owner John Mara something that has been obvious to most in and around the NFL for the last few months.Yes, the league is closer to returning to Los Angeles than it has been at any point over the past 20 years. Yes, that means there's a better chance than not that some team will be playing in the Coliseum or the Rose Bowl or Dodger Stadium in 2016. And yes, that makes a significant mile marker in the path back to the nation's second largest market.We won't have a conclusion this week. But we already have a roadmap. And the dominoes have fallen quickly. The league first looked at buying a 60-acre parcel adjacent to Hollywood Park in 2013. That prompted owner Stan Kroenke to move on and . That led to Kroenke linking up with Stockbridge Capital Group, which owns the 238-acre lot next to Kroenke's Mark Lowe Jersey land, and developing . That, of course, pushed the and to partner on their own . All the while, St. Louis, San Diego and Oakland were put in the position of having to play catch-up.On Monday, executive vice president of NFL ventures and busine s operations Eric Grubman will make a presentation to the owners about where the L.A. projects stand. He'll field questions, and Kroenke, as well as the ' Mark Davis and the ' Dean Spanos, will be free to (but not forced to) jump in and provide answers. This will be the first forum en ma se for (made up of Mara, the ' Clark Hunt, the ' Robert Kraft, the ' Bob McNair, the ' Jerry Richardson and the ' Art Rooney).This much is clear: The race is now on.The NFL's dilemma is that the most advanced and attractive project is being run by the , who are the team Justin Turner Jersey least qualified to move by the letter of the league's relocation criteria. Indeed, Kroenke's $1.86 billion football palace, which would anchor the larger 298-acre development, is shovel-ready and provides what the league long believed impo sible: an L.A. solution driven by a single team owner. The flip side is that the and are far more capable of demonstrating the failures of their existing markets.And that brings us to the other layer of this: the status of St. Louis, Oakland and San Diego. According to a league source, the NFL plans to visit all three cities in April as part of market a se sments being done on each city (the owners will get an update on those Monday, as well). As things are now, the league is measuring each on how aggre sive and specific they've been in their efforts to retain a team.St. Louis, as the NFL sees it, has been both aggre sive and specific. San Diego has been specific but not aggre sive. Oakland has been neither. But all three cities have been more active as the tenor of the NFL's effort to return to L.A. has changed.There is one condition that hovers over all of this: In order to protect the , the league prefers, at least in the short term, to look at having two teams total -- rather than three -- in Southern California. That means there will either be two teams in Los Angeles -- one being the Will Smith Jersey -- or one in L.A., with the staying put in San Diego.With that in mind, one of the 10 to 12 scenarios being looked at by the league is particularly intriguing: The go to L.A., the replace them in St. Louis and the remain in San Diego. The would get a head start as the first team in L.A. (a reward for Kroenke's investment), the would get a fresh start in a new stadium and the would potentially be able to jump-start their efforts to build in San Diego, with the city knowing the team could join the in Inglewood.At any rate, it's clear there's a spirited game of musical chairs playing out in real time now. And no team wants to be left standing up, knowing things could crystallize as soon as October or November.That accelerated timetable -- along with the attendant competition -- is certainly a good thing as far as the league is concerned.Here are five other things to watch for, in addition to the usual rules discu sions, in Phoenix this week: Expanded playoffs. Mara said Sunday that expanded playoffs are likely to come about in the long term, and the topic is on the agenda for this week, but no vote is expected. The plan, for now, is to go forward with the usual 12-team field for 2015. Introduction of a new medical chief. Betsy Nabel, president of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, was Los Angeles Dodgers Jersey named in February, and she will make a presentation to the owners. Since her appointment, a number of young players have retired early, again bringing the topic of player health and safety to the forefront. International discu sion. The NFL is ramping up efforts to test London's ability to be home to a team, with a divisional game (- in Week 4) , along with games set for back-to-back weeks (- in Week 7 and - in Week 8), which will test Wembley's Kirk Gibson Jersey turf and logistics. The next steps could be to take the automatic bye away for teams visiting London and potentially adding a December game. NFL executive vice president of international Mark Waller told me in November he'd be "very disappointed if we're not playing more than three games there in 2016." Conduct Committee report. This is another that will have its first big forum at this set of meetings. And with the situations of and still unresolved, this nine-member group, which includes two women (Dallas' Charlotte Jones Anderson and Cleveland's Dee Haslam), will have a high profile. Team busine s. With the draft a month away, this gathering of so many power brokers under one roof can lead to news on the team level, and Peterson is the one to watch on that front. , according to two sources close to the tailback, with remaining the problem. Minnesota general manager Rick Spielman, coach and Peterson's agent, Ben Dogra, will all be in Arizona, but Dogra already turned down a meeting with Spielman. As I understand it, the reasoning on the player's side was that the ' decision to not release Peterson leaves the parties with little to discu s.Follow Albert Breer on Twitter .