Tag: 2021 NFL season

Cal McNair hopes Texans have full attendance at NRG Stadium in 2021

Houston Texans chairman and CEO Cal McNair hopes the team can have full capacity at NRG Stadium during the 2021 season.

Houston Texans chairman and CEO Cal McNair hopes the team can have full capacity for home games at NRG Stadium during the 2021 NFL season.

McNair fielded questions from the Houston media as he was part of a Texans community outreach event at Houston Fire Station No. 55 on May 4 to celebrate International Firefighters’ Day.

“That’s our hope,” McNair said via Mark Berman of Fox 26 [KRIV-TV] on May 4.

McNair says the team is already selling tickets for the 2021 campaign.

“We’re selling tickets now,” said McNair. “So, hopefully — we’re going as if it’s going to be a full stadium, and we’re looking forward to having our fans in there, having all of the excitement of the games fans have come to enjoy: both before the game and during the game. So, we’re looking forward to that.”

The Texans played in front of reduced capacity through the 2020 season. The first home game at NRG Stadium was Week 2 against the Baltimore Ravens on Sept. 2020. No fans were allowed in attendance for that game, and the attendance was slowly increased throughout the course of the regular season.

McNair believes the Texans’ ability to accommodate more fans will be a boon for the city and the franchise.

Said McNair: “It’s big. It’s big for us, for the team, for the city. It’s really big.”

The NFL schedule release is on May 12 at 7:00 p.m. Central Time.

Chargers announce 2021 offseason workouts, OTA dates

Find out when the Chargers rookies and the rest of the roster will be hitting the practice field.

The start of the 2021 regular season is still four months away, but preparation for it is set to get underway.

The NFL released the schedule for each team’s offseason workout programs, including the Chargers’ dates.

Below is the team’s official news release on the program schedule.

  • Rookie minicamp: May 14-16
  • OTAs: May 24-25, May 27, June 2-4, June 7-8, June 10
  • Mandatory minicamp: June 15-16

Starting next week, the drafted and undrafted free agents will get to hit the field as a pro for the first time.

Shortly after, the rest of the roster will all come together to get ready for a new era under first-year head coach Brandon Staley.

Chargers announce 2021 offseason workouts, OTA dates

Find out when the Chargers rookies and the rest of the roster will be hitting the practice field.

The start of the 2021 regular season is still four months away, but preparation for it is set to get underway.

The NFL released the schedule for each team’s offseason workout programs, including the Chargers’ dates.

Below is the team’s official news release on the program schedule.

  • Rookie minicamp: May 14-16
  • OTAs: May 24-25, May 27, June 2-4, June 7-8, June 10
  • Mandatory minicamp: June 15-16

Starting next week, the drafted and undrafted free agents will get to hit the field as a pro for the first time.

Shortly after, the rest of the roster will all come together to get ready for a new era under first-year head coach Brandon Staley.

Sean Payton on Saints draft needs: ‘Corner is an area that we have to address’

The Saints have glaring holes on the roster, Sean Payton tipped his hand as to which direction the Saints may go in the 2021 NFL draft.

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With the 2021 NFL draft rapidly approaching, the New Orleans Saints have an opportunity to address some of the holes on their roster. With the majority of high-impact free agents already signed, that leaves the upcoming draft as the best time to add a roster-altering talent to the team.

Saints head coach Sean Payton occasionally lets on to what the team plans for the draft, but sometimes the need is so glaring he doesn’t risk giving much away by bluntly saying it.

“There’s one (priority),” Payton told Luke Johnson of the Advocate | Times-Picayune after golfing at the recent Zurich Classic. “Look, corner is an area that we have to address here between now and the start of the season, and I think we’ll be able to find that.”

The only lockdown corner that New Orleans currently has rostered is Marshon Lattimore. His recent arrest in Cleveland raises questions about his availability. After the release of Janoris Jenkins, cornerback was always going to be the priority this offseason, even more so than linebacker and wide receiver. The Saints’ only other options with starting experience are backups Patrick Robinson and P.J. Williams.

So that suggests the Saints might target a cornerback in the first round of the draft, and they might even need to trade up to get the right prospect. If you have been keeping up, the Saints Wire crew just took that exact path in our final mock draft. Prospects to watch in a first round trade would include Greg Newsome II and Caleb Farley, though Jaycee Horn and Patrick Surtain II are expected to go much higher. Realistic options at No. 28 could be Asante Samuel Jr. and Eric Stokes, though Stokes’ teammate Tyson Campbell has been a late riser in media circles despite poor college numbers (11 passes defensed in 33 games, compared to 25 breakups in 24 games for Farley). And if the Saints can’t find a high-end corner early in the draft, veterans like Richard Sherman are still available in free agency.

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NFL sets release date for 2021 schedule

The NFL will release its 2021 regular-season schedule on Wednesday, May 12

The NFL is approaching the start of its draft on April 29 and it already is setting its fans up for another offseason date to look forward to next month.

The NFL is going to release its 2021 schedule on May 12.

The schedule will drop as part of the “Schedule Release ’21′” Show on NFL Network at 8 p.m. that Wednesday.

This NFL schedule will be unlike any other. The league has bumped its regular season by one game and the 32 teams will each play a 17-game schedule.

The teams know who they will be playing but have no idea what the order of their games will be. Everyone will find that out on May 12.

ESPN takes the under on Bears’ 2021 projected win total

ESPN isn’t confident in the Chicago Bears’ ability to win more games than the Las Vegas oddsmakers are predicting

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Not much is expected from the Chicago Bears in 2021. With Andy Dalton as QB1, the oddsmakers have set the team’s projected win total at 7.5.

Remember: 2021 is a 17-game season, and math tells me that Vegas expects Chicago to be a 10-loss team, or at least, pretty darn close to it.

Not great, especially in a season with a general manager and head coach on the hot seat.

But is that number too low? Let’s face it, the Bears have been a .500 team or better the last three seasons and have qualified for the playoffs in two of them.

According to ESPN, the projected win total is actually too high. Chicago will finish with seven wins or less, according to Jeff Dickerson.

Over/under: 7.5

Prediction: Under

It’s hard to envision eight wins or more because of the uncertainty on offense. Andy Dalton had a good run in Cincinnati, but his best days could be in the rearview mirror. Defensively, Chicago still boasts Khalil Mack, Akiem Hicks and Roquan Smith, but losing cornerback Kyle Fuller (cap casualty) opens a sizable hole in the secondary. The Bears are unlikely to bottom out, but it will be challenging to reach last year’s win total, even with an extra regular-season game.

It feels an awful lot like the Bears are in football purgatory right now. They’re a .500 team entering a season (17 games) that, barring a tie, won’t allow for an even win-loss record anymore.

9-8? 8-9? 7-10? Gross.

Dickerson is probably right with his decision to pick the under. Are you going to bet on Dalton turning the team around? Sure, he’s an upgrade. But that’s not saying much.

Last year’s starter, Mitch Trubisky, is buried behind Josh Allen on the Buffalo Bills’ depth chart. Nick Foles was so bad in 2020 that he isn’t even in the mix for the starting job in 2021.

So, yeah, 7.5 wins is a fair number, and picking the under is fair too. The Bears are in prove-it mode, and until they establish themselves as a winning team worthy of playoff chatter, it’ll be another preseason of mediocre to below-average expectations from Matt Nagy and company.

See the Vikings’ projected win total for 2021

The Minnesota Vikings will have a hard road to making the playoffs in 2021. Here is the Vikings’ win total!

Minnesota is coming off a season where the team went 7-9, missing out on the playoffs after winning in the postseason the year before. Now, the Vikings will try to orchestrate a comeback season.

A revamped defense should certainly help. If the offense can keep pace with their production from 2020, the team could be looking at a winning record.

So it makes sense that BetMGM has Minnesota’s projected win total set at nine for the 2021 NFL season. Keep in mind, the Vikings will be playing a 17th game in 2021, so if that record ended up happening, the team would be 9-8 in the regular season. That might be enough for a postseason berth.

Among NFL North teams, the Packers have the highest projected win total with 11 victories. The Vikings have the second-most projected wins in the NFC North.

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Rebuilding progress is clear for the Dolphins in one financial area

Rebuilding progress is clear for the Dolphins in one financial area

The Miami Dolphins are just about done flushing the system. Entering Year 3 of the Brian Flores & Chris Grier regime in South Florida, the team appears to be finished with the painstaking task of ridding their roster of the sins of the past: the team is completely remade and the financial weight of past decisions no longer lingers over this team like a black cloud on the horizon. Miami’s rebuilding effort may or may not net the team an elusive championship in the coming years — that will be the ultimate judge of whether or not it “worked”.

But at the very least we can say with confidence that the rebuild is working in more ways than one.

The Dolphins’ salary cap outlook is a terrific example of this — and we’re not talking about the spending power or room to sign players. Rather, we’re looking at the Dolphins’ dead cap: salary cap space that has been reserved for terminated contracts and players no longer on the team. NFL contracts can be tricky business, but the long and the short of it is that teams can pay players guaranteed money up front in the form of signing bonuses — that money can then be split up over several years of salary cap so long as that player remains on the roster. But if a team trades or cuts a player that they’ve paid more money to than they’ve had accounted against their past salary caps, the remaining balance gets advanced into the current season’s cap as “dead money”.

Warren Sharp of Sharp Football offered an eye-opening assessment of the Dolphins’ trajectory with the dead cap since the start of the Flores/Grier regime in 2019:

2019 was all about one thing for the Dolphins: clearing out bad contracts that were signed by the previous regime to older players who would not be a part of the team’s long-term forecast. It resulted in the highest figure in the league.

2020 was more of the same, only to a lesser degree. Miami, in 2020, still owed dead cap for the past contracts due to safety Reshad Jones ($10.1M), safety Minkah Fitzpatrick ($5M), linebacker Kiko Alonso ($2.2M) and many others — all signings or selections from a past regime under Adam Gase, Mike Tannenbaum and (to a degree that is debated) Grier.

Over the last two seasons, the Dolphins accounted for over $100M in cap space that went to players no longer on the team. So when you hear the Dolphins talk about attacking building a team with a “sustainable winner” in mind, this is why they operate they way they do. Paying big money up front and then deferring the balance to years down the road and having to foot the bill only part-way through the original financed window can create crippling backlogs of salary cap space that you can’t spend.

These Dolphins don’t do that. And now, entering year three of a new era, the team is finally free of the restrictions that bad habits of the past.

The Vikings’ odds for winning the Super Bowl, the NFC North

See the odds for the Minnesota Vikings to win the NFC North and the Super Bowl for 2021.

Odds courtesy of BetMGM.

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2021 NFL Season: Bears to face Raiders in 17th game

The Chicago Bears will face the Las Vegas Raiders in the 17th game of the 2021 NFL season

The NFL announced Tuesday that the season schedule will expand to 17 games beginning in 2021, and we already know who the Bears will face in next year’s season finale: the Las Vegas Raiders.

A 17-game season will take some getting used to, especially for statheads who like to evaluate data that’s comparable year over year. With another week of regular-season action, stats like yards and touchdowns will naturally become inflated.

Still, who doesn’t want another week of meaningful games?

The complete 2021 NFL schedule is expected to be released sometime in May.