Pete Carroll did the Seahawks shuffle when he took over as coach, engineering 284 roster moves in his first 12 months. During this dizzying transformation, he lost his players in a big way at midseason (dropping six of eight games), got them back in a bigger way at season’s end (rescuing the postseason) and turned them strangely historical — coming up with the NFL’s first losing team (7–9) to collect a division title and win a playoff game (41–36 over New Orleans).

The year was 1979 when Eddie DeBartolo Jr., after two disastrous years as owner of the San Francisco 49ers, hired an innovative offensive coach from just down the road at Stanford in hopes of reviving his franchise. Bill Walsh installed what came to be known as the “West Coast Offense,” and in 1981 he led the 49ers to their first Super Bowl victory, a win that marked the start of an NFL dynasty in San Francisco. Fast-forward to 2011, and the 49ers are hoping that history will repeat.

The Panthers dropped off a cliff in 2010, falling to an NFL-worst 2–14 mark and setting numerous team records for offensive futility. As you would expect when a team performs that poorly, much is new for 2011. New coach Ron Rivera — who interviewed for 10 head coaching jobs before finally being hired by Carolina — is determined to turn things around in the aftermath of the John Fox era.

Considering their young franchise quarterback, the brash head coach who speaks in salsa sound bites and a shrewd general manager, you would expect the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to jump at an invitation to be the subject of the HBO reality series Hard Knocks. After all, every game played at Raymond James Stadium was blacked out last season, so no team should crave camera time like the Bucs.

The Giants were the class of the NFC East and a Super Bowl contender last season as late as the fourth quarter of their Week 15 game when they held a 31–10 lead over the Philadelphia Eagles. They were about to roll to their fourth straight win and were getting hot just in time for the playoffs.

The streaks are almost all gone now, which means the Detroit Lions finally are ready to put their past behind them. The Matt Millen era is a fading memory, along with the historically awful 0–16 season that capped it in 2008. In the span of two weeks last December, the Lions ended both a 19-game losing streak in the NFC North and a 26-game losing streak on the road. And by winning four in a row to finish the season — even without their franchise quarterback — the Lions have suddenly offered tangible evidence that they’re a team on the rise.


With an offense that remains a work in progress, the Chicago Bears will again depend on an elite defense to do most of the heavy lifting after falling a game short of the Super Bowl.

The Vikings’ expectations for 2011 can be found somewhere between promise and denial. Several talented pieces remain from a 2009 team that was one botched play from a Super Bowl berth, but those pieces are either aging or still wondering what the heck happened during last season’s 6–10 meltdown.