The NFL capped off one of its wildest and most entertaining seasons in recent memory with the Philadelphia Eagles’ surprising victory over the New England Patriots on Sunday. This offseason, however, could have just as many twists and turns around the league than that game did.
For the first time in years, several high quality and established NFL starting quarterbacks will be hitting the open market. Names like Kirk Cousins, Sam Bradford, Teddy Bridgewater and Jimmy Garoppolo all remain without contracts and are all intriguing options for plenty of quarterback-hungry teams. Of course, this list doesn’t include Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles, who the Eagles almost certainly will trade with his value so high after Sunday’s performance.
So what do all of these available quarterbacks mean for the next several months in the NFL world? Plenty of trades, free agent pitches and money thrown around. Unlike the NBA and the NHL, it isn’t all that common for the NFL to have these types of free agent sweepstakes. And the teams that’ll be involved in this quarterback carousel far outnumber the teams that feel comfortable at that position.
Cousins, for example, could easily be courted by up to eight teams this offseason. The 29-year-old has started all 48 of Washington’s games over the past three seasons, but for whatever reason has been constantly disrespected by that team at every turn. That relationship finally ended when the Redskins traded for Alex Smith last week. Cousins is no scrub, and deserves most of the money that teams are going to throw at him this offseason. He’s thrown at least 25 touchdowns in each of those past three seasons and his quarterback rating has hovered around 100 during that stretch. Teams like Arizona and Minnesota can add Cousins to some already tremendous defenses to immediately become contenders in 2018. Middle-of-the-road teams like Buffalo or the New York Jets can easily have their anemic passing offenses turn into something special with the acquisition of Cousins.
For the teams that Cousins will undoubtedly snub, there are plenty of reasons to still have hope for a major improvement at the position. In addition to the aforementioned signal-callers, this year’s draft also features plenty of options at the position. Bottom line, you may want to hold off on buying an NFL jersey until the dust settles near the end of training camp in August.
In addition to the quarterback carousel, there will be plenty of other head-turning storylines to come from this offseason. The biggest, according to various reports, is that the NFL is expected to significantly alter its current catch rule. Of course, this rule has become a nagging black eye for the league, and really took a lot away from a great season of football. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was asked prior to the Super Bowl to give an explanation of what a catch was and even he couldn’t find the right words to give a coherent answer. If the boss doesn’t know the policy how does he expect others involved in the league–referees, players, coaches–to know have a grasp of it.
The league is expected to get the input of many different voices in trying to resolve this issue, but at some point the right answer is most likely going to be the simplest one. Take Philadelphia tight end Zach Ertz’s touchdown grab late in the Super Bowl to ice the game for the Eagles as an example. To the naked eye, and to most people who have been watching the NFL for years, it looked like an easy call for the touchdown. Of course, the play was reviewed for several minutes, and even NBC announcers Chris Collinsworth and Al Michaels admitted that the play could be overturned into an incompletion. The most nervous man in America probably wasn’t Ertz, or anyone on either sideline during the game; rather it was Goodell. If the league managed to have a catch controversy in the final minutes of a game watched by over 100 million people, it may have been a blow that even the NFL couldn’t overcome quickly. The good news for fans of the league is that those in power are finally recognizing that this is a major problem, and seem eager to get it right for the following season.
There’s plenty to look forward to in the usually calm days of the NFL, and the offseason is just two days old.