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The Guardian
Belichick’s exit plan and exchange with JJ Watt: 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? The general attitude of the NFL towards 2020 can be summed up succinctly: what pandemic? As other leagues shut down, consider canceling their seasons, entered complex bubbles, or faced existential crises, the NFL has thundered, with the kind of bravado that is only offered to the biggest, the nastiest and the most watched in the neighborhood. Certain precautions have been taken. The preseason was over. The mask warrants had entered. But the main thing was this: No matter the composition, no matter how ridiculous the show, regardless of the health consequences, football will be played. And, in general, it was a success. Covid has the potential to embarrass the league in Week 17, the last week of the season, and we still don’t know the extent of the health consequences, but for the most part the league has made its wish come true: season will be over on time. As the timeline shifts from 2020 to 2021, here are some subgraphs to watch out for. As of now, Rodgers probably has his name engraved on the MVP trophy. Voters love a story, and the Rodgers Revenge Tour is a better story than “Isn’t Patrick Mahomes terribly excellent?” It’s Michael Jordan syndrome. (Voters actually gave Karl Malone an MVP award during Jordan’s Prime. It’s a real thing that happened.) But not too long ago, the Packers picked Jordan Love to the first round of the draft, as Rodgers’ future hung in the balance. , that the team had obviously chosen their replacement, that it was only a question of whether Rodgers was going to leave. Rodgers has been great this season. His game has evolved. The off-screen improvised jazz artist is still around, but he’s married it to the screenplay beat that defined his early years as a starter. It’s a deadly combination: the power to decide his future now rests with Rodgers. He’s playing at 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 much was he really upset with the love selection? With possible quarterback openings in hot places like New England, Los Angeles and San Francisco, could Rodgers be looking to get out of the 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 plagued the majority of sports leagues during the pandemic. Rather than pushing games or adding weeks, the NFL stripped off its preseason and leapt forward whenever there was a sign of health scares. We are playing football! Who is ready to play? Who is watching? We will play them on Monday evenings and Tuesday evenings and Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings, the quality of the games or the health of the players to be damned. It was a lucrative strategy for the league, as much as any league wins. money in the Covid age. But the league is still made up of old school owners who made most of their money old school fashion. While many owners equated the financial blow to their athletic institution, many have suffered significant losses in their non-sporting businesses. Owners have been hit by the pandemic: Tilman Fertitta, the last owner of the NBA, who paid a record $ 2.2 billion for the Houston Rockets franchise in 2017, makes his money in casinos and restaurants. His operation was reduced to 4% during the pandemic and he was forced to go public, as well as accept an operating loan from the league. There are similar issues in the upper house of the NFL. Some owners feel the financial costs much more than others, especially 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 biggest fat cats, but NFL franchises are notoriously hard to rule out owners because they print. money. The pandemic has changed that. The year 2021 could usher in a bunch of new owners as the current owners who have been most severely affected by the pandemic attempt to recover funds. Will there be Cam Newton takers? Newton’s one-year plan in New England was clear: to have the smartest, most creative, and cohesive organization in the sport; show that he still had a lot of juice left, that he just needed a break; and then sign a mega-deal this coming offseason, whether with New England or elsewhere, but as far as Bill Belichick has tried to sell the Patriots-Cam Newton experience to the media and fans this season as a success , it did not work. The Patriots’ offensive staff have been creative and available, sidestepping Newton’s idiosyncrasies and lack of precision. But too often, when Newton stepped back and tried to play with some sort of rhythm, it looked like he was trying to throw a medicine ball. Newton’s health is the issue here. He no longer has the same type of zipper on his fastball, and his throwing accuracy that was poor even at the best of times has now completely fallen off a cliff. Maybe the Patriots are talking to Newton. for another season as a bridge to whatever the future of the team’s quarterback may be. Maybe they’re thinking he looked great before his Covid diagnosis. Maybe Belichick thinks Newton, even with his flaws, will be fine once the Patriots are able to bring back the pieces of their roster that have been missing this season due to COVID. But that seems unlikely. It seems that Newton, the great pioneer, the paradigm-shifter, is finally brought down. And if Belichick doesn’t want to indulge in another season, will another team be? And if not, what does Newton do? Withdraw? Sit another year and hope to heal? It’s hard to imagine Newton doing the trick as a yearlong gunman on a rebuilding team ready to charm. Is it for Bill Belichick? It doesn’t seem like Belichick is slowing down. But, at some point, Belichick will quit the job of the Patriots. Belichick has tried to set things back for another push this season, helping a group that were missing their core defense due to Covid defections and missing a quarterback given Tom Brady’s move to Florida. Is Belichick, in his advanced age, post-Covid, ready and willing after a normal year to start another rebuild? He doesn’t have a quarterback, and the backbone of the roster that delivered the last Super Bowl is starting to crumble – a majority have already left or are expected to exit this offseason. Plus: Belichick’s staff are expected to be reselected during the offseason, both on the coaching side and the Patriots front office. Is it possible that he chooses to walk away before things get ugly? Justin Fields surge The Jaguars have locked down the number one pick in the upcoming draft. The selection should be Trevor Lawrence, Clemson’s only quarterback prospect. But as always in a draft round, expect there to be a run against Justin Fields, the Ohio State quarterback who would be the top surefire selection in a traditional year. What if former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer ends up in the lead. Honcho in Jacksonville, be careful. The chatter will increase. Leaks will flow. Commercial offers will arrive, Lawrence should be the first choice, but Jacksonville may switch places with the Jets (for significant transport). A JJ Watt trade JJ Watt and the Houston Texans are synonymous with each other. But if Houston is looking to generate some sort of asset to be able 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 cap sheets. They also have a confused roster who is the walking embodiment of the fractured front office that has overseen its construction over the past five seasons. Yet there, in the middle of it all, is Deshaun Watson, one of the most gifted quarterbacks in the league. Having a good quarterback fixes a lot of things. So for the Texans to get back on track, even with the holes in the roster and lack of flexibility in the market, it would take as little as five to six smart moves. One way to open up some sort of flexibility, to increase the margin of error in trying to make such moves, would be to move on from Watt while he still holds value. It would be a difficult decision financially and culturally, but that would also be advised. And that would allow Watt to get a shot at a different organization, where he might have a shot over the next 24 months to advance beyond the division round. As noted in the article on The Guardian’s Bold Predictions for 2021, the current round of NFL TV rights deals will expire in 2022. As sport remains the only place networks can count on to produce large audiences in live, and as the NFL continues to reign supreme as the largest provider of live content (eight of the 10 most-watched single broadcasts in 2020 were football games or post-game games), the auction is expected to be intense and expensive. traditional broadcast partners. Or he could hand a more favorable deal to ESPN / Disney, with the possibility of Disney grabbing a coveted Super Bowl and transferring its shows to ABC. Or it could offer larger packages to a streaming customer, like Amazon Prime, in the hopes of getting ahead of the live sports streaming curve or trying to make up for some of the revenue that the league and its owners have lost by. 2020.
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