The NFL season zips by, which might be one of the hundreds of reasons it remains our national religion. There isn’t really time to get bored with it and everything that happens in it feels truly important. Which means any team that can string a few good weeks together has turned some mythical corner that we wouldn’t assign to an NBA or NHL or MLB team for a couple of months. Which means genius gets amplified even when it’s maybe just a gimmick. It might even take over a season and a half.
Mike McDaniel had solved offense not so long ago. Sprint motions, receivers schemed wide open, push-button QB play, all seemed so simple. Until it became clear Tua Tagovailoa couldn’t make any play that was off-script and can’t put any zip on a ball from your living room to your kitchen. They beat one winning team all season and coughed up the division at home Sunday night. Now they have to waltz into Kansas City next week, which isn’t the task it used to be but not what a team would choose either.
Jacksonville had a plan, too. The most vaunted QB prospect on his rookie deal, allowing them to splurge on whatever free agent their heart desired. It’s the biggest advantage in football, right? Yet to win 10 games in a season in hardly a convincing division, coughed up a playoff spot to a going-nowhere Titans team . And they may no longer have the best QB in the division moving forward, and two other teams in the AFC South also have QBs on rookie deals to possibly mimic their strategy and possibly do it better.
Remember the Eagles? You might have forgotten them, they’ve been missing for weeks now. So cute, with their Brotherly Shove and their weapons everywhere last year. Even for the first half of this year, looked like the best team in football. Then it became clear Jalen Hurts couldn’t make the plays, his team was terrified of asking him to, and they’re getting their ass waxed by the Giants in the last week of the season with still a chance to take the division. They’ll limp to Tampa having lost five of six and looking like they just want to be put out of their misery. They were seconds from a Super Bowl win not so long ago and now they’re the old dog you can’t watch be in pain anymore. All in less than a year.
It’s a ruthless business. The tease is that no team has to get something to work for all that long to make a massive difference to their season and outlook. It’s like three or four weeks, with maybe another counter for that for another couple weeks. But time runs out on that. The Ravens and Chiefs have true quality at QB, which always works. The Cowboys always have dudes all over the field, which helps them be around it most seasons, even if they’ll find a way to blow it. The rest? In a league that has built its rep on mediocrity, all it takes is some slight of hand and misdirection. But eventually the league calls out the methods and removes the mystery of the trick. Happens to a handful of teams every season.
So the MLB is just the Dodgers now?
Oh look the Dodgers are still the only team doing anything. They signed Teoscar Hernandez to a one-year deal to man left field. It gives the Dodgers a little more bottom to the lineup after their first four hitters, though Hernandez saw an uptick in his strikeouts last year as well as a decrease in his pop. Still, there are plenty of teams that could have used a professional bat that Hernandez provides, and yet the Dodgers seem to be the only ones interested in adding players who can help them win ballgames. This after winning 100 of them last season. Getting a little silly now.
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