Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Thu 2024-11-21 8:15PM Pittsburgh Steelers @ Cleveland Browns
Sun 2024-11-24 1:00PM Dallas Cowboys @ Washington Commanders
Sun 2024-11-24 1:00PM Detroit Lions @ Indianapolis Colts
Sun 2024-11-24 1:00PM Kansas City Chiefs @ Carolina Panthers
Sun 2024-11-24 1:00PM Minnesota Vikings @ Chicago Bears
Sun 2024-11-24 1:00PM New England Patriots @ Miami Dolphins
Sun 2024-11-24 1:00PM Tennessee Titans @ Houston Texans
Sun 2024-11-24 1:00PM Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ New York Giants
Sun 2024-11-24 4:05PM Denver Broncos @ Las Vegas Raiders
Sun 2024-11-24 4:25PM Arizona Cardinals @ Seattle Seahawks
Sun 2024-11-24 4:25PM San Francisco 49ers @ Green Bay Packers
Sun 2024-11-24 8:20PM Philadelphia Eagles @ Los Angeles Rams
Mon 2024-11-25 8:15PM Baltimore Ravens @ Los Angeles Chargers
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Notes -
Eagles came through a tremendous week last week, delivering beatings to two division rivals in the space of five days and asserting themselves as the overwhelming favorites to win the NFC East. After a rocky start, they seem to have mostly righted the ship behind two rookie CBs, noted violent freak Jalen Carter, and an offense that with Saquon Barkley and a great O-Line will get you eventually. The team continues to suffer from weak pass-rush production, their edge rushers are weak and most of their production results seems to result from Carter or another DT making the big play to break things down. And the weird mental lapses and turnovers continue to be an issue. But they made it through the toughest week on their calendar all year. Moving forward, they've got a lot of tough games left: against the Rams this weekend, then the Ravens and Steelers, and then to Washington. But only the Ravens game looks like they should be underdogs.
I would bet on the Rams if you fancy it. Stafford, Kupp, and Nacua are primed to execute the same gameplan that Mayfield and the Bucs used against the Eagles: quick passing to avoid pressure and stay marching up the field. Stafford has a quick time-to-release, and the Eagles pass rush when it succeeds at all is typically slow-developing. The Rams defense is first in pressure rate in the league, while their cornerbacks suck, but "put pressure on Jalen Hurts and dare him to get the ball out quickly" is basically the book on how to beat the Eagles most days. Hopefully Saquon can put them on their heels enough times that the Eagles can pull out the win, but the Rams are a tough well coached team as long as Stafford is under center, and their strengths and weaknesses match up well against the Eagles.
I love to see the Cowboys suffer, and things are looking worse than ever. The Cowboys have failed to win a single homegame through week 11 of the NFL season, only the Cowboys and the Giants share this distinction, and the Giants were known to be hunting for the #1 pick coming in, where the Cowboys were thought to be all-in super bowl contenders behind the highest paid players in league history. Love to see it.
Speaking of all-in teams that have turned into dumpster fires, at this point the Jets have over the past four years:
-- Drafted Sam Darnold #3 overall, sputtered, traded him
-- Drafted Zach Wilson #2 overall, sputtered, benched him to trade for
-- Aaron Rodgers. They rebuilt the team in his image, fired the head coach, and now the general manager. He will probably leave next year, whether he wants to retire or the Jets choose not to bring him back due to mediocre play.
What a disastrous run. I'm not sure we have many examples of that kind of concentrated futility in sports history, particularly when the defense has several stars, the team has jettisoned a good number of draft picks to get Rodgers and friends on the offense, and two of their former QBs are leading teams that look like playoff contenders elsewhere. The entire org is torn down at this point, Rodgers is going to leave very little behind him to build on. The Jets and Browns both looked like great defenses and solid offenses that just needed a competent QB to turn into contenders, both traded away assets and sold their organizational souls (the Browns far moreso) to acquire and placate those QBs, both orgs now look like dumpster fires. The core that they hoped to build around will pass on to other teams or decline before they contend again, some players have spent their whole peak toiling on Jets and Browns teams that never did anything. The agony of defeat, not just momentary but for years.
The NFL is seeing the results of their efforts to achieve parity: ratings are down in what were normally some of their largest markets in New England and New York. This is obviously related to all the teams there being total dumpster fires. The NFL, like all American sports leagues and arguably most successfully, has worked for decades to make sure that every dog has its day, that every team will have its year in the sun once out of every thirty. They've succeeded tremendously, only four teams (Broncos, Falcons, Panthers, Jets) haven't made the playoffs since 2020, and other than the Jets the other three made the Super Bowl within the memory of a high school senior. The goal of the NFL is based on the assumption that lifelong fandom starts with every kid, during their youth, seeing their local team put out a great product and make a deep playoff run. This model seems to work to build strong fanbases for every team, the NFL prints money relative to other leagues, despite its near total lack of international footprint compared to NBA/UEFA/etc. But, we're starting to see fans catch on: the league achieves parity over time by making it impossible to keep a great team together. Instead teams go all in for a championship run, then rebuild. The result is more teams than ever aren't even really trying to be good at football, and fans tune out. The Giants are benching Daniel Jones, who is mediocre but clearly the best QB on the roster, to avoid paying him any more money on his bad contract. What's the reason to watch a Giants game anymore? To see Tommy Devito's guido agent in the stands? Fans will just tune out until the Giants get good again. This is another example of businesses building procedures around customer tastes and practices, then customers shift their practices to maximize the value they can get in the deal. Why not just wait until the team is, if not good, at least trying? Fact is, I'm a fair weather fan. Right now the Eagles are good, and I like their identity as a team, I'm watching every game listening to podcasts I can tell you who their backup safeties are. If they start to suck, I'll still watch a few games but I'm not going to schedule my Sunday around it. I might attend more games if tickets get cheaper. But I'm not going to be obsessed again until they are better. I just don't do the whole fan gatekeeping thing now that I'm an adult, and I don't see why I should if the league is going to encourage the opposite behavior from the teams.
On a brighter note, the Bills-Chiefs game delivered on the wish of a Buffalo fan I met outside the Linc after last years rain soaked OT classic (the high point of the iggles season last year), who plaintively said "Just once I want the Bills to win the game of the year..." I'm not sure it was quite the best game of the year, but they were the first team to beat the Chiefs and that's worth something, and I'm pulling for Allen to win the MVP if Saquon doesn't.
It's still better than the alternative, though. In 35 years as a Pirates fan I've experienced exactly 6 playoff appearances (1990–1992, 2013–2015), one winning season where they didn't make the playoffs (2018), and a handful more that were worth paying attention to at some point (1997, 2003 (April only), 2005 (Early June only), 2011, 2012, 2016, 2023, 2024). The rest were all over before they even started. Yet I watched anyway, hoping something would happen, hoping they'd turn the corner. Prior to their 2013 playoff appearance I made a list of all the little things we'd suffered through as Pirates fans over the course of 20 losing seasons. I put together an all-time 20 years of losing commemorative team, full of players who personified 20 years of losing. I'm accused of my family of either being insincere or an idiot for continuing to pay attention. Mostly, though, no one cares. The Pirates continue to exist primarily as an inexpensive pro-sports option for families. Kids watch until they are old enough to understand that the team sucks and isn't worth watching.
Winning does not rectify this. Every time the team appears to be having a decent season, there's a loud chorus warning that the success is ephemeral; don't get used to it. During their string of winning seasons in 2013–2015, people still said that the best we could hope for was a few winning seasons per decade. Even if the team won the World Series, all we'd hear about is that it's a fluke, like the Marlins, and that Nutting would soon sell off the team, like the Marlins. Granted, Bob Nutting is part of the problem, but if the league were actually concerned about parity and had a structure akin to the NFL, there would at least be some incentive for him to try to have a winning team.
The thing about NFL rebuilds is that they're at least short enough that they're fun to watch in real time. Granted, as a Steelers fan my team will never rebuild (or at least never admit to it), but there was always a reason to watch. Will Mitch Trubisky perform better than geriatric Ben? Is Kenny Pickett the answer? How will Russ and Justin do? Will the defense be enough to compensate for an anemic offense? Elsewhere, no one expected the Commanders to turn it around as quickly as they did. No one expected the Bengals to do the same a few years earlier. The Patriots suck, but there's reason for optimism. I'd much rather have this than a league where every decade there are like 5 good teams, a few teams that will occasionally make the playoffs, and a hige raft of incompetents.
Look at the NFL in the '70s. The Steelers, Dolphins, Raiders, Cowboys, Vikings, Rams, and maybe Redskins were good. Then you had teams like the Colts, Broncos, Browns, and Oilers that were kind of good, sometimes. Then you had everyone else, who largely spent the decade in obscurity. the New York Giants did not make a single playoff appearance between 1964 and 1980. The Jets didn't make one between 1970 and 1980. The Patriots made 6 total playoff appearances (AFL included) between their inception in 1960 and the introduction of the salary cap in 1994. As I mentioned in my post below, the Steelers made the playoffs once in their first 40 years in the league.
A better example may be the NHL during the Dead Puck Era. You had New Jersey, Detroit, Colorado, Dallas, and maybe Philadelphia as legitimate cup contenders. The Sabres almost wone won but that was due to Hasek more than anything else. Even teams like the Penguins who consistently made the playoffs were never expected to do much. Look at the rosters and those teams were stacked. The other playoff regulars had a few stars but got thin quickly, and a bunch of teams had nobody. This is a big reason why Gary Bettman takes so much heat over expansion; everyone points to how long it took to get hockey going in the new markets, but most of the time those markets had very little to root for.
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