Nurse the Hate: Bring On The NFL

 

I am moving away from a life of "continual growth" to "survival".  All my hopes and dreams are now coming down to two things…  The distraction of NFL gambling and the lottery.  I’ve hit the age where I’m trying to balance being marginalized in most aspects of life, living with radically reduced expectations and living under the cloud of existential dread that seems to be 2024’s biggest takeaway.  Really, the little victories are all I’m pushing for now.  

I have a basset hound that ate two rocks last week.  I don't know why he did that, but he did it.  The good news is that he shit one out after being aided by some horrible vet induced chemical cocktail.  The other one was stuck in his stomach and had to be removed surgically.  That was a $3200 bill.  Super.  I got home and my dishwasher died.  The options are putting in a $350 repair order on a 20 year old dishwasher or buying a new one.  Verdict?  Hello $1200 dishwasher.  I flew over to England for a wedding in the high season, discovered that Edinburgh was even more expensive than London, and got food poisoning in the United Club in Newark after a super dodgy aborted landing made me miss the connection.  My credit card company will be sending a hitman out after me to shake down what is sure to be an awe inducing balance.  

Here’s the bottom line.  Thank God football is back and I can now apply some tunnel vision to drown out the sea of noise threatening to wash over me.  I have to get some winners together, and I’ll tell you, I have some opinions on these season win totals…

The Kansas City Chiefs have been so reliably good for so long, it seems like their 2023 regular season was  sort of crappy.  They just didn't have that dominant type year that they have reeled off since 2016.  Guess what?  They still finished 11-6.  Mahomes has been a starter for six years.  They have won the AFC West all 6 years, and never won less than 11 games.  They managed to do that when the Chargers, Raiders and Broncos were kind of good too.  Now they're rolling into a season where they appear to be transitioning over to better skill players just as the Broncos and Chargers are starting rebuilds.  The Raiders?  Well, they're the Raiders.  They serve only to be the opponents for when you and your boys travel to Vegas on a roadie to see your team win... and lose $3000 in craps.  As long as Mahomes stays healthy, the Chiefs should win 12 games easy.  Denver/Chargers/Broncos should be 5-1.  They also play the NFC South (Bucs/Falcons/Saints/Panthers).  What's that?  8-2?  9-1?  Now we're looking for a 4-3 record vs the rest of the schedule to get to 12 wins.  They've won 12 games 6 of the last 8 years.  Why not one more time?  Kansas City Over 11.5 wins.

Every year there is a team that completely flames out, and this year it’s going to be the Patriots.  It’s very odd to me the way that resolutely sound organization for 20+ years denigrated into a three way set of finger pointing where each camp wanted to take credit for the unprecedented success that they’d achieved.  They should be taking victory laps doing that three way bow the way crappy theater casts do after a performance.  Brady, Belichick and Kraft should all be standing around saying “No!  YOU’RE the greatest!” instead of all scrambling around trying to take all the credit.  The fact that Kraft is the one most focused on showing how smart he is, when he clearly did the wise thing during the dynasty run and stayed out of the way, is maybe the most mystifying.

The Patriots decided to radically reverse course on what they had been doing so well that it was called “The Patriot Way” and now decided to be “Player Friendly”.  I cannot ever recall a football team that got better by becoming more loose and chummy.  The Patriots run out a football genius who had perhaps the most control over any organization in the NFL and replaced him with what is by most accounts a questionable hire as head coach who has never coached before.  The team stayed somewhat competitive by playing great defense last year, and now they lost two of their best defenders to injury and traded a third.  Oh, and Belichick isn’t calling the defense any longer.  An already shoulder injured Jacoby Brisset will make a few starts behind an awful offensive line until they toss Drake Maye out there at QB.  There are no offensive skill players of note.  This looks all bad to me.  Where do the wins come from?  New England UNDER 4.5 wins.