Table of Contents
What is “art,” really?
Subjectivity or objectivity is the focal point of the eternal debate of whether speckled ketchup on a golden toilet bowl commands an auction price in the high ten digits.
I’m no art critic, of course, but the prevailing wisdom that art, much like the Supreme Court’s views on pornography, is “you’ll know it when you see it.”
When applied to the NFL this idea, that looks and “feel” around a team or player has anything to do with their future or current success, baffles me. How much does coaching have to do with a team’s ability to push people three feet or more? Who decides what a person is owed for doing their job? What is “rough?” These are the more or less subjectively absurd narratives we’ll look at this week… with the caveat that I, again, have never played or coached football in any capacity other than Madden.
These are Week 6’s Most Absurd Narratives.
The NFC BEAST
If you’d told me after the first month of the season Philly would be the only undefeated team and only one of the NFC East’s member teams would be under .500, I wouldn’t necessarily have dismissed it entirely out-of hand. Largely unlikely, sure. However, it’s the NFL and Deshaun Watson still has a job, so nothing has to make 100% sense.
Even though it’s an interesting time for the East, the NFC as a whole has been…underwhelming at best. The Eagles are 5-0, which is great for the notoriously meek and well-behaved fans in the City of Brotherly Cheesesteaks. However, it brings to mind what I say when my son asks why 6-0 Directional Arkansas Tech isn’t ranked:
“They ain’t played nobody!”
Seriously, the Eagles have managed to win five games against, well, nobody. The Lions, Vikings, Commanders, Jaguars, and Cardinals are a combined 10-15, and only the Vikings have a winning record. If you’ll recall, the Eagles-Vikings game was on a Monday night, and we’re all aware that Directional Arkansas Tech could hold Primetime Kirk to 80 yards and three picks, so I count that as “nobody.” Ultimately, the Jury’s still out on the Eagles.
As for the Giants; hey, they beat Aaron Rodgers! Brian Daboll’s a gutsy, respectable commander! Daniel Jones’ hand was bloody for some reason! I’m willing to chalk this one up to circumstances surrounding the Packers’ first-ever trip to Tottenham Hotspur and the continuing repercussions of letting your (fan-pushing) world-beating WR1 walk and replacing him with bus-stop guys. As the soon-to-be former Mrs. Brady once famously uttered: “[he] cannot f*cking throw the ball and catch.” The Giants are the Giants; Daniel Jones is still a serial fumbler, they have nobody of note catching passes, and unfortunately, it’s only a matter of time before shouldering the weight of New York’s fanbase ends up snapping something important in Saquon Barkley’s lower half.
We end with the Cowboys.
Loathsome as I find it to give anything Skip Bayless says or thinks more airtime than it already has, the idea that Dak Prescott is feeling anything even remotely close to pressure might be the dumbest thing he’s said since about ten minutes ago. Head coach Mike McCarthy might be a graduate of the Andy Reid School of Clock Management and hold a master’s degree in Playcalling from the Joe Judge Academy, but even he’s not so stupid to think Cooper Rush gives the team the best chance of improving on their 4-1 record.
Again, let’s look at the tape: smoked by the Bucs, snuck by the Remembering-They’re-The-Bengals, beat the Giants (whom we’ve discussed), beat the Commanders, and just finished dissecting the Rams’ god-awful excuse for an offensive line. Seriously, when you have Micah Parsons and DeMarcus Lawrence playing against some of the worst offensive lines in football, your QB1 can put up 80 yards and still win.
This reminds me:
Nothing about the Cowboys’ success should be attributed to Rush’s play, and they have a schedule so easy your Mom would disown you for even thinking about texting it “wyd.” This is a Cowboys team we’ve all seen the movie of, where competent defense buoys a mediocre offense through a cupcake schedule en route to a playoff home game where they’re inevitably embarrassed by a new combination of coaching incompetence and player gaffes.
Lamar Isn’t “Worth It”
FootballOutsider’s “Walkthrough” author Mike Tanier had this to say about my unabashed favorite NFL player, Lamar Jackson:
All Ravens conversations start to sound alike after a while, don’t they? Lamar Jackson deserves ALL THE MONEY after every big play, just ignore the interceptions and all the downfield misfires to open receivers. And Jackson can’t do it all himself, which is exactly what he would be forced to do if the Ravens locked up five years of guaranteed money for him, but internal consistency has no place in Internet discussions.
Lamar Jackson deserves all the money from a team *already* forcing him to do it all himself without having spent all said money. Lamar Jackson occupies a singular, god-level tier of game-changing football talent never before seen in professional sports. Could Wayne Gretzky also slide in goal and record a shutout while assisting himself to five goals per game? A serial sexual abuser got more than $200 million guaranteed and Matt Flynn exists, not to mention the physical danger Jackson puts himself in week after week giving his everything for a team obnoxiously unwilling to value him anywhere close to how he values himself.
Plenty of internal consistency there, I think.
Tackling the Passer
Safe to say Derek Carr isn’t Tom Brady, right?
Before Week 5 even concluded, the “Brady gets all the calls” argument, an absurd narrative in its own right, was debunked in a decisive on-field manner, not to mention what the data says about it:
Brady is nowhere near the leader in roughing penalties drawn—according to NFLPenalties.com, he’s had 34 since 2009; Matt Ryan is miles ahead with 56. Even adjusting on a per-sack basis, Brady is toward the middle of the pack. The only area where Brady really stands out here is in the postseason penalty stats—he’s drawn five roughing penalties in the postseason, nobody else has more than three—but that can be explained by the fact that he’s played in more playoff games than anybody ever.
Rodger Sherman, The Ringer
Just make personal fouls reviewable, already. All of them. Get rid of the “they only catch the second guy” world of thrown punches and helmet swings. Determine how late is “late.” Balancing the tightrope between a public declaration of commitment to player safety and patently absurd penalty calls like this obviously isn’t working. It works for targeting in college (mostly, because referees are still human and fans gotta bay about something), and it’ll work in the NFL.
Know what’s not absurd? The narrative of you crushing your co-workers and loved ones in your pick’em pools for the rest of the NFL season made even more effortless with a subscription to RunYourPool VIP. Get access to elite data and prediction tools and even win prizes! Change your narrative today.
