We’ve arrived at the doorstep of Week 11. How is everyone feeling?
The NFL cynic in me is dying off, as I’ve mentioned in a few of these introductions. The longer you tend to cover something, the more likely you are to lump things into categories that match cyclical trends. Over time, our brains become machines of predictive analytics instead of newly minted sponges ready to be surprised for the first time. Oh, this team will do this because that’s what they always do. Oh, nothing is going to matter because only three or four owners are actually trying to win.
Thanks to the Texans, Vikings, Cardinals and, really, the entirety of the NFC South, my most hardened perspectives about the league have changed. Maybe it has always been this way, but everyone (well, almost everyone) is trying, dammit. And on a week-to-week basis, there are probably more instances of good football (in a vacuum) than we’ve seen in the last few years. Some will complain that the defensive counter-evolution and the league’s naked attempts to officiate its way through a good group of defensive coaches to still provide offense make this a bad product.
