The Top 12 Worst Games of 2021: Epilogue
Did we learn anything? We learned that the Browns and Bears play boring football. Nothing new under the sun.
A fascinating, infuriating, and at times agonizing deep-dive into the most inexpiably villainous depths of the 2021 NFL season has helped me grow as a human being. Never again will I roll my eyes when Tom Brady gets put in prime time 17 times a season. Never again will I groan with weariness when the Ravens run the ball 97 times a game. Never again will the comparatively uninteresting brand of effective football that the Rams play give me leave to complain about the blandness of the affair, for I have started into the gridiron abyss and it has stared back at me, much like a backup quarterback stares down his first read before being intercepted.
At the end of this long list of miserably played and scantly enjoyed football, are there any patterns that I have noticed that would seem to probabilistically indicate the potential for Bad Football? Yes. Are there earmarks of particularly pathetically-played pigskin clashes that one ought to look out for if they want to maximize their viewing enjoyment? Check. Are there any specific individuals who have authored unpardonable football darkness at greater rates than their peers? In the words of Hugo Weaving in V For Vendetta: “Certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable.” I feel that those to blame for the listed football atrocities have in large part already been held accountable simply through their memorialization on these pixelated stone tablets, but those of particularly bilious predilection towards ineptitude will be climactically named and shamed here. As a cautionary postscript – and a fun bit of distillation that will compress 18,000 words into kernels of pure unvarnished insight – I have bulleted below those things that act as the NFL’s equivalent of the mark of Cain, signifying eye-piercing badness of the rankest magnitude. These are the vile indicators of terrible football that I think promise most positively to degrade the football watching experience:
Backup Quarterbacks. They are backups for a reason.
Rookie Quarterbacks. They’re rookies who lack the athletic acumen built up over many seasons of studious self-application, so cut them a break. That said, some of these will be relegated to the first bullet after a season or so more of Bad Ball.
Botched Hail Marys. If you can’t figure out how to properly attempt a last-ditch-effort all-or-nothing pass (forget successfully converting one), the game probably stinks.
Rain and wind. We’ve excluded “snow” and “cold,” as these often make for Good Football. Rain and wind don’t. Mud can go either way.
COVID-19. It doesn’t matter if it knocks out your coach or your players – the presence of the virus equals sleazily-played games.
Former Patriots assistants. One thing they don’t teach in Foxoborough is how to play exciting football if you’re someone not named Bill Belichick. But maybe Las Vegas has finally made the right hire of a former Beli coordinator. Yawn.
Game plans “tailored” to limited QBs. This is more an umbrella finding for the first two bullets, but it holds true. Get creative if you have to trot out a B- or worse passer, don’t torment us with a billion runs up the middle.
Guilty parties:
PLAYERS: Mason Rudolph, Tua Tagovailoa, Justin Field, Ian Book, Mike Glennon, Geno Smith, Saquon Barkley, Alex Collins, T.J. Hockenson, Pat Freiermuth, Lions Quarterbacks, Browns Quarterbacks.
COACHES: Matt Nagy, Kevin Stefanski, Dan Campbell, Robert Saleh, Brian Flores, David Culley, Ron Middleton, Mike Zimmer, Sean Payton.
It’s been a fun ride – these games were fun to reminisce about, if only to laugh at as bygone wights growing dimmer and dimmer in the distance. Thanks for playing. Till next time.
