Gross Football Lunch Presents: The 2024 NFL MegaPreview

Welcome to the Gross Football Lunch 2024 NFL MegaPreview!

For this year’s preview, I decided it was time to get serious about acquiring, synthesizing, and re-delivering Advanced Ball Knowledge to you, my faithful readership. I was going do preparatory readings from multiple sources, I was going to digest as much tape as I possibly could (without ponying up for my own All-22 subscription, that is), and I was going to open my mind to new and exciting ways of considering the sport. In so doing, I was going to transcend the genre of humble football prognostication itself, and emerge from this summer of monastic study and contemplation as a holistic biological football computer, a real-life gridiron mentat capable of processing the relevant visual data of each and every play on both sides of the ball and instantly synthesizing this data into easy digestible but intellectually honest packages that also provided true insight into what to expect from each and every team this season.

And then I remembered I have two young kids, and that my real job is taking care of those kids while my wife wins the money that allows me to fool around with this nonsense, and man oh man, those kids do not appreciate being ignored for hours at a stretch. Apparently, in this cutting-edge conception of child-rearing, little kids need a bunch of weird, niche, and frivolous bullshit like “love” and “attention” and “water.” What’s up with that? In what universe is grilling a couple of cheeses for lunch more important than finding a unique perspective on the Tennessee Titans? Can you believe this horse hockey!?

Not only was I unable to find a fraction of the time necessary to carry out my exhaustively planned research, I found that what precious few materials I did find time to sit down with simply passed through me like shit through a goose. No matter how much thought and effort and rigor the purveyors of these materials put into their takes, the only take my deeply exhausted brain could come away with was “Team [X] looks like they have everything they need to be [good/bad] at football this year, unless they are [bad/good] at football this year, in which case perhaps we should’ve seen it coming.” Eventually, every word used to describe anything related to the sport lost all meaning. Forget transforming into the NFL equivalent of Pietr De Vries; by the start of August, I was struggling to keep the most well-publicized and over-analyzed offseason transactions straight. Russell Wilson is playing for the Steelers now!?!? Get out!

Clearly, I would have to scale back my ambitions. Advanced Ball Knowledge will have to wait until next year. Snarky, pithy, disrespect will once again have to suffice in its stead.

Returning to my roots as an obnoxious little shit, while a dispiriting setback that I resorted to entirely out of necessity, isn’t all bad though. Why put on airs? I can only hope that, by staying in my lane, I will occasionally make a big-picture observation that proves correct. Football is a complex sport, but that doesn’t mean it’s always complicated. Also, the less I know what I’m talking about, the freer I become to entertain myself with wildly out of pocket and deeply disrespectful predictions. Why go chalk when I can dare to be stupid instead?

I’ve described my level of ball knowledge as a Couch Dad Plus; I am moderately hip to the broader strategic considerations of contemporary football, and I try to listen to actual ball knowers when they tell me what to think. But at the end of the day, all I notice about football is the same stuff everyone else watching notices. (Examples include but are not limited to: He’s gotta catch that one, They’re showing blitz at the line but watch them drop into zone coverage, he shouldn’t have thrown that one, etc.) The ball knowledge contained in this article reflects the best of this grand tradition of casual but elevated football observation.

This preview is structured just like last year’s. I will provide my predicted final standings for each division, in descending order. Division champions will be listed on top, in bold, and my predicted Wild Card teams will be marked with an asterisk(*). My hot takes for each division will accompany these predictions; just like last year, I will only talk about teams if I have a real opinion I want to share with everyone. I didn’t have time to learn about every team in detail or even form a cogent opinion on all of them, and I have no reason to pretend otherwise.

But, unlike last year, I will not only prepare you for the football portion of Gross Football Lunch, I will also prepare you for the lunch portions! Every division preview will be prefaced with a picture of one essential kitchen item. These are the eight items that I assume you, my loyal reader, will always have on hand for the purposes of cooking the Recipe of the Week! All eight of these accessories and ingredients are a must for home cooks of any level of skill or ambition, and it’s likely you have most if not all of them already. But I’ve no doubt that establishing this baseline of expectations will prove helpful down the line.

None of the kitchen essential/NFL division pairings are meant to carry any significance, but feel free to invent whatever significance you choose, then post about it on your social(s) of choice as if I’m directly responsible for whatever strange symbolic journey you went on for your own amusement.

To the extent this preview has been researched, credit goes to Aaron Schatz and everyone else who worked on this year’s FTN Almanac, which is an ever-indispensable resource for anyone who wants to know anything about football. I cannot recommend you purchase and peruse this essential document for yourself. I would also like to credit my favorite football podcasts, particularly The Domonique Foxworth Show, The Athletic Football Show, and The Mina Kimes Show. They’re all well worth your time, and it’s quite possible that I stole opinions from these shows without even realizing it.

Let’s dig in!

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Jump to a Division: AFC East / AFC South / AFC West / AFC North / NFC East / NFC South / NFC West / NFC North
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AFC East
Buffalo Bills
Miami Dolphins*
New York Jets
New England Patriots

Part of me wants to pick the Dolphins to take the division title – it’s hard to feel like I’m putting any effort into my predictions when I’m picking the Bills again – but what have the Dolphins actually done to suggest This Year Will Be Different? A plan that hinges on making it to January with fewer injured players than the past two seasons is not a plan at all. For the third consecutive year this team has both chosen to build around elite skill position talent without skill position depth (the mortal remains of OBJ do not count), and for the third consecutive year, they’ve decided that schematic fuckery and Tua’s quick release are an adequate substitute for actually good pass protection (per the FTN Almanac, the Dolphins’ line allowed the third lowest sack rate in the league, but the very same chapter also states they were 31st in ESPN’s pass block win rate; I’m no statistician, but it seems to me that at least one of those figures will prove unsustainable.) I am therefore forced to conclude that, for the third consecutive year, they will rise to their exact level and gracefully exit in the Wild Card round.

One of the most salient advantages of writing a season preview three weeks deep in the 2023 season was that I did not even have to pretend to take the Jets seriously. This year, I am compelled to pretend that betting on an almost 40-year-old headcase returning from an Achilles injury returning to top-notch form (which he hasn’t exhibited since 2021) is a strategic masterstroke instead of the caveman-style sequestering of all eggs into a single basket it obviously is. I’m not saying the Jets are completely doomed already, I’m just saying the Jets are doomed in all likelihood, and I will not take them seriously until I am forced to. That said, I will take the Jets more seriously than I take the Patriots. I don’t care if their defense remains outstanding; how is this team meant to score points, exactly? The offensive line is terrible, the receivers are even worse, and they may very well send a rookie out to die behind this mess at some point. This team was built to go 5-12.

And so, I am forced to pick the Bills to win their division. All whining aside, I’m at peace with this pick. I went into last season think Sean McDermott was running out of juice and had taken over the defense to accelerate the depletion process, but I must admit he sure showed me what I know. After getting a great performance out of a depleted defense last season, I no longer doubt his ability to put his guys in a position to succeed, even with this offseason’s big departures. That said, I am less convinced that shipping Stefon Diggs off to Houston will be a net positive in the short term, even if it proves to be the right call in the long term. This wide receiving corps simply does not inspire confidence, and the only way Dalton Kincaid can substitute for a true WR1 is by becoming The New Gronkowski. But they’re the only team in the AFC East that isn’t idling, rebuilding from scratch, or going mad from sheer hubris, which makes them the only sensible pick.

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AFC South
Houston Texans
Jacksonville Jaguars*
Indianapolis Colts
Tennessee Titans

I’m a hopelessly spiteful contrarian, and the Trevor Lawrence disrespect got out of control down the stretch of last season. For these two reasons and these two reasons alone, I really, really wanted to give the Jags the division before I came to my senses. For every positive thing one can say about Trevor Lawrence, there is an equal or greater negative thing one can say about Trent Baalke. It’s not impossible to envision Jacksonville taking the division, but it’s unwise to pick them to do so when Houston spent their offseason consolidating their new-found power in the AFC with logical roster additions meant to get the most out of their new hot-shit quarterback. Even if those moves don’t work out, their legibility inspires a confidence that Baalke’s bizarre roster maneuvering could never match. Also, just look at the way C.J. Stroud throws the ball. It’s so pretty! How can anyone say no to that?

I am also keeping an eye on the Colts, who I want to place higher but can’t for lack of evidence. Shane Steichen has my respect, but Anthony Richardson is still largely unknown, and years of safely ignoring this division have made it easy to eschew researching it in-depth. Having two potentially relevant teams in the league’s backwater is enough of a strain as it is; why stretch myself even thinner by adding a third into the mix before I’m forced to? At least I can safely ignore the Titans again, at long last. Thank goodness for small mercies.

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AFC West
Kansas City Chiefs
Los Angeles Chargers
Denver Broncos
Las Vegas Raiders

Of course, there’s even less sense in picking against the grain in the AFC West. You do not need me to tell you that, in winning a third Super Bowl despite fielding a catastrophic wide receiver corps, the combination of Mahomes and Reid have officially seized a level of benefit of the doubt previously afforded only to Brady and Belichick. And just like the AFC Easts of years gone by, the Chiefs’ division rivals all look to be laying down in one way or another. I hold Jim Harbaugh in the highest respect, but the Chargers are so obviously incomplete that I can’t sensibly expect much of them this season. Even if you’re a Justin Herbert optimist, you must admit that the Chargers brought in Greg Roman as their offensive coordinator, and we all know how that ends.

That said, the Chargers’ are the only team that passes for serious opposition here. I’m somewhat impressed with the coaching job Sean Payton put in last year; he did right the ship somewhat after a disastrous start. That said, he’s talking an awful lot of shit for a guy who drafted Bo Nix. After a decade of listless flailing driven in no small part by a series of terrible quarterback decisions, I’m not giving the Broncos organization any further praise until they prove worthy of it.

But at least I can see how it’s possible for the Broncos to prove themselves so worthy, even if I have to squint. The Raiders, by contrast, are entering their 22nd consecutive season as the least serious team in the league. This year brings no hope whatsoever that things will be different. They are doomed to spend this season frantically swapping back and forth between their two terrible quarterback options in a series of ever-increasingly desperate gambits to manufacture any semblance of juice. If only they could fire Josh McDaniels a second time.

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AFC North
Baltimore Ravens
Cincinnati Bengals*
Pittsburgh Steelers
Cleveland Browns

I feel like I spent this whole offseason taking psychic damage from absorbing hot takes on Lamar Jackson’s standing in the quarterback hierarchy based solely on his performance in last season’s AFC Championship Game. I’m not gonna go full Well, Actually Guy on y’all’s asses and claim Jackson played well in that game – he demonstrably did not – but I am going to point out that the Ravens were one Zay Flowers brainfart goal line stretch away from tying it up and changing the game – and how we think about it – completely. Blame Jackson for the Ravens’ loss all you want, but the fact of the matter is that for as poorly as he played, it almost didn’t matter.

I say this so that you, the reader, may ward yourself against whatever residual Ravens disrespect you have absorbed this offseason. This is still the team to beat in the AFC North. They retained most of their key pieces, their organizational record for drafting and developing players to replace their departures remains sterling, and yes, they are helmed by the best quarterback in the AFC North. One bad playoff showing doesn’t change that. I think the world of Joe Burrow; he’s so good that sometimes I wonder if Zac Taylor deserves more respect than he gets. But on an organizational level, the Bengals are being the same self-defeating cheapskates they’ve always been. As of this writing, Ja’Marr Chase is staging a hold-in, Tee Higgins is stuck on the franchise tag, the offensive line remains a question mark, and if the defense has done anything of note to correct their horrendous drop-off last season, I haven’t heard tell of it. Maybe safety isn’t the most valuable position these days, but trying to replace two very good safeties with two randos and hoping everything works out is what the true ball knowers call Fucking Around. I feel like something important must come after Fucking Around, but I have no idea what that could possible be, and neither does Mike Brown.

My point here isn’t that the Bengals have no shot at bouncing back and winning the division; my point is that every time I’m picking between two teams with elite quarterbacks, I’m going to pick the team with a proven track record of modeling organizational competence over the team with a proven track record of pissing in its own mouth. Still, I feel a hell of a lot better about the Bengals than I do about the Steelers – win nine supremely ugly games all you want, you’re not going to convince anyone you’re going anywhere until you get a functional offense – or the Browns, who will be forced to repeat their world-historic defensive performance from last season just to have a chance of getting another summary judgment handed down to them in the Wild Card round. Good luck with that.

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NFC East
Washington Commanders
Dallas Cowboys
Philadelphia Eagles
New York Giants

This prediction is obviously the product of sick mind that has long since completed a particularly excruciating descent into madness, but hear me out. Yes, when you look at it on paper, the Eagles and Cowboys sure look like the only teams worth taking seriously. But let’s face it, neither team can be taken remotely seriously! After a few seasons of relatively quiet disappointment, the Cowboys have retaken their rightful place in the league’s drama spotlight thanks to their ongoing game of contract chicken with their three two best players. Naturally, this circus comes to town at a time when their roster is showing obvious signs of decline, and after an offseason where the team made no real moves to reverse any of it. Their offensive line is not what it used to be, and their run defense ended last year in shambles. Mike McCarthy is probably on the hot seat, to boot. Conditions are perfect for a shit storm of epic proportions.

Speaking of shit storms, the Eagles…sweet lord, the Eagles. Who the hell hires Matt Patricia to do anything? Was making Lions fans pine for the days of Matt Millen and Rod Marinelli not enough for you? If the answer is no, what about the 2022 Patriots offense inspired your confidence? Who let this happen!? Patricia’s baffling and inexplicable employment status was hardly the only thing that went wrong for the Eagles down the stretch, but it’s the most depraved by miles. Seeing as the front office and coaching staff are clearly infested with brain parasites, any argument for an Eagles rebound this season must start with their roster talent. Seeing as the the Eagles had roster talent in abundance last year, I cannot and will not buy it. Also, Kellen Moore sucks and Vic Fangio has been figured out. If there’s any consolation to be found from this whole mess, it’s that Eagles fans are certain to react to this impending disaster by modeling emotional stability and stoic perseverance for the rest of us.

Since the Giants are already a punchline, this means that the Commanders are stuck holding the bag. There is very little to like about this team as currently constructed. They were stuck hiring their third choice as head coach, who brought confirmed pseud Kliff Kingsbury as offensive coordinator. They lack roster talent generally, and not a single position group looks to be above average. They have a rookie quarterback who runs frequently and lacks any sort of preservation instinct lining up behind a group of turnstiles. Don’t get me wrong, I wish Jayden Daniels every success life has to offer, I just don’t think that’s what he’ll end up getting. Frankly, I fear for his health and safety. But somebody’s gotta win this sorry, sad bastard division; why not these chumps? Maybe they’ll have a good running game something.

In conclusion, if you were told that one division champion would finish the regular season with a losing record and were asked to guess which one, don’t sleep on the NFC East. Yes, the NFC South looks chock full of chumps as well, but when I survey this division, I see four teams in four unique stages of decomposition. But the Commanders bottomed out first got a head start on their rebuild, so pretty soon their remains will provide fertile ground for new, exciting, and incredibly toxic kinds of fungi to sprout forth.

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NFC South
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Atlanta Falcons
Carolina Panthers
New Orleans Saints

Welcome to the Kirk Cousins Experience, Falcons fans! You’re about to be shocked at low little fun you’re having, and I say this fully aware of the fact that the Arthur Smith years could scarcely have been a bigger disappointment. At least you (probably) had the good sense to realize a team starting Desmond Ridder was doomed; with Cousins under center and the rest of the division in shambles, the expectation is that the Falcons will win the NFC South with nothing but steady if uninspiring competence. I’m here to tell you today that it is in the essential nature of Kirk Cousins to guide his team just short of expectations. Regardless of how low the bar is set, Cousins will find a way to limbo underneath it. I’m not gonna go so far as to say drafting Michael Penix Jr. in the first round weeks after giving Cousins $200 million was a particularly wise expenditure of team-building resources, but I am saying that, after watching Kirk Cousins for six seasons, I understand.

While the Saints have not yet exhibited the decency to collapse just yet, consider this a reminder that there is no wrong time to bet against an ancient, expensive roster with a middling, injury-riddled starting quarterback and a coach who is so powerful and respected his team is willing to disobey his direct orders in public, and to the delight of the team’s social media manager. This is a team that refuses to acknowledge their window slammed shut four years ago, and which must pay the price for their desecration of common sense eventually. Why not now? If you traveled to January and learned the Saints won four games and finished dead fucking last in the division – behind even the lowly Panthers – how shocked could you possibly be? See, that’s what I thought. Maybe it’s more likely their brand of miserable, unwatchable football nets them the 4 seed and a home loss in the Wild Card Round, but where’s the fun in that? If you predict that exact season of mediocrity for the Saints, and the Saints’ season plays out exactly according to that prediction, would you feel vindicated? Would you feel like a big kid who knows ball? Or would you feel all the more sad, dejected, and unwell for being right? Again, that’s what I thought.

Speaking of the Panthers, I just wanna say that, as a North Carolina resident, it’s about fucking time the rest of the football-observing public figured out how much Tepper sucks. We’ve known all about it since 2019, do better next time.

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NFC West
Los Angeles Rams
San Francisco 49ers*
Arizona Cardinals*
Seattle Seahawks

This time last year, it was fashionable to consider Jonathan Gannon’s tenure as Cardinals head coach dead on arrival. This is understandable insofar as last year’s Cardinals were bereft of talent and even more bereft of good vibes, but what bothered me was the way the Eagles’ poor defensive showing in Super Bowl LVII was held against him. I don’t know who out there still needs to hear this, but good and even great and even elite defenses get their shit rocked all the damn time in today’s game. One roasting – the hands of Mahomes, no less – is hardly compelling evidence of inadequate coaching in and of itself.

On top of that, this ignores the fact that the ’22 Eagles got 70 goddamn sacks in the regular season. 70! That’s so many fucking sacks. I can’t even begin to figure out how to impress on everyone how many sacks that is, even with a 17-game schedule. That’s just so many sacks. It’s absurd amount of sacks, so absurd that pointing out that those Eagles had elite pass rushing talent and a relatively soft schedule isn’t sufficient to explain it. For reference, the legendary 2017 Sacksonville Jaguars had a relatively paltry 55 sacks in the regular season. If you’re too much of a hipster to be impressed by counting stats, know that this gives the ’17 Jaguars a sacks per game rate of 3.4, compared to the frankly ludicrous 4.1 sacks per game the ’22 Eagles came away with. Surrendering 4 sacks in a game these days is catastrophic for any offense, and evidence that Gannon knows what he’s doing. And while the Cardinals did only snag four wins last year, that’s at least one or two more than anyone expected.

My point is that the Cardinals now have a decent enough coach in Gannon, a decent enough quarterback in Kyler Murray, and a rookie receiver everyone presumes to be a pre-made superstar in Marvin Harrison Jr.; this is more than enough firepower to compete for the Cardinals to compete for a Wild Card in a thin conference, even with a roster that remains this incomplete. I usually advise caution whenever anyone attempts to declare a rookie an outstanding player before their first professional snap, but Harrison seems as overwhelming a talent as there is.

Picking anyone other than the 49ers to win this division may scan as performative disrespect – and make no mistake, it absolutely is that – but it is also a sign of non-confidence in the 49ers’ front office. I am writing this on the morning of Friday, August 23rd; there is no indication either Brandon Aiyuk or Trent Williams are about to return to the team any time soon. In fact, this article pointedly uses the word ‘Stalemates’ to describe the situation. Last year, the 49ers were the only serious team in the entire NFC, but when Aiyuk and Williams were out with injuries, they were so bad they lost to the Vikings. The Vikings! Can you imagine?

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the Trey Lance trade, and what lessons can be learned from it. For a long time, my take was that the trade was evidence that a team can screw up a draft in catastrophic fashion and still be alright in the end. I’m not saying the draft isn’t important, or that it is in any way easy to botch an entire draft and still contend immediately thereafter. The draft is important and screwing up an entire draft is almost always bad. But, two years after the Lance trade, the 49ers still took on the defending champs for five quarters in the Super Bowl and almost won, too. Win or lose, I don’t think it’s possible to take Kansas City to overtime in the Super Bowl with insufficient roster talent. That can’t be the issue, especially when you could’ve just gone for the fucking touchdown, Kyle!

And yet! What the 49ers’ current foibles do demonstrate is that an organization unserious enough to fuck up an entire draft in order to acquire a quarterback with functionally non-existent experience at the position is also unserious enough to try to contend without two of their best players – both of whom play extremely important positions – in a season that is otherwise their last, best chance to exploit a wide-open Super Bowl window. You don’t actually have leverage here Kyle, give them both what they want now and figure the rest out later. It’s OK to mortgage future salary cap space in order to maximize a real shot at a championship, I promise.

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NFC North
Green Bay Packers
Detroit Lions*
Chicago Bears
Minnesota Vikings

So if Kyle Shanahan is going to spend this season sawing off his big toes just to feel alive again, this means that there are only two remotely serious teams remaining in the NFC, and one of them is the actual, honest-to-god Deee-troit Goddamn Lions, a franchise that has forgotten more about self-mutilation than the 49ers will ever know. What a world!

Alas, the other serious team is the Green Bay Packers, who have not known any emotion that bears even passing resemblance to true suffering since the George H. W. Bush administration. On some level, I understand that the rational football observer should not overreact to a mere eight games of great play from Jordan Love, but I’ve seen this before and refuse to be dispassionate about Love’s breakout. They fucking did it again, and the sooner we can accept that fact, the sooner the healing can begin.

The race for the NFC North is going to be a prize fight between the conference’s two best teams, just like the Eagles/Cowboys battle atop the NFC East was a couple of years ago. Green Bay and Detroit both sport top-flight offenses, suspect defenses, and two of the best head coaches in the game. I am not going to push back too hard on anyone who thinks the Lions will emerge victorious, but I can’t bring myself to pick them. For as long as I’ve been paying attention to the NFL, this division has brought me nothing but death, taxes, and the fucking Packers. There are no superlatives to describe how big of a sap I’d feel like if I chose not to see them coming.

I don’t really have too much to say about my Vikings; they are unlikely to be terribly relevant in the bigger picture of this season, and J.J. McCarthy’s injury means they are unlikely to be terribly exciting, too. As ever, the team is trying to present themselves as competitive, and they should be good for 7 wins or so, but this year was all about evaluation. Even though the Vikings aren’t really ready to contend, much of the team’s future core appears in place, and their rebuilding plan has taken visible shape. They have their QB of the future, two excellent wide receivers, a very good tight end, and two very good offensive tackles. The defense is less complete; cornerback is a particular concern, even with the recently signed Stephon Gilmore. Mekhi Blackmon’s promising second year is lost to an ACL tear and Khyree Jackson died. (I don’t even know what to say about Jackson’s passing; my heart sinks.) With questions at corner, the Vikings invested heavily in pass rush this offseason in the hope that Brian Flores won’t have to resort to unsustainable psychopathy to cover lack of talent all of the time. He’ll just resort to unsustainable psychopathy most of the time, because it’s fun.

Therefore, all I’m looking for from the Vikings is evidence that this plan is viable, and I suspect that’s all the team is really looking for, too. I’m sure they’d love a playoff berth – when you get down to it every team in the NFC, including the Vikings, should be asking themselves “Why Not Us?” – but nobody is getting fired unless this season is a complete, unmitigated disaster. While that’s possible, it’s unlikely. They have too much talent to bottom out completely, and if Kevin O’Connell managed to turn last year’s catastrophe into 7 wins, it’s hard to imagine him capable of overseeing the type of total meltdown needed to put him at immediate risk. To that end, a year of Sam Darnold with no chance of forcing McCarthy onto the field is a bit of a blessing. If the team can look viably constructed with Darnold under center, it bodes well for next year, when they will need to win or face the consequences.

Perhaps this is a sign I’ve sipped too much of the purple Kool-Aid, but in some ways I think the Vikings are in a better position than the Bears. They are in a position to win as much as they can right away, even though their shiny new potential franchise quarterback is going to spend his entire rookie year on injured reserve. There’s absolutely no guarantee they’ll win much of anything, of course, in the year or in any of the year’s to come. Hell, maybe trying to win this year will prove delusional and J.J. McCarthy will prove unplayable. But – and this is where the Kool-Aid chugging is most apparent – I can sort of see how it could work. The Vikings have bet on their ability to build and develop a team and an offensive structure in which several quarterbacks could potentially succeed, including even the likes of Sam Darnold. That the Vikings are even in a position to attempt this strategy demonstrates Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s facility for flexible thinking and contingency planning, as well as his bone-deep commitment to process-based team-building. A plan with no backup plan isn’t a plan at all; ask any veteran XCOM player (thanks Paul!).

This is why I’m worried about the Bears. I can’t tell what their backup plan is, or if it even exists at all. That said, the Bears do deserve praise. For the first time in franchise history, the Bears have drafted a truly excellent quarterback prospect in Caleb Williams, and displayed sufficient foresight to give him good weapons to work with as a rookie, too. Bringing in a new quarterback and putting him in a immediate position to succeed is low bar, but clearing it is a huge step for this organization. It is a feat of team building that they’ve never even attempted, let alone come close to pulling off. Yes, I hate the Bears, but I love to hate the Bears. Chicago is my favorite place in the whole world, and once you get used to the way they drive, you’ll find that its people are chill and lovely. They deserve better than the completely unwatchable garbage that has passed for Bears football in the past few decades.

So the Bears have a passable plan at quarterback for the first time ever. That’s great! What sucks is that they have a suspect offensive line, a defense that may or may not be any good, and a head coach who is as good as gone if the Bears miss the playoffs. It is this last point that keeps me awake at night on behalf of my Bears fan friends. The Bears, famously, have not brought in a new coach, general manager, and quarterback at the same time. Like, ever. (There was an article in The Athletic from a few years ago that detailed this ignominious streak, but I was unable to find a link to it. I apologize but must also heartily condemn The Athletic’s site search, which is useless.) Each new regime has inherited a quarterback they’re ultimately not attached to, and will ultimately sacrifice in order to save their own skin before they too are inevitably sent packing after the next miserable season.

Justin Fields’ time with the team fits this pattern, as does Mitch Trubisky’s. One should hope that Caleb Williams is spared this fate, but if Matt Eberflus is fired at the end of the season, who knows. Ryan Poles is probably safe for this year – getting the Bears in position to draft Williams in the first place was a massive success all its own – but changing coaching regimes will nevertheless force Williams to learn a new offense in his second year and generally make life harder on him than necessary. There’s also a chance the Bears are so bad that Poles is sacked, too, in which case Williams may very well be left to twist. It may seem ridiculous that an incoming coach and GM would cut bait on a prospect of Williams’ caliber after one year, but screwing over and then cutting bait on quarterbacks is the Bears’ whole thing. That’s the problem.

Caleb Williams doesn’t just need to be The Guy, he needs to be The Guy right away, this very season. A Promising Young Rookie campaign for a non-playoff team is not going to be enough. That’s an incredibly big ask of any rookie quarterback, regardless of his draft pedigree. I worry about this in Williams’ case because I tend to value nurture above nature guy when it comes to quarterback development. I freely admit this is one of my own cognitive biases, and it may not matter for Williams. Again, if Joe Burrow fixed the woeful Bengals just by showing up, then maybe it’s possible for a team to find The Guy. But if Williams is not The Guy right away, and needs the support of the Bears’ organization to guide him through times of struggle, he’s screwed. This franchise deserves absolutely no benefit of the doubt when it comes to quarterback development. The Bears don’t lack institutional knowledge of developing young quarterbacks; they possess negative institutional knowledge of said. In that sense, Williams is already on his own.

Yes, the Bears have done well to surround Williams with talent and infrastructure for a change, but there are no guarantees with this aspect of their plan, either. If Keenan Allen were to run out of gas all of a sudden, he would not be the first highly-regarded possession receiver north of 30 to do so. If Rome Odunze were to struggle as a rookie, he would not be the first highly-drafted college superstar receiver to do so. If the offensive line struggles to hold up pass protection while Williams tries to make something happen, better lines than this one have had the same problem. As well as Shane Waldron did in Seattle, it’s not clear to me whether he was hired specifically to maximize Williams’ talents or because he was a guy Eberflus has heard of. I hope it’s the former, but after years of watching defense-first head coaches hire offensive coordinators, I fear it’s the latter.

The Bears have received a lot of praise this offseason, and they deserve a lot it. But the more I’ve thought about Poles’ plan for the franchise, the more it becomes apparent that Poles’ plan gives the franchise no margin for error. Poles’ plan was find The Guy, give The Guy as much as you can to give him the best chance of becoming The Guy immediately, and sit back while The Guy covers and erases over a half century’s worth of sins. It’s a tightrope walk above the abyss itself. By contrast, the Vikings plan does not revolve around finding The Guy at all; it revolves around finding A Guy. I feel better about that. I could easily be wrong. Williams may flourish and McCarthy may suck. Both might be good or both might suck! All I’m saying is that I know which plan looks better to me.

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This concludes the MegaPreview! Thank you for joining me on this voyage of takes. I deeply appreciate each and every one of you who sent me a click, regardless of whether you read every word, scrolled to your team’s division and nothing else, or fled immediately.

The Week 1 installment of Gross Football Lunch will arrive the morning of Thursday, September 5th, just in time for the Kickoff Game! Come clog your heart with sandwiches and your brain with Week 1 predictions! Join me then – and on every Thursday morning in the regular season – for each new installment of Gross Football Lunch!