NFL training camps are kicking off, and with them come thoughts of the season ahead. Which teams, players and coaches will define the 2024 season? Who are the most fascinating folks to watch ahead of the 2025 offseason? We have reached the point where we're about to start finding out.
With that in mind, here's our offseason look at 10 people we think will help shape the next 365 days in the NFL. They could be listed here because they are potential breakout players. They could be players with something to prove or a big contract situation on deck. They could be a coaches on the hot seat. They could even be a coach on the outside looking in. (Spoiler alert: One of them is.) You never know what will happen in a season, and how its events will shape the league's future. But there are always a few people to keep an eye on.
Let's take a closer look at 10 such individuals who should play a part in defining the next calendar year.
Dak Prescott, QB, Dallas Cowboys
Will he sign an extension with the Cowboys before camp? Before the season? Before hitting free agency next March? At all???
Prescott has the Cowboys over a barrel. He has one year left on his contract, which includes a clause prohibiting Dallas from using a franchise or transition tag on him next spring. That means, absent a new deal, he would become an unrestricted free agent at age 31, just one year removed from finishing second in MVP voting in 2023. Oh, and he'd be entering a quarterback market with a top end currently pricing out at $55 million per year.
The Cowboys have a ton of reasons to get this deal done. Prescott would cost them more than $40 million in dead money on next year's cap if he leaves in free agency. They don't have an obvious successor unless Trey Lance is about to make a serious jump in a backup role. And it has been three decades since they got as far as the NFC Championship Game. The Cowboys are desperate.
But thanks to the sweet deal that he and agent Todd France negotiated just over three years ago, Prescott can sit back and wait for the Cowboys to come to him. And he has no reason to do anything about an extension unless and until it includes every single thing he wants. His worst-case scenario is that he's exactly where Kirk Cousins was in the spring of 2018. And we all know how well that has worked out for Cousins and his bank account.
Joe Burrow, QB, Cincinnati Bengals
It's absolutely a pivotal year for Burrow. He has played four NFL seasons. One ended with him and the Bengals in the Super Bowl. One ended in a close AFC Championship Game loss in Kansas City. And the other two ended early because of injury (and in those two, the Bengals missed the playoffs).
Cincinnati managed to finish 9-8 last season even though Burrow missed the final seven games with an unusual right wrist injury that required a surgical repair. If he's back and fully healthy, there's no reason to think Cincinnati can't take advantage of its lighter schedule (from finishing last in its division in 2023) and return to the top of the AFC North. But given the uncertainty around his injury and the fact that something always seems to get in the way of Burrow's training camp schedule and season preparation, he's worth keeping an eye on.
Burrow once famously said the Bengals' championship window is "my whole career," but with key stars Tee Higgins and Trey Hendrickson playing out the final years of their contracts, 2024 is a massive year for this particular group of Bengals to cash in on its promise. It feels like the Bengals' chances of doing that rely significantly on Burrow coming back from his injury and avoiding another.
C.J. Stroud, QB, Houston Texans
Stroud and the Texans aren't sneaking up on anyone this season. After an aggressive offseason that saw them add key veterans like Danielle Hunter and Stefon Diggs in an effort to maximize Stroud's rookie-contract window, expectations are as high as they've ever been in Texans history. To author an encore to his dazzling rookie season (4,108 passing yards and 23 touchdown throws), Stroud will have to navigate a tough schedule and a much more intense spotlight.
Peyton Manning says the AFC South Division runs through C.J. Stroud and the Houston Texans on the "The Pat McAfee Show."
Did you know that the first 16 games of Houston's 2023 season all started at noon CT on Sundays? Their first non-early-window game was the Week 18 matchup against the Colts, which was moved to Sunday night because it was for the AFC South division title. This season, Houston is scheduled for four prime-time games and one late-Sunday-window game.
Stroud has a lot going for him in addition to his obvious talent and composure. His offensive line was the most injured in the league last season and should (hopefully) avoid similarly bad luck in 2024. Plus, the addition of Diggs to the wide receiver corps and Joe Mixon at running back help bring experience to an otherwise young offense. But with Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars looking to bounce back, and the Colts fired up to see what coach Shane Steichen can do with a healthy Anthony Richardson under center, the AFC South won't roll over for Houston. Can Stroud do what Burrow did and lead a previously moribund franchise to the Super Bowl in his second season?
Derrick Henry, RB, Baltimore Ravens
Is Henry the missing piece of the roster that will finally get Lamar Jackson and the Ravens past the Chiefs and into the Super Bowl? Baltimore has been the league's top rushing offense -- by a whopping 27 yards per game -- over the past five seasons, but its marquee offseason addition was a veteran running back. The Ravens' hope is that Henry, with his punishing running style, can be a consistent focal point of their run game and a fourth-quarter finisher in games where they have a lead.
Henry is 30 years old, an age at which running backs often are generally well into their decline phase. But considering that he is coming off yet another 1,000-plus-yard season and his sixth straight campaign with at least 12 TDs and an average of 4.2 yards per carry or better, he's also a unique player who could well defy traditional decline timetables. If so, he could be just what the Ravens need.
Marvin Harrison Jr., WR, Arizona Cardinals
I personally believe the Cardinals could have a sneaky good offense. After quarterback Kyler Murray returned from his torn ACL in Week 10 of last season, Arizona had the league's second-best rushing attack behind only Buffalo (152.8 yards per game) -- and the ninth-best offense overall (362.8). Add in a full, healthy offseason for Murray, who seems rejuvenated under coach Jonathan Gannon, and a year's worth of experience in the Drew Petzing offense, and we could have expected fairly big things even if the Cardinals hadn't added the most pro-ready wide receiver prospect in recent memory with the fourth pick of the draft.
Harrison has occupied the football fan's consciousness for so long now that we almost forget about him. But if he's the prospect the Cardinals (and most of the league) believe him to be, Arizona's passing game could be set to reach new heights much more quickly than a lot of people are assuming.
Aaron Rodgers, QB, New York Jets
Ah, yes. This guy was on this list last year -- the clear-cut major story of the 2023 offseason whose first Jets season ended four plays in with a torn Achilles. He says he's back to full health, and the Jets loaded up in free agency to try to maximize their chances to win while they still have him. By the time this season ends, he'll be 41 years old -- an age at which exactly one quarterback in NFL history has played at a championship-caliber level. Can Rodgers be the second? Heck, can he make it to a second game this time?
Bart Scott and Robert Griffin III debate whether they'd rather have Aaron Rodgers or Joe Burrow this upcoming season.
There is no wider range of potential outcomes for any team in the league than there is for the Jets, who are all-in with the all-time roster construction Hail Mary. Either Rodgers leads them to postseason success or he and a whole bunch of other people in that building are likely to be out of there next offseason.
Caleb Williams, QB, Chicago Bears
This was the second year in a row the Bears held the No. 1 pick in the draft. Last year, they traded it to Carolina, deciding to attempt to build around Justin Fields and see if he had the goods. This year, they ended up with the pick not because of their record but because of that 2023 trade with Carolina, and they used it to replace Fields with Williams. On one hand, you can say the bar is low, since the Bears are the only franchise in the league that has never had a quarterback pass for 4,000 yards or have 30 touchdown throws in a season. On the other hand, however, expectations are sky-high for Williams.
There are fans who wanted the team to stick with Fields and will surely let Williams and the front office hear it if he struggles. The Bears do offer Williams perhaps the best situation into which a rookie quarterback has ever stepped, equipping him with two wide receivers (DJ Moore and Keenan Allen) who surpassed 1,000 yards last season and another (Rome Odunze) who led all FBS players in receiving yards in 2023 (1,640). The Bears' defense performed as well as any in the league in the second half of last season after the acquisition of Montez Sweat, saving coach Matt Eberflus' job and raising hopes for what they can be in 2024 and beyond.
But how ready Williams is to take on this level of responsibility -- and whether he can do something resembling what Stroud did in Houston last year -- will have a lot to say about how Chicago feels about its team next spring.
Bill Belichick, former coach
By the time it happened, the Patriots' decision to move on from Belichick wasn't a shock. What was a shock to many was Belichick's inability to land another job right away. It felt like he was going to get the Falcons' job, but that instead went to Raheem Morris, and none of the other teams with coach openings even tried to hire him.
People close to Belichick say they believe he still wants to coach -- at least long enough to get the 15 wins he needs to surpass Don Shula atop the all-time wins list -- and that he'll have his eye on potential opportunities as this season goes along. That means that just about every coach who's on the hot seat will probably have to deal with speculation that Belichick is looking over his shoulder and that his bosses might be considering hiring Belichick.
It's entirely possible that, at age 72 and five years removed from his last playoff win, Belichick isn't going to be anyone's top choice as a head-coach candidate in 2025. But that's not going to tamp down the speculation. Belichick will remain one of the league's most intriguing figures until we get to next January and see whether he's still someone teams want to hire.
Mike Macdonald, coach, Seattle Seahawks
Sean McVay was the youngest head coach in the NFL when the Rams hired him in 2017. He held that title for an astounding seven years until this offseason, when the Patriots hired Jerod Mayo and the Seahawks hired Macdonald, the mastermind behind the Ravens' dominant 2023 defense.
Macdonald, who turned 37 last month, has the difficult task of succeeding Seattle coaching legend Pete Carroll, but there are folks around the league who believe the Seahawks might just have found a defensive version of McVay -- a coaching prodigy with the leadership skills to maintain Seattle's winning culture without skipping a beat. Can he make the Seahawks a playoff team in his first season? Can he live up to the promise that comes with being anointed the next McVay? And if he succeeds, will head-coach hires keep getting younger and younger?
Lloyd Howell, executive director, NFL Players Association
It has become hard to avoid noticing the NFL's clear desire to expand the regular season to 18 games. There is a large number of people who believe it's a matter of when, not if. The only problem? The collective bargaining agreement between the league and the players expressly prohibits any further expansion of the regular season for the life of the deal, which means through 2030. So if the league really is set on expanding to 18 games before then, it would have to open and renegotiate at least part, if not all, of the CBA.
Howell took over as executive director last offseason and has kept a fairly low profile publicly. But behind the scenes, he has had plenty of discussions with owners and league powerbrokers and surely has a sense of how desperately the league wants this. If it reaches a point where the two sides decide to have a negotiation over it, all eyes will be on Howell to see what kinds of concessions he can extract from the league in exchange.
One of the reasons many players opposed the adoption of the last CBA in 2020 was that they didn't think they had gotten enough in return for allowing the league to expand the season from 16 games to 17. One would have to think a restructure of the top-line revenue split between players and owners would be required to get the players to now approve of an 18th game. Keep an eye out over the next year to see how and whether this progresses.