in the sport, it’s very difficult to NOT be seduced by the chaotic mess that is the Jets organisation.
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE PATRIOT WAY?
“The Patriot Way” has defined the NFL so far this century. It was THE standard others tried their best to match but couldn’t, or even worse, those who had lived it tried to replicate it somewhere else and got run out of town as a result.
When Tom Brady left New England in 2020 and won the Super Bowl in Tampa a year later, it seemed the Patriot way, the way to win, was HIS way and Bill Belichick was just along for the ride.
The Pats have struggled to be relevant since, and now Belichick, the sport’s GOAT coach is gone, replaced by Jerod Mayo, a student of the Patriot Way.
The Patriots took North Carolina QB Drake Maye third, rebuffing a godfather offer from the New York Giants to start a new era.
Belichick’s relationship with New England owner Robert Kraft had gotten sour enough for him to go, which started with Belichick’s desire to run Brady out of town after six Super Bowl wins.
As the defensive mastermind wades through the media waters in the hopes of landing a new place to cement his legacy, could a Patriot revolution and revival make him rue the day he let Tom Brady walk?
THE MADNESS THAT ENGULFS AMERICA’S TEAM
Ah, the Dallas Cowboys, the jewel in the NFL’s crown. A diamond, shaped like a star that shines bright, win, lose or draw.
Despite not even having a chance to play for a spot in the Super Bowl since 1996, the ‘Boys are still the NFL’s prima donna.
They’re the only franchise whose owner, Jerry Jones, does his own press conference after every game, not to mention has a weekly spot on radio to talk about his team.
They have a quarterback in Dak Prescott leveraging them to earn the biggest contract in NFL history, even though his standing in the league, though high, sits well below the game-changers at the QB position.
Yet he has a no-trade clause and is without a contract at the end of the season, meaning he could walk for nothing.
And, their coach, Mike McCarthy also has only a year left on his contract, and some would argue he should have been gone two seasons ago.
Yes, a shimmering diamond indeed.
Jones, now 81, has said he will do anything for another championship, yet his actions suggest otherwise at the moment, recently saying he hopes his coach feels under pressure.
“There’s no question in my mind that angst, pressure, competing will bring out the best in this game from coaches and players, “ Jones said.
Really?
They have won 12 games every year for the last three, hard to argue with that method you’d say, but what is there to show for it at this point?
IMMORTALITY AWAITS, YOU NEED ONLY REACH FOR IT
Bart Starr’s Packers, Terry Bradshaw’s Steelers, Joe Montana’s 49ers and the aforementioned Brady/Belichick Patriots are some of the most successful dynasties in NFL history.
None of them did what Kansas City has a chance to do this season. That glorious threepeat.
In the sports world of equalisation, Patrick Mahomes’ side is defying the trend.
In Mahomes’ worst season statistically so far, 2023, the Chiefs took down both the Bills and Ravens on the road in the playoffs, and claimed the Lombardi yet again.
It’s tough to find someone who could beat them when they stood tall after the “season from hell,” plagued by a sloppy offence and a superstar quarterback coming off an MVP season frustrated by what he saw from his supporting cast.
Now, that supporting cast has had a facelift, welcoming Marquise “Hollywood” Brown and the fastest player in the history of the NFL draft combine, Xavier Worthy.
That guy Kelce we mentioned, maybe the greatest tight end ever, he’s still there too, plus a majority of that defence who led the way last season.
Mahomes is extraordinary, a joy to watch, the rare quarterback who can operate with both a scalpel and a chainsaw to rip out your soul.
It’s why, just six seasons into his career he is inarguably the third greatest player ever at the QB position, but also has a case to be the best we have ever seen already.
Doing something that has never been done before, it’s a sure-fire way to aid your GOAT case, even in a “count the rings” society.
And one to watch, his coach Andy Reid, with a possible threepeat secured, could walk off into the sunset having passed Bill Belichick, who tormented his teams for two decades.
History and legacies are on the line, who will add to theirs when season 2024 kicks off on Friday morning AEST? Don’t look away for a second.
Super Bowl 59 pick: Chiefs over Lions
Originally published as NFL 2024: Chiefs’ threepeat quest, Aaron Rodgers’ return some of the stories to watch this season
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