By Andrew Rovit ’22, Sports Section Editor

The NFL logo which sits at the center of MetLife Stadium, the home for the New York Jets and New York Giants

Football is back! The leaves are falling, and the annual tradition of fans spending eight hours of their weekend sitting on their couch and screaming at the TV has returned. The local teams, the New York Giants and the Jets, are still in a rebuilding phase, but there are many other storylines still to play out. Here are the top four things to look out for this season.

1. Fans

Football fans, welcome back to your home stadium. Due to the pandemic, most teams could not let fans into the stadiums last season, thus this season will mark the return of fans packing the stands and tailgating in the parking lot. Home field advantage will be restored, so watch out for the crowd noise which is sure to affect the opposing team’s offense. 

2. New Title Contenders

In the past couple of weeks social media has been flooded with Super Bowl predictions. We are still seeing the usual suspects — Kansas City Chiefs, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Green Bay Packers, LA Rams, etc. But two newly competitive AFC teams that have been talked about as having Super Bowl aspirations are the Cleveland Browns and Buffalo Bills. Both of these teams, who have yet to win a Super Bowl, have great, young quarterbacks (QBs) in Josh Allen and Baker Mayfield. It should be exciting to see if the new blood can remain at the top of the league.

3. Rookie QBs

This past draft, there were five quarterbacks selected in the first round — three of them were the first three picks in the draft. Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson are going to be the starters on a rebuilding Jaguars and Jets teams, respectively. Mac Jones is going to get the chance to take the recently struggling Patriots back to the playoffs. The other two QBs, Justin Fields and Trey Lance, will start on the bench this year, but I would not be surprised if we see them starting games by the end of the season. 

4. Contract Years

It is always interesting to look at the stars who are in the last year of their contracts and are trying to prove they are worth more money. Nick Chubb, star running back for the Browns, is in the last year of his contract, and even though he splits carries with former Chief Kareem Hunt, it would definitely be in the best interest of the rising team to keep their offense consistent. The other name that has my attention is Davente Adams, star receiver for the Packers. He is one of the best players in the NFL, but after he and fellow Packer QB Aaron Rodgers posted a picture of MJ and Scottie Pippen on their Instagram, an allusion to the Last Dance documentary, fans speculate he is unlikely to return to the Packers following this season. With this being the presumed last season on the Packers for Rodgers as well after his hectic off season, Adams might want to look for a new team after this season.

The 2021 season is upon us, and I, like so many of you, am so excited to watch these storylines play out over the course of the next couple of months.