The Kansas City Chiefs have been crowned Super Bowl champions, which means it’s time for the other 31 teams in the NFL to focus on how to build their team to dethrone the back-to-back champions. This offseason presents a variety of franchise-altering questions that could impact the next three to five years for their respective franchises. From the NFL draft to free agency, it’s time to look at some of the biggest queries of this offseason.
The teams that didn’t make the playoffs have been thinking about Thursday, April 25 for a long time now. The NFL draft, in a way, is the Super Bowl for the teams that didn’t have the NFL season go the way they wanted, and the championship prize in this draft is prospect Caleb Williams.
Due to a savvy trade by Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles, the Bears took the first overall selection from the Carolina Panthers. The problem with this is that they have a young quarterback on the roster with their starter, Justin Fields. This sparks the question of if the Bears should trade back in the draft like they did last year or take a chance on a new quarterback in Williams and try to trade Fields.
It is also important to note that the Bears own pick nine in the draft, so trading out of the first overall selection wouldn’t keep them out of getting another top ten prospect. What Chicago does will impact the layout of the entirety of this year's draft so it is one of the most important dominoes to watch.
NFL free agency opens up March 13 at 4 p.m. and with so many stars’ contracts expiring this offseason, a team could significantly improve through free agency. Some of the biggest names on defense that are available include defensive lineman and Super Bowl champion Chris Jones and his teammate cornerback L’Jarius Sneed.
Jones has already expressed his desire to return to the Chiefs but he will be looking to set the market with his new contract. Jones is coming off of a campaign forcing 11 sacks, which was tied for best on his team. An expert pass rusher, Jones usually accounts for two blockers on his own, which puts him in a league of his own at the position.
In comparison, Sneed doesn’t impress statistically but that’s because of his effectiveness. Sneed was so spectacular this season that teams wouldn’t even target him which allows his teammates to play off coverage a lot more. Sneed is a shutdown and being only 27-years-old allows him to sign a four year max contract without age being a concern for his play from teams.
With big free agents like quarterback Kirk Cousins and wide receiver Tee Higgins probably returning to their teams either via the franchise tag or extensions, this class of running backs has a huge possibility to not only change their new teams but change free agency forever. Headlined by Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs, Tony Pollard, Derrick Henry and Austin Ekeler, this is possibly the most loaded running back class we have seen in a decade.
The only problem is that in the NFL the market has been set to underpay what these players think they deserve which has led to countless holdouts as we saw at the beginning of the season with Indianapolis Colts running back Jonathan Taylor. Taylor was able to get a deal done eventually, but with all of these players being free agents it would be surprising to see them all get deals similar to his. It is commonplace in the league today to force these running backs into one year deals because of the danger of the position. It will be very interesting to see if these running backs will be able to finally break the standard of running back deals over the past few years and get a deal done.
Looking into the crystal ball is very difficult to do when it comes to predicting where these players and picks will end up but it’s important to look at these storylines as every team will be looking to get better this season. The NFL season may be over but that doesn’t mean that football is over so keep your phone ringer on and monitor how your team will look to improve.
Jasper Greuel is a junior studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note the views expressed in this column do not represent those of The Post. Want to talk to Jasper about his column? email him at jg453620@ohio.edu.
