The questions hanging over this Mayo team are the same questions that were hovering over their heads 12 months ago. And in 2016, and in 2015, and 2014…
Can they go to the well one more time? Do they have an All-Ireland in them? Are they finished? And on they go.
The truth is, we won't be know the answer to any of them until this incredible bunch of players either finally drags themselves over the finishing line or they blow up once and for all. If they do neither, we'll be back asking the same questions in 12 months' time.
The Green above the Red start their Championship campaign this afternoon at home in Castlebar against a Galway side that have cracked the code and worked out how to beat Mayo.
Make no mistake, Stephen Rochford's team really are top of the range. They've done everything bar actually getting their hands on Sam Maguire.
There aren't many other teams that have managed that in recent years. In fact, stretching back to 2012 the only other sides to beat them during the summer have been Donegal, Kerry and Dublin, and on each occasion they went on to win the All-Ireland.
Mayo have improved year-on-year since they made their breakthrough at Connacht level under James Horan in 2011.
Since then they have at least made an All-Ireland semi-final seven years on the bounce and that run includes four All-Ireland final appearances, five if you count the 2016 replay. Their last game of the campaign has been a replay on three occasions, once they lost by two points and three times by a single point. They're not far away and they're getting closer.
Make no mistake, Stephen Rochford's team really are top of the range. They've done everything bar actually getting their hands on Sam Maguire.
Until they do get their hands on Sam Maguire, if they ever do it, the questions will remain.
Mayo have tasted All-Ireland final defeat nine times since 1989
Last year they managed to dispel a few myths about themselves, namely that they were tactically naive and that they didn't have the forwards to mix it with the very best.
In 2017 they racked up a string of big scores as they made their long way to the All-Ireland final, it took them a joint-record nine games to make it that far, and on the big day in Croke Park they rattled off 1-16 on their way to a one-point defeat to the Dublin.
That 19-point total would have been enough to win all bar four All-Ireland finals in the previous 30 years.
Tactically, they got it spot on. Manager Rochford has learned on the job and against the Boys in Blue last September they did virtually everything right, squeezing the life out of Stephen Cluxton's kick-outs, forcing him into a mini-meltdown, and when they had the ball they ran hard at blue jerseys.
Had Donal Vaughan kept his head when John Small committed the offence that earned him a red card, instead of lashing out and joining him on the line, Mayo might well have won the damn thing.
Donal Vaughan's red card was pivotal in last year's All-Ireland final
The reason they didn't was that they ran out of bodies. When Dublin brought on All Stars like Diarmuid Connolly, Kevin McManamon, Paul Flynn and Michael Darragh Macauley, Mayo turned to young men still with much to prove like Danny Kirby, Conor Loftus and David Drake.
They're no chokers either, despite what some who like to mock them claim. These boys never give in. They've made mistakes in the past and learned from them. They've simply come up short, beaten by a better team every time.
So the big questions that Mayo have to answer are over the players at either end of the spectrum - the youngsters and the oldsters. Have they unearthed the young talent to make the difference and can those veterans that they have relied upon for so long go one more time?
Six players who would be on the teamsheet whenever their fit are already over 30 - David Clarke, Chrissy Barrett, Colm Boyle, Keith Higgins, Seamus O'Shea and Andy Moran. That's more than a third of the side and not a brilliant age-profile.
People talk about losing All-Irelands and various things like that. I would much prefer to be in the All-Ireland than not be in it. You have only one chance of winning, and that's if you are in the bloody thing
The likes of Boyle, Higgins and Moran have serious miles on the clock in inter-county terms.
The current Footballer of the Year is one of the most positive people you'd ever meet and the 34-year-old certainly talks a good game about his hunger and desire for football.
"What I would love to think is that I'm going hell for leather to win one this year, next year. Whenever I play I think you can only have one goal," said Moran, who had his best season in the Mayo jersey in the last campaign, ageing like a fine wine.
"People talk about losing All-Irelands and various things like that. I would much prefer to be in the All-Ireland than not be in it. You have only one chance of winning, and that's if you are in the bloody thing. So, we'll keep fighting to be in it, and we'll keep fighting to win it."
Alongside the veterans, even younger players like captain Cillian O'Connor and Kevin McLoughlin know their way around the block. For example, the pair started every single one of Mayo's 19 Championship games in 2016 and '17, finishing the vast majority of them too.
It's worth noting that no other county in hurling and football has ever had such a heavy schedule of games in a two-year period. To win Sam Maguire this year Mayo will have to play a minimum of eight matches thanks to the additional fixtures in the Super 8 series.
And that's where the questions about this team really get sticky - can they keep going, having come so near before?
Andy Moran and Aidan O'Shea have played a lot of football for Mayo
The closest model to this Mayo team in recent GAA history is the Cork footballers of the last decade, who, between 2005 and 2009 lost two All-Ireland finals and three semi-finals, one of them after a replay - all to Kerry - before finally getting over the line in 2010.
The Rebels beat Down in the '10 final, the Mourne County having taken the Kingdom out of the equation at the quarter-final stage.
"To win an All-Ireland you need everything going your way," said John Hayes, who soldiered on through those years and came on as a sub in the All-Ireland win for Cork. "If someone beat Dublin in a semi-final, for example, this year, it would really open it up."
Hayes points that Cork were getting closer and closer through those five agonising years before they finally lifted Sam.
No team ever gets together at the start of a year and says 'this is our last chance'. We always had belief and we were very much in the moment
He said: "A big thing for us is that young lads started to push through. Nicholas Walsh, Graham Canty, Derek Kavanagh, Colm O'Neill - they all started on the bench in that final. Daniel Goulding, Patrick Kelly and Aidan Walsh all started and that was a big thing for us.
"Mayo need that, some of the fringe forwards like Conor Loftus to push on.
"No team ever gets together at the start of a year and says 'this is our last chance'. We always had belief and we were very much in the moment; we only worried about the next match and we were lucky to have a lot of experienced leaders to make sure we stayed focused. Mayo are the same.
"They are a quality team and they play to a very, very high standard."
There's no short way to an All-Ireland for Mayo this year thanks to the new format, though falling to Galway at the first hurdle will extend the road they'd have to travel.
Opinion is divided about this. In his newspaper column this week Darragh Ó Sé says this fixture is largely an irrelevance, as it turned out to be the last two seasons. But in his column Kieran Shannon, Mayo's former sports psychologist, says it has to be the front door on this occasion.
Stephen Rochford has been learning on the job
Rochford is one of the shrewdest football managers about and he's as well qualified as anyone to help drag Mayo over the line.
He refuses to get bogged down in his side's recent shortcomings or the county's horrendous record in All-Ireland finals - nine lost since 1989.
"No, I think it is too simplistic to bring it down to one thing," he explained. "It is like a jigsaw; I use this analogy. There is 1,000 pieces on the jigsaw and from the distance it looks perfect, but when you get really up close you can see that this was a little bit off or that needs to be a little bit better.
"Not massive things, not big under-performance from any one person or one incident. Just a number of different bits that need to be put together. To me that is just a measure of the potential within the group."
They certainly don't look like a team that are ready to give up. This bunch are a team that nearly always find a way in big games, as long as they don't involve Dublin, just as they showed with their last-gasp draw with Donegal that ensured their top flight survival in the Allianz Football League earlier this year.
Will they finally get over the line? Are they done once and for all? Nobody knows and the questions continue to be asked. Maybe by September we'll have a definitive answer.
Follow Mayo v Galway this Sunday via our live blog on RTÉ.ie and the News Now App, watch exclusive television coverage on RTÉ2 or listen to exclusive national radio commentary on RTÉ Radio 1.
