The 2022 National Football League preseason is in the books, and the stories about more money wagered on a preseason football game than a baseball World Series matchup can take a backseat to football games that really matter.
There are 32 teams that open the NFL campaign with hopes of ending this season in a hail of confetti in their team colors next February in Arizona. Only one will reach that pinnacle of the football world and get sized for a Super Bowl ring.
Who will it be this season?
The team that wins it all will have not only the talent to get it done, only about a dozen of the 32 NFL teams can honestly profess to have the parts in place to win the Vince Lombardi Trophy, they will also have a couple other factors going their way that are tough to predict before the season starts.
One, and this is paramount, is to avoid injuries. The two teams that square off at State Farm Stadium in Super Bowl LVII will probably be units that have their five offensive linemen active for all their 2022 games. No unit on the field is more important for synchronization than the offensive line. It is true that receivers and quarterbacks need to establish a connection to have their skills best work together, but the offensive line is a ballet.
On the snap of the ball we have five men near 300 pounds right next to each other moving to block big guys trying to get past them to disrupt their offense. If the five guys upfront don’t work together all sorts of bad things can happen, that includes subjecting their quarterback to punishment, running backs with no holes to run through, and their defense quickly back on the field because of offensive woes.
If a team was to assemble the best five offensive lineman in the game today, and have them all start when the season kicks off next week, the results probably wouldn’t be good initially.
Why?
Because five talented offensive linemen coming together for the first time would need time to have their movements on the snap synced up to avoid stepping on each other and creating gaping holes in their protection.
Great offensive lines are always units that have worked together for years and have an appreciation for each other's strengths and tendencies. When I was with the Oakland Raiders in the 1970’s, I always enjoyed listening to head coach John Madden and team owner Al Davis debate the most important position on the field. Madden contended it was the offensive line, and in those days he had three future Hall of Fame inductees that were making him a successful coach; Jim Otto, Art Shell and Gene Upshaw.
Davis argued, in a lighthearted way, that the most important position to assure team success was cornerback. He would point out that if your team was getting beat in the defensive backfield and giving up long touchdowns everything else got leveled. Davis talked of great defensive backfield play as I was listening while the Silver and Black had some of the best ever, including Willie Brown, Jack Tatum and George Atkinson.
In truth, a winning team needs talented athletes on both sides of the ball at all 22 positions and special teams. The Buffalo Bills would have won a Super Bowl had their kicker simply converted a 47-yard field goal; the Minnesota Vikings would have represented the National Football Conference in Super Bowl XXXIII had their kicker not ended his perfect season on field goals with a miss in the waning moments of their NFC Championship Game against the Atlanta Falcons.
In truth, both the Bills and Vikings had good kickers with Scott Norwood and Gary Anderson respectively, who missed field goals at critical times. Which brings us to another element that will be necessary for a team to win it all this season.
The need to overcome.
The Bills were favored by nearly a touchdown against the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXV, the game Norwood was wide right on a 47-yard kick that would have won the game for Buffalo. The Vikings were double-digit home favorites in 1998 when Anderson botched a would-be clinching field goal against the Falcons. The eye of the tiger, the need to overachieve in order to succeed, is the most common trait of a winning football team and neither the Bills or Vikings had that when they teed up the ball in those games.
Talent is necessary, but just as important is that edge players only have when they know that even their best efforts may not be enough to get a win. Hall of Fame Quarterback Peyton Manning is always in the conversation of the best to ever play his position. During his 14 years with the Indianapolis Colts, he only once guided his team to a Super Bowl win. That was in 2006. In four other seasons Manning had directed Indianapolis to better regular season marks but that year, 2006, the Colts had the worst rushing defense in football during the 16 game regular season. They had given up more than a quarter of a thousand yards on the ground to the Jacksonville Jaguars in a loss that December.
In the years the Colts entered the playoffs as the prohibitive favorites, they fell short. In the year they had a liability to overcome, they won it all.
So, as we stand at the beginning of this NFL campaign we know what a team needs to win it all … we can’t necessarily know until it happens what teams will avoid injuries, who will have the eye of the tiger in February and what team will end this season hoisting the Super Bowl Trophy.
I’ve got my eye on two teams that I think will meet in Super Bowl LVII, and before the regular season kicks off I will announce those along with a number of teams I think are headed this year to seasons that will end above or below their posted season win totals. Keep reading these Headline Plays for all the details.