They're Not Even Polishing The Turds Anymore - Part I

The NFL's salary cap blow-out over the past few years has meant that idiots who can’t analyse or coach personnel have their shittiness amplified.

Before, other teams had to get rid of some of their good players to keep the real good ones.

In 2005, the cap was $85.5m – now, just four years later, its $127m.

What that’s meant is if you’re the Colts or the Patriots or the Giants (i.e. can evaluate talent), you get to keep your good players until they’re not good anymore. Or, if after being shitty for a little while, you hire someone who can evaluate talent or coach (Dolphins, Parcells; Saints, Payton; Broncos, McDaniels, Atlanta, Smith/Dimitrioff), you can catch up quick in free agency and the draft with so much to spend.

If you can’t evaluate talent at the player or coaching level – i.e. Browns, Bills, Redskins, Raiders (oh fuck, the Raiders), you get to spend even more money on the wrong people, and the difference between you and the good teams is magnified.

Now, unfortunately, what this has done is in no time at all is make a dozen teams historically shitty, and six games a week total blowouts.

This is the first time that three teams have been undefeated after week 7, and the first time there’s ever been 3 winless teams.

In week 7, 11 of the 13 games were decided by double digits; a shocking six by four touchdowns or more.
Packers 31, Browns 3
Chargers 37, Chiefs 7
Colts 42, Rams 6
Patriots 35, Bucs 7
Jets 38, Raiders 0
Bengals 45, Bears 10

TOTALLY fucked my Sunday.  And it's been happening all year. 

I thought life couldn’t beat the experience of getting inebriated while following eight close finishing games at once in the 1pm slot, before them thankfully dropping it down to 4 in the 4pm slot while I was totalled.

This year, most are over at quarter-time. Now I’m starting to doubt whether I should even divorce my wife for this.

Detroit were last year the first team ever to lose all 16 games after the Patriots had won all 16 games the year before. Someone this year is going to give at least one of them company.

Now, some teams are just stuck in inertia. Mobs like the Bills, Tennessee, Jacksonville, Houston, Seattle and the 49ers. They’re worthy of ongoing disrespect, for sure – much like Vanderbilt’s college football program, or LL Cool J's acting career.

But there are some special teams out there that deserve some concentrated abuse for how they’ve fucked it up. The reasons are a little different, but when your team’s worth a billion, you shouldn’t be fucking it up this bad.

So I’m going to have a significant and focussed piss and moan about the Browns, Chiefs, Raiders, Bucs, Lions, Rams and Redskins for fucking up my expensive NFL Sunday package, and my Sundays.

Who's first?