Overtime Delenda Est
Week 4 of the 2025 NFL season was the finest argument against professional football as entertainment in years, and it highlighted the fact that there is simply far too much of the sport for everyone who doesn’t make a living covering it. If you sat down to watch football at exactly 9:30 AM Eastern time for the start of the disjointed and largely unpleasant Vikings/Steelers game in Dublin, and remained seated all the way until the bitter, baffling end of the Packers/Cowboys showcase, you spent 15.5 hours parked in front of the TV in search of a fun game that never arrived (unless you had the privilege of seeing Colts/Rams). Going to bed confused and upset at the baffling ending of this final game is your just desserts.
Go ahead, click on that link up there and have another watch of Sunday’s raging anticlimax. Pay rigid attention as the weekend’s marquee contest draws to a close with a doomed wide receiver screen (wide receiver screens being the worst play in the sport), an even more doomed swing pass to the flat, and a literal last second throwaway that set up a walk-off field goal for a tie. Watch and rewatch this sequence a many times as you wish, then tell me: what about this bumbling, sorry display of gridiron nincompoopery was better than going to bed at a reasonable hour? While you reflect on that, I will remind you that the weekend’s real punchline came on Monday night, when three bad teams and one underachieving one took to the field for two more conventionally terrible games, as the only punishment befitting those few unfortunates who ended their Sunday wanting more of this crap.
Listen, I’m well aware that there can be no guarantee that any given football game is worth anyone’s time or attention. However, it is possible to guarantee that, if the NFL must waste our time every now and again, they can at the very least waste less of it. Therefore, I am once again calling on the NFL to abolish regular season overtime, effective as soon as can be made possible.
I wrote the above linked piece in 2019, and despite the fact that it was written in a fit of pique as I adjusted to living with primetime football under the baleful and unfliching gaze of Eastern time, I stand by every word of it (with the caveat that I don’t reasonably expect the implementation of my proposed postseason overtime rules, even though I maintain that their implementation would make the world a better, happier place). To have a regular season overtime period that stands a very real chance of enabling the very result it is intended to prevent is a waste of everyone’s time, benefiting only a small handful of television and league executives.
Every industry operates solely to funnel money to the top these days, to the detriment of absolutely everything. In show business, this detriment has manifested as a leaking septic tank of dreary recycled intellectual properties doing everything in their power to suck up as much of our time and attention as they possibly can, in a vain and stupid effort to satisfy the bottomless appetites of each property’s least satiable followers, in the hope that their crazed enthusiasm for this will break containment and draw in stray cash from stray normies.
The NFL is one of the very last media behemoths that can even be bothered to cast a wide net, which means that if we all rise as one as a football watching people, the league just might listen to us. This means we must reject the league’s efforts to convince us that surplus football is desirable football, and instead scream as loudly as possible from the highest point possible that we will not tolerate the league’s efforts to monopolize more of our few fleeting breaths than it already does. If we can come together, we can win our time back and put an end to regular season overtime.
We all deserve better but, in order to get better, we must all resolve to do better. Football watchers of the world unite!
NFL Confidence Pool – Week 5
Week 4 Correct Picks: 9/16 (0.563) 9/15 (0.600)
Season Total Correct Picks: 42/64 (0.656) 42/63 (0.667)
Week 4 Points: 77/136 (0.566) 77/120 (0.642)
Season Total Points: 373/544 (0.686) 373/528 (0.706)
Bye: Bears, Falcons, Packers, Steelers
14 Points: Lions over Bengals
13 Points: Bills over Patriots
12 Points: Colts over Raiders
11 Points: Rams over 49ers
A lot of life has been happening this week, and I have to save as much juice as I can for next week’s Minnesota Vikings check-in/bloodletting/court ordered anger management counseling session, so this column will be short on game-specific comments. The Bills, while far from perfect, are one of the very few teams living up to their preseason billing so far this year. You are free to place big points on them despite the division rivalry. There is no real reason to take the Patriots seriously, and if you can’t trust the Bills with double digits, you can’t trust anybody.
10 Points: Chiefs over Jaguars
9 Points: Eagles over Broncos
8 Points: Buccaneers over Seahawks
7 Points: Chargers over Commanders
Suspicion and mistrust once again rule the middle assignments with twin iron fists. As impressed as I am with the Jaguars, coming off of a big road win against a quality non-conference opponent is a classic trap game setup. I acknowledge I may be overreacting in presuming the Chiefs’ offense is once again functional, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. The Eagles are another rare team that is playing to expectation, with four wins against respectable opponents, but as with all things related to this team, the vibes are horrendous because they are not hoisting the Lombardi Trophy this very second. By contrast, the Broncos’ lofty preseason projections have netted them just two wins against walking arguments for relegation (dare you to tell me you don’t want to watch a healthy Joe Burrow annihilate the MAC next fall with a straight face). Philly’s underachieving offense increases this game’s already quite high rock fight potential, so double digits are discouraged, but they are also the better team so pick accordingly.
6 Points: Cardinals over Titans
5 Points: Texans over Ravens
4 Points: Cowboys over Jets
3 Points: Vikings over Browns*
2 Points: Panthers over Dolphins
1 Point: Saints over Giants
The usual suspects are bringing up the rear this week, and most of these picks are some combination of uninteresting and self-explanatory, but I do want to highlight a couple of things. First, it does not look like Lamar Jackson will play on Sunday, and my pick reflects that. Both teams are 1-3 and both teams deserve to be 1-3; this is a reminder to assign points based on what has actually happened this season, not what you thought would happen a month ago.
Second, I was going to pick the Browns this week because starting Carson Wentz behind an injured offensive line facing Myles Garrett and his buddies is a great way to lose a football game. However, the Browns have decided to give Dillon Gabriel his first career start on Sunday, and boy oh boy, giving an uncelebrated mid-round pick his first start at quarterback against Actual Goddamn Brian Flores is a choice, one I’m certain was made on the orders of noted meddlesome dipshit Jimmy Haslam. If there’s any consolation for Kevin Stefanski, it’s that once he’s finally free from his terrible job he can blame Haslam for every single thing that went wrong and no one will question it. At least he’s well paid; the only thing worse than serving as a human shield for your boss is serving as a human shield for your boss for normal person money.
Rob Writes About Whatever 