The NFL is finally back. Here’s our full 2024-25 season preview.
Football is cyclical. This shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone that’s watched the NFL over the years. There are only so many ways the wheel can be reinvented, and we’re well past the point where someone can bring new thinking into the league and succeed — because almost everything has been seen before.
There is one big shift we’ve seen in the league since this time last year: Big boy football is back.
It’s a trend we predicted a year ago, and now it’s in full swing. A return to the halcyon days where a ground game was critical, running backs defined the league, and the first step to competitiveness was to have a balances offense. This time it’s a little different. Days are gone of the big-money, three-down running back — instead replaced by a constantly spinning revolving door of talent, with teams embracing a notion that modern run concepts means almost anyone can succeed, as long as the plan works.
That might seem ridiculous on first glance. The idea that anyone can run in the NFL is a wholly ridiculous concept, but it is something teams are embracing more than ever. Of the 32 running backs who started for teams in 2022 only 14 top the depth chart for the same team in 2024. That’s a 56 percent turnover league-wide, higher than any other position — proof that teams are comfortable moving on from running backs at the drop of a hat.
The fascinating flipside to this is that interior linemen have never been valued more highly. With teams happy to rotate running backs in and out, the constant they want to keep is elite play from their guards and centers, positions which were traditionally seen as expendable.
In 2024 free agency the top-10 guards and centers combined for a staggering $417.75M in contracts, while the top-10 offensive tackles combined to make $84.47M. Granted it was a weak class at OT, but there are now five guards on contracts of $75M or more — the most in the NFL history. Three years ago there was one.
Playing from the inside out is cool again. There’s no doubt that throwing the ball is still king, but we’re seeing a dramatic return to elite interior linemen, disruptive DTs, and collapsing the pocket from the middle. As quarterbacks get better at recognizing pressure off the edge teams have adapted to learn that overwhelming the middle is the key to success.
This is how the Kansas City Chiefs won back-to-back Super Bowls with Chris Jones as their key difference maker, and the entire league took notice and want to emulate it. Elite, pocket collapsing DTs mean interior linemen need to step up to counter them — and that’s the new way of the NFL.
Meanwhile teams are attacking the A-Gap again. Downhill running between the center and guard is the way, ideally with a running back who can both hit the hole for the hard yards, while also being a threat as a receiver when needed. Offenses moved to stacked receivers and mesh concepts with four receivers, so defenses countered by running more dime. That made the box weaker, so now it’s about bruising up the middle to punish that dime. It’s a natural progression that’s changing the league as a whole.
This makes football fun again. There’s less offensive homogenization, and the doomsday future of pass-only football has been avoided, falling by the wayside as the push-and-pull of defensive adjustment has resulted in only three quarterbacks passing for more than 4,500 yards in 2023, compared to four in 2022, and six in 2021. The drop off is happening, and that’s wonderful.
The way teams approach team building around big boy football might be different, but the result is the same. Young coaches are embracing old-school concepts, everything that was thought outdated is roaring back, and the league is better for it.
Welcome to the 2024 NFL season. The state of football is strong, and its future is big. — JD
Every NFL team, ranked by their Super Bowl chances.
Read JP Acosta’s feature on how the Pistol is coming back in style across the NFL.
Read J.P. Acosta on the Jets. Including:
This crazy group of hypotheticals might just work. The defense will give them a much wider margin for error to figure it out on the offensive side of the ball. The group returns all of their stars and could finish at the top of the league. Defensive tackle Quinnen Williams is a trendy DPOY pick, and his game-wrecking ability is the centerpiece of this defense. Corner Sauce Gardner has another level his game can go to, and with the defensive braintrust still intact, they can get even better.
Offensively, what if Rodgers is just decent? He doesn’t have to be the MVP he once was, especially if the defense is as good as it can be. If Rodgers can be the most effective point guard in the NFL, getting the ball out extremely quick and hitting enough of the tough throws to keep defenses honest, it’s a good formula for success. RB Breece Hall should be a major player in this offense, with a commitment to the ground game accentuating around Hall’s strengths. On top of that, the Jets have the fourth easiest schedule in the entire league, per Sharp Football Analytics. They have enough time to really get things going and get Rodgers back into the swing of playing football.
Our James Dator imagines a future where the Cowboys come up short this year and give Deion Sanders the keys to the franchise. Read it all here.
Would it work? Probably not. In fact, no ... there’s no scenario in which Deion Sanders would be a good NFL coach. That’s not really the exercise here. We’re not trying to fix the Cowboys, but rather present a possibly timeline that has enough grains of plausibility to see it happen — while also being one of the funniest things to happen in modern NFL history.
It’s a bold approach by new head coach Dave Canales that could either result in a healthy Panthers stunning the NFL world and making an impact right away, or sucking out loud and finding themselves in a hole. As it stands Bryce Young is being treated like a top quarterback who doesn’t need his reps. We’ll see if this belief is warranted when Week 1 rolls around.
Read James Dator on the Carolina Panthers.
At some point, New England will want to get Maye onto the field this season. After all, the main goal for this year is to get to the upcoming offseason confident in the belief that Maye is indeed the franchise quarterback this organization has been seeking since Brady walked off the podium after a loss to the Tennessee Titans in the playoffs and never looked back. If the Patriots can enter the next offseason confident in Maye they can build around him — putting their nearly $90 million in cap space to good use — and load up for a true run next year. But that plan does not work if Maye is shattered playing behind a porous offensive line.
Read Mark Schofield on Patriots rookie QB Drake Maye.
