So after nine weeks of the NFL season, give or take a shared and very valid dread at the condemned warehouse that is the Cardinals-Cowboys Monday night matchup, we can all agree that the only thing we can all agree on is that Dan Quinn really filled his trousers by not taking Jayden Daniels out of last night’s lost cause of a Seahawks-Commanders game. It is a rare point of consensus in a season that has mostly been unsettled and uneasy—it is indeed suboptimal to have your starting quarterback/franchise future mangle his elbow trying to make a play he doesn’t need to make late in a game his team is losing by four and a half scores.
But that’s the only thing on which there is anything remotely close to universal agreement; everything else in this year’s NFL can be considered day-to-day and highly questionable. Baseball fans can snark away in the direction of their Dodgers-shaped straw man, basketball fans can opt in to All Wemby All The Time, and college football will always be able to find that get-your-ass-off-our-campus energy every Saturday, but the NFL has no galvanizing player or team at this moment. The best teams are all vulnerable, and not just because the odd coach will occasionally forget that there aren’t any 32-point plays.
