Merry Christmas and welcome to the NFL’s day of excess. Yes, the league got greedy this year, with a Christmas Day triple-header, and in return Santa came down the chimney with some of the most disappointing teams in the league. Rams-Broncos might as well be coal.
How truly bad is this slate of games?
I sorted all 32 teams by preseason win total over/unders compared to the number of wins every team had going into Week 15. Five of the six most underachieving NFL teams (by this admittedly rudimentary metric) landed in standalone windows on what the league is trying to turn into a showcase day.
But it’s still a full day of NFL football, and two of the matchups (Dolphins-Packers and Cardinals-Buccaneers) are at least interesting, if not as quite as important as they looked on paper when the schedule was released in the spring. It’s still Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers and three teams alive in the playoff hunt.
Of course, people will still watch, and after reports come out about more people tuning in to watch Trace McSorley than Ja Morant, we’ll surely see chest-thumping from the league, the TV networks airing the games and the people who enjoy bragging about which sports are most popular.
So don’t worry about me! I’m sitting at home eating Chinese food and happily logging takeaways on all three games. And because I’m fully leaning into clichés, we’ll put plays and players onto lists naughty and nice.
