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BEN VOLIN | SUNDAY FOOTBALL NOTES

Can the Falcons avoid the Super Bowl hangover? And other NFL training camp storylines

Matt Ryan walks back to the locker room after the Falcons lost Super Bowl 51.Tony Gutierrez/AP

Football is finally back this week after a six-month hiatus, with all 32 NFL teams reporting for training camp to begin preparations for the 2017 season.

Training camp lasts five-plus weeks, and much can change between now and the Patriots-Chiefs kickoff game on Sept. 7 (mostly injuries). But let’s take a look at the top story lines entering the 2017 season:

■ Can the Falcons avoid the Super Bowl hangover? The “loser’s curse” might be more myth than reality now — before the Panthers collapsed last season, every Super Bowl loser between 2009-14 still made the playoffs the next season. But the Falcons’ loss to the Patriots was no ordinary loss, either. Matt Ryan admitted recently to CBS Sports that he was “in a funk” for several weeks after the game, and many players still haven’t gotten over the fact that former offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan (now the 49ers’ head coach) chose to pass instead of run in several crucial moments in the fourth quarter.

“There’s always going to be a little sting,” Ryan said. “You never lose that. Hopefully we’ve got four Super Bowl victories after this one, but that doesn’t mean we won’t still be like, ‘Damn, let’s talk about the other one we should’ve had.’ ”

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If the Falcons can’t focus on the present, their 2017 season could quickly turn sour.

■ Will Colin Kaepernick or Robert Griffin III get a job? No need to rehash the entire Kaepernick saga, but with nearly 120 quarterbacks signed for training camp, he’s still not one of them. And any notion that his protests last year have nothing to do with his unemployment have been thoroughly squashed at this point. It’s obviously the No. 1 reason he doesn’t have a job.

While we wholeheartedly believe that Kaepernick is good enough to deserve a roster spot this fall, he’s still not helping himself by remaining quiet about his football intentions. He’s naïve if he expects an opportunity to simply fall into his lap.

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Meanwhile, RG3 is also unemployed. Is the former No. 2 overall pick and 2012 Rookie of the Year done after just five seasons?

Josh McCown has a 59.1 completion percentage over his 14-year career.Julio Cortez/AP

■ Quarterback battles: The “open competitions” aren’t exactly the sexiest battles. The most interesting one is in Denver, where the Broncos have a championship-caliber defense but need Paxton Lynch, last year’s first-round pick, or Trevor Siemian to pick up the offense. In New York, Josh McCown will try to hold off Bryce Petty and Christian Hackenberg for the honor of leading the Jets to the No. 1 draft pick next year. In Cleveland, a seemingly rejuvenated Brock Osweiler looks like the favorite over Cody Kessler and rookie DeShone Kizer. And the 49ers might have the worst QB battle of all time, with Brian Hoyer looking like the favorite over Matt Barkley and C.J. Beathard.

Far more interesting will be to see how long a few veterans can hold off this year’s first-round picks. Houston’s Deshaun Watson looks to have the clearest path to a Week 1 starting job, with only Tom Savage standing in his way. Mike Glennon should start for most of this year over Mitchell Trubisky in Chicago, and the Chiefs’ Alex Smith should keep his job for this year over Patrick Mahomes. But if either team struggles in the first half of the season, the urge will be strong to supplant the veterans with the kids.

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■ Can Philip Rivers save the Chargers? The Chargers took several months to sell out their new, temporary 30,000-seat stadium, and fan interest in Los Angeles is somewhere between “minimal” to “non-existent.” The only way the Chargers will make an impact in LA is to have a great 2017 season and make the playoffs, and much of that will fall on Rivers, who has led his team to the postseason just once in the last seven years. Not helping matters: No. 7 overall pick Mike Williams, a physically imposing 6-foot-4-inch receiver, might have to undergo surgery and miss significant time for a back injury suffered in rookie minicamp.

Richard Sherman is entering seventh season in the NFL, all with the Seahawks.Ted S. Warren/AP

■ Can the Seahawks take advantage of their shrinking window? Some of the Seahawks still haven’t gotten over their crushing loss to the Patriots in the Super Bowl three years ago, but Richard Sherman and Co. care very much about their legacy and know that to be considered an all-time great team they need to win another Super Bowl together. Russell Wilson will be leading the way for the next decade, but 2017 might be the last year that the Seahawks can keep their championship-caliber defense together, with age and expiring contracts creeping up on several star players.

■ Can anyone in the AFC challenge the Patriots? The AFC was a flawed conference last year, and while the Patriots have seemingly gotten even better this offseason, their rivals still have some ugly warts. The Broncos have a big question mark at quarterback, so do the Texans, the Steelers have plenty to prove on defense, Joe Flacco and the Ravens have become too inconsistent, the Colts have been atrocious in the trenches, and the Dolphins haven’t proven that they can win a big game.

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The only team that looks like it can threaten the Patriots is the Raiders, who should be a favorite for a top-two seed if Derek Carr can stay healthy. The other team to keep an eye on is the Titans, who have built a tremendous offensive arsenal around promising young quarterback Marcus Mariota, and look primed for a nice jump this year.

■ Can Dak and Zeke avoid the sophomore slump? The Cowboys were one of the biggest surprises in 2016, finishing with a 13-3 record and No. 1 playoff seed behind a couple of super rookies, Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott. But now the league has a book on them, and as RG3 can attest to, it won’t be so easy duplicating their otherworldly rookie seasons. The Cowboys don’t have Tony Romo as a backup plan anymore, so the pressure is really on Prescott to produce.

UNNECESSARY ROUGHNESS

Broncos, fans battle over tickets

Dustin Bradford/Getty Images/File 2016

An interesting story out of Denver is making the rounds on the Internet and social media, shining a light on the secondary ticket market and the rights of NFL teams to yank season tickets from fans.

The Broncos, who have sold out every home game since 1970 and have a season-ticket waiting list of 75,000, informed about 150 season ticket-holders (representing 400 tickets) that their seat licenses were being revoked because the fans sold a majority or all of their tickets on the secondary market.

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One of those fans, Jim Hayes, a ticket holder since 2004, wrote a lengthy piece on LinkedIn last week expressing his frustration with the Broncos. Hayes wrote that he and his wife were forced to sell tickets to all but two games in 2015 because they had their first child in August, and then sold all of their tickets for 2016 because they were going through intense fertility treatments to have a second child.

Hayes appealed the decision, but to no avail.

“We sold all of our tickets through NFLTicketExchange.com, the only authorized site the Broncos promote to season ticket-holders for selling tickets,” Hayes wrote. “We would still have our tickets had we traded or sold them through any NFL-unauthorized channel. If we could go back in time, we would not use NFLTicketExchange and we hope other season tickets-holders stop using the site. The Broncos (or any NFL team) could decide you aren’t a fan based on sales data from the NFLTicketExchange regardless of why you actually sold them.”

But the Broncos didn’t quite see it that way. Not only did the Hayes family only attend two of the Broncos’ 22 total home games the last two seasons (including none in 2016), they also bought playoff tickets in 2015 — which was not required of season ticket-holders — and sold both games on the secondary market.

The Broncos note that they granted several exceptions to fans who couldn’t attend games last year, most notably those dealing with significant health issues and those in the military. The Broncos also note that they were able to better serve other fans by upgrading their season ticket-holders and taking a few hundred people off the waiting list.

“While some licenses were reinstated, including those affected by military service and personal health reasons, several accounts were not renewed in an effort to get more tickets in the hands of fans who attend the games,” the team told the Globe in a statement. “As a result, we’ve been able to have movement on our waiting list for the first time in six years while upgrading more than 10 times as many current season ticket members and increasing our very limited single-game allotment.”

In May, the Denver Post wrote an editorial agreeing with the Broncos.

“When there are 75,000 fans on the wait list for season tickets and the Broncos have sold out every game since 1970, it’s time to cull the pack of those privileged few who hold 22,000 season ticket accounts, which represents 97 percent of the stadium’s capacity,” the newspaper wrote.

So while we sympathize with the Hayes family, ultimately the Broncos have to think about their fan base at large, and their decision appears reasonable. More interesting is the insight into NFLTicketExchange.com, the league’s self-run secondary ticket market.

Not only are teams getting a second cut on ticket sales, but they can track your data and see which fans are attending games. A league spokesman declined to comment on the Hayes story or how teams are using the data in general. Big Brother is always watching, even at football games.

BAD GAME PLAN

Redskins’ strategy is self-destructive

Matt Rourke/AP

Washington has led the league in dysfunction since Daniel Snyder took ownership in 1999, and last week held a clinic on how not to handle business with a star player.

When the deadline passed last week for quarterback Kirk Cousins to sign a long-term deal, signifying that Cousins will play this year on his franchise tag contract of $23.9 million, team president Bruce Allen released a statement to the public attempting to shine a light on the negotiations and show the fan base that the team tried really hard to sign Cousins.

“We made Kirk an offer that included the highest fully guaranteed amount upon signing for a quarterback in NFL history ($53 million) and guaranteed a total of $72 million for injury,” Allen wrote. “But despite our repeated attempts, we have not received any offer from Kirk’s agent this year. Kirk has made it clear that he prefers to play on a year-to-year basis.”

Not only did the statement paint Cousins as greedy and not committed to the team — a baffling decision by a team that is supposedly counting on Cousins to lead it to the playoffs this year — but the statement inexplicably supported Cousins’s position and made the team look foolish.

That $53 million guarantee was for a five-year extension — or a six-year deal — and included the $23.9 million that Cousins was already guaranteed for this year.

And if Cousins were to get a transition tag next season — a strong possibility given the dearth of starting-caliber quarterbacks — his salary would be $28.8 million. So Cousins is looking at $52.7 million over the next two seasons whether he signs a long-term deal or not. If he were to hit the open market, Cousins would likely get significantly more.

Washington’s proposal, then, asked Cousins to give the team his contractual rights through the 2022 season, for the princely sum of an extra $300,000. That’s not an offer, it’s an insult to Cousins’s intelligence — one that Washington strangely bragged about in its statement. And while a few sycophantic Washington fans took the bait and peppered Cousins with insults on his Instagram account, most of the media and the football world roasted Snyder and Allen for their absurd tactics.

To quote Adam Sandler in “Happy Gilmore,” “Talk about your all-time backfires.”

ETC.

Dungy lists Brady as sixth-best QB

John Tlumacki/Globe Staff

We got a kick last week out of Tony Dungy listing Tom Brady as the sixth-best quarterback of the modern era in a project with ESPN. Dungy approached the exercise by determining which quarterbacks he would least like to face, and he put three scrambling QBs at the top — John Elway, Steve Young, and Aaron Rodgers — because of their added threat as runners.

But we found another comment from Dungy to be interesting. After the three scramblers, “I put [Peyton] Manning and [Dan] Marino at the top of the nonscramblers because they didn’t have the benefit of dominant defenses,” he wrote.

Wait, didn’t Dungy coach Manning’s defense for seven years in Indianapolis (2002-08)? Is he blaming himself for not coaching up the defense properly, or is he perhaps taking a swipe at former general manager Bill Polian for not giving him the right players? The Colts weren’t always a defensive juggernaut under Dungy, but they finished No. 1 in total defense in 2007 and No. 2 in 2005, and lost in the divisional round of the playoffs each year.

Extra points

Le’Veon Bell rushed for 1,268 and 7 touchdowns last season.Jim Rogash/Getty Images

The Steelers may open camp without two key starters. Franchise-tagged running back Le’Veon Bell declined to sign a long-term contract extension at last week’s deadline, and don’t be surprised if he skips the first couple weeks of camp before reporting. And left tackle Alejandro Villanueva still hasn’t signed his exclusive-rights free agent tender for the NFL minimum of $615,000, a sum that’s less than 1/10th of what two of his fellow linemen are making this year. While teams can fine players $40,000 for every day of camp that they skip — a new provision in the 2011 collective bargaining agreement that effectively squashes most holdouts — the Steelers can’t fine Bell or Villanueva if they haven’t signed contracts . . . All veterans will make $1,900 per week in training camp regardless of their contract, and first-year players make $1,075 per week. Players don’t get paid their real salary until Week 1, and veterans with four-plus years of experience get their entire 2017 salary guaranteed if they are on the opening-week roster . . . Interesting to see the NFL Players Association release a video on Friday with a message of “Save now. Fight later,” including an emoji of a closed fist. We’re four years away from the next CBA negotiation, but the union already is urging players to start saving now for any potential work stoppage . . . Fox Sports is throwing Jay Cutler right into the deep end of the pool, reportedly assigning him to call the Bears-Falcons game in Week 1 . . . Only 11 of 32 NFL teams are holding training camp in the traditional college dorm setting, tied for the lowest number this century, as teams find it more lucrative and enjoyable for the fans to hold practices at home. The Vikings, finishing up a brand new training facility, are holding training camp at the University of Minnesota-Mankato for the 52nd and final time. Only the Packers have held camp at one site for longer, practicing at Saint Norbert College for the last 60 years.

Back to work

The 2017 NFL season is underway, as the full squads for the Cardinals and Cowboys have already reported to training camp. Here’s a look at the sites and reporting dates for each team:

Compiled by Michael Grossi

Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @BenVolin. Material from interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report.