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Mark Duncan/AP |
For NFL, this season promises riveting plotlines
The Michael Vick scandal likely won't overshadow the prospect of evenly matched franchises going head to head.
By Erik Spanberg | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the August 31, 2007 edition
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Forget back to school, Halloween, and autumnal foliage. For millions of Americans, fall means one thing: months of watching bone-jarring hits and majestic touchdown passes on TV.
With that ambitious agenda of caloric consumption and couch potatodom in mind, it's worth considering a few of the intriguing story lines for the new NFL season. It kicks off Sept. 6 with a matchup between the defending champion Indianapolis Colts and NFC runners-up New Orleans Saints (8:30 p.m. EST, NBC) and culminates Feb. 3 in Phoenix with Super Bowl XLII.
Questions abound. Can Donovan McNabb return from injury and lead the Philadelphia Eagles to a championship? Is San Diego's LaDainian Tomlinson already the best player of his generation? What will Tom Brady achieve with a Patriots lineup of receivers that now includes the mercurial Randy Moss? And will ESPN's Chris Berman lower his decibel level?
Here are other plotlines to look for this year:
Two by two
To be an NFL contender, teams need a semblance of a running game to go with the inevitable pass-happy West Coast offense that seemingly every NFL team employs these days. That means finding two premier running backs.
"The day of one running back carrying the load for 16 games, I think has come and gone," says Howie Long, a Fox Sports analyst and Hall of Fame defensive lineman. "You need to have a couple in the stable."
The ravages of life as an NFL runner explains why last year's Super Bowl teams each had two feature backs. And guess what? Both the Colts and the Bears lost half of their dynamic duos, posing major question marks for solo incumbents (Joe Addai in Indianapolis and Cedric Benson in Chicago). New Orleans (Reggie Bush and Deuce McAllister) is but one of many examples of the "two is better than one" mantra permeating NFL backfields.
Delicate balance
For the past decade, if not longer, the mantra of NFL football has been parity above all else. Teams are so evenly matched that the "any given Sunday" cliché has largely become reality.
"The competitive balance in the league is greater than ever before," says Gil Brandt, a retired Dallas Cowboys personnel executive who now grades talent at NFL.com. "You see more teams with better records. I don't think you're going to see a team win just two games like Oakland did last year. And I don't think anybody will win 14 like San Diego did."
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