OPINION

By Michael Wilbon

Columnist

updated 12:34 a.m. ET Sept. 3, 2008

Michael Wilbon Columnist

Usually by now, on the eve of a new NFL season, I've fallen in love with some team, maybe a couple. You get a handful of teams that at the very least appear to be stacked. But not now. Not on the eve of this NFL season.

I don't love anybody, not a single team. A whole lot of folks, once again, have fallen in love with the Patriots. The prognostications have New England going 14-2, no worse than 13-3. They don't believe that loss to the Giants in the Super Bowl, where Tom Brady was thrown around like a rag doll, means anything important in the long term. We disagree.

A ton of people see the Dallas Cowboys as Super Bowl material. I see an underperforming, overrated team that has fallen on its face annually in the playoffs. The Chargers? Nope. A great roster and a logical progression says the Chargers should go from division playoffs to AFC championship game to the Super Bowl. But injuries to Shawne Merriman and Antonio Gates and Philip Rivers's diva behavior suggest a backslide.

The Vikings? They've got the great back in Adrian Peterson, a potentially great defense and no quarterback worth trusting. The Browns? Wonderful offense, defensively challenged to say the least. Eagles? A serious threat when healthy, especially Donovan McNabb, but they never are.

The Saints? Drew Brees has to do too much, and the league's worst pass defense does too little. The Giants? Too many critical personnel losses to repeat.

I've got a crush on the Steelers, but it'll only blossom if they find a pass rush, and the Jaguars, but they have to get past the Colts in their own division. And what about the Colts? Jeff Saturday, Peyton Manning's center, could be the most valuable lineman in the NFL, and he's out for six weeks.

And it's fair to wonder if Marvin Harrison, 36, is done being Marvin Harrison. For that matter, we need to see how Manning responds to offseason knee surgery. If Manning and Brady (foot) are out for any length of time or just physically reduced, which would be understandable given the battles they've been through the last several seasons, and if their teams have to go to the bullpen for long relief, the Patriots and Colts would be looking at sub-.500 records in a hurry.

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All this isn't to suggest the upcoming NFL season won't be a blast; in fact, the lack of an established pecking order could be the ultimate appeal of the season, looking for emerging teams and players to fill gaps.

The NFL, like all leagues, goes through these transitions every now and again. John Elway exits, Kurt Warner and Brady enter not long thereafter. We might very well be in one of them now. It's fun to look for the next good thing. Not many people had Elway and the Denver Broncos being succeeded by Warner and the St. Louis Rams, who showed up pretty much out of nowhere. The Baltimore Ravens in the 2000 season were equally unexpected when they blasted through the door completely unannounced.

Sure, the teams of the year could come from the usual suspects, meaning the Patriots, Colts, Steelers, Eagles and Giants. Forget about the Bears and Seahawks, both one-year wonders. The Jaguars and Saints are hybrids, teams that have been threatening for a couple of years but have been unable to break through.

Jacksonville's David Garrard is now in his prime, and he has a wonderful backfield tandem of old Fred Taylor and young Maurice Jones-Drew to keep him from doing too much. If only the wide receivers were as prolific. Meantime, the Saints need Deuce McAllister back to make their offense as explosive as it was in 2006, and they need to play with the abandon they demonstrated as underdogs; the Saints haven't been real good at handling expectations and the role of a favorite. That's what the Vikings will find very different from 2007 to 2008.

The NFC is particularly wide open again. That doesn't mean the Redskins are going to be a repeat playoff team. The Eagles, Giants and Cowboys are all better in the NFC East. The playoff teams should be Seattle, New Orleans, Minnesota, the Eagles, Cowboys and Giants, with the Saints and Eagles advancing to the NFC championship game.

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The difficulty for the Patriots won't be any one opponent uprising; the AFC East teams that were so dreadful a year ago — particularly the Dolphins and Jets — will be noticeably better. And there's no way a league whose teams can mimic any and everything won't figure out a way to do what only the Giants could successfully do last year: harass Brady, which reduces the effectiveness of the Patriots' passing game.

Still, New England should win the division and reach the AFC playoffs along with the Steelers, Jaguars, Chargers, Browns and Colts, with the Jaguars and Steelers reaching the AFC championship game, by which time at least one team and presumably more will be worth falling in love with.

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