The NFL is back. Here are 3 big questions as the season kicks off

The NFL season is here, and what a start: The league has made its season kickoff a weekend-long event, with a season opener hosted by the Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles against the Dallas Cowboys Thursday night followed by three more primetime matchups on Friday, Sunday and Monday, each pitting together two Super Bowl hopefuls in matchups with plenty of narrative intrigue.

This season, the league’s ever-expanding quest to win fans and screens worldwide will include a record-setting seven international games, including new host cities Dublin and Berlin, and games broadcast exclusively on four different streaming platforms — including the returns of Prime Video’s Black Friday game and Netflix’s Christmas doubleheader — alongside the usual weekly TV lineups on Fox, CBS, NBC, and ESPN.

And this week, after pop star Taylor Swift’s Instagram-breaking engagement announcement to Kansas City Chiefs celebrity tight end Travis Kelce (the 9th most liked post on Instagram ever), NFL commissioner Roger Goodell coyly declined to deny the possibility of a Swift halftime show at the Super Bowl.

“It’s a maybe,” Goodell said with a smile on the Today show.

What’s not a maybe: Football is back, and with it the storylines and drama of a new season about to unfold. Read on for three big questions looming over the start of the year.

Does the trade heard round the world make the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl favorites? 

For fans of the Cowboys, this season is already a nightmare. In genuinely stunning news last week, the Cowboys traded away their biggest star, the 26-year-old defensive end Micah Parsons, to the Green Bay Packers after negotiations over a contract extension had fallen apart.

Usually, in sports, it’s a bad thing when a team sends away its best player when that player is in the prime of their playing career. This was not an exception. (And the pain is double for Dallas fans, whose Mavericks inexplicably traded away the generational star Luka Doncic back in February.)

The Packers, in return, sent Dallas two future first-round draft picks and defensive lineman Kenny Clark. “Those draft picks could get us top, Pro-Bowl-type players,” team owner Jerry Jones told reporters afterward.

But there’s an obvious problem with that logic. The Packers are a good team, meaning their first-round picks are likely to be toward the end of the round. The odds of drafting a starting-caliber player (let alone a Pro Bowler) late in the first round are essentially a coin toss. Not to mention, of course, that those picks were already a “Pro-Bowl-type player” in Micah Parsons, who’s been named a Pro Bowler in each of his four seasons in the NFL so far.

For the Packers, the Parsons trade was Christmas in August. The Packers were already dark house Super Bowl contenders. Now, Parsons immediately levels up the Green Bay defense, putting the rest of the NFC on notice. They’re now in the mix for NFC betting favorites right alongside the Eagles and last year’s top-seed Detroit Lions (who meet the Packers Sunday for a high-stakes Week 1 matchup).

Which second-year quarterbacks will take a leap forward … and which will step back? 

Never before last year were so many quarterbacks chosen so early in the NFL Draft. A record six quarterbacks were chosen in the first 12 picks, from Caleb Williams to the Chicago Bears through Bo Nix with the Denver Broncos. All but one (J.J. McCarthy of the Minnesota Vikings, who suffered a season-ending knee injury before last season began) saw the field last season — and all of them showed promise, including last year’s Offensive Rookie of the Year winner Jayden Daniels of the Washington Commanders.

Now, for these six players — who make up nearly 20% of the league’s starters — a critical Year 2 is on deck. But forward progress isn’t a guarantee these days, as the patient development of quarterbacks seems to have become a thing of the past in the NFL.

One exception is Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell, who has repeatedly shown he can bring out the best in quarterbacks who’ve floundered with other teams, like Sam Darnold and Josh Dobbs. That bodes well for McCarthy, as does the Vikings’ top-tier receiving talent — including the superstar Justin Jefferson — who can help compensate for beginner mistakes.

For leaps forward, look to Nix, who proved he has a solid foundation to build on with a low sack rate and great arm strength, and Drake Maye, whose Patriots worked to improve the pieces around him on offense during the offseason. Meanwhile, any list of regression candidates has to include Daniels, who was excellent last season but whose Washington Commanders could have a tough time repeating that 12-5 record against a tougher schedule this season. The Atlanta Falcons’ Michael Penix undoubtedly has a big arm, but his accuracy issues remain a question mark.

Maybe the biggest wild card is Williams, who came into a chaotic situation in Chicago last year and lost his offensive coordinator, then his head coach, before the end of November. Then the Bears made the splashiest coaching hire of the offseason by bringing in Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. That’s a lot of change for Williams, who has to start again from the ground up in Year 2. “It’s different — a whole new playbook, different terminology, different reads, different footwork, different things like that,” he told reporters in July. “Being able to handle it all is what we get paid to do.”

Williams and McCarthy will each get their season premiere in the bright lights when their teams meet on Monday Night Football. Circle that one.

Is this the year another AFC contender finally breaks the Kansas City Chiefs’ grip on the conference? 

The Buffalo Bills and Baltimore Ravens are powerhouses with MVP-winning quarterbacks at the helm. Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and the Cincinnati Bengals are due for a rebound season after missing the playoffs last year. The Denver Broncos have made leaps with Nix at the helm. The Los Angeles Chargers are in year two of the Jim Harbaugh turnaround plan. The Pittsburgh Steelers, with 41-year-old Aaron Rodgers under center, are a wild card contender. The Houston Texans should be improved, as should the Las Vegas Raiders, amidst an overhaul that has brought coach Pete Carroll and quarterback Geno Smith to town.

But one team has stopped them all in five of the last six seasons: the Kansas City Chiefs. If you’re not from Kansas City, you’ve probably got major Chiefs fatigue. But the fact is that, since Patrick Mahomes took over as the Chiefs’ starting quarterback, the Chiefs haven’t fared any worse in the playoffs than an AFC Championship Game loss … in overtime.

Last year was the perfect opportunity to knock the Chiefs off their throne. They were far worse than their 15-2 record and ultimately got their due in an embarrassing Super Bowl loss. But the Bills and Ravens missed their chance, and now, the Chiefs might somehow be better this season — at least their offense might be — if reports out of training camp about the performance of their offensive line and wide receivers are to be believed.

The Bills and the Ravens are favorites to topple the reigning AFC champs, and we’ll see very soon which might have the upper hand, as the Ravens travel to Buffalo to open the season on Sunday Night Football.