Annual ESPN "In Three Years" Predictions Post Thoughts

Seen a couple of these the last couple years, and it's sometimes a bit of a tell on the potential for future storylines, but ESPN, as training camps are beginning to push toward opening, they posted 25 predictions for the next three years.  Here are some of the most interesting...

• It does sound like the league is trying to push Patrick Mahomes as The Next Man.

The prediction is $40 million, but the fact is that the NFL appears to be about ready to make Patrick Mahomes the next big name who will win rigged championships and the like.  In fact, one of the major preseason magazines (I think it was Athlon.) has Kansas City beating Chicago to win the Super Bowl this year.

• Kirk Cousins stays with the NFC North Champion Vikings.

And then there's someone who doesn't think Chicago is going to ride that defense to the Super Bowl.

• Here's a duh:  The Patriots will win one of the next three Super Bowls.

Hyper way-too-early thoughts have me thinking the Patriots will at least make Super Bowl 54, probably for a rematch with the Rams.  But time is running short to get Brady #7 to be Greater Than Jordan.  And especially if the league wants The Forty-Million Dollar Man to be the next biggie...

• Ezekiel Elliot will hold out to get a better contract.

I'll go a step further -- I think he leaves Dallas.  There's a real problem in Dallas with conduct and drugs, and it's been going five or six years.  I think it's becoming clear that there's a very real chance Elliot is going to be the league's next Odell Beckham Jr.:  Insanely talented, should've accomplished something in this league, but in the league's doghouse and will be encouraged to change his scenery by all parties involved to some team the league wants you to think will be relevant, but won't.

• Eli Manning leaves the Giants, and they can't settle on a new quarterback.

If he wants any kind of another run, this must happen.

• The Cardinals will win the NFC West one of the next three years.

Unless you're thinking 2021, I can't see it.  Too much invested in LA not to build the Rams as the league's "Lakers".

• No NFL work stoppage.

Only if the owners indisputably win again and the players ground further into pulp.

• He doesn't even think the Rams will be in the Super Bowl this year -- says the next LA team in the Bowl will be the Chargers.

If that's the case, New England wins this year too for Brady #7. 

But the fact is that you have such an investment in the LA Experiment that the only reason you wouldn't have the Rams win is what I said after Super Bowl LIII(E):  LA, and Inglewood specifically, isn't going to make it as a city.

I understand what the author is saying about questions about the Chiefs -- but if you want Patrick Mahomes to get $40 million a year in year four or five, he's going to have to have earned that money, and that's going to mean a ring.

(He's basing that on Russell Wilson getting $35M, but Wilson has had a Super Bowl run already.)

• Le'Veon Bell will not stay with the Jets.

You're talking a guy who sat an entire season to get a new team, and the Jokes was all he could get.

I'm not sure this guy's in the league in three years -- talent be damned!

• Odell Beckham Jr., with the Browns, will lead the NFL in TDs and yards.

Not crazy about the prediction, but there is the question, as I implied above, of relevance.

• The Raiders will make the playoffs, but not until they leave for Vegas.

Stunned they're actually doing one more lame-duck year, especially with the increasing rot that is Oakland in general.  I could actually easily predict some degree of major off-field incident for the city which impacts the Raiders' season this year, but the fact is the same principle does apply to their new investment.  But that it only probably means maybe rigging them to 10-6 and the playoffs says volumes about the viability of the team on a much longer-term basis.

• The Steelers will win more division titles than the Browns in the next three years.

Kinda also says something about the Bengals and Ravens too, when you think of it.  I could easily see the Steelers winning all three titles and getting maybe one playoff win between them, and that's a wild-card win.

• There's been talk of an 18-game season.  The author says ignore it.

So do I.

There's even one desperate ploy that says that the league would go to an 18-game season, and no player could play more than 16 games.  Can you imagine a team built around one marquee player, as a going concern, who had to sit that player, by rule, for two games???

No.  Just...  no.

• Andrew Luck:  League MVP.

The league doesn't want to get off that horse (see late last year), but do you actually envision a year Indianapolis could be pushed 12-4 or beyond so that Luck could get that consideration -- in an AFC with Brady, Mahomes, and Roethlesberger??

I don't see it, but if there's any other single player they'd try, Luck would be on the short list.

• Fully-guaranteed veteran contracts?  Author says yes.

I say they might SAY they will, and, instead, you get another means that what will be considered a good NFL career, sans the big-money quarterback, is about three or four seasons.

There's already a movement against paying veterans big to begin with unless they're marketable.  This would make it worse.

• The Packers will NOT win a division title the next three years.

I've said, a number of years now, that the increasingly corporate nature of the NFL makes the Packers an antiquity in American sports -- even more than they already are now.

It may not happen in three years, but, little by little, I do think the league is finally going to try to push the Packers to a more conventional ownership situation -- and, EVENTUALLY, a new city.  This is a corporate league, increasingly urban, and the Packers are, at best, a legacy of the league's past that I would have to think more than a few people would like to be rid of.

Consider:  Even with the money-printing machine the NFL is, the Packers -- because of their contracts and because they sucked last year -- barely broke even.  Made less than a million dollars, according to corporate documents.

• The next CBA will be more permissive to marijuana.

I don't know about that, because I really don't know if the owners don't view the players as so disposable that they have no value whatsoever.

• The Eagles and Jaguars will win division titles.

And no one will care.