The Vukovi Belgrade have worked long and hard to establish their reputation of the top team in the CEFL. The reputation is not without cause, as 2011 will be a year they’ll attempt to get their third consecutive championship, but the way the last few months went on, it could be the hardest to accomplish to date.

Since the 2010 season was over, they’ve parted ways with the successful coach John Harper, and the replacements were in the end hard to come by. They found not one, but two, but both were forced to leave due to personal reasons, and in the end former NFL running back Reuben Droughns will be the team’s head coach. Droughns joined the Vukovi before last year, as an assistant to Harper, and this will be his first experience as a head coach.

Overall they’ve experienced even more problems on the player side. Most of their core defense from previous years decided to stop playing football and two of their best offensive lineman, Branko Mutić and Vladimir Uzelac, decided to try their luck playing in Germany. Andrej Tasić, one of the longest tenured players on the team, will also play less then before, focusing on his coaching role.

They also won’t have quarterback Jordan Green anymore, but it’s questionable if that is a loss, since they did replace him with another import player. Their new quarterback is Vinnie Miroth, and they’ll also for the third year have running back Brandon McDowell.

Still, they will rely on much more young and inexpierenced players then in the last years, since several talented juniors joined the team. But there were also some good news, as receiver Bratislav Bošnjak joined the team full time, after a very successful period with them in late 2008, while his Serbian team at the time was in the offseason. Miloš Barbir also comes back, after spending time in Vienna, where he also spent time with the Vienna Vikings team.

It’s hard to imagine a year in which the Vukovi could be unsuccessful – after all, they’ve won three titles in five years, two straight, are just coming off from an undefeated season and there has never been a year in which they didn’t play in the final. But if there ever was a year, where there is uncertainty about how much they can achieve, it’s this one.

There are of course reasons for optimism – they still have many of the players they had before, that helped them win two straight titles. And until somebody knocks them off, they are still the best team in the league.