Are you ready for the 2020 NFL season?

It's a weird year to be football fan too.

We're three former SB Nation NFL staffers—Ryan Van Bibber, Sarah Hardy, and Christian D'Andrea—who made a boatload of good content over at the old digs and had a lot of fun working together. The Post Route is an email newsletter looking at the trends and details that shape each professional football season. Oh, and it's FREE. But you can support this effort with a smidgen of your hard-earned cash via our Ko-Fi page. We'd love it if you would, as an ancient branding exercise once said, "come fan with us."

2020 has thrown a lot at the NFL. 

Tom Brady left New England to join a Tampa franchise that hasn’t won a playoff game since he was just 25 years old. Patrick Mahomes signed a decade-long, $450 million contract extension that puts him in reasonable striking distance of becoming the league’s first billion-dollar man. The postseason field expanded from 12 to 14 teams, which would have given the world the 2020 harbinger of a Duck Hodges playoff start had it been enacted a year earlier.

And, right, there’s a worldwide pandemic that turned the draft into a Zoom meeting, postponed the start of training camps, and eliminated the preseason. 

So, a lot.

It’s been seven months since Mahomes led the Chiefs to a comeback Super Bowl win. Seven months since we’ve seen any real NFL action, an unusually long time in football terms but an eternity when the news cycle feels like riding a Tilt-a-Whirl with a stomach full of cotton candy and funnel cake.

Nothing much feels normal about this upcoming season, except for the fact that we are having one. That was never really in question in a league that fancies itself as America’s best diversion but cares mostly about the bottom line. Granted, it’s still possible there’s an interruption during the season, due to a Marlins-like Covid outbreak or a temporary players’ strike (somehow, we doubt the NFL painting “end racism” in the end zones will in fact end racism). 

All of that makes it hard to know how to feel as a football fan in 2020.

Maybe you haven’t been as invested in the NFL this year, without the usual cues that signal a new season is approaching and because, well, we have more important things to worry about. Maybe the long delay means you’re even antsier for Week 1, waiting for that sweet, sweet dopamine hit that comes when Lamar Jackson jukes a defender into leaving a full-body divot in the turf. Maybe you’re conflicted about whether players should be risking their health when the coronavirus is still raging, despite the grifters who want you to believe that it’s over. Maybe you feel all of these things simultaneously and are in an endless loop of excitement and guilt and ennui about watching football again.

Any and all are valid emotions. We’re not here to tell you how to feel about the NFL’s return, except to implore you to remember these are human beings who are playing the game.

But we are here to help you navigate the season, whatever highs and lows that journey takes us on. 

While the biggest headline this year has been claimed, there are other storylines we’ll be watching closely, including but not limited to:

• Are the Chiefs starting a dynasty?

• What's Deshaun Watson’s future with the Texans and how badly will Bill O’Brien screw it up?

• Will the 49ers suffer the dreaded Super Bowl loser curse?

• Who will come out ahead in the divorce: Bill Belichick, now that he’s with longtime QB crush Cam Newton, or Tom Brady, the newest Florida Man?

• Are the Packers beginning to decouple from Aaron Rodgers?

• Can we, for real this time, believe in the Browns?

• How will Lamar Jackson follow up his MVP season?

• Can Mike McCarthy get the Cowboys over the hump?

• Is this the Bills' year to take over the AFC East?

• Will the Rams' big spending on defense make any difference?

• Is Joe Burrow just gonna be the next link in the Bengals' jumbo chain of sadness?

• How will Teddy Bridgewater's comeback fit in with the Panthers' rebuild?

• Can Michael Thomas win an MVP award by catching, let's say, 3 million passes?

• Will Ryan Tannehill turn back into a pumpkin?

If that sounds right up your alley, then sign up for our newsletter and let’s experience this (don’t say unprecedented, don’t say unprecedented) NFL season together.

Image via FOCO.