NFL WEEK 9: No Good Team Goes Unpunished
This week’s title brought to you by 1) the cast announcement for the new Wicked film and 2) a weekend of upsets that has everyone questioning everything they’ve ever known about what teams are actually any good. Here’s our hot take: Much like how the game itself is played out in the last 2 minutes or so of each half, the actual season has wayyyyy too many games and most of them don’t matter. For example, Bill Belichick is famous for his strategy of taking the first month off: the first few games of every season the Patriots tend to struggle and aren’t always in their peak form. Then, November rolls around and they apparently become a playoff contender. STAY WOKE pretty soon the pundits will start talking about the PLAYOFF PICTURE even though we are quite honestly months away!!! Anyways the lesson here is that if your team of choice started off strong this year, well, they’re either already rife with so many injuries that you don’t recognize anyone left on the roster OR everyone has figured out the strategy and it’s not working anymore (examples of this to follow). This was a week of upsets, if you believe in that sort of thing, but we’re only HALFWAY THROUGH THE SEASON so be prepared for everything to change all over again in about….three weeks. Let’s get into it!
Games We Didn’t Watch
Giants 23 Raiders 16: Ok are the Giants good now? Are ANY AFC Teams good?!?!!?!?!?!?
Falcons 27 Saints 25: TBH, I don’t want to talk about it guys. We’re skipping this FOR MY MENTAL HEALTH.
Jaguars 9 Bills 6: Live footage of me seeing the final score of this game:
(And then realizing that the Bills don’t actually have a big win yet this season and haven’t played challenging teams and they’re kinda blowing it and maybe they were overinflated but also maybe they just haven’t gotten going yet???? Also JAX has a linebacker named Josh Allen so twitter had a FIELD day making jokes about Josh Allen sacking Josh Allen and Josh Allen intercepting Josh Allen, and so on! t’s the classic tale of a doppleganger, ie Jekell/Hyde, that scurry movie US, etc!)
Browns 41 Bengals 16: Even with OBJ out, Browns found a win- Baker’s haters are looking pretty dumb right now.
Patriots 24 Panthers 6: Panthers are set to get McCaffrey back which is good because they clearly need him!!! Patriots are rolling now that they’ve decided to start trying.
Titans 28 Rams 16: Despite not having Derrick Henry, who is indisputably the main asset of the Titans offense, they found a way to outmaneuver the Rams and get a win. Starting to think this Rams team is OVERRATED!
Cardinals 31 49ers 17: I’m starting to think that the 49ers are…not as good as I want them to be! The Cardinals on the other hand are ROLLIN baby
Steelers 29 Bears 27: Justin Fields put in some HEROICS for the bears in this game, but sadly thanks to an aggressive amount of penalties (or, uncalled penalities) the Steelers overcame them.
Games We Did Watch
Colts 45 Jets 30
My BIGGEST takeaway here was the the Colts need to reevaluate their font choice- they’re trying to do like a saloon vibe and it is NOT working. Especially since the Colts are apparenty originally from Baltimore (not very saloony) The Jets played well! They kept the game competitive, they kept things spicy, but it ended up not being enough. Anyways I fell asleep at halftime, so that's all I got.
Broncos 30 Cowboys 16
Uh oh! Even with Dak back in the game, the lauded Cowboys offense lost to a team I have consistently been shitting on all season- oopsies. Maybe if I start bullying the Saints they’ll win more too? The Broncos, fresh off the headline that they lost Von Miller, an essential defensive player and a huge asset to their team (and very famous and beloved apparently), decided to win the breakup by winning this game. My sweet prince Teddy Bridgewater (who many thought was going to get dropped ahead of the trade deadline, but I guess the Bronco’s are sticking with him) had a GREAT game (remember when he used to have great games at the Saints? And ride his bike to the Superdome? God I miss 2019)- getting both a rushing and a passing TD. At one point Katrina and I were pretty sure there was a safety scored, but it turned out NOT to be safety, and it was actually another very random confusing thing ( basically: The Broncos didn’t get a 1st down, so they punted the ball, but the Cowboys blocked the punt, and then the ball bounced around, and then the Broncos tackled the ball, and GOT THE BALL BACK?!!?!? I will never understand this sport and I have yet to get clear on what a safety is!). Everyone is allowed to have an off day, and we have no choice but to chalk this one up as one for Dallas and just move on.
Ravens 34 Vikings 31:
Ok we did technically only catch the end of this game, but we’ve said it before and I’ll say it now: The last five minutes are all that matters! Perks of this matchup: It was a LOT of purple on the field, which we support for obvious reasons. Once again, this came down to the end, proving that 3 hours of play don’t even matter.
Chiefs 13 Packers 6:
AMERICAS GAME OF THE WEEK FOLKS! Honestly the lead up to this game was better than the game itself, with A-A-Ron Rodgers out on COVID rest despite being immunized via homepathy, making the rounds in Press Conferences and Podcasts trash talking THE WOKE MEDIA (interesting strategy my dude!) and then all the headlines being about Jordan Love (who you may remember was a first round draft pick two years ago, much to the anger and surprise of Rodgers) getting his first career start. Was this the worst way he could have started his NFL careeer? It’s possible!!! Arrowhead Stadium (questionable name choice I’ll say it) is notoriously unfriendly to away teams, Love’s gf & mom (who comes to all of his games whether or not he plays- I’m not crying you’re crying) were up in the NOSEBLEEDS of the stadium (real nice guys), AND the Chiefs themselves had a lot to prove in this game. The Chiefs’ defense had a pretty solid game (which again, is bad news for bb Jordan Love), snagging some turnovers and really limiting the Packers offense. Sadly the Chiefs OFFENSE didn’t get the memo that we were trying to win this week, and while they avoided turnovers for the first time in several games, they didn’t do much else. Patrick Mahomes kept LAUNCHING the ball downfield to no one in particular, Tyreek Hill (@cheetah) couldn’t get things moving on the ground, and over all, it was tough to watch two ostensibly talented teams play a game of “who can be worse at football”. A few weeks ago, we told the chiefs NOT TO PANIC and now I would like to revise that statement and say BEGIN SOME MILD PANIC because I have no idea what has happened to this once unstoppable offense. We’d be remiss if we didn’t cover how garbage the Packers special teams players did- their kicker missed an easy field goal (wind!), a slightly harder field goal (the yips!) and multiple punts were completely boofed (one, for example, was tipped and intercepted). A Shit Show!
The Big Takeaways
It’s injury season in the NFL (haha just kidding when ISN’T IT INJURY SEASON), and much like in soccer when we talk about champion level teams finding a way to win, depth is essential for the footballers now. Many teams are missing big stars at the moment and will have to push through without them for a little while. More importantly, CAM NEWTON IS BACK WITH THE PANTHERS. AND HE WORE A PINK SUIT TO THE PRESS CONFERENCE. God I love it here.
