SI:AM | The Five Biggest Narratives of This NFL Season

Plus, the NFL’s new highest-paid defender.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. This is a reminder that 506sports.com is the best website for NFL broadcast schedules—tailored to your location.

In today’s SI:AM:

💰 Nick Bosa’s big payday

⚾ How Gerrit Cole took the next step

🏈 Week 1 fantasy rankings

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The new NFL season gets underway tonight, with the Chiefs taking on the Lions at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC. Here’s what I’m looking forward to the most over the next 18 weeks.

Aaron Rodgers’s New York debut

Expectations will be high for the Jets this season—and they should be. Rodgers joins a team that had really only one hole last season: quarterback. New York had an excellent defense last year and a collection of talented young skill-position players who will be better this year with a Hall of Fame quarterback. It isn’t outlandish to say that this is a situation similar as when the Buccaneers added Tom Brady and immediately won a championship.

But the Rodgers addition is not without risk. He’s shown over the past several years that he can be cantankerous when things aren’t going well. On the field, he seems like a perfect fit for the Jets—but is he a perfect fit for New York? This is a guy who had regular squabbles with the media while playing in Green Bay. How is he going to react when he lands his first unflattering back cover of the New York Post?

Brock Purdy’s encore

Purdy will be heavily scrutinized in his second season. He had an excellent debut as a rookie, and the Niners have thrown full support behind him, but there’s a ton of pressure associated with being the potential weak point of a team with Super Bowl aspirations. San Francisco’s defense is championship-caliber, and Purdy did a great job shepherding the offense in eight games last season. But entering a season with the responsibility of leading a Super Bowl contender is far different from stepping up as the third-stringer in an emergency.

The Lions’ development into an NFC contender

Detroit shocked everyone with a 9–8 finish last season, coming within a whisker of a playoff berth. After being unceremoniously dumped by the Rams and struggling in his first season with the Lions, Jared Goff piloted a Detroit offense that was fifth in scoring, and he was named to the Pro Bowl. Amon-Ra St. Brown blossomed into one of the NFL’s best receivers in his second season, and while running backs Jamaal Williams and D’Andre Swift are both gone, Detroit has replaced them with the consistently productive veteran David Montgomery and explosive rookie Jahmyr Gibbs. Defense was the weak point last season, so the Lions added safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, cornerback Cameron Sutton and linebacker Alex Anzalone. An improved defense would make an NFC North title attainable, even if a first Super Bowl appearance in franchise history seems unlikely. (Michael Rosenberg wrote this week about why you should believe in the Lions.)

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Bijan Robinson’s usage

It’s hard to remember the last rookie running back to come into the league with as much hype as Robinson—and he deserves every bit of it. This is a guy who averaged 6.3 yards per carry in three seasons at Texas and ran for 1,580 yards in 12 games last year.

But how many carries will the Falcons give him? Teams have been much more willing in recent years to spread the wealth among their running backs, and Atlanta also has Tyler Allgeier, who rushed for 1,035 yards last season. But the Falcons could have a seriously run-heavy offense as the team lets Desmond Ridder ease into the starting quarterback role.

If Atlanta gives Robinson the ball enough, he has the potential to put together a truly special rookie season. Albert Breer believes he’s capable of racking up more than 2,000 yards from scrimmage, especially considering that Ridder will need a safety valve out of the backfield in the passing game.

The crowded top of the AFC

The Chiefs, Bills and Bengals—last year’s top three teams in the AFC—all promise to be title contenders again this year. Add in a couple of teams (the Jets and Jaguars) that should make significant leaps, and the AFC is shaping up to be mighty interesting. Three of our experts picked Kansas City to repeat as champions, but winning back-to-back Super Bowls is uncommon. No team has done it since the Patriots nearly 20 years ago. Three of our experts picked the Bengals to finally get over the hump and win the Super Bowl after consecutive deep playoff runs.

But it’s tough to ignore the Jets in this conversation. After more than a decade of irrelevance, the addition of Rodgers completely changed this team’s outlook. A return to the playoffs seems like a good bet, but the Jets could be poised for much more.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports

• Making Nick Bosa the highest-paid defensive player in NFL history is another example of the 49ers’ Super Bowl-or-bust attitude, Conor Orr writes.
• Tom Verducci breaks down the adjustments Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole undertook to make him a front-runner for his first career Cy Young.
• MLB placed Dodgers pitcher Julio Urías on administrative leave. Stephanie Apstein explains what that means.
• Here are Michael Fabiano’s Week 1 fantasy rankings for quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers and tight ends.
• Rams receiver Cooper Kupp will miss the team’s season opener against the Seahawks.
• Portland State football coach Bruce Barnum says one of his players had his ear “ripped off” during the team’s loss to Oregon.
• Carl Nassib, the first openly gay player in NFL history, has announced his retirement.

The top five...

… plays in baseball last night:

5. Top prospect Jasson Domínguez’s first home run at Yankee Stadium. He had three hits last night and now has three homers in his first five games.

4. Cardinals prospect Masyn Winn’s first MLB homer.

3. José Abreu’s grand slam and three-run homer against the Rangers. The Astros hit 16 homers in their three-game sweep of Texas.

2. The hustle by Angels minor leaguer Jordyn Adams to score on an inside-the-park homer.

1. Matt Olson’s 46th home run of the season, extending his MLB lead.

SIQ

The first replay review in NFL history took place on this day in which year?

• 1981
• 1986
• 1992
• 1999

Yesterday’s SIQ: On Sept. 6, 2000, Major League Baseball finally acquired the rights to the MLB.com domain name after it had been registered six years earlier by which business?

• The Minnesota Labor Bureau
• Major League Bowling
• Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, a law firm
• Moon Landing Believers, an organization dedicated to debunking Apollo 11 conspiracy theories

Answer: Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. The Philadelphia–based global law firm, one of the biggest in the world, registered MLB.com in 1994. When the league decided to embrace the internet later, it had to use majorleaguebaseball.com. Internet users who put MLB.com into their browser bar were taken to the law firm’s site, but a link on the page directed wayward baseball fans to the league’s page.

By the late ’90s, it was clear that the internet was going to be a big deal and that having a concise domain name would be valuable, which meant the league was interested in swapping its 19-character domain name for the more desirable three-character one.

As a 2011 article by George Mason University law professor Ross E. Davies points out, the other MLB had done legal work for the league for decades, which made negotiating the transfer of the domain a little awkward. The firm could have earned a boatload of money for its concise domain name, but maximizing the return for the valuable commodity risked ruffling feathers with a major client. In the end, the firm simply gifted the domain to the league, according to The American Lawyer.