The National Football League opens their 2021 preseason schedule this Thursday with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys meeting in the annual Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio.

Last year, you may recall, the NFL skipped the preseason due to the virus but were able to get in the entire regular season and the expanded postseason schedule. Threading the needle during the pandemic required a number of rescheduled games that necessitated for the first time ever the league staging a game on every day of the week.

This year, the league will not be so kind to teams that have outbreaks of Covid-19. Because the vaccine offers relief for nearly all the most serious complications from the virus and has proven successful in stemming the spread of the coronavirus, a team that has an outbreak this season will not get a chance to make up their game, but rather forfeit the result and not get paid.

Sounds severe, and some players have cried foul and been vocal in their opposition to having to get the life saving vaccine.

That discussion is for another report, while we will move onto the preseason looking for what teams are most likely to jell and pay dividends against the point spread. Ultimately, when the Super Bowl is played next February, we expect it will include two of the likely candidates or one of the few dark horses with a real shot at winning it all. By our current calculations, as many as a dozen teams could conquer Super Bowl LVI with good reasons going in for why they are poised to succeed.

Both teams that participated in last year's title game, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs, are capable of winning it all this year. Of the two teams that meet this Thursday in Canton, the Steelers and Cowboys, one might think either of these teams could be in the mix.