AFCN

“At last… My love has come along My lonely days are over And life is like a song.” – Etta James And just like that, the 2021 offseason is mercifully over.  Other than a few lingering details, like T. J. Watt’s contract negotiations, the AFC North is ready to go, with rosters having been more…

The information age, annoying as it can be, is still useful for some things. News of Saturday’s NFL preseason contest between the Baltimore Ravens and the Washington Football Team was barely under way when the reports surfaced:  Ravens starting RB J.K. Dobbins taken off field with apparent knee injury.  Naturally, Ravens fans held their collective…

It’s that speculative time of year. Fans of every NFL stripe are following their teams’ training camp follies with great interest.  Every injury is catastrophic.  Every dropped pass is a killer.  And every success is magnified far beyond typical measure.  This sort of hyperbolic reaction to everything, and I’m guilty of this like everyone else,…

Camps have opened, and we couldn’t be happier. Your team has had a few practices by now.  The odds are you’ve been reading coverage of them, and they’re disturbingly filled with injuries and no-shows.  This seems to be the case in every training camp as veterans and rookies alike begin to expand their workouts and…

Just a week or two now, folks. With NFL training camps preparing to open amid lingering COVID-19-and-variants dominating the headlines, particularly for the pending Olympics, camps haven’t received quite as much press.  I’m not talking about the Packers, of course, whose deteriorating relation with star QB Aaron Rodgers has been the focal point of NFL…

Yeah, this again. We’re at the antsy stage of the NFL offseason, where typical non-football sports begin to lose their appeal in anticipation of training camps opening.  While the currently-happening NBA Finals hold some appeal in the absence of annually “anointed” teams like the Lakers, football fans know there’s little substitute for the full contact…

Every time I write an NFL piece during the offseason, I tend to preface it with something like, “There’s no NFL news right now, but…” Just wanted to point that out. Anyway, there’s been some activity in the AFC North this week.  OTAs have been conducted, with moderate attendance.  A few position battles are starting…

I’m beat. This last pandemic-fueled year has been undoubtedly draining for most humans, my personal story notwithstanding.  I’m not here to bend your eyes and ears with tales of personal woe and injustice, driven by a reticence to wear masks or obey distancing guidelines (I honored both, as most good humans should and did), nor…

Now that the 2021 NFL draft is behind us, we can begin our ever-astute analysis of our teams’ fortunes for the coming season, outlandish as it may be.  We can also assess team drafts in the context of their respective drafting histories.  Some AFC North teams have notorious, overly-documented drafting issues, while others require a…

The 2021 NFL Draft is officially over, and so is our general interest in the NFL for the time being. Hopefully, your team did well.  Opinions regarding each AFC North teams’ draft class vary greatly, but really, judgments made of a draft class prior to that class actually taking the field is premature and often…