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NFL THREAD
The NFL season is wrapping up, with just three games remaining in the regular season. The playoff picture has taken shape, and we're left with a real question for maybe the first time this century:
Are there any actually good teams in the NFL? Who are they?
We've definitely got some bad teams this year, but there's no really clearly good teams. This century, there's always been a Brady-Belichek team, or a Mahomes-Reid team in the mix, or the Legion of Boom Seahawks, or Peyton Manning was somewhere around. There's always at least one team that combines playoff experience, quality coaching, a reliable star quarterback. This year, the only team that fits that dynamic are the Rams, who remain Super Bowl favorites but have lost Davante Adams for the rest of the year and just lost to the Seahawks. The Seahawks are pretty good, but I'm just not going to have a ton of faith in or fear of a team lead by /r/TheDarnold. It's not even a dislike thing, it's just I don't think he can do it in the playoffs.
And for the most part, that's pretty much it. Last year going into week 16, there were five teams with odds better than 8-1 to win the Super Bowl, plus the Lamar Jackson Ravens sitting just below that. This year, those two teams are the only teams better than 8-1 odds right now. The Broncos are next, but I'm not sure I rate them; Buffalo comes after that and they will likely have to play three road games to get there. The Pats seem to lack that third gear, who even are their receiving threats? Houston has a brutal defense, but lacks much in offense. The Baker Bucs are a perpetual feel good story for making it as far as they do, but they're not going all the way. The Packers looked like SB favorites, but they have scuffled and just lost their best player for the year. The Lions look tough, but might not even make the playoffs, and as much as everyone loves Kneecap-Biting Dan Campbell, his rough and tough coaching style seems to leave the team injured by January. Nobody is taking the Jags or the Niners all that seriously. I guess the Bears have the whole pope thing going for them?
Which brings me, of course, to my Birds. The Eagles have been frustratingly uneven this year, and WIP talk radio fans have been frustrated throughout the year. The returning super bowl champs have achieved essentially zero consistency on offense, despite returning every starter except their RG. They lead the league in three and outs, their star receiver is complaining on twitch, their all-time-great running back has looked pedestrian. The defense has been better, but not always good enough, with a few frustrating game-losing lapses. Somehow, despite making the playoffs a likely five years in a row, making two super bowls and winning one, there are still fans in Philadelphia who want to get rid of Sirianni and Hurts, the winningest coach/qb combo the team has ever had.
That said, looking at expectations going into the season, they are at worst sitting at the median. My hope for the team was that they would 1) win the NFC East, 2) win the games I attended. They'll achieve 1) as long as they win one of their remaining games, or if Dallas loses any of their remaining games. On 2), they're 2-1 so far, with the loss on some bad luck terrible calls. Going into the season, their O/U was 11.5 wins. They could still hit the over if they win out, but they're likely to end up at 11 wins. Right where they were expected. And while I never expected a repeat, they have decent odds at a deep playoff run. Looking at the NFC playoff field, who are they really scared of? They already beat the Rams, Packers, Lions, Bucs in the regular season; not always convincingly but they're certainly capable of doing it again. The Seahawks are good, but /r/TheDarnold in the playoffs is always going to be beatable. The Niners don't scare anyone. The Papal-backed Bears shellacked the Eagles in the regular season, but that's the only team I'd feel really worried facing in the NFC? And once you get the to the big game, well, anything could happen.
Not so much that the Birds are that good, just that every team could beat pretty much every other team this year. I don't think I'd feel any differently for any of the other good teams this year. If I were a Chargers fan or a Lions fan or Bills fan, I'd be feeling pretty much the same. I feel like there's five or six teams that are going into the playoffs feeling like there's not going to be a game they're going into with less than a 40% chance of winning. This is going to be an exciting year. This is the best year to go on a surprising run since, what, 1998? It could be anybody's year.
Obviously, this is the Steelers year. While I'm obviously hoping for this outcome as a fan, this is more intriguing because to a certain type of Steelers fan this would be the worst possible scenario. For the past five years, there's been an unending chorus of people talking about how the Steelers suck and Tomlin needs to go, they're running a JV offense from the 90s, hasn't won a playoff game since the 2016 season, etc. I even have friends who think that being 9–8 or 10–7 is the worst possible place you can be because you don't even get a good draft pick. When people talk about firing Tomlin I jokingly tell them that Hue Jackson is available. This never seems to faze them much, largely because 1.) They obviously assume that the Steelers will hire a head coach who is better than 90% of people who have coached in the NFL since Tomlin was hired, and 2.) The correct hire obviously isn't a black guy.
This second point plays into it a lot more than you'd expect. While most Tomlin haters don't really give a shit about race, a not-insignificant percentage of them do, and plenty will openly tell you that the guy was a Rooney Rule hire who isn't qualified to carry Bill Cowher's jock strap. The fact that the man won a Super Bowl plays no part in this, because apparently "that was Cowher's team". Setting aside the fact that assembling the team isn't the job of the head coach, and if it were the Steelers would have selected an O-lineman over Ben Roethlisberger, the fact is that Cowher, in his last year, went 8–8 with a team that was one year removed from a championship, Tomlin only won in his second year, and he managed to go to a Super Bowl in 2010, four years after Cowher left and five after Cowher's last championship.
This argument gets even more idiotic when you consider the full implications of it; if it were true, the upshot would be that the Steelers haven't won a Super Bowl since 2008 because the teams simply weren't good enough to win one. Except the Tomlin haters will also tell you that there's no excuse for not winning when they had Bell and Antonio Brown. Well, which is it guys? Is he bad at assembling a team or a bad game-day coach? It obviously isn't the latter because he managed to win a Super Bowl and play in another one. One guys seriously told me that a team as good as the 2008 team coached itself and didn't need Tomlin. Ok, whatever. The other thing that really irks me about these people is that the argument only applies to Tomlin. The Penguins have won five Stanley Cups, not one of them with a coach beyond his first full season with the team. Bob Johnson is the most beloved coach in team history, but he only coached here for one year, and no one said that he only won because he had Gene Ubriaco's players. Scotty Bowman is a coaching legend and won it for them in Johnson's absence, but the players hated him and he didn't stay long-term. Fast forwarding to the Sid era, and Bylsma won his lone cup in a year where he took over late in the season. Ditto Mike Sullivan, who won two cups in consecutive years, the first after the much-maligned Mike Johnston was fired the previous December. Ed Olczyk was the coach when they drafted Sid and Geno; should he get all the credit despite being patently (and obviously) unqualified?
A Steelers Super Bowl win would mean that these people need to find more excuses to hate Tomlin, and this season gives them plenty of creative avenues to pursue. Steelers fans are historically known for being fickle, going from doomerism to confidence in a Super Bowl victory in the span of a single play. LAtely, though, everyone seems convinced that the team still sucks, regardless of how well they are playing. Aaron Rodgers looks positively elderly on TV, the most expensive defense in the league's play ranges from average to horrible, Patrick Queen is a disappointment (except when he isn't), Jaylen Warren should totally be a bell cow back (ha!), Arthur Smith runs a shitty offensive scheme that won't pass to the middle of the field (along with the rest of the league), they get lucky for getting so many turnovers, the offensive line absolutely sucks (despite advanced stats saying otherwise), the team loses games they should win, wins games they should lose because of "bullshit", and gets dog walked every time they play a good team (except when they manhandled the Colts). There would be nothing more satisfying than this purported disaster winning a championship in the shittiest way possible.
*As an aside, having a white coach would not make the racially based hatred disappear if that coach has anything other than a championship season. When Cowher was here people hated him too (how quickly we forget!) and came up with racial rumors that were just bizarre: Cowher and Kordell Stewart were secret gay lovers, which is why Kordell was still QB; Kordell was still QB because Cowher was having an affair with his sister; and Cowher impregnated a black woman who works for the Steelers. This last one is my favorite because it didn't explain anything. It should also be noted that the first one was an outgrowth of the rumor that Kordell Stewart had been arrested at Schenley Park's notorious "fruit loop", a public running track that's notorious for anonymous gay sex. There is no public record of such an arrest, but Stewart had to make an announcement to the team about how he wasn't gay, and every Pittsburgher's uncle knows the cop who arrested him.
The Steelers winning would actually be a pretty hilarious outcome this year, for many reasons. And hey, why not? The only teams in the AFC bracket I really like are the Chargers and the Bills, and are both wildcards and are known to piss down their leg in big games. Bo Nix seems like a good candidate to implode, and the Pats seem a little young as an org, which is funny to say given that they're not that far removed from Belichek.
This is why you need people, you never learn things like that from TV coverage.
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I was lucky enough to get to attend that game, but man what a disaster it turned out to be. I didn't think the Packers were playing that well before the injuries (they seemed to be slowly losing ground after the early lead), but the injuries really put the nail in that game's coffin (and the rest of their season, I imagine). Injuries are a part of the game, but it's still a real bummer to see it happen to your boys.
I think injuries suck the most in the NFL, because you're sitting around with 52 guys that could win a Super Bowl and you're missing the one you need.
Though, of course, the Eagles won behind Nick Foles, so stranger things have happened.
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