With the Dubs currently floundering around, struggling to adjust to this strange new reality where they are not winning every game all the time, their immediate challengers are jockeying for position.
The obvious trio - we know who they are - naturally scent an opportunity in the exciting power vacuum that has developed. Who will fill that vacuum? (Of course, the beaten down folk will insist that said vacuum fillers could in fact be the Dubs again, if they recover their senses but anyhow...)
First, a word on last year's smash-and-grab All-Ireland champions, who are in the midst of an underwhelming spring.
Tyrone - though 2021 taught us not to read much into their league form - are flirting with the drop, with only a draw against Monaghan and a dicey victory over Kildare to their name so far. The county also has a reputation, inherited from the noughties, of mounting peculiarly abject title defences, though this is surely of limited relevance to the current crop.
They were, after all, high on their first wave of All-Ireland success in the 2000s and may not have been psychologically primed for back-to-back tilts. But this is now their second era of All-Ireland glory. They now have the characteristics of a 'permanent' top table team. Back-to-back titles will hardly be beyond their ken, even if they do have to navigate the sharks in Ulster.
The two other main challengers meet in Tralee on Saturday evening. Were the GAA to scrap the needless and extraneous League finals, we could almost bill the game as a Division 1 decider.
For obvious reasons, both Kerry and Mayo are ravenously hungry at this point. The smell of want whenever the two meet these days is overpowering, capable of knocking everyone out within a 10-mile radius.
Logically, Mayo should be the hungrier, given all they've endured. After the 2013 All-Ireland football final, Mayo chairman John O'Malley announced to the crowd in Castlebar: "America got Bin Laden, Mayo will get Sam Maguire."
They've lost four more finals and three semi-finals since then. Their jarringly poor showing in the 2021 decider was the most bungled raid of them all.
And yet Kerry, as their fans are never long in telling you, have a different conception of what constitutes a famine to everyone else, aka, normal counties.
In the Mayo dressing room after the 2006 All-Ireland final, Jack O'Connor told the beaten team - four final losses in 11 years, no win for 55 - that Kerry's hurt had been greater because they lost the All-Ireland final to Tyrone the year before. In that context, eight seasons without Sam is entirely intolerable.
Peter Keane, like Mickey Ned O'Sullivan and Ógie Moran before him, didn't survive three years in the job without gaining Sam Maguire. Seeking an All-Ireland title as quickly as possible, they prised O'Connor out of Kildare (didn't take too much prising, say the Kildare fans), a manager with a track record in Kerry of winning Sam immediately.
Some critics felt the appointment was a bit unimaginative and worryingly nostalgic. But O'Connor is always a pragmatist and Kerry have started the season in fine fettle.
Before the Dubs emerged as Mayo's taunters-in-chief, the role belonged to Kerry. The Kerry fans inhabited this role with more old world gallantry than did the Dublin support, though some Mayo fans probably found their condescension hard to take.
Mayo had prolonged Kerry's longest famine with a stunning six-point win in the 1996 All-Ireland semi-final. The effect of this was to make John Maughan's side nominal favourites ahead of the following year's All-Ireland final, even though their form had dipped in the lead-up. A drab game was only enlivened by Maurice Fitzgerald delivering the signature display of his career, finally gaining an All-Ireland medal in his 10th season.
The 2004 and 2006 finals were dreadful wipeouts, Mayo in over their heads against Kerry teams of brusque ruthlessness. In those deciders, it felt less like Kerry were playing a game against Mayo and more like they were straining to live up to their ancestors and impress their demanding public. The Connacht champions felt like roadkill.
The Gaelic Grounds replay - sent down there because the college gridiron had pre-booked Croke Park - was one of the most anarchic and dramatic games of the last decade
Perhaps Mayo's most galling loss to Kerry was that evening in Limerick in August 2014, the final day of James Horan's epic first stint in charge. Mayo, by that stage, clearly looked the more powerful and fully-formed team against a Kerry side famously supposed to be "in transition".
The Gaelic Grounds replay - sent down there because the college gridiron had pre-booked Croke Park - was one of the most anarchic and dramatic games of the last decade. Kerry had an uncommon snarl that evening, epitomised best by Kieran Donaghy, who was sprung from the wilderness to rescue a draw the first day and who stamped his personality all over the replay.
In the bitter aftermath, Mayo were sore at the ragged refereeing display and Kerry's brazen cynicism in extra-time.
As Kerry struggled and stagnated in the years following, Mayo gained revenge in 2017, winning one of their sweetest victories of the decade in the semi-final replay, teeing up the greatest final of all the following month.
As of early 2022, they look to be the two strongest teams in the country.
Kerry recovered from an uncomfortable afternoon in Newbridge to trample over Dublin, Donegal and Monaghan in their next three games. As we know, their forward line is majestic in full cry. That magnificent two-headed beast known as Clifford-O'Shea was ably supported by Tony Brosnan in Inniskeen (0-03 from play) and Diarmuid O'Connor has been in superb form in midfield. Though this has been asserted before, their defence seems to be tightening, with only one goal conceded in four matches.
The caveat here is that the previous regime had no problem getting a similar tune out of these players in the league. One senses Kerry's evolution into All-Ireland winners will only be complete when they win a cloying, claustrophobic game at the business end of the championship.
The visitors, with Jason Doherty back and Cillian O'Connor due for a return, have shaken off last September's intense disappointment and are full of beans again. They rammed home their sudden new superiority over Dublin with an emphatic win in Croke Park. Lord, they even managed a palmed goal against Dessie Farrell's side - a pleasing role reversal from the normal order of things.
Their frenetic but muddled forward play was the major failing to emerge from the 2021 All-Ireland final - it's easily forgotten that they were actually gaining a stranglehold in the middle third in the second half. If they can address these shortcomings with big players returning, this could push them over the top.
Now that the anger and despondency from last autumn's mis-fire against Tyrone is subsiding, there is a realisation that Mayo are as primed as they've ever been at the beginning of the season.
Already a top of the table clash, Saturday's game doubles as an intriguing scene-set for the most open championship in years.
Follow Kerry v Mayo (throw-in 7.30pm Saturday) via our liveblog on RTÉ.ie/sport or the RTÉ News app, alternatively watch live on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, from 7.15pm.
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