It’s never too early to start thinking about football.

Sure, baseball is a thing in Western Pennsylvania again thanks to the Pirates.

In past years, long about now, attention has diverted — understandably — to all things Steelers.

By the way, training camps around the NFL start in about two weeks. The first preseason games are in about a month and the kickoff to the regular season in a mere 55 days.

Not that I’m counting.

This NFL season may be the most interesting yet as the game is on the verge of some major changes, either for the better or for the worse (probably for the worse).

To paraphrase Van Halen: Only time will tell if the NFL’s changes stand the test of time.

Here are some things to look out for as the NFL season rapidly approaches:

Check those police blotters: The NFL is getting kind of a bad rap this summer with the spike in arrests, approximately 32 of them at last count.

But three of them belong to former Lions’ wideout Titus Young within a span of five days when he went full-on Amanda Bynes.

A couple of the others were when players forgot they had packed a lethal weapon in their carryons at the airport. Oops.

The Aaron Hernandez saga has brought even more scrutiny on the league. In reality, less than one percent of all the players in the NFL have been arrested this offseason. Only one is an alleged psycho-killer.

That’s still not good and probably more than the three other major sports leagues in the United States combined. But it’s also not an epidemic.

Chip Kelly’s offense: All eyes will be on the Eagles, this preseason in particular, to see if Kelly’s up-tempo, fast-break offense will work in the NFL.

While Philadelphia likely will not run more than 100 offensive plays a game like the Oregon Ducks did routinely last season, they could come pretty close.

My take is Kelly will abandon it all together at some point. He doesn’t want to be the Paul Westhead of the NFL.

Innovation is good. But some things should be left at the college level.

Crazy rule change: This will be the first season a ballcarrier cannot lower his head outside of the tackle box.

This is going to result in a lot of penalties in the preseason and in the early part of the regular season because these players have been taught since they were knee high to Maurice Jones-Drew to lower their head to initiate contact.

It’s probably going to cost a team a game, too.

Get used to it. More rule changes will happen in the near future. It’s just a matter of time before the kickoff becomes a thing of the past. That’s just the start. Within a decade, you won’t be able to recognize the game. It’ll be some hybrid of flag football and a 7-on-7 passing drill.

It won’t matter anyway, because most of the games will be played in London.

Player conduct will be Scotland Yard’s problem then.

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.