Earlier this week, as another NFL season dawned, a woman in Los Angeles sent a group text message to her husband and her brother. It read, roughly: Hey, what’s the bet we have for this game? Meaning the season’s first kickoff, scheduled for Thursday night at SoFi Stadium. Rams vs. Bills. Defending Super Bowl champion against trendy Super Bowl pick. Matthew Stafford meets Josh Allen and his group of elite wideouts.
As of Tuesday, neither the husband nor the brother had responded. But it wasn’t because they lacked interest in the game or the season ahead. It’s because the person who connected them could do what they could not do, which is acknowledge the awkwardness, the ties that typically bind now dividing a football family.
“She was trying to juice us up,” the brother says, while attempting to come up with a bet that seemed appropriate, searching for the right balance between friendly sting that lands and a joke taken too far. “Maybe like a mini-fantasy-football deal,” he says, hunting for options. Something embarrassing. Something that owed to their allegiances. A tattoo is suggested. “Probably a little much,” he says.
