First, some facts. If football was a drug then we all would have mainlined our way to an overdose last night. The Los Angeles Rams and Kansas City Chiefs, led by two of the most innovative offensive coaches in the sport and two of most promising young passers in the sport, put on the type of show that could make a grown man pee in his cup so as to not miss one single second of live action (note: not a personal anecdote). If you told either myself or any other sports' fan that we could subscribe to watch even one such spectacle each and every week from September to January we'd sign for that package with our own blood without even reading the fine print. Football, like all sports, is inherently a form of entertainment, and games don't get any more entertaining than one that features two of the top teams in the league smattering the scoreboard with 100+ points by way of 14 touchdowns. That being said, if you don't think Sean Payton (inexcusable misspelling, for the record) watched the entirety of last night's contest with the type of smug smirk on his face that makes his competition want to feed shit to his grin then your blind infatuation with the most simplistic of stats is comparable to that ten year old playing Madden on 'Rookie' mode. Twenty-one combined penalties, seven combined turnovers (with 3 ending up in the opposing end zone), and such a thorough cover-up of suspect decision-making with pretty point totals that each score should have been sponsored by Maybelline makes not great football, unless your interpretation of the word "great" is as subjective as that of a MAGA hat. Fun football? Yes. Intriguing football? Undoubtedly. Addictive football? Pretty sure my prior reference to the mainlining of narcotics make that's question rhetorical. Great football? Hell no. One gunslinger of an MVP candidate shot his own team in the foot five times (including twice in a row with the game on the line), and offered up 14 points to the opposing defense. Another workhorse of an MVP candidate didn't touch the ball for the last eleven minutes of a one score game in which the clock was begging to be bled more than a self-mutilator. Two great teams definitely faced off against each other last night, but the brand of play they put forth was basically the Four Loko of NFL football. That game was drunk and hyper as all hell, which - while more than worthy of all the buzz - is wildly unsustainable without all but guaranteeing an inevitable crash. Even in retrospect, I wouldn't have changed a damn thing about it, so you can certainly be mad at Trent Dilfer for bitching out and killing your vibe, but don't be mad at him for stating a fact.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
January 2020
|