As the dust settles on another NFL season, we still have one important piece of business to tie up. The time has come to name the winners from our weekly prediction competitions.  I invite you to stand in virtual applause for jspaceman, who sealed their place as champion of our Pick the Playoffs game by correctly predicting that the Broncos would beat the Panthers at Super Bowl 50. They called 10 out of 11 games correctly through the postseason, the only miss coming in the Patriots’ divisional round win over Kansas City.  We already celebrated goodfella493, Nostradamus and Uma Blue as the joint-winners of our Pick Six contest. But who emerged as our overall champion - combining the results from results from the regular season and the playoffs together?  Once again, we have a three-way tie. Humean, homebrewer and Nostradamus each finished with 68 correct predictions out of a possible 113. But, by virtue of being the only one who remembered to post a score prediction for the Super Bowl tie-breaker, it is Humean who takes the title. I do hope you’ll join me in congratulating all of them.  More than 500 people took part this year, so thanks to all of you for making these blogs what they are. With no games left to pick until September, here instead are a few predictions for the offseason. Let me know yours in the comments section below.  OK, let’s start with an easy one. Manning is taking time to reflect over the possible end of his playing career, just like he promised he would. But the Broncos will need to know his intentions by 8 March at the latest. The new league year begins one day later, and at that point Manning’s $19m base salary for 2016 would become fully guaranteed.  Related: Cam Newton: 'Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser'  More realistically, if he had not retired by that point, he would need to renegotiate or be released. Von Miller and Malik Jackson head the list of prominent Broncos with contracts up for renewal, and it would be impossible to justify paying Manning such a sum given the struggle that this team faces to stay under the salary cap. Brock Osweiler, who did after all go 4-2 as a starter, is also set to become a free agent and at this point keeping him appears a far greater priority.  Manning is not going to start over with another team, even if there are one or two who might sign him for the publicity alone. And, frankly, I don’t think he will come back even for another year in Denver, either. His words, his body language, almost his every public interaction over the past few weeks have suggested that this is the end.  It started with the “last rodeo” remark to Bill Belichick, and moved on to Manning’s emotional speech to team-mates before Super Bowl 50, a game that he ended by commiserating with the beaten Panthers by telling them to “have a great career”.  His own career, he knows, is at an end.  Megatron’s path toward retirement has been a little more low-key. A good many people refused to believe last month’s reports that he was considering calling it a day. Some suggested that this might simply be a negotiating ploy, designed to persuade the Lions – already struggling with his $24m cap figure for next year – to let him leave and join up with a Super Bowl contender.  There are plenty of teams who would pursue Johnson if he was available. Unlike Manning, nobody doubts that the receiver can still produce at the highest level – coming off the back of a sixth consecutive 1,000-yard season. It is easy, and even a little thrilling, to imagine him hitting greater heights during a late-career renaissance like the one that Randy Moss had in New England.  Related: Watching the Super Bowl in San Quentin prison: 'It sort of hurts a little bit'  But the unromantic truth is that, as team-mate Golden Tate put it this week, Johnson’s “body just isn’t holding up”. Over the last three years his practice schedule has been constantly cut back by a combination of knee and ankle complaints. He told team-mates before this season that it would be his last and has never gone back on that. Johnson, like Manning, is just waiting for the right moment to make it official.  Jon Robinson wasted no time getting to work in Tennessee. On the same day that he was introduced as the team’s new general manager, he told reporters that he was open to trading the first pick in the 2016 draft.  It was hardly a shocking revelation. Having already landed Marcus Mariota in last year’s draft, and since watched him make an encouraging start to his NFL career, the Titans are all set at quarterback and therefore well positioned at the top of the draft to extract value from a rival who isn’t. With holes to fill all over their roster, stockpiling picks also makes sense.  Robinson’s challenge will be to find a willing trade partner. Only three times in the last two decades has a team moved up to No1 overall, most recently in 2004. Technically speaking, the Giants traded for Eli Manning after the Chargers had already selected him that year, but the deal had been under negotiation for some time before the draft.  Such trades are rare because the price is typically so steep. Washington gave up three years’ worth of first-round picks, plus a further second-rounder, just to move up four spots from No6 to No2 and select Robert Griffin III in 2012. The strongest case against the Titans finding a trade partner is that nobody would pay such a price this year, for what is considered a modestly talented crop of quarterbacks.  And yet, this is precisely why I think that they might succeed. Robinson will know he cannot hang on for a deal like St Louis got because there is no player nearly as hyped as Griffin. But if that knowledge can persuade him to set his sights a little lower, he may find that there is still scope to make a trade that benefits the Titans.  Several teams will be interested in taking a signal caller early in this draft – from Cleveland to San Francisco, St Louis, Philadelphia, and perhaps even Dallas. It only takes one head coach to fall in love with Paxton Lynch, Jared Goff or Carson Wentz in the coming weeks, to make a deal become possible.  During an interview with Dallas radio station 105.3 The Fan last month, Cowboys owner Jones confirmed that he was open to taking on some risk in his search for Tony Romo’s successor. “What would enhance me taking risk is a bigger upside,” he said. “And if that upside is there, that old risk-reward situation, then, yeah. This is as far as we’re going to go here now with this because I don’t want to get involved in any type of tampering situation. We’d take some risks.”  At the time, those words were widely interpreted as an overture to Manziel. It is no secret that Jones wanted to draft Johnny Football with the 16th pick of the 2014 draft, only to be overruled by his son, Stephen. Likewise it is no secret that the elder Jones continues to admire the quarterback, referencing him in November as a “great one”.  Manziel has no future in Cleveland. There was not an awful lot of ambiguity in the statement released by director of football operations Sashi Brown at the start of this month, which included the line: “[Manziel’s] status with our team will be addressed when permitted by league rules.”  Since then, the quarterback has been accused of turning up drunk to a team meeting – an allegation denied by the Browns. On Monday, an affidavit from his ex-girlfriend Colleen Crowley, which claims that he hit her so hard that she lost hearing in one ear, was made public.  The Cowboys have taken on players with damaged reputations before now, with Greg Hardy an obvious recent example. Previously, off-field troubles have not stopped them from signing such players as Tank Johnson or Pacman Jones.  So do I think that Manziel’s off-field woes preclude Dallas from signing him? No. Instead, I simply suspect that Jones might have noticed an even more exciting option.  Robert Griffin III’s career has not progressed in the way it was supposed to after an electrifying rookie year, but his numbers are still far more impressive than Manziel’s. He has completed almost 64% of his passes, with 40 touchdowns against 23 interceptions. His passer rating (90.6) compares favourably to Manziel’s (74.4) and so does his rushing average (6.1 yards per carry, as against 5.6).  Perhaps most importantly, he has a comparable marketing potential. And we already know that Jones admires him.  “I’m a fan of RGIII,” he said during one interview in late 2014. “Right on this field two years ago, or maybe it was three seasons ago, he put on a show and had a game that just floored me. And they won, and they won in large part because of his play at quarterback. I thought ‘my goodness, and we’re going to have to be playing this guy for years and years.’ And so he’s got it.”  “Once you see a player do it, especially if you see him do it two or three times, you know he can do it. And of course he’s a driven young man. I’m a big admirer of RGIII.”  Washington are expected to part ways with the quarterback one way or another this offseason - whether by releasing him or orchestrating a trade. Don’t be surprised if Dallas are among the first teams to come calling.
With the Super Bowl done and dusted we turn our attention to the events that will hit the headlines in the coming months