Not that far away...

Ah, the first week of football... I know that the NFL season isn't quite ready to kick off, but darn it, I'm excited anyway. Just who am I to be on this blog and already so excited about the season? I'm Chris Clark from Sports Radio 850 the Buzz and I'll be blogging this season mostly about the NFL. If you get the opportunity, feel free to check out my show M-F from 10-Noon. The college season has been served as an appetizer, my fantasy football team has already been drafted(no, I don't like my team), and when I was walking the dogs this morning the air was a crisp 65 degrees. It's not "frozen tundra" weather, but today just felt like a day for football. With that in mind, let's look at a few of the things that I'm most interested in seeing during week one of the season...
1)Can the Carolina Panthers start well out of the gate this season? Last year, the Panthers dropped their opening game against division rival, New Orleans. I know that this was this first game after Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, but Carolina had asperations of being a Super Bowl team and New Orleans wasn't going anywhere with the team that they had last year. Carolina lost to the Saints, beat the Pats in week two, but then lost again in week three to Miami. Carolina finished 11-5, but lost the division to Tampa on a tie-breaker. That put Carolina on the road for the entire playoffs. Don't think that the season opener is just a regular game that the Panthers can get it back somewhere else. Perhaps Carolina will come into Week One with more focus this season, since the Panthers will be taking on their mortal enemy...Michael Vick.
2)New Qbs in new places. I don't know where the offseason ranked in terms of previous ones, but it felt like there were an awful lot of name quarterbacks that changed addresses in the offseason. Daunte Culpepper has a new knee and a new home in Miami. Drew Brees left the always perfect weather of San Diego for New Orleans. Steve McNair went from Tennessee to Baltimore. How these Qbs do and how their replacements do will be interesting to see, especially how Philip Rivers steps into Drew Brees' old job with the Chargers.
3)T.O. I hate hearing the daily updates from Cowboys camp about TO being on the bike, not being on the bike, if Bill Parcells referred to Owens by his name, etc, etc, etc. It all seems so middle school. Then again, look who we're dealing with. I don't want to watch, but like any car accident or reality series with former Public Enemy rapper Flava Flav...I cannot look away.
4)Is this Peyton Manning's year? It doesn't seem as if it's been that long, but this is Peyton Manning's ninth season in the NFL. Okay, so...this is the year that he finally wins the Super Bowl that people have been predicting. Manning has been a pheonminal quarterback with over 4,000 yards passing in seven of his nine years in the league. He set a new singal season record for TDs in 2004 and led the Colts to thirteen straight wins last year. But, it was another year in which Indy fell short. Instead of New England, it was Pittsburgh that kept Manning in his usual role of runner-up.
5)Rookie Impact. For most of the season, you'll hear guys talk about Reggie Bush vs Mario Williams. Bush will probably have the bigger impact this season, but Mario Williams is a special player and keep in mind that it takes longer for a defensive end to figure thing out on this level than it does for a running back. By the way, keep Jay Cutler with the Broncos in mind. Jake Plummer had a good regular season last year, but isn't firmly entrenched in Denver as the signal caller. Cutler, the 11th pick in this past year's draft, looked pretty solid throwing for four Tds and about 500 yards. Granted, it was just the preseason, but if Plummer struggles at some point, I don't think Mike Shanahan would hesitate to insert the rookie. It seems to work pretty well for him with running backs.
Those are just a couple of thoughts rolling around in my head as we all keep watching the clock and waiting for the big kickoff weekend. If there are things that you've been mulling over then leave a comment and we'll all get through this together.

Chris