After months of free agency, the draft, training camp, preseason football, roster predictions, and enough speculation to last an entire season, we finally made it.

Football is back!

The 2026 NFL season kicks off tonight in Seattle, and it’s hard to ask for a much better opening matchup. The defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks will raise their banner before hosting the New England Patriots, the same team they defeated 29 to 13 in Super Bowl LX just seven months ago.

But tonight is about more than a Super Bowl rematch.

It’s the beginning of another NFL season. Every team is 0 and 0. Every fan base has reasons for optimism. And all those offseason questions we’ve spent months debating are finally going to start getting answers.

It’s also the perfect time to launch Across the St. Croix.

So, for the first post on this site, here are five things I’ll be watching as the 2026 NFL season gets underway.

1. Can Seattle Do It Again?

Winning a Super Bowl is hard. Winning another one when everyone is coming after you might be even harder.

Seattle enters the season as the defending champion after beating New England 29 to 13 in February. Much of the defense that helped carry the Seahawks to that championship remains intact, but this isn’t exactly the same roster.

One of the biggest changes is in the backfield. Super Bowl LX MVP Kenneth Walker III is gone, meaning Seattle will have to find production elsewhere.

There are also questions in the secondary entering tonight. Safety Ty Okada has already been ruled out with a hamstring injury, while Nick Emmanwori is questionable as he works his way back from ankle surgery.

None of that means Seattle suddenly isn’t a contender.

It does mean we’re about to find out how well a champion can handle being the team everyone is measuring themselves against.

2. What Does Drake Maye Do for an Encore?

The Patriots weren’t supposed to get as far as they did last season.

Then Drake Maye helped take them all the way to the Super Bowl.

Now comes the difficult part.

Expectations have changed.

New England spent the offseason giving Maye more help, most notably adding A.J. Brown to the receiving corps. That gives Maye a legitimate number one target and makes this version of the Patriots offense considerably more interesting.

Tonight provides an immediate test.

Seattle’s defense gave New England all kinds of problems in the Super Bowl. Maye was sacked six times, and the Patriots didn’t score until the fourth quarter.

Seven months later, New England gets another shot.

If the Patriots really have closed the gap, we shouldn’t have to wait long to see it.

3. Which Offseason Storylines Actually Matter?

This might be my favorite thing about Week 1.

We’ve spent months hearing about breakout candidates, new schemes, draft steals, improved offensive lines, players who are supposedly in the best shape of their lives, and teams that are ready to take the next step.

Some of it will be right.

A lot of it won’t.

That’s what makes the first few weeks of an NFL season so much fun. We finally get to replace speculation with actual football.

Which teams were legitimately improved?

Which players are ready to break out?

Which supposed contenders were overrated?

And which team nobody is talking about right now will have everyone paying attention by October?

Week 1 won’t answer everything, but it will give us our first real evidence.

4. The NFC North Is Going to Be Fascinating

This is where things get particularly interesting for those of us living around the St. Croix.

The Packers and Vikings don’t have the luxury of easing into the season. Green Bay travels to Minnesota on Sunday for a divisional matchup at U.S. Bank Stadium.

And these games have a habit of being close.

Fifteen of the previous 23 regular season meetings played in Minnesota have been decided by single digits.

It’s also the fourth time in five seasons that Green Bay has opened against an NFC North opponent.

For Packers and Vikings fans, there’s no preseason feeling out period here.

You get a border rivalry immediately.

As someone who grew up rooting for Wisconsin teams and now living and working around Minnesota sports fans, this is exactly the kind of matchup that inspired Across the St. Croix in the first place.

We’ll have plenty more on Packers versus Vikings before Sunday.

5. I’m Just Happy Football Is Back

Not everything needs advanced statistics.

Sometimes sports are supposed to be fun.

There is something different about the first week of the NFL season. Fantasy lineups are being changed 15 times before kickoff. Predictions that seemed brilliant in August might look ridiculous by Sunday night. Fans are already talking themselves into playoff runs before their teams have played a snap.

And for the next several months, we’ll get to do this every week.

There will be great games, terrible predictions, injuries, upsets, questionable coaching decisions, breakout performances, and probably at least one team that makes absolutely no sense.

I’ll have opinions about all of it.

That’s why I started Across the St. Croix.

This site will primarily focus on the teams and stories that matter to sports fans in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but we aren’t going to stop at the state line when something around the sports world is worth talking about.

There will be analysis. There will be reactions. There will be predictions.

There will probably be some takes that age terribly.

We’ll have fun with those too.

For now, though, there’s only one thing left to do.

Turn on the TV.

Football is back.

Welcome to Across the St. Croix.