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A Few Fun Takeaways At The Halfway Point Of The 2024 NFL Season

By Lord Castleton | TV | November 4, 2024 |

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Image sources (in order of posting): Lord Castleton, Instagram, Facebook, Instagram


Hellooooooooooooo football friends and non-football friends alike! I’m blasting this piece out today because no one will give three chicken-fried shits about football tomorrow. It’ll either be all about dancing in the streets or fleeing to Canada, and I’m not down with having to learn aboot things like the Grey Cup and the Thunder Bay Stampeders vs the Halifax Warm Fishin’ Boots or whatever. If you’ve read anything I’ve written over the years you probably know how much I love our Canuck pals, but after covering every sport from jai alai to synchronized swimming on Pajiba over the last decade, I’m all full up on ingesting new leagues, so let’s go out and win this thing tomorrow people! Fuckin A!

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Okay, so we’re just about halfway through the season. There’s still one game to play tonight on Monday Night Football between the undefeated Kansas City Chiefs and the four-time defeated Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Chiefs are the reigning world champions, and the Bucs are a bunch of lunatics in a ridiculous Disney-style stadium where they shoot off cannons and grownups dress like Jack Sparrow. It’s preposterous. I love it.

The current Chiefs organization is similar to the New England Patriots dynasty of a few years ago. It’s disciplined, competent and clinical. It’s also the worst football in the world to watch. They know they’re better than everyone else and they’re playing to lock up the division, get a first round playoff bye and win the Super Bowl. That’s it.

All the other teams are out there like teenagers high on meth and ready to trade body blows, whereas the Chiefs sit back in the corner with a box of wine, filling out their tax returns and just trying to stay healthy. They don’t care about football other than using it as a way to acquire an additional trophy. If they could win every game 3-0 they’d be perfectly content doing that. It’s just a statistic. Add W’s, rinse and repeat. If a team decides to press them at all, Patrick Mahomes does a big yawn and stretch like he’s Rip Van Winkle, scrambles for any first down he needs, casually throws touchdowns to any of the wayward C+ Chiefs receivers or the B+ Travis Kelce, and calls it a day. Ho hum. I’m not making fun of Travis Kelce - the dude can still play, he just looks like a guy who’s lost three steps and wishes he was anywhere else. There’s still a mind meld with his quarterback, he still has great hands and can make contested catches, but I promise you that after every game his body is angry and complains like a spouse that was forgotten on an anniversary.

It makes for relatively uninspiring football.

The Chiefs did have one superstar receiver named Rashee Rice, but he was injured and is out for the season, like every other top receiver in the league. That said, I love how receiver Xavier Worthy’s name sounds with a Korean accent.

Across the field from them tonight, the Bucs lost both of their top receivers. One might return in a few weeks, but the other is out for the year. So it’ll basically be Kermit the frog on one side, doing the minimum, lobbing balls to an underwhelming receiving corps and a decent tight end against a hodgepodge defense.

On the other side, you have Blazer Mayfield. This is a dude who used to rub me the wrong way but now I sing his praises on the reg. He’s sort of a reformed, humbled, hayseed who will be throwing to a comparably underwhelming group of receivers and decent tight end against a very talented defense. In Kansas City.

Now I’d love to tell you that David can beat Goliath, but we know many of the people who would pretend to get that reference got their Bibles made in China. The Chiefs are favored by more than a touchdown. Baker Mayfield is going to throw three interceptions because Han Solo don’t give a fuck and he’s fine shooting Greedo first. His devil-may-care gunslingin’ is one of the best things about him. It may also mean that he throws four touchdowns. Mayfield currently leads the NFL in touchdown passes, total touchdowns and ranks second in passing yards. In fact, he’s been so lethal than since he donned the Bucs uniform, no quarterback has thrown for more touchdowns. This season he’s actually on pace to break Tom Brady’s Buccaneers TD record for scores in a season. That’s some hallowed ground in Tampa and the fans love him.

The Buccaneers have been a blast to watch this season, both on and off the field. My favorite football-adjacent spoof this year was Baker becoming a modified Uncle Rico to blend in with some die-hard Bucs fans.

The caper was hosted by Eli Manning, the greatest Manning, and as a Patriots fan I appreciated this insert of Eli’s video collection, featuring digs at both Eli, the Pats and of course, his older brother.

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For my fellow Gen X’ers out there, don’t feel old watching this. Feel lucky that we had such groundbreaking tech.

Unlike the Chiefs, who lost their star running back to injury and replaced him with one guy who owns an alligator and another guy they had previously fired for domestic abuse, the Bucs have a very exciting cadre of young running backs. Starter Rachaad White is probably the weakest link, but he’s great at catching passes out of the backfield. Third stringer Sean Tucker may be the best complete back on the team but he’s behind a rookie named Bucky Irving, who is the type of player that makes people fall in love with football. Outside of Philadelphia’s Saquon Barkley, who is capable of THIS, (which no one has ever seen before),

…Bucky is my favorite back to watch. Dude has shake for days. I think this was the play where I first realized that Bucky had some jukes.

You colloquially hear about a player ‘breaking someone’s ankles,’ but in this case, the player Bucky faked out was one of the Broncos captains, Alex Singleton. There’s no way to tell if it happened on this play but Singleton tore his ACL sometime during the game and went on to finish most of the game. You’d hate to think that this play ended his season, but boy does it look like it might have.

So yeah, the Bucs have some runners. Too bad the Chiefs are the #1 ranked rush defense in the league. No one has even run for more than 64 yards against them all season.

If history is any indicator, the Bucs will kind of suck for three quarters then turn it on in the fourth. It’ll come down to a last minute prayer which will get picked off and the fans at Arrowhead will do that super objectionable tomahawk thing and America will settle back into the rightness of organized crime and betting lines and all will be well until a change agent from Californ-I-A gets elected to the nation’s highest office the following day.

Chiefs 26, Bucs 20. Snore.

Secretly, though, I’m rooting for a fun game where the Bucs run all over the Chiefs and the last unbeaten team is downed, at home. Bucs 31, Chiefs 27.

~~~

Okay so we’re just about halfway through the NFL season. I’d like to take this opportunity to shut down your phone/ipad with one million embeds. There’s a lot of fun to be had and I love to share a good laugh.

Three weeks ago, running back Nick Chubb made a heroic return to football. Everyone loves Nick Chubb and (at least for the last two years), everyone hates the Browns, even Browns fans. It’s a strange marriage. But read this and you, too, will love Nick Chubb.

Browns ownership sold their souls to hire a certain player-who-will-remain-nameless so universally detested that it will leave a stain on the organization for years to come. However, in what felt like a bizarro reprieve, that player was injured and is out for the season, making way for the team to at least attempt to begin the healing process. I don’t know if we’ll ever see the beauty and grace of peak-condition Nick Chubb again, but I’ll never root against him.

Jason Kelce traded the field for the booth during the offseason. Here’s what happens when you get an actual, honest-to-goodness human being on the dias.

Did this kid accidentally put the evil eye on Tyreek Hill and the Dolphins before the season even started? Here’s Hill tossing a kid a grapefruit at the Tyreek Hill Football Camp and the kid calls out his favorite receiver: Jamar Chase of the Cincinnati Bengals.

I love when we get to see athletes being real people and this snippet of Chargers players coming face to face with younger versions of themselves is charming. Come for the reactions, stay for the Daiyan Henley side eye.

More good guy Chargers, this time it’s defensive linemen Christopher Hinton teaching Poona Ford.

Referee Tyree Walton outsprinted four of the best players in the NFL. Without even playing a snap, I’d wager he could start at running back for the Las Vegas Raiders.

Lions coach Dan Campbell loves him some David Montgomery. They just signed the powerful running back to a two year extension. Campbell waxed poetic about the player.

I’m with Campbell on this. Sometimes Monty makes gaining yardage look absolutely effortless.

The extension is especially sweet considering that Montgomery was navigating some pretty heavy emotional weight during his rookie year. Sometimes people forget the human quotient of fantasy football.

These days, Monty doesn’t even need a Disney wand to be magical.

The Lions are so easy to root for and Dan Campbell is great. He sets a good-natured tone, like in this moment when he didn’t realize that his quarterback, Jared Goff, had finished the game a perfect 18 for 18 on pass attempts.

You can feel how much the Lions love the game and no small part of that can be attributed to the skill of Offensive Coordinator Ben Johnson. Zero chance he isn’t a head coach next season, I just hope he latches on with a decent franchise. This was such a ballsy play call by the Lions and so well executed…

One place I know Ben Johnson won’t end up: Dallas. Here he is sending 300 pound linemen to play wide receiver at the end of a blowout victory over the Cowboys. It’s utter, intentional disrespect, and talking-bag-of-malignant-puss Jerry Jones took it seriously.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and say that I wish the overt disrespect had killed the old bastard, but I won’t mind if you imagine me saying that.

Jones is the worst. The absolute worst. Owning the team isn’t enough, he also has to be the general manager. But when the Cowboys look horrendous, guess who has to address that? The general manager.

When some local sports hosts had the audacity to question him on how he planned to right the ship, he lashed out and threatened their jobs.

UGH. What a repellant, loathsome man. He is the living action figure of the type of white man asshole that ruined the whole world.

As for Ben Johnson? You have my sword. Keep humiliating those asshats.

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I unabashedly love Joe Flacco, who has played both backup quarterback and best quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts this season. This season, he’s come in to stabilize the offense when wunderkind starter Anthony Richardson has been dinged up.

After Flacco pulled off another victory an opposing player calls him a legend and he scoffs it off. Lots of players can come across as unreachable. Joe Flacco is enjoying every single second of this late career renaissance and he seems like a joy to be around. Amari Cooper called him a “faith multiplier,” whatever that means, but it sounds additive. Joe Flacco comes across as loving football as much as Aaron Rodgers seems to be incessantly irritated by it.

Flacco was promoted to the starting job as of this week and then promptly had a horrible outing against one of the league’s better defenses, but he’s such a mensch and the dude he replaced couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat, so.

One thing I love about the Colts is when we get to see owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon on the sidelines like a goddamned boss. During the telecast last night they panned to coach Shane Steichen and Irsay is behind him looking badass. Everyone else can have analytics teams and fan liaisons. Carlie Irsay-Gordon looks like a football sorceress. She’s not up in a luxury box somewhere paying someone minimum wage to irradiate her enlarged prostate, she’s on the field of battle wearing like nine necklaces, six rings and a headset. She’s engaged. She’s in the shit, and she’s clearly reading from a spellbook that confounds opposing quarterbacks.

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Irsay-Gordon is the oldest of three daughters and has taken over management of the Indianapolis franchise. We need more of this in football…and everywhere else. I’m not saying all men are bad, (just most of us), but if you have to throw your lot in with an NFL owner, are you going to unsheathe your sword for Carlie Irsay-Gordon’s eyebrows or saaaayyyyyyyyy….this guy?

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Or this spirit of wanton destruction?

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Or maybe this absolute dildo who owns the New York Jets?

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If you’re wondering, by the way, yeah, NFL owners disproportionately support Republicans. That’s not a surprise. But even knowing that, there is a glimmer of whimsy, like WalMart heiress and Broncos owner Carrie Walton Penner sticking it to her old man by supporting the libs.

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It’s hard to like the Broncos, but you can’t say there aren’t bucking a major trend. Once upon a time, the great Doug Williams broke the color barrier at quarterback for the Washington football franchise, and this season is the first time in 22 years that a white cornerback started an NFL game.

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Atta boy, Riley Moss!

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You’re like the Linda Rondstat of secondaries! Who says white men can’t jump? Except for these guys.

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Aaaaaand, I guess, these guys, 31 years later.

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Whatever. Don’t let the haters get you down, Riley Moss! You’ve gotta be the most electric R. Moss in the history of the NFL!

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The Broncos are trying to turn it all around under old-school assface Sean Payton, who is known for eviscerating his players. During one game there appeared to be a flare up in tempers between the crotchety coach and his star pupil, rookie QB Bo Nix.

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Everyone wondered what it was about, and Bo Nix cleared the air in the post game presser.

Damn you, Bo Nix! I was perfectly content to doubt you and refuse to root for anyone even tangentially connected to Sean Payton, but that’s some A+ deadpan and timing right there. Nothing wins me over like comedy. Fine. I’m a Bo Nix fan now. Jesus Christ.

Still, you gotta speak up there, rook. Even the other team knows that. Cue Raiders resident swashbuckler Maxx Crosby and his huge personality.

The Broncos might sneak into a wildcard spot for the playoffs but there’s no way they make a run because it’s been revealed by crack journalists at The Athletic that they lead the league in number of Smuckers Uncrustables consumed per week.

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With all the player movement, sometimes a good love affair gets fractured. Take, for instance, the departure of wide receiver Stephon Diggs from the Buffalo Bills.

Diggs spent the four best seasons of his career catching pills from Josh Allen. From 2020-2023 he played 66 games, caught thirty seven touchdowns from Josh Allen and racked up 5,372 receiving yards. On April 3rd of this year, the Bills traded Diggs to the Houston Texans in exchange for a second round draft pick. The teams played against each other in week 5, with the Texans defeating the Bills 23-20. It was a good game and each player had a respectable stat line, but one couldn’t help but notice that the key thing missing in Buffalo this year is a Stephon-Diggs-sized hole in the starting lineup.

There’s a story that’s captured here, and when you throw Chappell Roan’s iconic lesbian anthem over it, by god you might just stir up a little emotion.

By the way, no one is more excited about the stratospheric rise of Chappell Roan than the Kennedy family, because now when you type “CHAPP” into any search engine, “chappaquiddick” isn’t the first result anymore.

Once the Bills became aware of their blunder in sending Diggs away, they traded mid-season to snatch Amari Cooper from the sinking Browns.

You just wonder if anyone could ever match up to…um…Joshphon. No, to Stephosh. Whatever. I’m terrible at Benniffering. The point is: do you think Amari Cooper is really going to appreciate Josh Allen’s farming skillz the way Stephon Diggs did? HA! AS IF!

You can’t knock the kinetic potential of a Josh Allen / Amari Cooper bromance. Hell, before they ever played a single snap on the same team, we already knew that Cooper could pull a Josh Allen dime out of the air like nobody’s business.

SUH-WISCH!

Since the trade, Cooper has gotten injured. Also since then, Stephon Diggs tore his ACL and is out for the season.

Tomorrow is election day. It’s also the NFL trading deadline. Teams have become much looser with trading than they used to be, which is actually more fun. When the Carolina Panthers shipped off their top wide receiver, it opened the door for players like this: rookie Xavier Legette. I really enjoy how he plays football but I absolutely love how he talks.

You could circumnavigate the globe twenty times before you found a couple as naturally beautiful as Miss Universe Olivia Culpo and 49’ers running back Christian McCaffrey. Hot damn!

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McCaffrey has yet to play a snap of football this season, but there’s hope that he’ll finally make his debut next week. Christian McCaffrey! How have you been managing without football? We know how it started, soooooo, how’s it going?

YIKES.

Stay strong, boo.

Here’s former QB and Ivy Leaguer Ryan Fitzpatrick throwing some deserved shade at former coach William Belichick.


ACTUAL FOOTBALL STUFF

I’ll blast out another one of these bad boys at the ¾ mark of the season, but as far as actual football goes, the writing is generally on the wall. While I was scribbling up this post, the Saints fired their head coach, Dennis Allen. This is the point in the season certain teams start to tank and others shore up their reserves. It won’t be the last time a coach is fired this season.

Fourteen teams will make the NFL playoffs. Currently in the AFC it’s:

Kansas City Chiefs (7-0) — the current best team
Buffalo Bills (7-2) — pretenders
Pittsburgh Steelers (6-2) — paper tigers
Houston Texans (6-3) — legitimately getting worse in every phase
Baltimore Ravens (6-3) — barely behind KC
Los Angeles Chargers (5-3) — coaching has turned them around
Denver Broncos (5-4) — ditto

I expect the Bengals will make a push to knock the Broncos off of this list. Ultimately it’ll be the Ravens or the Chiefs in the Super Bowl, though. Probably the latter because holy shit do they have the Ravens’ number. Also, defense wins championships and a nine year old with a paper airplane could throw on the Ravens secondary.

In the NFC it’s:

Detroit Lions (7-1) — Far and away the best team in the NFC
Washington Commanders (7-2) — improving in every area
Atlanta Falcons (6-3) — arrow pointing up as long as Kirko stays healthy
Arizona Cardinals (5-4) — ridiculous, no there there
Minnesota Vikings (6-2) — Amazing coaching still can’t fully save Sam Darnold
Philadelphia Eagles (6-2) — gritty but something’s rotten in Denmark
Green Bay Packers (6-3) — arrow pointing down

In the NFC I think we’ll see the Rams and/or the Seahawks knock the woeful Cards out of the playoff race. Matthew Stafford looks ready to light ‘em up and the defense is roaring back to form. Geno Smith, meanwhile, changes every play. One play he’s a god, the next he looks concussed. Still, good coaching in both places. If CMC is actually back, San Francisco will round back into form. Tampa Bay is much better than their record would suggest and when Mike Evans is back they should play with a chip on their shoulder.

The best gift is watching the Cowboys implode, though. They’re devaluing faster than TruthSocial stock.

Players to watch for pure love of the game in the second half of the season:

I alphabetized these and then noticed, “damn, there are a lot of J’s.” These are the players I absolutely love to watch, and I’m expecting a lot of fun from them over the next few months.

Aaron Jones
Adam Thielen
A.J. Brown
Alvin Kamara
Amon Ra St. Brown
Andrei Iosivas
Austin Ekeler
Baker Mayfield
Braelon Allen
Brian Robinson
Brian Thomas Jr.
Brock Bowers
Bucky Irving
Cade Otton
Calvin Austin III
Cedric Tillman
Chase Brown
Christian McCaffrey (fingers crossed)
Chuba Hubbard
Cooper Kupp
Cordarrelle Patterson
Dallas Goedert
Darius Slayton
Darnell Mooney
David Montgomery
David Njoku
DeAndre Hopkins
Deebo Samuel
Derrick Henry
DeVonta Smith
D.K. Metcalf
Drake Maye
Evan Engram
George Kittle
Jahmeer Gibbs
Jakobi Meyers
Jalen Hurts
Ja’Marr Chase
Jaxon Smith-Njigba
Jayden Daniels
Jayden Reed
Jaylen Warren
Jaylen Wright
J.K. Dobbins
Joe Burrow
Joe Mixon
John Metchie
Jonathon Brooks
Jonnu Smith
Josh Allen
Josh Downs
Ja’Tavion Sanders
Justin Herbert
Justin Jefferson
Keaton Mitchell
Kenneth Walker
Keon Coleman
Kirk Cousins
Kyle Juszczyk
Kyren Williams
Ladd McConkey
Lamar Jackson
Malik Nabers
Mike Gesicki
Nick Westbrook-Ikhine
Nico Collins
Noah Brown
Puka Nacua
Ray Davis
Ricky Pearsall
Rome Odunze
Saquon Barkley
Sean Tucker
Tee Higgins
Trey McBride
Troy Franklin
Tyler Allgeier
Tyrone Tracy
Zay Flowers

Okay! That’s a little glimpse into some of the ongoing storylines from the current NFL landscape. Let’s hope that this season finishes in a way where something as trivial as football is something we can still enjoy because we’re not worried about more…pressing issues.

Good luck to all of us tomorrow. Let’s bring it home!