After an off-season filled with news of domestic violence, concussion suits and the Washington franchise’s nickname, the National Football League gets down to doing what it does best — gluing millions of fannies to the couch.
It all begins on Thursday, and if you haven’t been keeping score, these magazines can bring you up to date.
The cover of Sports Illustrated’s 2014 NFL Preview bears the image of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson pitted against his San Francisco rival Colin Kaepernick.
Inside, however, we get the highly questionable prediction that Super Bowl XLIX will find the Green Bay Packers defeating the Indianapolis Colts 30-23.
This would be fine if columnist Peter King had a coherent argument to back his idea.
Instead, we get a litany of solid reasons to doubt it — the most obvious being that Green Bay’s defense could be in trouble, despite the virtuosity of QB Aaron Rodgers.
As for the Colts, they “have a favorable schedule…and a quarterback, (Andrew) Luck, who is ready to take the next step.” Please forgive us, Peter, if we aren’t racing to call our bookies.
The Sporting News puts Eli Manning on its cover, noting his pledge to “reinvent” himself after throwing a league-leading 27 interceptions last year.
What will the result be? A 6-10 season for the Giants, versus last year’s 7-9, according to the mag, which calls for the 49ers to win it all this year.
Aside from the fact that San Francisco wants it really, really bad, the mag notes that Kaepernick’s supporting cast on offense will be stronger as veteran receivers Anquan Boldin and Vernon Davis are healthy again.
Columnist Vinnie Iyer makes the compelling (if not somewhat depressing to those of us on the East Coast) case that Seattle and San Francisco are today’s best NFL rivalry, noting that “they’re the two best teams in the game, hands down, and they hate each other.”
The USA Today NFL preview does a better job highlighting what seems to be this season’s key question: can Seattle, so dominant last year ahead of its Super Bowl win, stage a repeat this year?
One reason to think the answer might be yes — the historical rarity notwithstanding — is that coach Pete Carroll appears to be all too aware that it’s a long shot.
“It’s been demonstrated that teams can get there, but for the most part they can’t stay there,” Carroll admits.
Elsewhere, check out well-chosen breakouts on the Denver Broncos’ off-season efforts to recover from last year’s bruising defeat, as well as the sorry state of the Dallas Cowboys under Jerry Jones, who haven’t won a playoff game since the 1995 season.
ESPN puts LeSean McCoy on its cover, and inside we get an entertaining feature on one of the more intriguing NFL story lines of late — that of the Philadelphia Eagles under its tech-obsessed coach.
Chip Kelly demands that players pee into cups regularly to monitor their hydration, and wear bracelets at night to monitor their sleep.
We’re far from convinced that Kelly’s methods will take the Eagles to a championship this year, but it will be fun to watch.
Other good reads included the feature on former Giants bench-warmer Jared Lorenzen, who truly was a giant, especially for a quarterback.
“What do you do when your appetite for food competes with your appetite for the game?” the sympathetic writer Tommy Tomlinson asks, detailing Lorenzen’s tragically outsize taste for Little Debbie snacks and Little Caesars pizza.
The time has also arrived for college ball, and the New Yorker’s John McPhee reminisces about being eight years old in the stands at a Princeton game.
He sat next to the coach’s screaming wife, whose “voice was curdling blood,” coming to a crescendo as each play developed.
“That was my basic introduction to football,” McPhee says.
Elsewhere, there’s a solid piece on the growing problem of narcotics abuse on Staten Island, where doctors and hospitals prescribed painkillers at about twice the rate as the rest of the city between 2009 and 2012.
Also check out the story on hacker Anonymous’s disgraceful misidentification of a police dispatcher as the killer of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
“I will never speak with my family again,” the hacker whines, unconcerned about the damage he did to the innocent dispatcher’s life.
Time apparently is feeling the pressure from data journalism as it publishes “The Answers Issue,” loading it up with stats and charts about everything from shopping trends to prison populations.
Some of the answers are quite lame — e.g., “It’s not designed to,” in answer to “Why does the bag not inflate if oxygen is flowing to the mask?”
Some of the answers are ridiculous — e.g., “if current trends continue, 100 percent of Americans will be overweight or obese by 2048.”
Some of the questions are equally lame — e.g., “What’s the line dancing capital of America?” or “What is the most patriotic color?” (Who cares?)