More Drama Set for 2016 NFL Season

If you have your sights set on another exciting season of NFL action, your long wait is finally over. So grab your favorite team jersey and make plans to meetup with friends or head out to a game on Sundays. Its going to be a great 2016 NFL season.

Unless you are a diehard MLB fan, you’re pretty much stuck with baseball from the middle of June until the first “real” NFL games take place in early September.

Sure, there are all those wonderful pre-season games (cough cough) to fill the slate in August and sometimes the first few days of September, but those are pretty much what they sound like, exhibition games.

That said once the real season kicks off with Carolina facing Denver (Sept. 8) in a rematch of last season’s Super Bowl (won by the Broncos), NFL fans will have football every week right through the AFC and NFC Championship Games in late January.

So, are you ready for the drama that is the NFL?

If so, buckle up and get ready for what should be another wild ride, with no clear prohibitive favorite to win the trophy come next February in Houston.

New Season Means New Happenings

As with every new NFL season, there are storylines and then there are storylines.

Heading into this season, one of the biggest topics someone would find on just about any NFL fan blog they came across, the drama that is Tom Brady.

Suspended for the first four regular season games, Brady and the famed “Deflategate” drama dominated the NFL landscape during the regular season last year and even the off-season.

As quarterback of one of the most despised (yet very successful) teams in the game over the last decade or more, Brady has had to put much of the drama to the side, instead concentrating on keeping his AFC East Patriots in the hunt for the Super Bowl season after season.

With Brady sitting out the first four games this season, there is still plenty of drama to go around the league.

Among some of the headlines as the first month of the regular season kicks off:

• The return of the NFL to Los Angeles after some 20 years. The nation’s second largest TV market will once again have a team in its midst, as the Rams move back to Southern California from St. Louis. Having played in Anaheim (Orange County) for years prior to moving to the nation’s heartland, the Rams will be a hot ticket for football fans in Southern California;
• No more Peyton Manning after nearly 20 years in the league – While he will still be hawking Papa John’s pizza and some other commercial items, this will mark the first season without Manning suiting up in a while. Winner of two Super Bowls (Indianapolis, Denver), Manning called it quits after leading the Broncos to their third Super Bowl crown last February. As the Broncos (and the NFL for that matter) move on from one of the game’s greatest QB’s ever, not to mention one of the sport’s greatest ambassadors, it will be interesting to see if younger brother Eli can recapture the Super Bowl ring lead in the Manning family, with each having won two now;
• Is Tony Romo all but officially done? – Finally, no player’s health is more closely watched these days than that of Dallas quarterback Tony Romo. Unless you are an NFL fan who has been living under a rock in the last month or so, you know that the veteran quarterback injured his back yet again. The pre-season injury in a game at Seattle supposedly will have Romo out anywhere from six to eight weeks, though that timetable could of course change at any point and time. With Romo on the sidelines, Dallas now must rely on rookie Dak Prescott (Mississippi State) and veteran backup Mark Sanchez to hold down the fort until (and if) Romo is healthy once again. On the flip side of the coin, Dallas management can take a good look at Prescott, seeing if in fact he could be the heir apparent to Romo in North Texas.

As you can see, those three headlines alone are interesting to NFL fans, but you know there is so much more, especially as the season unfolds and winds its way through the holidays (the regular season ends on Jan. 1).

For NFL fans, the drama is just beginning.