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The NFL Football Season Is Back in the Covid-19 & Donald Trump World!

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By Ron Signore

I am going to pretend I am back in college for just a second. The idea in most college towns is that the weekend begins on Thursday. Purdue in West Lafayette, IN was no different. When you grow up, time revolves around getting through that work week just for those two days of freedom and relaxation.

Every fall, many of us start to remember that feeling of the weekend starting on Thursday. While COVID has many days running together like Groundhog Day, weekends have not had the same appeal as in years past. Until Thursday, September 10, 2020. The NFL season kicked off in all it’s glory last Thursday night after many doubts lingered of the season even happening.

The first game slated for the season was the defending champs in the Kansas City Chiefs against the conference rivals in the Houston Texans. There was a lot of anticipation for this game not only from a play perspective, not only from a COVID perspective, but also the political perspective. The ever-controversial topic of players who knelt during the anthem, or how players used the platform for their cause was running wild through many social media outlets. Both teams came out and stood in solidarity during the pregame. A beautiful act of humanitarianism showing that even the fiercest of rivals, the roughest of competitors can see past color and hate, were met with the sound of 17,000 admitted fans booing. Another natural disappointment from the uneducated.

The game got underway after that embarrassment. Now we were ready for the much more fundamental speculation of game play. With no preseason and nearly 8 months since the last NFL snap, the concerns of sloppy play were a huge factor for those who enjoy placing the occasional bet on the spread or the total. Kansas City was favored by 9 points with the expectation that last year’s known explosive offense would continue to dominate behind quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Though the Texans jumped out to a 7-0 lead in the 1st quarter, the Chiefs dominated from that point on going up 24-7 and never looking back, winning the contest 34-20.

But a weekend is not one day. It is a minimum of two. And in this household, as with many others, Saturday rings in college football and Sunday the NFL. College football is another area where we as fans (and gamblers) were curious how things would play out for this season. Early on, two of the Power Five conferences in the Big 10 (B10) and the Pac-12 suspended their seasons, leaving much doubt teams from either of the two conferences would see a snap all year. While the B10 and Pac-12 sit on the sidelines, Saturday opening the college season with very limited matchups. The ACC and the Big 12 conferences highlighted the most interesting of the limited matchups. The number one ranked team out of Clemson University (ACC) beat up on conference foe Wake Forest.

The most intriguing, storied matchup though was arguably the game between Notre Dame and Duke. I don’t think anyone but maybe the Duke locker room thought Notre Dame would lose. The intrigue though wasn’t the focus on the win or lose in this game, but rather the concept that Notre Dame, a football program very well known to be an independent program from the football conferences in the NCAA, had joined the ACC to be able to play this season. Somewhat historic of an event. Notre Dame would go on to be Duke 27-13, failing to cover the almost 3 touchdown spread.

With no SEC competition during this week, the most exciting game to probably watch was University of Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin Cajuns, who were unranked, rage up from the comfortable southern weather to the gloomy Midwest fall-ish climate of Iowa State University. Iowa State, ranked 23rd in the nation out of the Big-12, came out and held their own going into halftime with the lead 14-10. But the Ragin Cajuns score 21 unanswered points, knocking off the ranked Cyclones of Iowa State.

As we went into Sunday, the anticipation of play from the first game on Thursday night was not the biggest of concerns for the slate of games on Sunday. For Sunday there were bigger story lines to focus on. For the first time in his professional career, Tom Brady was taking snaps from under center in a new uniform. His debut with The Tampa Bay Buccaneers was very highly publicized as the divisional matchup put Brady against another future hall of famer, Drew Brees, and the New Orleans Saints. Brady and the Bucs were already road underdogs as a spread play (+3.5), Brady performed respectable having thrown 2 touchdowns. Costly mistakes in turnovers, two specifically by Brady and one becoming an interception returned for a touchdown, would cost the Bucs the match 34-23.

While that was Brady’s first snap without Bill Belichick as his head coach in the NFL, Belichick had a new starter in former MVP Cam Newton taking the snaps in New England. Newton would comfortably cruise with 2 TD’s in his debut with the typically solid Patriots, 21-11.

This offseason, the Green Bay Packers drafted a quarterback with their first-round draft pick. In natural human fashion, drama swirled around the NFL universe wondering if the Packers were getting ready to move on from Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers took on the critics of his arguably declining play and came out with a vengeance shredding the division for Minnesota Vikings on the road as 3.5 point underdogs winning outright 43-34. Rodgers accumulated 364 yards in the air and 4 touchdowns in the contest, which was not as close as the score may indicate.

The football team formally known as the Washington Redskins had an interesting offseason. They hired coach Ron Rivera, who is a really good coach. Rivera was later diagnosed with cancer, leaving some contingencies needing to be in place incase he needs a sudden absence while undergoing treatments. But even with all this going on, he helped the stubborn owner of Dan Snyder finally move to change the team name to from the Redskins. While they are currently the Washington Football Team, they came out amid the changes in name and personnel and with Rivera playing Ohio State rookie quarterback Dwayne Haskins as the starter, they came out victorious as heavy underdogs to the long-rivaled Philadelphia Eagles.

We saw the now Las Vegas Raiders travel to Rivera’s former team in Carolina and win 34-30. Many fans of football nation are looking forward to the games being played in the gambling capitol of the universe in Las Vegas.

The 2019 odds on favorite for the Heisman Trophy, and NCAA Championship winning Louisiana State quarterback Joe Burrow made his debut in Cincinnati on Sunday after no preseason adjustment or transition into the NFL. The number 1 overall pick would score a rushing touchdown 23 yards untouched in the loss against the now Phillip River-less San Diego Chargers.

Phillip Rivers, a long-time quarterback for the Chargers took his first snaps in a different uniform Sunday throwing for 363 yards and a TD in an upset loss to division rival Jacksonville Jaguars. The former Washington State quarterback, Garner Minshew racked up 3 touchdowns and no interceptions in the Jacksonville victory.

The Houston Texans traded the elite wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins to the Arizona Cardinals to play alongside Larry Fitzgerald and sophomore quarterback Kyler Murray. Hopkins would have a career high in 14 catches for 151 yards in his debut against the Conference Champion San Francisco 49ers. Amidst the poor air quality in the city by the bay, the 49ers came out hot with the sour taste of the recent Super Bowl loss. The Super Bowl hangover kicked in as they ran out of juice dropping the game 24-20 to the Cardinals.

While the Cowboys of Dallas are still touted as America’s team, they went out and hired former Green Bay coach, Mike McCarthy. Dallas would be very unimpressive in his McCarthy’s debut dropping the Sunday Night Primetime game to the LA Rams. The Lamar Jackson led Baltimore Ravens came out and steamrolled the Cleveland Browns 38-6. And the Chicago Bears traveled to Detroit to play the Lions, where they rallied in the 4th quarter behind Mitch Trubisky’s 3 touchdowns to come back and beat the Lions 27-23.

A lot of new faces in new places. A lot of interesting game play with the lack of a preseason and a modified off-season due to COVID. It was an entertaining “first weekend of fall,” with lots of anticipation for the season going forward. Can we get by this nonsense of criticizing players for exercising their right to kneel or show for a cause during the anthem? A battlefield for 3 hours every Sunday with players coming from all backgrounds showing unity should say more than we let it. The limited, if any, number of fans allowed in to games live did not seem to have an impact on play. And beyond the political aspect, we cannot wait to see the journey to this year’s Super Bowl. Let’s just hope COVID does not win.

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