PicoBlog

This is necessarily subjective. But I really have not enjoyed this NFL season, which sucks, because I look forward to it all year.

NFL football is the only sport I really follow anymore. I used to follow the NBA and baseball fairly closely, watching a couple dozen games of each a year and tracking the divisional standings. I can’t remember the last time I watched a baseball game (for reasons) and while I’ll enjoy an NBA game if I catch one, I couldn’t tell you who’s good and bad right now. I used to get into hockey in time for the playoffs and college basketball in time for March Madness, but no more. The NFL, though, I follow religiously, including through playing fantasy football and through (legally and responsibly) betting on games. But I’m simply not enjoying the league very much at the moment.

It pains me to agree with Tom Brady on anything, but I just feel like the product isn’t great. Scoring is down, which I should like - I’m not a fan of the recent all-passing-offense, no defense dynamic in the league. (You could see this clearly in the fact that last year the number one defense in the sport, the Buffalo Bills, gave up a field goal in 13 seconds in the playoffs, and it didn’t even seem surprising.) But the downtick in offense seems, impressionistically, to be less the result of improving defense and more the result of sloppy and disorganized offenses. I understand that everybody’s running these two-high shells and taking away the long ball, and I’m sure that and other defensive tactics are involved. But when I watch the games now, the significantly reduced amount of practice time due to the collective bargaining agreement and the effort to reduce head injuries looms large. There’s just a lot of problems with execution, coordination, and busted plays, though I’m sure some NFL stathead will disagree.

I’m sure someone will pop up and say that there have been a lot of close games. But there’s a difference between close games and good games. A lot of people are calling the Vikings-Bills game from a few weeks ago the game of the year. But that’s almost entirely a property of the last couple minutes, not the quality of the game overall. And the game went down to the wire because of a comically inept quarterback sneak followed immediately by a botched snap. To me, that’s a microcosm of the whole season.

My biggest complaint is this: no one’s good! There are just so few teams that look remotely like good teams. The defending champs have fallen apart in truly epic fashion. No one in the NFC South has a winning record. The Seahawks are a nice story but scare no one. Presumed contenders like the Bucs and Packers have eaten shit. Supposedly up-and-coming teams like the Cardinals and Lions suck. I trust neither of the New Jersey teams. The Ravens can’t close games, and while I think Lamar Jackson is overall a fine quarterback, he also has more than his share of inexplicable throws and decisions. The Vikings have an impressive record but are led by Mr. 1:00 PM himself, Kirk Cousins. The Cowboys are the Cowboys and Mike McCarthy is Mike McCarthy. I don’t trust the Dolphins and fear for Tua’s health. The much-ballyhooed AFC West, which Peter King said might be the best division ever, is no race at all and features the putrid Broncos, sad Raiders, and mediocre Chargers. I am aware of the Philadelphia Eagles, and their record is impressive. Their schedule is not. Their signature wins are over the Cowboys and the Vikings, who both look like pretenders to me. Jalen Hurts has been impressive and is deservedly in second position for MVP, but there’s no real team-defining games left on the schedule to impress me. Playing the AFC South is like getting handed three wins.

My operating assumption right now is that the Kansas City Chiefs will cruise to the first overall seed in the AFC behind an MVP season from Patrick Mahomes. I watch their games and it really seems like they’re clearly in a class of their own. Mahomes is too good, Andy Reid’s schemes are too good, and rules changes that prevent punishing receivers who come over the middle have left Travis Kelce simply unguardable. It’s really hard for me to imagine a scenario where they don’t win another Super Bowl next February. The biggest impediment to that once seemed to be the Buffalo Bills, but they’ve been devastated by injury after injury - Von Miller, Micah Hyde, Matt Milano, Greg Rousseau, Jamison Crowder, Mitch Morse, Jordan Poyer, Tremaine Edmunds, Tre’Davious White…. I love Josh Allen, but he can’t shake the turnover bug, and with so many injuries they have very little margin for error.

And that’s the other thing! I know it’s a common complaint that the injury bug is getting worse, and that it’s often not true, or at least lacking evidence. Injuries at least rose early last season, but I can’t say whether that’s true still. There’s constant debate about whether injuries are actually on the rise or if there’s just more stringent reporting for the injury list. What I can tell you is that the impact of injuries seems to grow and grow. Like I told you, I follow the sport very closely - I watch five games a week, I study boxscore, I take in tons of news and analysis online. And yet every week when a game starts and they list the inactives, I say “wait, he’s out? He’s out? He’s out?” It would be a full-time job to keep track of every team’s injury list, and the nature of the league is that missing some random left guard or nose tackle can absolutely decide a game’s outcome. It’s really the only thing that seriously degrades my enjoyment of the sport, the constant influence of injuries and the fickle nature of which teams are healthy and which aren’t. I think a fully-loaded Bills team could beat the Chiefs again, but we’ll never know because the team will never be fully-loaded.

We could get a great, exciting playoffs and a different champion than the one I’m predicting, and you can come back to this post and make fun of me if you want. Right now, I’m watching a bunch of teams that top out at B- with poor offensive line play and injury-ravaged rosters bumble around. It’s not fun, and this is the only sport I still care about.

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