Three questions each NFC South team must answer for 2021 NFL season Who is the quarterback in New Or

All throughout this week, the crew here at CBSSports.com is working its way through burning questions to preview each division. Already this week, Tyler Sullivan covered the , Patrik Walker looked into the , Bryan DeArdo took a Nemanja Bjelica Jersey peek at the , Cody Benjamin covered the , and Jeff Kerr dove in to the .In the space below, we'll take a look at the NFC South, beginning with the defending champions in Tampa. Who will win the Division? Can they get the same health luck they did last season?Can they maintain last season's post-bye offense throughout the year?Can they stave off age-related regre sion (again)?On the way to their Super Bowl victory, the Bucs were arguably the healthiest team in the NFL last season. According to Football Outsiders, the Buccaneers finished last season with the fewest Adjusted Games Lost, a measurement of how often each NFL team had its starters out of the game. The Bucs also finished with the second-fewest Adjusted Games Lost in 2019. If they get merely average instead of very good health luck, that could cause some problems.Following their late-season bye, the Bucs scored at least 26 points in every game the rest of the way, including 30 or more in all four playoff games. Earlier in the year, they struggled a bit against top defenses. Some of the lack of early-season explosion could be attributed to a lack of practice time and chemistry between and his receivers, obviously. But it's notable that they did not face much in the way of top defensive talent over the latter part of the year. We shouldn't expect a significant regre sion or anything along those lines, but it's worth keeping an eye on. Brady (44), (35), (34), Richaun Holmes Jersey (33), (32), (32), and (31) are all candidates for age-related regre sion. That doesn't mean they'll be ; just that it's po sible they're not as good as they were last year. Luckily, the Bucs brought back every single starter from last year's team and fortified their oldest positions with reinforcements in the draft. They should be able to ease the workloads for their oldest players.Who the heck is the quarterback of this team?What does the new offense look like?Who will help rush the pa ser and cover downfield?It's worth repeating again that we do not know who will be under center for the Saints this year. Will it be , who has the second-highest interception rate of any quarterback since 2000? Or will it be , who is only vaguely a quarterback, has more rushing attempts than pa sing attempts during his career, and fumbled 10 (TEN!) times last year? Either way, it will represent a dramatic change from the Drew Brees era, during which the Saints were routinely one of the most efficient offenses in the NFL.Without Brees delivering the ball with pinpoint precision, how is this team going to actually move the ball downfield? and made their reputations working with Brees on swing pa ses and slants, respectively, and it's tough to count on Winston or Hill firing the ball to them with the same degree of accuracy. The Saints could lean into a run-based offense due to the strength of their line, plus Kamara and , but that's much more viable with Hill under center than with Winston. is in Cincinnati. is in Tenne see. is in New York. The Saints need players like , , , and even CJ Gardner-Johnson to step up and account for those absences. That's a lot to put on their shoulders, but with a thinned-out roster the Saints have to count on players for larger roles than they're used to.What will Arthur Smith's offense look like?Is going to age gracefully?Can Dean Pees get this defense to perform at an above-average level?Given what we saw in Tenne see, we can at least gue s at what Smith's Atlanta offense will look like from a schematic standpoint. It'll be fairly heavy on Trevor Ariza Jersey zone runs, play-action pa ses, and targeted shots down the field. The questions are how he'll shift his run-pa s balance with in the backfield rather than , and how an offense with and will differ from one with and . Will they use the same volume of two-tight end sets (with )? How often will Pitts split out wide? Which of the other receivers will see the field, and how often? And will Smith feel the need to max-protect as often on downfield throws as he did with the ?Ryan took another minor step backward last season, and is now five years removed from his 2016 MVP season. He's averaged just 7.3 yards per attempt in each of the last two seasons, his lowest mark since 2010. He's not the type of mobile quarterback that can make plays outside Kyle Guy Jersey of structure, so he needs to be really efficient from the pocket to make up for it. Smith was able to scheme into succe s for two years using a similar system to the one Kyle Shanahan utilized during Ryan's MVP campaign, but again, that was a while ago. Dan Quinn was a defensive coach, but his defenses were not all that great. In fact, it took a switch to Raheem Morris to get the defense playing better last season. Pees is a longtime defensive stalwart who did good work in Tenne see, and the Titans' defense fell off after his brief retirement. The Falcons don't have a ton of defensive talent, but perhaps Pees can get more out of them than we're used to seeing.Was it , or was it the ?Can bounce back from all his injuries?Will the young defense take a step forward?Darnold was put in position to fail during his three years in New York, and he failed. Was that his fault, or the fault of the Jets? He was working behind a porous offensive line, with subpar weapons, and in an offense whose plays were called by Adam Gase. The Panthers offensive line isn't great, but it's better than what Darnold had in New York. He's got not just , but also , Christian McCaffrey, and . in Carolina. And he's got Joe Brady calling plays, after he had such great succe s with and even . We're going to find out a lot about Darnold, very quickly.McCaffrey was limited to only three games last season, and he left two of those games early due to injury. He should be over the high ankle sprain that caused him to mi s Weeks 3 through 8 as well as the shoulder injury that ended his year. He's still firmly in his physical prime (this will be his age-25 season), but the track record of players with 400-touch seasons (like McCaffrey had in 2019) isn't all that great through the rest of their careers. His skill set is important to making this type of offense work, though, so the Panthers need him to break the trend. Carolina's defense finished in the bottom half of the league last season. They used all seven of their 2020 draft picks on the defensive side of the ball so there should be some internal improvement baked in this year due to players like , , and taking steps forward, but the Panthers are also counting on Bogdan Bogdanovic Jersey rookies like , free-agent signings like Haason Reddick, , and , and improvement from incumbent starters like and .
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