Everyone in the sports media business is well aware that football season is the crucial time of the year. As we enter July, it’s all barreling upon us. College football is huge in its own right but the NFL is King, and from my vantage entering the most fascinating season of all-time.
The primary reason for this is there is an unprecedented depth of great, interesting, and/or serviceable quarterbacks. If you pull up a list of the 32 NFL teams, there’s virtually no dreck to be found. As we’ll discuss, the floor has been raised several levels.
I’m not sure everybody realizes how dominant the NFL is not just in sports but also the broader TV landscape. Thirty-three of the top 50 most-watched TV shows of 2020 were NFL games, including 14 of the top 20 (this year there will be robust Olympics competition, but no presidential debates).
And the rich are getting richer. This offseason, the league inked new TV deals collectively worth $100 billion. The regular season is expanding to 17 games. Fans are returning to the stands, which makes the games feel much more meaningful. Knock on wood, games should be played at the dates and times they’re supposed to be, rather than the roving jigsaw puzzle of last year. Gambling continues to be legal in ever more states, which should help with eyeballs on the margins — even if it doesn’t it’s effectively a printing press of money in marketing partnerships.
Out of home viewership was not counted in standard 2019 ratings, and last season sports bars were either closed or faced capacity restrictions in many regions. I expect an enormous impact to be felt with the full inclusion of these metrics this season.
I ran all this by a network executive who responded: “Ad sales for football are through the roof. College and pro. The marketplace agrees with you.”
Returning to the unprecedented quarterback talent in the league: To double-check my own opinions, I reached out to NFL experts Peter King, Albert Breer, Mike Florio, and Sean Salisbury — who combined have closely followed the league for over 100 years — to see if they could ever remember a season that lined up to be as fascinating as this one. Here’s what they said:
Peter King (NBC Sports)
Lots of reasons to think 2021 will be one of the NFL’s most interesting seasons. I’ll give you four.
One: We are in the NFL’s golden age of quarterbacks, with the best crop of young passing stars I’ve seen in 37 years covering the league. In 2005, two quarterbacks threw for more than 4,000 yards, and two had a rating over 100. In 2020, 12 surpassed 4,000 yards, and 10 had ratings over 100.
Two: Tom Brady at 44, piloting a fully intact defending Super Bowl champion. Both of those things are incredible.
Three: GMs are bolder than ever. If the Deshaun Watson case is resolved by midseason, one of the risk-taking GMs could trade for him, even if Watson is suspended.
Four: Navigating a 17-game season, with more injuries and general fatigue, will be a storyline. Coaches should rotate series off–at least for veterans–in fourth quarters of decided games, but will they? I didn’t mention COVID, and how teams respond to the 2021 protocols. But I have to think a team with 2019 freedoms could have a competitive advantage over a division rival with 2020 restrictions.
Albert Breer (Sports Illustrated)
Where I think the NFL’s collective quarterback situation is so interesting stems back to three years ago, when it seemed just about every team was going into the season with at least some sort of plan at the position. That year was 2018, and I honestly couldn’t find a single team where I looked and could say, definitively, that team is going to take one in the first round next year. Three did—the Cardinals fired their coach and bailed from Josh Rosen after a single season, the Giants finally tabbed a successor for Eli Manning, and Washington saw its QB, Alex Smith, suffer a seismic injury—but that didn’t lessen the overarching idea, and that was that the NFL, as I saw it, had never been healthier at its most important position.
And now, going into the 2021 season, I think we’ve reached the next phase of that, where just good, for a lot of teams, isn’t good enough.
Call it the Mahomes-ization of the NFL. At the aforementioned juncture, before the 2018 season, Mahomes was indeed the Chiefs’ plan at the position (they’d just dealt Smith away to clear the way for their 2017 first-round pick), but few knew what Andy Reid was about to unleash on the league. Three years later, he’s the mountain that most other teams are looking up at, the one they’ll have to scale over the next decade to win a championship. A decade ago, winning a championship with Joe Flacco or Eli Manning, or a raw second-year player (where Russell Wilson and Ben Roethlisberger were for their first titles) was realistic, if you were good enough around them. And a lot of teams, looking at the challenge Mahomes will present them for the foreseeable future, clearly don’t see it that way anymore.
If you’re the Bills with Josh Allen or the Chargers with Justin Herbert or the Jaguars with Trevor Lawrence, you have reason to believe that the ceiling is there where you’ll get close enough to keep pace with Kansas City and Mahomes. But most others? There’s a reason why the Rams paid a king’s ransom to swap out a 26-year-old Jared Goff for a 33-year-old Matthew Stafford, and why the Niners moved heaven and earth to gamble on Trey Lance, which will eventually mean bailing on Jimmy Garoppolo. As is the case with Allen, Herbert and Lawrence, the ceiling is there with Lance and Stafford, and clearly the Niners and Rams don’t think it was with Garoppolo and Goff.
So that, to me, is the most interesting thing about this very interesting season to come. It’s the year where good was not good enough for a lot of teams at the position. I believe the explosion of capable quarterbacks in the NFL is a result of a couple things—these guys are developed with personal coaches like golfers from the time they’re in grade school, and the NFL is far more creative offensively than it used to be, allowing for a wider net to be cast for talent at the position—and that has raised the bar at the position.
It seems like the talent pool now is deep enough for everyone to be good at quarterback. But because of the presence of Mahomes, more and more, teams feel the need to be great.
Mike Florio (ProFootballTalk; Mike’s book ‘Playmakers’ is out March 15th)
It’s all driven by the quarterbacks. We continue to be in a golden age of the most important position in football, with several older quarterbacks who are among the best to ever play (Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Ben Roethlisberger), plenty of great young quarterbacks who ultimately could be among the greatest to ever play (Patrick Mahomes, Deshaun Watson, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Baker Mayfield) and some potential all-time greats (Russell Wilson, Matthew Stafford, Dak Prescott) in the middle. Quarterback play is improving at the college level, and NFL teams are no longer trying to make quarterbacks who did great things in college do something different at the next level. They’re embracing the great college quarterbacks for who they are and what they do, and they’re becoming great pro quarterbacks.
The annual availability of a fresh crop of competent rookie quarterbacks has made teams more willing to move on from veterans, resulting in more quarterback movement than ever before. Every year, free-agency will include quarterbacks who previously never would have gotten away from their existing teams. Now, teams who have good quarterbacks will crave finding great quarterbacks, and they’ll be willing to give up the bird in the hand to get there.
Here’s where this all is going to eventually lead. Within five years, the league will start talking about expansion. A few years ago, there weren’t 32 quarterbacks who were good enough to start in the NFL. Now, there are enough. Enough to justify 34 teams, 36 teams, or more.
Legalized gambling will push the league in that direction. The new 17-game season will inevitably become an 18-game season. Beyond that, the only way to increase the inventory of games will be to increase the number of teams.
Sean Salisbury (SportsTalk 790 and KPRC 950 in Houston)
No doubt the energy and momentum the NFL will get from the return from Covid will heighten the excitement. We are blessed with as deep a Starting QB class as we’ve possibly ever had. We have play callers who are doing things most of us didn’t think was feasible. Two of our best, Rodgers and Watson, may not play. Brady is the favorite and still is the very reason the team should be the favorite to be in the Super Bowl. At 44 years old this August he should be preparing his HOF speech. Yet, he’s playing like he did a decade ago.
I don’t remember a time when we went into a season thinking a dozen different QBs could win an MVP. We have franchises who people have laughed at that are now in positions to win their division and are a February threat like Cleveland and Arizona. The excitement of young stars — Zach Wilson and Trevor Lawrence — bringing relevance to the Jets and Jags while giving hope to their fan base. We all wonder who Carson Wentz and Jimmy G actually are as players and whether Bill Belichick will turn Mac Jones into his next Super Bowl QB. There are so many other wow factor stories in the league this year, yet the QB drama alone is enough to make you pay triple the price for a ticket. For me, I can’t remember a time when I was more intrigued and pumped for an NFL season than I am in 2021!
Ryan Glasspiegel is a contributor for BSM. He has previously worked for Outkick, The Big Lead, and Sports Illustrated. In addition to covering the sports media business, Ryan creates promotional products for brands and companies including t-shirts, hats, hoodies, and various types of swag. For business inquiries email him at Glasspiegel.Ryan@gmail.com or find him on Twitter @sportsrapport.
