Gross Football Lunch – Week 1, 2024 NFL Season

Welcome to the second season of Gross Football Lunch!

Gross Football Lunch is a mindset, a celebration of the delirious excess that defines the experience of following the NFL throughout the course of the season. Every year, football fans spend five whirlwind months in a state of football saturation. We all spend our entire Sundays parked in front of the TV soaking in with the raging flood of games, and the widespread prevalence of Sunday Ticket and RedZone make it easier to stay on top everything that’s happening around the league than it’s ever been. These days, even the most casual fan can keep tabs on each and every team in actual detail.

After the Sunday night game ends, you or I or anyone else who cares to can spend all of Monday watching highlight videos and game film breakdowns, listening to podcasts, and reading any number of columns and blogs dedicated to recapping the previous day’s events. Would you like recaps of all or most of the games around the league, or would you prefer that they stay focused on your favorite team? It doesn’t matter, because you can get either from just about anywhere. Oh, and then there’s gonna be at least one more game waiting for you that night, too. And as soon as that game is over, it’s time to turn your attention to the next week, which starts in just three days.

As a result, there is a lot of football to gorge on during the season! Not only do we gorge on the sport itself, we gorge on actual food while we watch it, too. We tailgate. We crowd into sports bars where the healthiest option on the menu is the deep fried pickles. In both cases, many of us pound down as many of whatever beers are closest at hand, and maybe a shot or six of some of the stronger stuff, too. Football is a fast, violent game, and when we watch it, we dismantle our bodies at near-equal speed.

Because I am nothing if not an enabler, just like your health teachers warned you about all throughout middle school, Gross Football Lunch exists to glorify and revel in this culture of wild over-consumption. Every week for the remainder of both the regular season and the playoffs, I’ll be bringing you both my weekly confidence pool picks – the long beating heart of my NFL uh…’coverage’ – as well as the Gross Football Lunch Recipe of the Week, so that, when you sit down each Sunday’s slate of games in the comfort and privacy of your own home, you can wreck yourself just as effectively as if you had rolled up to the stadium parking lot six hours early.

And, since there will be times I can’t help myself, I may indulge in a rambling, holistic soapbox diatribe about whatever goings on in the sport interest me at the time. Because if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that the internet doesn’t have enough football takes, and somebody’s gotta do something about it!

It’s a new season, let’s get after it!

Recipe of the Week: Tuna Melt

Method & Analysis:

The return of football is a momentous occasion and, depending on your rooting interest, it’s quite possible this will be the only week all year you’ll be particular excited to watch your favorite team. Therefore, this might already be your last, best chance to actually enjoy this season before your team’s shitty coach/quarterback/offensive line/secondary/punter ruin(s) everything. So before you once again forsake your team and the stupid sport they play, let’s enjoy these last few moments of shared NFL enthusiasm together, and make the vilest, greasiest, grossest football lunch we can possibly can. Let’s have tuna melts.

Last year, I presented my Unified Theory of Sandwiches. Here it is again, edited for clarity:

“All sandwiches must be properly balanced, but what that balance looks like varies depending on the sandwich itself. Some sandwiches are at their best when the ratio of primary filling to other stuff is as close to 1:1 as possible. Other sandwiches are at their best when they’re positively stuffed with the primary filling, but have just enough other stuff going on to round out the flavor profile.”

My theory has served me very well in my sandwich-making career, but the boring, sensible truth of this theory is that the majority of sandwiches fall into the first category. Even though we all spend our listless mornings daydreaming of a sandwich that’s too big and too messy to eat with our hands, most of the time the more satisfying sandwich is the one in which the ingredients are arranged in even, rational, boring proportions.

But the tuna melt is a deliriously decadent exception. It’s at it’s best when stuffed to the gills with fatty tuna salad and melty cheese. The balance of the sandwich comes from the other ingredients you put in the tuna salad. The high fat content of tuna makes it tasty in its way, but it has a soft texture and a mild flavor. In order to avoid wasting your time assembling a dull and lifeless wad of dull and lifeless tuna salad, you will need to load it up with ingredients that provide crunch, acidity, and sharpness.

Open your can of tuna and drain it, then dump the tuna into a bowl. Next, dice up one half of a medium onion per can of tuna and add it to the bowl, then do likewise with several pickled jalapeno slices. You may add as many or as few pickled jalapenos as you like, however, do not let the ratio of diced onion to pickled jalapeno fall below 2:1. Once your tuna and veggies are in, add a few generous shakes of ground cumin, smoked paprika, oregano, salt, and black pepper.

As an aside, it’s worth noting that the tuna salad depicted here is just one possible way to make a satisfying tuna salad of many. You do not need diced onion and pickled jalapenos and this spice profile, specifically; all you need is something crunchy, something acidic, and something flavorful. Celery is popular in the stuff for a reason, as are cubed dill pickles or pickle relish. Any kind of mustard will cut through nicely, too. You could use cherry peppers instead of jalapenos, or diced bell pepper instead of or even in addition to diced onion. If you’re willing, feel free to experiment with whatever ingredients you think might work; as long as you’re covering these three bases – crunch, acidity, and sharpness – you’re heading in the right direction. Dare to be yourself, and dare to achieve sandwich greatness!

Now it is time to bring this tuna salad together with mayonnaise; it is of the utmost that you use only enough mayo to bind the tuna salad ingredients into something resembling a unified substance! Mayo is great at many things but it is never great in excess. A tuna salad with too much of the stuff is one that will make exactly the sort of bland, flabby sandwich that we are striving to avoid. To that end, it is better to use slightly too little mayo and be left with some loose tuna and veggie chunks than to use too much and end up chowing down on a vaguely briny cream wad posing as a decadent sandwich. Once your tuna salad is both tasty and reasonably held together, give it a taste to make sure the seasonings are sufficiently dispersed, and add more if needed. If you think it’s over-seasoned, it’s not. Again, tuna and cheese in this sandwich aren’t terribly bold on their own; the spices can and should steal some of the spotlight. Slice up your cheese. Use thick slices; if you bought pre-sliced cheese, set aside two to four slices.

Time to assemble! Take two slices of bread and start piling your tuna salad on one of them. You could go for a single thin, sensible layer of the stuff, but what’s the fun in that when you spent all this time and effort? Slather it on and pile it high! Unfortunately there is no precise, scientific way to describe what a proper slathering looks like, but I like to put one nice, thick layer down, then pile about half of that same amount on top of it and spread it even. Once you’ve laid the tuna salad down, add your cheese. Cover the tuna salad completely, in no less than the equivalent of two deli slices worth of cheese. Total cheese coverage is a must!

Now it’s time to fry this bad boy up. Haul out your frying pan and put it on medium heat. While your pan heats up, top your sandwich with your second bread slice, then spread a thin, even layer of mayo on top of it. Mayo has become my preferred cooking fat for grilled cheeses, melts, and the like, as it is the easiest to spread thinly and evenly. Unless, or course, you remembered to haul some unsalted butter out of the fridge far enough in advance for it to come to room temperature and fully soften. As you most certainly did not remember to do this, just use the mayo.

Once your pan is hot, place your sandwich in the pan mayo and cheese side down, then lay down another thin, even mayo spread on the upward-facing bread slice. Let the sandwich cook until the cheese starts to look super melty; this will take a few to several minutes. Be patient, and don’t worry about the bread getting a little char on it. Even with all the crunch loaded into the tuna salad, this is still a soft sandwich. Therefore, a good crunchy crust on the outside is a must. Once the cheese is mostly melted, flip the sandwich and fry it on the other side for a few minutes more. A sandwich of this caliber will not tolerate a half-hearted flipping attempt! You must be quick, decisive, and authoritative. Some filling may spill out during the flip anyway, but if you did it right this spillage will be minimal.

After a few minutes more, your sandwich will be done; note that the second side will not take as long as the first side. (If you must, feel free to use your spatula to lift it up and peek underneath to check progress; it is done when the bread is a nice, dark golden brown color.) Once done, pull your sandwich off and dump it on a plate. Allow it to cool for a couple of minutes before cutting in half. While I acknowledge this is sick and depraved – the last thing this sandwich needs is more salt – I like to douse my completed sandwich in hot sauce, which brings heat and extra acid to the party. What, did you think this sandwich was healthy otherwise? Be serious.

Your melt is ready, so chow down immediately, before your team’s first lost fumble of the season. Football is back, isn’t it great?

Week 1 NFL Confidence Pool

Welcome back to the Confidence Pool! The confidence pool is a method for picking games that’s more interesting than picking games straight up, but less terrifying than picking against the spread. You pick the team you believe will win each game on the entire week’s slate, then assign a point value to that pick based on your level of confidence in it. The point values range from 1 to however-many-games-are-happening-this-week, with 1 representing your least confident pick, and the top value representing the most confident pick. When you pick a game correctly, you win the point value you assigned to that pick. When you pick incorrectly or the game ends in a tie, you get nothing. Whoever wins the most points wins the pool for the week, and there may be prizes for most points won over the course of the regular season, too.

(This brings me to a vital point: Always consult with your confidence pool’s organizer to make sure you fully understand your pool’s exact rules and procedures! I am not a confidence pool attorney, and this is not confidence pool legal advice. Your pool’s rules and procedures may differ from the ones I am adopting for the purposes of this column, and are in no way binding upon the rules or procedures set by any individual confidence pool organizer.)

I will be sharing my own confidence pool picks and point assignments in every weekly installment of Gross Football Lunch. I will also provide brief but concise justifications for most of these picks and assignments. I reserve the right to ignore a game entirely; not every game is interesting. Furthermore, I cannot even pretend have the time and resources necessary to understand every single team’s deal in-depth, meaning I will not always be able to weigh in intelligently on each and every game each and every week. If I can’t form an opinion worth sharing regarding a particular contest, I won’t.

Before I get into the Week 1 picks, here are some general guidelines for assigning points that I have found useful in my Confidence Pool career. None of these are hard and fast rules, and in fact, I guarantee you that strict adherence to these guidelines will screw you over multiple times over throughout the course of the season. Please exercise caution! With that in mind, here are my confidence pool tips and tricks:

• The best games to place max points on are mismatches. These are games in which an excellent team is playing a terrible one. The Chiefs playing the Panthers is a mismatch. The Ravens playing the Giants is a mismatch. You get the idea. Put big points on these games and don’t think twice about it, even if the superior team is playing on the road.
• Better teams are always worth more points, while worse teams are always worth fewer points. Every week, you will be tempted to place big points on a mediocre team playing a terrible one when you could put those points on a great team facing quality opposition. For example, say you pick the mediocre Chargers over the woeful Raiders. You then also pick the outstanding Lions over the potentially dangerous Rams. Which team gets more points? The answer is the Lions. No matter how bad a bad team is, a mediocre team cannot create a true mismatch, and cannot be trusted with your top points. It is always best to place your top points on a demonstrably awesome team, even if that team has a tough matchup. Games between two bad teams should be assigned as few points as possible.
• Beware Divisional Matchups! There are no true mismatches when it comes to division rivalry games! Division rivals are both familiar with each other and highly motivated to kick each other’s asses. Exercise caution! If you’re tempted to place big points on a divisional game, and you will be from time to time, make sure there isn’t a non-divisional matchup that’s more worthy of those points.

Home teams are listed in bold. For international games, the designated home team is further noted with an asterisk*. To the picks!

I’ve had success in Week 1 in previous years, but this Week 1 has me vexed. Not only do true mismatches seem to be in short supply, I feel hyper-aware of the fact that I do not know which teams will ultimately prove trustworthy with my top point assignments. Hell, I picked the Cardinals to make the playoffs and I’m still putting max points against them! What’s up with that!? Well, consider this a reminder that picking an NFC team to grab a Wild Card is not the same thing as declaring that team to be good. When you think about it, it’s really a form of damning with faint praise. The Bills have their own questions to answer as well, but I have enough faith in McDermott’s defense and Josh Allen’s abilities to make a Cardinals upset in Orchard Park an extremely tough ask.

On paper, Packers/Eagles is a closer matchup than this, but seeing as this game is being played overseas, I’m willing to place a high bet the Packers’ established stability over the Eagles, who have two new coordinators and are a under constant threat to completely unravel at any point. I’m starting to worry I’m getting a little too high on the Texans, which should make me nervous but is having the opposite effect. If I lose 14 on them in a divisional matchup, it’ll be my just desserts and I’m at peace with that. If this week goes as badly as I fear it might, at least I’ll have plenty of obvious mistakes to learn from.

As I implied above, this grouping below the mismatches is reserved for good teams facing other good teams. It may be a stretch to call the Jaguars good, and I will write off the Dolphins as frauds at the first opportunity, but that’s all the more reason to milk the Dolphins for as many easy points as I can before the injuries pile up. That’s what they’re best at as presently constructed, and I expect them to handle business. The 49ers did the right thing; in the time since my preview went live, they extended both Brandon Aiyuk and Trent Williams, and enter Week 1 locked and loaded. Good job! Now go show the Jets – who are about to learn the hard way that a team that fancies itself a quarterback away from a Super Bowl isn’t within sniffing distance of said – what a real contender looks like.

I do have high expectations for the Rams provided Matthew Stafford can remain healthy, but without Aaron Donald I expect the Lions’ superb offensive line to bowl over whatever jury-rigged, Donald-in-aggregate solutions they came up with in the offseason. Speaking of offensive line play, how the Ravens retooled line performs against Chris Jones and friends might end up telling us a lot about what to expect from Baltimore this season. If they hold up well in this game, the sky’s the limit, and I don’t see any reason to believe the Ravens’ front office is foolish enough to skimp on offensive line when they’re trying to contend as a run-first team. Of course, the Chiefs are still the Chiefs, so I’m not fully comfortable putting any double-digit value against them, but it’s better than the alternatives.

This tier of assignments is what I refer to as the Tier of Suspicion and Mistrust, which is exactly what it sounds like. The Bengals should inspire real confidence against a Patriots team that needs to prove itself less miserable than last season’s, but Ja’Marr Chase still might not be playing. Jesus Christ Mike, just sell the team if that’s your attitude. I don’t even like the Browns, but I have an unshakable, unignorable gut feeling that something incredibly stupid is going to happen to the Cowboys in this contest. Since this is the Cowboys we’re talking about, I am forced to conclude that they will be directly responsible for whatever disaster awaits. Gut feelings are even worse for decision making than vibes – at least vibes-based analysis is actual analysis – but the way I see it, even if this pick busts that means the Browns lost, and that thought makes me happy. Also, the Cowboys are frauds and I’m not picking them if I don’t have to.

Speaking of frauds, the only difference between the Falcons and Steelers is that people seem to expect the Falcons to be good for some reason. I’m going to say this once again, and I’m going to keep saying it until everyone agrees with me, but Kirk Cousins exists to fall short of expectations. Hell, he might suck now! He’s 36 and coming off of an Achilles injury! Not one of us could possibly be surprised if it turns out he’s not back to even his normal disappointing self. I’m not sure I could be that surprised if he looks worse than Russell Wilson, who has been dead for four years. The only reason I’m even picking the Falcons is because the Steelers have a real chance to be truly dreadful. The Buccaneers, meanwhile, should provide the exact steady but uninspiring competence people presume Cousins provides (and again, picking the Commanders to win the NFC East does not mean I think they’re good).

And, last but also least, we have the bad teams. Most of these picks say more about the teams I’ve picked to lose than the ones I’ve picked to win, and the low point values reflect that. That said, 3 points on the Bears seems a little low even for me, but I need to see them actually play well before I give them real points. I didn’t say anything about Seattle in my preview because I sense they’ll be fine but easy to ignore. I don think it’s reasonable to expect Mike Macdonald will have their defense looking like last year’s Ravens out of the gate. For now, this is more a pick against Denver than anything else. The combination of Justin Herbert and Jim Harbaugh is all I need to pick against the Raiders, who could very well draft first overall next year. I’m more than willing to lose a single point on Saints disrespect; what’s the point in doing a confidence pool if I can’t have any fun with it? I’ll need to take my joy wherever I can find it when it’s Sunday afternoon and I just watched Sam Darnold eat eight sacks and throw four picks. There’s always next year.

Enjoy the games, everybody!