State of the Shield Tuesday Open Thread

There’s jack-shit for NFL News today. However, I’ve always viewed Thanksgiving as the first time you can look at the majority of NFL teams in a given season and know who they are. Some reveal themselves early- any Lions, Jags or Jets fans knew this was gonna be a bumpy one since the preseason. Others may fake you out- the Bills, Chefs and Raiders have looked like wholly different teams week to week. But now we are entering We Are Who We Thought They Were territory.

Fun fact- Dennis Green’s famous rant actually came in Week 6.

Anyway, here’s what we now know as the NFL Season kicks into its home stretch:

1. Roger Goodell still sucks.

2. The Qardinals do not suck, and I’m not happy about it. I don’t know why Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray piss me off so much. It’s marginally better than the Seahawks or Rams running away with things but…

3. The top of the AFC is extremely talented and completely unstable. It’s been a long time since I’ve been glad I’m not a Football Degenerate, because betting on games looks like fun. But if I was doing it this year, my son would have run out of diapers around Week 7. I was genuinely shocked to see Ballmer is 8-3, because every game I’ve seen them in (even the wins) they look like ass-flavored licorice left out in the sun. The Bills look unstoppable one week and irredeemable another. Are the Chargers and Chiefs good or ass? Yes!

I dig parity, but it should be parity based on talent and strategy. This feels more like parity based on some dude in New York rolling a 323-sided die to determine the results.

3.5: The NFC makes more sense, but sucks. If it’s Brady v. Rodgers in the championship game, I’m just going to huff some ether and drift off. Do you huff ether? Inhale it?

4. People continue to bitch about officiating, but it feels like it’s been (relatively) reasonable this year. The obvious exception is the taunting rulings, which I blame on league officials for making it a “point of emphasis” rather than the refs for calling it.

5. Nobody likes Stan Kroenke. He is a compulsive dickburger who literally cannot resist the urge to fuck over other people. He took the 30 people on the planet most inclined to see things his way and told them to eat shit- “I know I agreed to indemnify you against relocation lawsuits, buuuuut…I don’t feel like it.”  Not that the billion-plus dollar potential damage award was chump change even to the gold-digger of the Walton family, but he was threatening to stop paying even the legal fees. That is small change compared to the goodwill of the other owners. The fact that it settled for $750 million is mostly a win for the NFL, because it means the remaining teams can continue threatening relocation in their stadium grift game without a judgment on the books. But Stan better hope his e-mails are clean, because he’s now more likely to get the Fredo treatment from his fellow owners than the Dan Snyder hand-wave.

6. Speaking of which, what does Dan Snyder have on the rest of the league?

7. Bad year for teams depending on “big name” backs. Christian McCaffrey is done, having played ten games over two seasons. Derrick Henry was finally ridden into the ground. Dalvin Cook has missed significant time, as has Alvin Kamara.  Running back by committee still sucks, but those who don’t use it by choice are kind of having it foisted upon them.

8. Either the NFL is lying about it’s vaccination rates or every single vaccine refuser is a starting QB or wide receiver.

9. Urban Meyer. Notre Dame? What’s Gaelic for “Bobby Petrino”?

10. Dan Campbell is proving that a team cannot live on kneecaps alone.

11. How the hell are the Falcons just under .500?

12. I don’t like the color adjustment on NBC where they make the area between the line of scrimmage and the line to gain appear a brighter shade of green than the rest of the field (apparently they call it the Green Zone?).  I know this is several years old, but it’s only bothering me now. The Glorious Yellow Line already tells me how much of the field they need to cover. What’s the point, other than to make me think I’m having a stroke?

13. As it stands, there is a remarkable amount of consolidation at the top of the draft, and I am Here For It. Projections differ, but going by current record and tiebreakers, the Jets will pick 4 and 5, the Giants will pick 6 and 7, and the Iggles will pick 9, 10 and 14.  I would be concerned, except none of these teams appear to have the first clue what to do with one high draft pick, let alone several.

14. Bills gonna win it all.

15. Roger Goodell still still sucks.