Let's chat about the National Football League. This thread will be dedicated to all post-season games, including the Super Bowl. This post will be updated with results and schedules going into February (All times Eastern):
Wildcard matchups:
2025-01-11:
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04:30PM: Los Angeles Chargers vs. Houston Texans
08:00PM: Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Baltimore Ravens
2025-01-12:
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01:00PM: Denver Broncos vs. Buffalo Bills,
04:30PM: Green Bay Packers vs. Philadelphia Eagles
08:00PM: Washington Commanders vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
2025-01-13
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08:00PM: Minnesota Vikings vs. Los Angeles Rams
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Notes -
My rooting interests are tempered by the fact that, living in Pittsburgh, I have to deal with the annual chorus calling for Tomlin's head in a season where we make the playoffs because he hasn't won a playoff game in nearly a decade and he's entirely to conservative on offense and who cares if he has no losing seasons, yadda yadda yadda. There's also this perception that the Steelers are in some kind of hell where they need to get bad before they get good and maybe we need a losing season or two to get some top 10 picks and rebuild for the future. Never mind that the Patriots were strong for nearly 20 years picking at the end of the draft, or that the Browns, Raiders, Jaguars, Giants, Jets, Panthers, etc. have all had plenty of high picks in the past decade and they all still suck. Never mind that the Bengals have the best WB-WR tandem in football and they're out of the playoffs, or that the high-flying Dolphins have the most creative offense in football and are out of the playoffs. Never mind that the vaunted "Killer Bs" era that they think should have won 2 or 3 Super Bowls had to deal with a perpetually injured Le'Veon Bell and a defense so bad that they couldn't stop Blake Bortles despite putting up 40+ points. It's not Tomlin's fault that Bell could never stay healthy. It's not Tomlin's fault that Ben was a gunslinger who threw a lot of picks. At the very least, he's handling losing his franchise QB better than Belechick, whose Pats collapsed following Brady's loss despite one good season from Mac Jones. I get the impression that these people would be pissed if the Steelers won the Super Bowl because that would mean another decade of Tomlin.
With that in mind, I'm rooting for the following teams in non-Steelers games:
Los Angeles Chargers The Chargers had one of those wunderkind head coaches in Brandon Staley whom Steelers fans liked to point to whenever they talked about how Tomlin was too old-fashioned and was letting the game pass him by. Except Staley couldn't win anything and got his ass canned. Now they've replaced him with a guy who is committed to running the ball despite not being particularly good at it and not letting Herbert run wild despite years of the media stroking him off, and they're having a great season. Nothing against the Texans, who have similar numbers, but they're said to be having a down year while Harbaugh supposedly turned this ship around by playing more conservatively.
Buffalo Bills I like Buffalo, and while they definitely play a brand of football quite different from what Tomlin would play, they're up against the Broncos. I don't have anything against the Broncos per se; I do have something against Sean Payton, who acted like he was the savior of the team and shit all over Russ. Of course, people in Pittsburgh are acting like he saw something in Russ that Mike Tomlin missed and we should have known he as cooked because he was worse last year than his numbers would indicate, which is all the more reason to root for them to lose. Also, the guy was involved in Bountygate, which should be enough to get him barred from the league for life.
Philadelphia Eagles Well, whaddya know? Another team that plays lights-out defense, runs the ball, and has a QB and coach who people were ready to run out of town on a rail at the beginning of the season. Also Kenny Pickett. Also people in Pittsburgh act like we should be rivals with them even though we only play each other once every few years. The Eagles aren't the Flyers. All the people thinking the Steelers need to tank need to remember that Hurts was drafted in the second round and people were suspect after his rookie season. Honestly, the Packers aren't much different, having been criticized for investing in defense and that "won't win in the playoffs", but with Aaron Rodgers as their WB for so many years it's easy to root against them, even if they now have Jordan Love (Hey! Another good QB not drafted in the top ten!)
Washington Commanders First, enough with calling them the Redskins. I know it's nostalgic and I wouldn't have changed the name either, but teams changing names isn't uncommon and it's been done for stupider reasons. The Redskins were originally the Braves. The Steelers were originally the Pirates. The Jets were originally the Titans. The Pirates were originally the Alleghenies. The Astros were originally the Colt .45s. And if we're talking baseball, in the Dead Ball Era some teams changed their name almost every season. While I'm not a fan of changing names for political reasons, I'm even less of a fan of people calling things that have names by other, incorrect names for political reasons. I'm rooting for them so conservatives will have to hear about The Commanders for a few more weeks. Also, everyone agrees that their stadium is trash, and, though I haven't been there, I never understood why. Does it have seats? Does it have a field? Is the building actively trying to kill the fans? What's the problem here? People like to tout these "State of the Art Stadiums" that are optimized for fan comfort with a retractable roof that's open once every decade and a giant LED screen that blocks the view of the field and five star dining and between-play entertainment. I hear some of them also have football games there.
LA Rams On Christmas Eve, I heard some dildo on the radio say that the NFL needed to change its playoff format because winners of weak divisions didn't deserve to be in the playoffs over teams with good records in tough divisions. Especially when the division winner gets the home game. Well, sometimes that's how the cookie crumbles. No one picked the Rams to win this division, and nothing better than an unexpected run. Besides, we all know that the Vikes are cursed. Plus, I've had the idea for a while of starting a betting tip line that sells picks made on the assumption that the games are fixed, and right now Los Angeles could use an uplifting story due to the fires. Scrappy team scrapes into the playoffs, home game gets moved to Arizona, Rams win anyway. Go to the Super Bowl and win, and Stafford retires. Hollywood ending.
Detroit Lions Everyone says the Steelers need a coach like Dan Campbell who's willing to take risks. Well, the sum total of Dan Campbell's success has been an NFC Championship loss in his lone playoff appearance. There would be nothing more satisfying than to see the high-flying media darling lose to the Commanders in the Divisional round. Nothing against their long suffering fans. Also, I had to point out to a friend that they only landed on Campbell after firing approximately 377 coaches since deciding that Wayne Fontes wasn't the guy to get them over the top.
Kansas City Chiefs Everyone is tired of them at this point, but I was rooting for them when they won in 2020, and they haven't done anything to make me dislike them. Except that my cousin's 11-year-old son roots for them because he "likes Patrick Mahomes". As in, he roots for them over the Steelers, who he says suck. When I was a kid in the 90s there were always kids at school who just rooted for the Cowboys because they were the best team, and I'm disappointed that my cousin hasn't talked some sense into him. This is Pittsburgh. We root for our home teams come hell or high water, and we certainly don't just pick the best team and root for them. If he were a Jets fan because he liked Sauce Gardner I'd at least appreciate the pluck, but damn.
This is why I think the draft system needs to be fixed to reward winning rather than reward being truly terrible. Fans seem to be constantly upset at their teams being good.
I think you have my motivations confused. I don't deadname the 'skins because I have nostalgia for them, I do it because I hate them, then and now, and calling them the Redskins makes their fans unhappy. In the same way I would call opponents the Brooklyn Regrets, the Red Sucks, the LMAOboys. For conservative fans it picks at the scab, for liberal fans I don't want them to get away from their team's racist past. And genuinely, Redskins was a uniquely bad name, an actual slur. Braves, Chiefs point to a particular tradition and archetype of a brave and noble Indian that the team wants to emulate and honor. Seminoles and Utes honor a particular tribe. Even the Cleveland Indians, at least Chief Wahoo was jolly and fun. Anyway, any Washington DC team should be called some version of the Senators.
Though I should also note I printed out a Jaylen Daniels poster from the internet and laminated it so that I could post it on a telephone pole near my house, where a roadside memorial for a big 'skins fan is kept by his family. Felt like sportsmanship.
I agree. Division rivalries are important, and division wins are important. I continue to think that the NFL should add rivalry cups, trophies that teams get for beating rivals and travel from stadium to stadium with the winner, to make rivalry games more aggressive even when one team is bad.
They should be the Washington Lobbyists. Or bureaucrats?
If they were going to do the collective noun thing common among mls and WNBA teams (Fire, Soul, Liberty) I'd love the Cabinet.
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Well, if you hate them, then you should probably be calling them the Wash Redfaces.
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In the Commie's case, Fedex Field (or whatever they're calling it now) is falling apart to the point that:
Sewage occasionally leaks onto fans.
The hot water stopped working in the locker rooms.
A railing broke and fans fell onto the field, almost landing on Jalen Hurts.
The playing surface was famously awful for years. It famously bears part of the blame for RGIII destroying his name (personally his being allowed to pay at all on an unstable knee was the biggest fuckup in my opinion, but the shitty field definitely didn't help). By midseason it looked worse than many high-school fields. They did renovate the field a couple years ago and I haven't heard complaints since, so this problem seems like it may have been fixed.
Some of the seat views are obstructed. They've somehow managed to lose 30,000 seats of capacity since it opened. Not that they've needed it considering the team's ineptitude and the subpar stadium experience, but still. Also, while not the stadium itself's fault, it's located in a high-crime area. Doesn't have the surrounding development that more modern stadiums try to cultivate.
Honestly, the fact it's fallen apart so quickly considering it was only built in 1997 is almost impressive. I don't know if they just straight-up didn't have a maintenance department under Snyder or what, but a stadium shouldn't be in this bad of a condition after less than 30 years.
As to their name, I don't type out Redskins anymore when referring to them but I definitely think it when I think of them, and will slip up often when just saying it off the top of my head. Same for the Cleveland Guardians - they were the Indians through all my formative years, including when I had a personal connection to the team; internally, they're still the Indians even if I type out Guardians and understand the change (Chief Wahoo was pretty bad). With time that might change, although the looming potential name change from Commanders->whatever else doesn't encourage too much reprogramming (although the Washington Commies is definitely fun).
Well, I guess I stand corrected given that the stadium does seem to be actively trying to kill its occupants. Which raises an interesting question: What is it about pro sports facilities that leads them to having much shorter usable lives than literally any other buildings? The idea that they would tear down a typical urban skyscraper after 30 or 40 years to build a new one is ridiculous, as most skyscrapers are intended to last indefinitely. Some snarky people may point to government incompetence, but most government buildings last for much longer. Allegheny County has several government buildings dating from the 1920s that haven't even seen significant renovation, and nobody's even talking about replacing or even remodeling them. Yet these stadiums are always falling apart after 25 years.
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Incredibly, incredibly lame. You just don't do that in Western Pennsylvania.
Anyway, I'm rooting for the Steelers. While they remain, I'd prefer they play teams that will give them a higher chance of lasting longer in the playoffs. I have no real commitments otherwise.
:(
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