Gross Football Lunch Presents: The Enlightened Sports Fans’ Guide to the 2023 NFL Season

Zzzzzzzzz

Zzzzzzzzz

Gah! How long was I out for!?
Aw man, my neck is killing me. I need to get this thing limbered up, stat. I keep thinking I can still nap while putting my head on my desk, like it’s freshman year study hall. My bones creak too much for that! I have to pay attention to my posture these days or else I end up feeling like I slept inside of a silly straw. On the plus side, my nap drooling game remains as on point as ever. Let’s see if we can get this wiped up before anyone else notices, could you do me a solid and grab me a paper towel from over there? Thanks bud, really appreciate it. Let’s get this wiped up and…there! Like it never happened!
Alright, so for real now, how long was I out for?
A YEAR AND A HALF!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

FUCK
I made plans for last year! I talked a huge game about how I was gonna do everything I could to finish above 0.700 in picks and points for my 2022 confidence pool! Now it looks like I straight up punked out on it out of sheer cowardice, when that’s not true! All I was trying to do was take a cowardice-erasing power nap, I swear! Well damn, at least I didn’t miss the 2023 season. All I have to do is get my ducks in a row for the 2023 season and, since the internet has collective goldfish memory, as soon as I sacrifice my season preview to Algorithmicoron, the Insatiable Godhead of Content, this whole fiasco will have basically never happened.
IT’S ALREADY WEEK 3!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

DOUBLE FUCK

Ok, take a deep breath and calm down. Give yourself some positive affirmations. Remember, no one cares or is paying real attention; therefore, you can do whatever and it’s cool. Alright, that feels a lot better. Or at least it would, except that now I have to serve up an NFL season preview when it’s already Week 3. This sucks and is incalculably disappointing, give me a minute.

Alright, I can do this. It’s just like that one person said sort of early on in Please Kill Me; I’m going to use moderately horrific screw-up to my advantage, just like I’ve been doing for years now. This mindset is what transformed me from an impossibly nerdy, socially inept adult virgin into an impossibly nerdy, socially inept adult sex-haver. I can do this, I just need some time to come up with an angle. For my NFL season preview. That’s coming out in Week 3. No for real, I can totally do this. I see that look on your face and I’m telling you, I can totally do this. Just give me a minute. Yeah I know, I keep saying that. Just bear with me, alright? I’m kind of going through it a bit right now but it’s fine and I got this. Seriously, I’m fine, I just need a minute to regroup here. I’ll be right with you.

Welcome to The Enlightened Sports Fans’ Guide to the 2023 NFL Season!

What makes this guide the one for The Enlightened Sports Fan? Every year, those of us in the professional football observing public spend our August whittling away the endless, miserably hot and football-less hours with an endless glut of season previews. There’s written previews that could choke a horse and there’s podcasts that spend six days breaking down a single division and there’s an infinitude of both amateur and professional tape grinders, each with their own YouTube channels chock full of five hour film studies of every single team in the league. It’s a little much!

I don’t point this out to shade any of the purveyors of these goods. This is a valuable service! If any of us had better things to do in August than drown ourselves in football chatter, we’d do those things. But we don’t. That said, what do we actually gain from these previews?

When it comes to predicting which teams will be good, bad, or neither in the coming season, all anyone can do is take a look at last year’s standings, move a small handful of teams up or down a position or two in the standings, then call it a day. As entertainment, it’s tremendous; as soothsaying, it’s near useless. Let’s face it, nobody ever has any idea how any given NFL season is going to go down until it starts, and really, nobody has any real idea how any given NFL season is going to go down until after the first couple weeks or so.

A guide to the NFL season with any hope of real accuracy in prediction requires data from the actual season in question; it is quite obviously impossible for any guide published in the preseason to have any such data. Therefore, The Enlightened Sports Fan is the sports fan who recognizes this fundamentally unsolvable dilemma and looks for another way. I not-so-humbly offer up this guide, published not just in advance of, but during Week 3 of the NFL season, as the very Sword of Enlightenment that shall cut the Gordian Knot of inherently flawed preseason takes. I have surveyed the landscape of the NFL after two weeks, made a note of who is actually good and who actually sucks, and synthesized this information into an entirely accurate and indisputably flawless prediction of each division’s final standings. You’re welcome.

The format is as follows. For each division, I will provide my accurately foreseen final standings, with a brief write-up included. I am not going to write up each team in the league; it is now September, which means we all have shit to do, and as The Foremost Enlightened Sports Fan, it is my sacred duty to respect the time of my fellow Enlightened Fans. Some of these write-ups will focus on a particular team or two, while others will take a more holistic approach, according to my wholly precise assessment of what makes each division uniquely interesting.

Division champions will be highlighted in bold, and wild cards will be marked with an asterisk(*). Let’s get after it!

AFC East

Dolphins

Bills*

Patriots

Jets

Listen, I know from experience what it looks like when a team’s Super Bowl window slams shut, and in my 37 years I can’t recall hearing any window slam louder than the Bills’. Faced with a crucial test of self-awareness in the wake of another devastating playoff loss, Sean McDermott decided that, rather than focus on his lagging skills as a game manager, it was wiser to lord over the defense with even greater weirdo control freak zeal. Listen, the enduring lesson of the NFL playoffs, across basically every era of the sport, is that if you can’t win in the playoffs unless everything goes your way, you can’t win. The enduring lesson of this era of the NFL is that even an elite defense is gonna get messed up from time to time, so you better be able to score some points. The opponent dropped 27 points on your elite defense? Fucking go get 28! Or, you know, take cues from the most brainworm-infested segments of your fanbase and blame Leslie Frazier for everything. That’ll fix your second round woes by ensuring you won’t get past the first.

AFC South

Jaguars

Titans

Colts

Texans

Nothing much to say here, except that with a fresh infusion of two rookie quarterbacks, this division could go from perennial laughingstock to one of the league’s best in short order. Yes, the Jaguars have Trevor Lawrence and the unfairly maligned Dougie P, but their GM is still Trent Baalke and that’s sure to catch up with them eventually. Not this year of course; these standings were written in the stars back in May. But in a year or two we could be looking at a real bloodbath.

AFC North

Ravens

Bengals*

Steelers*

Browns

The Bengals will be fine as soon as Burrow is healthy, and can weather even the slowest of slow starts as a consequence. The Steelers are the same team they’ve been since 2019, and will grab 9 wins through sheer stubbornness. In yet another season where the depth of the AFC is highly touted on the presumed strength of teams that can’t help but blow their own toes off with M80s, that’s gonna be enough for the 7 seed.

AFC West

Chiefs

Raiders

Chargers

Broncos

As we head into the third and quite possibly final season of Brandon Staley’s coaching tenure with the Chargers, let’s take a moment to reflect on the fact that at no point in said tenure has the discourse around the dude been remotely normal. In his first year, he was hailed as The Truth and The Future, mostly because of his aggressive fourth down tendencies and the fact that Justin Herbert – whose similarly deranged discourse I mostly refuse to participate in – is preternaturally fun to watch. And then in his second year, he was derided for poor decision making and generally regarded as The Problem, which has continued through their 0-2 start. From where I sit, the reality is this: Brandon Staley called a truly deranged Week 18 game against the Raiders that cost them a playoff spot, giving him the kind of brain damage that can probably only be fixed with a change of scenery. Also, his taste in Offensive Coordinators is piss poor. A Joe Lombardi-led offense is meant to go on a deep playoff run? All of y’all slinging takes out there need to make friends with more Lions fans, as they would have listed off every one of the Chargers’ offensive woes from last year in sickening detail before a single snap was played. Two weeks into the new season, it’s plain to see that Kellen Moore was holding Mike McCarthy back! Pretty grim stuff!

NFC East

Cowboys

Eagles*

Commanders

Giants

Oh, Eagles fans. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at you sorry lot. Here we see a long-suffering fanbase that finally won a Super Bowl a few years back and immediately set about for a way to make that into a problem. Now, after a brutal loss in another Super Bowl, this crew of pole-climbing riot punch guzzlers has spent the start of the season trying to complain as loudly as possible about a 2-0 start. As a self-loathing narcissist, I gotta say this is a truly depraved level of narcissistic self-loathing, one I can neither sympathize with nor endorse. Anyway, expect the Eagles to settle for a wild card while the Cowboys fulfill their ultimate destiny, as they march relatively unimpeded to the NFC Championship Game, at which point they will lose to the 49ers yet again, in even more hilarious fashion than last year, which was itself funnier than the hilarious loss to the 49ers the year before. Also, and not for nothing, that was absolutely defensive holding at the end of that game, there. Deal with it!

NFC South

Saints

Buccaneers

Falcons

Panthers

Am I the only person left alive who can tell how deeply unserious the Falcons still are? Am I truly meant to believe that they are going to push for double digit wins because of a moderately intriguing collection of skill position talent and a weak division? Their hot start changes absolutely nothing; this is still nothing more than a depraved offensive football hipster experiment. if I didn’t know any better, I’d say this sort of team could only be put together by a trust fund kid who doesn’t actually need this job, and oh hey, would you look at that. They will have no answers when they fall behind by more than two scores. They will not be able to make hay when they are forced to pass, and they will continue to fail to get pressure from their pass rush with any consistency. And, on top of that, their skill groups can only be so intriguing when Mack Hollins is your #2 wide receiver, and I like Mack Hollins! The Saints have their own problems and cannot possibly be mistaken for true contenders, but their defense can not and will not suffer foolery of this nature.

NFC North

Packers

Lions*

Vikings

Bears

I am going to ask you a question. This is not the sort of question that has a right or wrong answer; rather, it is meant as an invitation for examination, both of the self and of one’s social milieu. This question is, by its very nature, grim and disturbing, and I before I ask it, I want you to be aware of this nature and also aware that I am taking absolutely no pleasure in its asking. I am only doing so because I feel it necessary. If you don’t feel you are in the right frame of mind for a stark and unfliching reflection on the human capacity for cruelty, please skip ahead to the NFC West portion.

I am not kidding. This is your last chance. Skip now, if you wish, or feel you must. I will not be offended or judge you in any way if you choose to skip down; the choice is yours, and your alone.

Ok. Here I go.

Imagine the following scenario. You and I meet for the first time, as circumstances have forced us to band together on a long and arduous journey, one that must be completed on foot. Even though we haven’t so much as met, let alone established any sort of familiarity, rapport, or sense of camaraderie; nevertheless, we must work together in total lockstep, with mutual trust and respect, in order for us to have any chance of reaching our destination.

As we set off on this journey, you notice that I am holding a crowbar; this is the last thing you notice before, without any provocation or warning, I smash your right kneecap with this crowbar, and you collapse to the ground instantly. You have no time to process the agony of this attack before I begin to use the crowbar to dig into your flesh and pry your kneecap from its socket, thus dislocating it in a bloody mess, before I repeat the exact same process with the left. Whether or not you are able, in the midst of such horrific and senseless pain, to ask why am I doing such a thing, I communicate to you that this work is good and necessary. I say this despite the fact that is obviously completely senseless and completely devoid of reason, and, should you be able to see my face as I go about this, it will become clear to you that, for some unknowable reason, I am enjoying bringing you this pain.

After I am done with both knees, I immediately shift into another mode entirely. I make a phone call, the details of which you are unable to determine, except to note that I am radiating both calm and genuine concern for your well being. One the call is done, I clean, dress, suture, and bandage your wounds to the best of my limited ability. I offer you water and comfort in the form of soothing words and a warm embrace, as I tell you that help is on the way.

When this help arrives, you see that it is in the form of a 2005 Subaru Impreza hatchback. The hatch is opened, and a toss you into the back of it, with absolutely no regard for your person. You are then taken, in what is effectively a windowed trunk, for a bumpy, lurching, and altogether utterly unsettling ride. When the car stops, I pull you out – again, with any particular care or attention to safety – and introduce you my friend, a med school drop out with a tank of ether, a breathing mask, and a handful of tools whose legitimate medical purpose you can mostly only guess at.

It is clear that I have not only doomed our journey, but done so in the most horrific, senseless, and painful way possible. It is further clear that the help I have provided you is wholly inadequate, and has altered your life for the worse in ways you won’t be able to fully process for years to come. However, in the time between my unjustifiably violent behavior and unspeakably inadequate response, it is clear that I did everything within my power to lessen your burdens to the extent I was capable of doing so. This question is this: Does the fact that I did everything I could to mitigate your suffering in this interim justify the fact that I not only caused it, but fixed it inadequately? This question is about Ryan Poles.

NFC West

49ers

Rams*

Seahawks

Cardinals

I gotta say, I used to be a huge Kyle Shanahan skeptic, but I’ll be damned if he hasn’t won me over in the past couple of years. Ultimately, my beef was that yeah sure, his offenses are clever, but what has he done to show us he can make a team better than the sum of its parts? Two improbable NFC Championship Game appearances later, and the answer to that question is evident to everyone who has watched a game of football even once. The 49ers are the best team in the NFC and possibly the entire league, and will remain so for the duration of the season regardless of who the quarterback is even in this, the era of the Elite Offense. I can’t wait to see how Shanahan fucks up in the Super Bowl this time. Also, the Rams are going to be fine. Back in 2020, I confidently proclaimed that their lack of depth with get them killed, and they won a playoff game that year and the Super Bowl the year after. Yes they stunk last year but so what? Everyone got hurt. This year is this year. They’ll be fine.

Next Thursday, my brand-new weekly NFL column, Gross Football Lunch, will make its triumphant debut! Come for the Gross Football Lunch recipe of the week, stay for the Week 4 confidence pool! WE ARE SO BACK! LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!