The Mess of the Season

It’s a rite of the football season that sometime around the fourth or fifth week, morons like myself write about how CRAZY this season is. Because it’s always crazy and unpredictable, and whatever we think in the pre-season is usually wrong in at least one or two major ways.

But this? This is pretty damn preposterous. There have been four games, and already my pre-season predictions are obviously, woefully incorrect.

For a full-blown recap of the mess of the season, click below.


Of the NFC East, I said, “…this division looks to be Philadelphia’s to lose, and I expect Donovan McNabb to have a great season in doing so.”
Yeah…the Eagles are dead last, and Dallas – under the helm of Wade Phillips, and without Terry Glenn, two things I thought would really be factors – is 4-0. The Eagles are 1-3, and…so are the Bears, who are also last in the NFC North. The Packers are 4-0, three games ahead of the Bears. Tony Romo, whose recovery from a bad snap was one of the top plays of the year this Sunday, is now getting compared all over the place with Brett Favre, which feels particularly premature. The guy is good, and he plays with a field knowledge and enthusiasm that is impressive, but - regardless of what his detractors say, and how overhyped he is, Brett Favre is still a top-five QB of all time. Let's not hand Romo the keys to the Mount Rushmore of quarterbacks just yet, okay?

In the NFC South, my division pick the Saints are winless, and I also picked the 2-2 Panthers (who looked woeful on Sunday) as my Wild Card pick. Tampa, who I referred to only as “a mess,” leads the division at 3-1.

In my hometown NFC West, I took the Seahawks…as the Wild Card team. That’s because I picked the Rams to take the division. That’s genuinely inconceivable at this point.

So in the NFC, my four division winners were the Eagles, Bears, Rams and Saints. Those teams are collectively 2-13. With the Rams, I knew I was taking a bit of a leap, but otherwise these were not particularly bold picks. And they’re all wrong, barring virtual miracles for each squad.

Oh by the way, I picked the Eagles to make the Super Bowl.

In the AFC, things are screwy but not in as much of a shocking way. I didn’t see Pittsburgh playing this well, and I thought San Diego would not only win the West but challenge for the AFC title.

San Diego is the team (1-3) in the AFC that has underperformed the most, and Norvelle Turner has to be hearing it at full volume. What a disaster, and there’s no real clear reason unless someone is hurt but not admitting it. Turner is now 58-82-1 as a coach, and one really has to wonder when people will believe that it’s not just a trite statement that Turner is a great coordinator, but can’t be the lead guy. And speaking of coordinators, defensive coordinator Ted Cottrell is also probably to blame.

I did think the Patriots would be the clear Super Bowl winner, and right now, it looks like they should coast to it. In the NFC, the Cowboys look pretty solid, but I refuse to believe Wade Phillips can win three straight playoff games when he’s never won a single one as of yet.