We don’t need it. We absolutely, positively don’t need it. We are satiated. Satisfied. When the dessert cart rolls by, we can pat our stomachs confidently. This NFL season has been enough. The Chiefs’ dynasty has puffed out of gas. Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow may all miss the playoffs. Myles Garrett may break the single-season sack record on a team that never leads—and his quarterback for the remainder of the season (and possibly for the next five years) is Shedeur Sanders. Everyone is spitting on one another or punching their enemies in the testicles. This is the bizarro, but beautiful Season 2 of The Wire detour the NFL was in desperate need of.
And yet, it’s impossible to ignore the draw, the pure spectacle that is a 44-year-old Philip Rivers—a real, actual, “Poppy” sweater-wearing, Canasta-playing, matinee-showing-of-Wicked-going grandfather—coming back to try to rescue this Colts season from the brink of ruin. Daniel Jones is gone. Riley Leonard is beat up. Sauce Gardner won’t be back until closer to Christmas. The Colts are so incredibly, endearingly, unquestionably all in this season that it only made sense to perform the NFL equivalent of Gran Torino and bring an old cowboy back into the fire for one last gunfight.
