Predicting The 2016 Season Opener

By the end of next month, the NFL will have published its schedules for the 2016 season. Therefore, in this post, I'm going to do what I like doing each year and predict what the opening game of 2016 will be.

As per usual, it's going to be the Super Bowl Champions who will kick things off. So, that's Denver covered. 

We're half-way there.

The champions will be the home team in this fixture. We know the following teams will travel to Denver in 2016:

Kansas City

Oakland

San Diego

Houston

Indianapolis

New England

Atlanta

Carolina

Wow, I didn't know the teams for definite until I started typing them out from the back of this year's Super Bowl programme. There are some huge meetings that I can see the NFL going for here.

They could go with Carolina in a rematch from Super Bowl 50 or even Indianapolis with Andrew Luck coming back after his worst season to date.

I'm reluctantly ruling out the New England Patriots only because they were last year's champs and played in the 2015 kick-off. With that said, there is a storyline that could be stewed up with the most recent Super Bowl winners taking on the previous ones.

The one game that is really causing me to rub my hands with glee is the visit from the Houston Texans. That's the one I'm zeroing in on as my prediction.

If you recall, Denver's back-up quarterback from the most recent seasons - Brock Osweiler - departed the Broncos a few weeks ago to join the Texans. I can definitely see this return by Osweiler to spoil his former team's first game as champions being an angle the match makers will like to have on the first day of the season.

That's my call - Houston @ Denver in week one.

We'll see if I am right within a month.