The Dolphins make me so fucking sad. I just want all the teams with blue uniforms to do well.
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NFL Thread: 2025-26 Season
- Thread starter adjectivenoun
- Start date
Well, that was a fucking disaster, and this team's playoff chances evaporate with every injury. At least the Packers also lost to... the Panthers? Really?
This is the first post I’ve made on this thread in some time, I recently took another break from posting, but I’m just going to get straight to the point.
Okay, first of all, why is this screenshot so huge? And more importantly, good God who hurt this man? I wasn’t able to watch the first half live like I wanted to tonight, but rest assured I was still following the game in the background as I was watching YouTube, and… wow. This might be the greatest first half stat line I’ve ever seen from a football player in my entire life. And I’ve seen a lot of crazy stat lines. I have no other words. Sam Darnold, you absolute mad man.
What makes this even funnier is that my gut instinct told me to bench Jayden Daniels in favor of him for one of fantasy teams this week and Jayden’s having a terrible game
Okay, first of all, why is this screenshot so huge? And more importantly, good God who hurt this man? I wasn’t able to watch the first half live like I wanted to tonight, but rest assured I was still following the game in the background as I was watching YouTube, and… wow. This might be the greatest first half stat line I’ve ever seen from a football player in my entire life. And I’ve seen a lot of crazy stat lines. I have no other words. Sam Darnold, you absolute mad man.
I'm going to laugh my ass off if he collapses in the playoffs again.
The Commanders defense is a hospital ward; I am going to ignore this fact and attribute all the Lions' offensive success to Dan Campbell taking over some of the playcalling.
The Green Bay Packers.
This is honestly the most frustrating Packers team in recent memory. This situation sucks lol. They have all the pieces to become an easy top 5 team, and more than that too, but they so rarely put it all together on one night. Right now, it's less than the sum of its (as-of-now-uninjured) parts. It's a long season, and anything can change come playoff time, but man. It sucks!
The thing I don't get is how you don't have a league-average offense. Jordan Love is a quality starting quarterback! You have quality pieces for him! MLF has historically been a competent coach! It's baffling to me that these meltdowns keep happening. You'd be like 8-1 if your offense was adequate.
Realistically speaking, yes, but as a Seahawks fan that lives on the opposite side of the country I’m selfishly going to say I’d prefer this over a different window because 10:30 or so for a night game is crazy work. As for the game itself, yeah this should be peak. I could see either of us winning the division and to the Rams’ credit Stafford’s been playing out of his mind the past few weeks. I think this is going to come down to ball control and if our offense can make the most of the looks we’re given- we’ve been having problems with stacked boxes slowing down our run game for a while now and there’s also a certain Anthony Bradford who’s about to get absolutely bullied by the Ram’s defensive line. Dude’s either the worst offensive lineman in the league or in contention for that spot.
Have a coworker who was at the game (life-long Packers fan with his family), I think he may actually have a hernia
my uncle who's a Vikings fans (and yes I know I spoke to growing up in a Bills v Jets family -- he just lived in Minne and took me to some games when I'd see him sometimes) if I believed in JJ and I was like Tbh I got no idea cus he's always hurt, but rn I still think Darnold or Jones wouldve been the better bet to take advantage of that roster.
Edit: I added Jones as a pre-Colts run thought cus I think Kevin O'Connell is a legit solid coach esp for QBs to help him kinda like Darnold had with Shanahan for that year lol. Darnold was just lucky/smart and doubled up on good offensive/QB coaches lol
Tbh nowadays it seems harder to write people off, cus there's a few coaches out there that can dust them off and get them right, Geno, Baker, Darnold, D. Jones, looks like Mac Jones too now, etc.
My question is does Shanahan fall in love with Mac and trade Brock, or risk pulling a move that Minne will be like "We been here" trading Mac cus everyone knows Shanahan wanted Mac OG lol.
Edit: I added Jones as a pre-Colts run thought cus I think Kevin O'Connell is a legit solid coach esp for QBs to help him kinda like Darnold had with Shanahan for that year lol. Darnold was just lucky/smart and doubled up on good offensive/QB coaches lol
Tbh nowadays it seems harder to write people off, cus there's a few coaches out there that can dust them off and get them right, Geno, Baker, Darnold, D. Jones, looks like Mac Jones too now, etc.
My question is does Shanahan fall in love with Mac and trade Brock, or risk pulling a move that Minne will be like "We been here" trading Mac cus everyone knows Shanahan wanted Mac OG lol.
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Injuries have frustrated me more in this season than in almost any other pro sport I've watched besides maybe a few nba playoff runs
lions defense keeps hitting the bowser space
joe burrow injured and we had multiple weeks of unwatchable bengals games before flacco started
giants were fun to watch until skattebo was injured and the way they handle dart's concussion risk is unacceptable even when considering that this is the league that desperately pretends CTE doesn't exist
on the more positive side we've had some historic performances we get to watch. jaxson smith njgiba has been having a historic season, broncos might beat all time sacks/season record, and colts offense is incredible to watch
lions defense keeps hitting the bowser space
joe burrow injured and we had multiple weeks of unwatchable bengals games before flacco started
giants were fun to watch until skattebo was injured and the way they handle dart's concussion risk is unacceptable even when considering that this is the league that desperately pretends CTE doesn't exist
on the more positive side we've had some historic performances we get to watch. jaxson smith njgiba has been having a historic season, broncos might beat all time sacks/season record, and colts offense is incredible to watch
Don't forget our offensive line! Ragnow retired after playing through injuries for years, and now the rest of the unit is getting cooked.
I can't present a rigorous defense of this take, but I think the injuries are getting worse in part as a consequence of the longer seasons. NFL games are such brutal affairs that making the regular season even a game bigger (especially without additional off time to compensate) probably compounds long-term wear on the bodies of players, and the season is still short enough for every game to be a big deal, so players are pressured to play through injuries despite the regular season becoming more of a marathon. TNF compounds this issue by forcing almost every team into at least one brutal stretch per season where they have to play on only three or four days of rest. The inevitable move to 18 games is probably going to be accompanied by a second bye week, so we'll see if that helps, but it won't surprise me if many players with primes in this era of NFL scheduling have premature retirements because their bodies just can't take the wear anymore.
yeah agreed. I think there's a confluence of a bunch of things. to tell you the truth, this might just be a random chance thing though. I'd be very interested in seeing whether we are within normal variance or if there is evidence that injury rates actually have increased. anecdotally it certainly feels like it, but anecdotal evdence is useless. I tried to look it up but the only injury type nfl self reports is concussions which have gone down. dissapointing but also expected that the self reporting from them would be useless
I think the reasons are probably
- more games
- shorter rests between games
- sports specialization from an early age (this is ruining nba stars left and right)
- poorly maintained turf and synthetic turf
- pressure to play through injury
I wonder if there are any other hidden reasons (more aggresive ped usage, owners cost cutting medical teams, etc.).
I also wonder if the NFL will pick up on the NBA's "load management" trend. If you're guaranteed playoffs will every starter just be benched?
I agree that this season has been terrible for injuries, to the point where I’m starting to wonder if something’s up with all these teams’ training and rehab facilities. I can think of about four different reasons just off the top of my head why there’s a ton of injuries going around, but ignoring the blatant suspicious nature of how injuries can affect things like fantasy football and prop bets that often have actual money on the line, I really think the turf fields have to go and I also want to know more about the facilities of teams that are more frequently getting hit with the Injury Bug in recent seasons than other teams. Looking at you, San Francisco.
In other news, it pains me to say this but I think I’m going to place my Seahawks on at least temporary Fraud Watch for the time being. We’ll see what happens in a couple days against the Rams, but in spite of the mainstream media’s recent surge in Seattle stock, I don’t know if I’m ready to call us Super Bowl contenders just yet. The obvious culprit remains Sam Darnold and his overall lack of playoff experience and success, but as I mention in my last post I still have concerns about our running efficiency and I also have concerns about the schedule we’ve played up to this point. Yes, we were technically seven from starting 9-0 but the box scores don’t tell the whole story. I would argue our two best wins so far have been at Pittsburgh and at Jacksonville, both AFC teams by the way, and most of our other wins have come against terrible defensive play or were a bit fluky for my liking (yes, that is a word).
Looking just at the standings alone, our 7-2 start through nine regular season games is the best mark we’ve had since 2019-20. That team would finish 12-6 including playoff games with a loss in the divisional round, but this team has advantages and disadvantages over that specific season. I may need to take a look at our defensive efficiency ratings again and possibly watch some earlier games this season again for the sake of the eye test and play recognition. For now, I do worry about the Rams exposing our weak spots here soon.
In other news, it pains me to say this but I think I’m going to place my Seahawks on at least temporary Fraud Watch for the time being. We’ll see what happens in a couple days against the Rams, but in spite of the mainstream media’s recent surge in Seattle stock, I don’t know if I’m ready to call us Super Bowl contenders just yet. The obvious culprit remains Sam Darnold and his overall lack of playoff experience and success, but as I mention in my last post I still have concerns about our running efficiency and I also have concerns about the schedule we’ve played up to this point. Yes, we were technically seven from starting 9-0 but the box scores don’t tell the whole story. I would argue our two best wins so far have been at Pittsburgh and at Jacksonville, both AFC teams by the way, and most of our other wins have come against terrible defensive play or were a bit fluky for my liking (yes, that is a word).
Looking just at the standings alone, our 7-2 start through nine regular season games is the best mark we’ve had since 2019-20. That team would finish 12-6 including playoff games with a loss in the divisional round, but this team has advantages and disadvantages over that specific season. I may need to take a look at our defensive efficiency ratings again and possibly watch some earlier games this season again for the sake of the eye test and play recognition. For now, I do worry about the Rams exposing our weak spots here soon.
In this particular case, I've heard that Kyle Shanahan has a pretty extreme "If you can stand, you're playing" kind of attitude, and it leads him to push a lot of his starters towards getting hurt. That's hearsay that I don't have a source for, but it supports the idea that a lot of the teams that seem persistently bitten by the "injury bug" might actually have deeper systemic issues than just bad luck.
BREAKING NEWS (5:00 PM PT)
Following the conclusion of this afternoon’s home NFL game against the Seattle Seahawks, Los Angeles local law enforcement has confirmed eyewitness reports of a likely overdose case less than a mile away from SoFi Stadium. Law enforcement was first contacted about the case at 4:30 Pacific Time and forensic experts have arrived at the scene. What they saw when they arrived surprised them- hidden away in a back alley away from the parking lots, a small yellow creature resembling the character “Pikachu” from the iconic “Pokémon” franchise, completely unresponsive laying next to a Seattle Seahawks flag and several broken bottles of alcohol.
Upon hearing of this report, fans of the Pokémon video games quickly identified this creature as a “Pichu”, and suggested to (the) L.A.P.D. that a creature of such a young age likely consumed “way, way too much alcohol” upon the conclusion of this afternoon’s football game. The Los Angeles Rams claimed first place in the NFC West division with an 8-2 record on the NFL seasons with their 21-19 win over the Seahawks in a game that saw 2025 free agent starting quarterback Sam Darnold throw four interceptions during the contest. It remains to be seen how the bottles of alcohol got into the Pichu’s possession in the first place, but local detectives are continuing to investigate the scene at this time. This has been bdt2002 with this breaking news report.
Following the conclusion of this afternoon’s home NFL game against the Seattle Seahawks, Los Angeles local law enforcement has confirmed eyewitness reports of a likely overdose case less than a mile away from SoFi Stadium. Law enforcement was first contacted about the case at 4:30 Pacific Time and forensic experts have arrived at the scene. What they saw when they arrived surprised them- hidden away in a back alley away from the parking lots, a small yellow creature resembling the character “Pikachu” from the iconic “Pokémon” franchise, completely unresponsive laying next to a Seattle Seahawks flag and several broken bottles of alcohol.
Upon hearing of this report, fans of the Pokémon video games quickly identified this creature as a “Pichu”, and suggested to (the) L.A.P.D. that a creature of such a young age likely consumed “way, way too much alcohol” upon the conclusion of this afternoon’s football game. The Los Angeles Rams claimed first place in the NFC West division with an 8-2 record on the NFL seasons with their 21-19 win over the Seahawks in a game that saw 2025 free agent starting quarterback Sam Darnold throw four interceptions during the contest. It remains to be seen how the bottles of alcohol got into the Pichu’s possession in the first place, but local detectives are continuing to investigate the scene at this time. This has been bdt2002 with this breaking news report.
Late but the short answer is the oline. To get more in depth- Packers let Josh Myers walk instead of signing him (which I agreed with!), and then moved elgton Jenkins from left guard to center and overpaid Aaron banks, who had injuries to play left guard. Banks, spoiler alert, gets injured constantly and Jenkins and Zach tom have been injured at different times this year. Injuries have had an impact obviously but the personnel has resulted in a less effective unit, particularly in the run game. The interior doesn’t hold up blocks and get to the second level well and it results in a generally less efficient run game and it makes 3rd/4th and short kind of a nightmare. The offense also has had significant pass pro issues against stronger dlines (browns and eagles, giants to an extent but love sort of bailed the offense out a lot when pressure came)
Receivers have also taken turns getting injured and doing the same 3 stooges stuff from last year. The eagles game had two really bad wr moments in high leverage situations (4th and 9 pass bounces off wr chest, first offensive drive Watson mysteriously loses track of the ball and tries to play defense, ball hits him in the helmet and falls incomplete on pass that would have turned 3rd and 20 into 1st and goal), giants game had 6-7 passcatcher drops, panthers game featured the packers moving the ball at will between the 20s and then scored 13 points off 5 red zone trips (which doesn’t include a missed 43 yard fg)
Overall I feel like Jordan love has been pretty good this year but there’s a lot of variance love and the offense have to overcome (things both in and not in their control) and the inconsistency and weirdness stems from that I feel
It took multiple miracles in succession to not lose to the 2-9 Giants. My God.
Honestly the Giants are better than their record. They've low-key had the hardest schedule in the league, or close. Of their 12 games, 10 have been against teams (at the respective times) likely to make the playoffs. The only exceptions were on the road in Dallas, a road game against a competent enough division rival, and in New Orleans, which OK that's just a genuine exception with no qualifiers. 7/12 games have been road games, too.
Of course, any team can lose forever against a hard schedule, but the Giants have been genuine tough outs. They're 1-5 in 1 score games, including two overtime losses, with wins over the Eagles (their only multi-possession loss) and Chargers. Since Skateboo's injury, they've played 4 teams currently 25-14-1 (excluding those wins over the Giants), which is roughly like facing four 11-6 teams back-to-back. 3 of those 4 games came down to the end of the 4th quarter or OT.
...You probably still should've put them away easier though, lol. As we probably should have, too.
On the other side of "record not matching quality", there's no better time to list out the wins of the 8-3 Bears (records exclude the Bears' wins over them).
Giants (2-9)
Raiders (2-7)
Saints (2-7)
Commanders (3-7)
Bengals (3-7)
Vikings (4-6)
Cowboys (in the process of becoming 4-5)
E: I wrote that above part when the Cowboys were down 21-7 tonight. It's tied now??? Well, I won't be too mad if the Cowboys beat the Eagles somehow lol.
*NEW* Steelers (6-4 when not starting a backup QB)
All wins were by one possession, besides the Cowboys and Saints (both at home). The Raidres and Commanders wins were by 1 point. The Vikings were by 2. The Acin' Mason Steelers (at home) were by 3. I'm not sure I've seen an 8-3 team with a negative point differential before. Props to the Bears – they're clearly better than I thought they were, I still expected them to perform unimpressive against this slate – but the hype machines can slow down a bit.
If they can wrangle their ghastly remaining schedule (including @ Eagles, 2x Packers, Lions, @ 9ers), then we'll have something different to say. But as is, I don't project them to make the playoffs. (They need one of the Packers, Lions, Seahawks, or 49ers to wipe out, and Carolina to not swipe them from behind.)
(How am I mentioning Carolina at this point in time???)
Of course, any team can lose forever against a hard schedule, but the Giants have been genuine tough outs. They're 1-5 in 1 score games, including two overtime losses, with wins over the Eagles (their only multi-possession loss) and Chargers. Since Skateboo's injury, they've played 4 teams currently 25-14-1 (excluding those wins over the Giants), which is roughly like facing four 11-6 teams back-to-back. 3 of those 4 games came down to the end of the 4th quarter or OT.
...You probably still should've put them away easier though, lol. As we probably should have, too.
On the other side of "record not matching quality", there's no better time to list out the wins of the 8-3 Bears (records exclude the Bears' wins over them).
Giants (2-9)
Raiders (2-7)
Saints (2-7)
Commanders (3-7)
Bengals (3-7)
Vikings (4-6)
Cowboys (in the process of becoming 4-5)
E: I wrote that above part when the Cowboys were down 21-7 tonight. It's tied now??? Well, I won't be too mad if the Cowboys beat the Eagles somehow lol.
*NEW* Steelers (6-4 when not starting a backup QB)
All wins were by one possession, besides the Cowboys and Saints (both at home). The Raidres and Commanders wins were by 1 point. The Vikings were by 2. The Acin' Mason Steelers (at home) were by 3. I'm not sure I've seen an 8-3 team with a negative point differential before. Props to the Bears – they're clearly better than I thought they were, I still expected them to perform unimpressive against this slate – but the hype machines can slow down a bit.
If they can wrangle their ghastly remaining schedule (including @ Eagles, 2x Packers, Lions, @ 9ers), then we'll have something different to say. But as is, I don't project them to make the playoffs. (They need one of the Packers, Lions, Seahawks, or 49ers to wipe out, and Carolina to not swipe them from behind.)
(How am I mentioning Carolina at this point in time???)
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I also want to highlight some recent thoughts I've had about scheduling. It's more immediately been in the college context (let's go Badgers!!) but applies here too, especially with the Bears.
Someone might disagree with my Bears skepticism with something like this.
"They can only play the teams in front of them. They've been doing (close to) as good as possible (in the primary metric of W/L record) under that constraint, which isn't something they control."
And, purely factually, they'd be right. But why does this factual information matter or not?
Wins matter in terms of judging a team's quality because they provide us information. Wins over stronger teams matter a lot more because they provide us a lot of information on a team's quality, especially in the types of games that matter for playoff success. What do we learn from seeing the Bears repeatedly beat on the dregs of the league?
Well, we learn that they probably aren't among these dregs of the league, because they beat the dregs. I had a prior belief that the Bears were a dreg, based on their past performance, but I have changed my mind given this new information. But I haven't changed it so far to call them a good team. Seeing the Bears beat the dregs, we don't learn that the Bears are a good team, or that they're comparable to a normal 8-3 team.
A good team, a normal 8-3 team, needs to be able to beat other good teams, at least sometimes. The Bears haven't done that. In their one or two games against teams I would call good at the time of the game – the Lions, and maybe the not-early-season Ravens – the Bears have done terrible. They got humiliated in Detroit, losing by 30, and decisively stopped by 2 touchdowns in Baltimore. To change my belief that the Bears are not among the level of good teams, I'm going to need to see them beat some good teams, and they have failed in their opportunities to do so. In other words, it's not their fault that Rodgers' injury denied them an opportunity for a quality win, but the facts remain that they just don't have quality wins.
It's easier for me to argue this when the Bears have actively lost against good team(s), but the point applies even if they had none of those opportunities. If the Bears only played dregs and went 5-0, they would have been given 0 opportunities to beat good teams, but the fact would remain that they beat 0 good teams – they did not demonstrate that which they need to change my belief that they aren't good. In that case, my response would be like, "Sucks for them I guess that they didn't get these opportunities yet, life is unfair sometimes, but we'll see what happens when the opportunities do come, when I can gain information on how the Bears perform against good teams."
They'll have plenty of chances to prove me wrong very soon. Could make for some exciting weeks!
Someone might disagree with my Bears skepticism with something like this.
"They can only play the teams in front of them. They've been doing (close to) as good as possible (in the primary metric of W/L record) under that constraint, which isn't something they control."
And, purely factually, they'd be right. But why does this factual information matter or not?
Wins matter in terms of judging a team's quality because they provide us information. Wins over stronger teams matter a lot more because they provide us a lot of information on a team's quality, especially in the types of games that matter for playoff success. What do we learn from seeing the Bears repeatedly beat on the dregs of the league?
Well, we learn that they probably aren't among these dregs of the league, because they beat the dregs. I had a prior belief that the Bears were a dreg, based on their past performance, but I have changed my mind given this new information. But I haven't changed it so far to call them a good team. Seeing the Bears beat the dregs, we don't learn that the Bears are a good team, or that they're comparable to a normal 8-3 team.
A good team, a normal 8-3 team, needs to be able to beat other good teams, at least sometimes. The Bears haven't done that. In their one or two games against teams I would call good at the time of the game – the Lions, and maybe the not-early-season Ravens – the Bears have done terrible. They got humiliated in Detroit, losing by 30, and decisively stopped by 2 touchdowns in Baltimore. To change my belief that the Bears are not among the level of good teams, I'm going to need to see them beat some good teams, and they have failed in their opportunities to do so. In other words, it's not their fault that Rodgers' injury denied them an opportunity for a quality win, but the facts remain that they just don't have quality wins.
It's easier for me to argue this when the Bears have actively lost against good team(s), but the point applies even if they had none of those opportunities. If the Bears only played dregs and went 5-0, they would have been given 0 opportunities to beat good teams, but the fact would remain that they beat 0 good teams – they did not demonstrate that which they need to change my belief that they aren't good. In that case, my response would be like, "Sucks for them I guess that they didn't get these opportunities yet, life is unfair sometimes, but we'll see what happens when the opportunities do come, when I can gain information on how the Bears perform against good teams."
They'll have plenty of chances to prove me wrong very soon. Could make for some exciting weeks!
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This is an excellent analysis post. I’ll be the first to eat my words and say I thought the Bears were going to be absolutely terrible this season since I didn’t trust what the offense was trying to do and I thought their schedule would be the hardest in the league, but instead, it feels like the exact opposite is playing out where their strength of schedule, and by extension strength of victory, are among the worst in the NFL and they’re finding ways to squeak out more wins than they’re supposed to. I’m taking every other 8-3 team over them at this point in the season, yes, even the Eagles with their own boring offense, and recent history also says the NFC North sucks in the postseason on average so I still think this team is a bust. Not to mention I don’t really know what their identity is as a team right now and they don’t really have that standout X-Factor in my opinion either unless you count Ben Johnson himself.
Frank Ragnow is back! God still does His good work on the world!