Joe’s Notes: Does the NFL Have Too Many Good Teams?

I will confess, as a Packers fan, that I spent time Thanksgiving night checking schedules to see if the Packers could catch the Cowboys and grab the NFC’s 5-seed. I will further confess, as a Packers fan, that I spent time Sunday night checking schedules to see if the Packers could catch the Lions and win the NFC North. Then, something bad happened. In combination, the Packers cut out their own kneecaps in every facet of the game, holding them aloft like a child showing a seashell to a parent; and Tommy DeVito’s four weeks of fame peaked. (I refuse to believe that Tommy Cutlets is a household name, as ESPN claimed before the game, but I recognize that this complaint sounds salty, so I will abandon the line of questioning.)

Helping the Packers escape more notice, the Dolphins suffered a worse loss last night, losing in worse fashion to a worse team while being a better team themselves. The Packers no longer look like a feisty Divisional Round opponent. The Dolphins no longer look like a Super Bowl contender. How the disappointments compare depends upon the brevity of each, but the Dolphins had more to lose.

We’ve seen variations on this theme throughout this NFL season. Teams have reached contender status only to crumble upon drawing even with their conference’s best. Teams have shown stirring signs of life only to play a 3–0 game a few weeks later against the Raiders. Collective quarterback health and other injuries haven’t helped, but it’s a year of few juggernauts. Two seasons after Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, and Josh Allen struggled for the AFC while it took dramatic finishes to oust Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady in the opposite conference, the three best teams in the NFL appear to be Brock Purdy’s San Francisco 49ers, Dak Prescott’s Dallas Cowboys, and Lamar Jackson’s Baltimore Ravens. Jackson won an MVP a few years ago, but Prescott has epitomized good–not–great for years, and for all the comparisons Purdy’s drawing to 2001 Tom Brady, 2001’s is the last Tom Brady you’d want. More importantly, the teams themselves are few in number, and they’ve each had a bad stretch. Only twice in the previous twenty seasons have we made it through Week 14 with no team 11–2 or better. The NFL lacks a juggernaut.

At the same time, though…

One of those two seasons of parity came in 2021, the very season we just praised for giving us such a spectacular Divisional Round (and a great AFC Championship). The Super Bowl was a letdown for a lot of casual fans, but those early rounds rocked, because when the playoffs finally started, we were reminded there were actually quite a few good NFL teams, even if there wasn’t a great one.

You don’t get a lot of 13-point spreads in the NFL. It’s unusual to see a team as heavily favored as the Dolphins were last night against the Titans. It happens only a handful of times a year out of the NFL’s nearly 300 combined regular season and postseason games. In college football, 13 points was the spread of last year’s national championship. 13-point spreads in college football happen all the time. By no coincidence, we’re usually certain that college football’s national champion is the country’s best team, and we can often call it a great team. In the NFL, we accept the Super Bowl champion when that champion arrives, but there are usually moments of heavy doubt along the way. In some ways, the NFL approach is dissatisfying. It’s nice to have a big, strong champion, and it can ring a little hollow when your champion’s just the Rams. But the cause of this—the driving force which makes good teams sometimes look bad—is not that the NFL lacks great teams. It’s that it’s full of good ones. It is hard to beat even one of the worst NFL teams. Titans and Giants included.

What to Do About Joe Barry

There was a lot of bad in the Packers’ loss to the Giants. There were dumb plays, and bad plays, and a lot of good luck that still didn’t manage to be enough. For the offense, thankfully, the bad was mostly an aberration. Patrick Taylor’s yet to grasp the concept of the clock stopping, and Matt LaFleur showed a troubling addiction to Jayden Reed running sideways, but on the whole, everyone involved has been doing enough good that last night’s bad doesn’t outweigh it. It’s reasonable for Packers fans to still feel confident in LaFleur & Love, and even to feel comfortable with Keisean Nixon, who admittedly “played like shit.” With defensive coordinator Joe Barry, there wasn’t as much goodwill built up.

Some of this is that Rasul Douglas is a Buffalo Bill. The defense would be at least a little better if Rasul Douglas was on it, as a friend pointed out by text last night. That doesn’t mean it was a bad trade, but the Packers thought they were out of things and then played their way back in, and the hole they accepted is a little more raw than they thought it would be. Some of it is also injuries, though every team deals with those. But Joe Barry has been an issue, and Joe Barry is an issue again, and there are good games in there but the bulk of the evidence says he’s not the guy. So the question is: How risky is it to make a change at defensive coordinator with four games left in the regular season?

It would seem to me that if the Packers make the playoffs, this season is going to be viewed as a success, even if a closer look says they left a round or two of wins on the table. To make those playoffs, the Packers probably need to go 3–1 these last four weeks, playing the 6–7 Bucs and the 1–12 Panthers before the reeling–again Vikings and the surging–but–still–the–Bears Bears. My guess, then, is that the Packers think they can go 3–1 these last four weeks with Joe Barry running the defense, and they’re worried about things really going awry if they try to make a change this late. This is a guess, and I’m by no means the smartest NFL mind (I would rate our overall NFL thinking somewhere below “understanding the Big 12’s football tiebreakers” on the list of this blog’s strengths, and it was impossible without inside information to understand the Big 12’s tiebreakers this fall). But that’s how I’m conceptualizing this continued slamming of the Packers’ collective head against the proverbial wall.

More Ohtani Money Talk

When we published yesterday’s notes, we knew Shohei Ohtani was going to defer a ton of money. We did not expect him to be deferring 97% of his $700M contract.

Is this overkill? Not at all. If you’re Ohtani, as we said yesterday, you have enough money that a few hundred million dollars doesn’t make a difference. Even with high interest rates, you have enough guaranteed future income that you can take out a loan right now for a few hundred million, tide yourself over, and then enjoy your annual checks from Los Angeles through 2043. It’s reportedly allowed by the Collective Bargaining Agreement, and it does nothing but help your chances of winning a World Series title.

So, congratulations to Shohei Ohtani for teaching us a valuable lesson about utility. I hope professors of econ prerequisite courses are kicking off class with this all week.

Oregon State and Washington State Being Their Reign

Chris Vannini at The Athletic reported yesterday that Oregon State and Washington State blocked a traditional December revenue payout from going out to Pac-12 member schools. The justification is that the conference has uncertain financial liabilities, and it might need the revenue to pay them, and there’s nothing in the bylaws saying the December payout has to happen (the money, as I understand it, just has to be paid out eventually). It’s hard to assess the validity of this justification, though. We really don’t know how reasonable or unreasonable this is, and all involved parties have a very strong financial interest in painting the other party as totally in the wrong. Something to keep an eye on.

The Bulls Stayed Lively

This six-game stretch might still end terribly for the Bulls, but they forced overtime again against the Bucks last night, even with Alex Caruso sidelined. We continue to support trading everybody, a list that now includes the scorching Coby White, because we don’t see any reason to believe any rebuild will bear fruit before even Patrick Williams reaches free agency. But. The Bulls are showing life, and under any productively designed playoff/draft structure, that would be exciting and we’d be looking for ways the team could get better now.

Caruso is listed as questionable again tonight against the Nuggets, and with the overtime last night, it’s not a great time for a back-to-back, but let’s see what Coby White’s got.

Connor vs. Connor

Lastly, the Blackhawks play the Oilers tonight, and that makes it the first meeting between Connor McDavid and Connor Bedard, and that in turn makes it another chance to appreciate how well Bedard’s rookie season is going. We’re a third of the way into the NHL season and reviews of this kid remain glowing, far and wide. I’d be interested in seeing what coverage of eventual “busts” looked like at this stage in their rookie year. As with the Joe Barry thoughts, I really don’t know what to make of this.