The NFL Dead Zone

JT: What are we talking about here?

Welcome the the dead zone of NFL football, ladies and gentlemen. The 2023 draft has ended and things are quickly spinning off the rails. We’ve got some among Jacksonville’s twitter scene going off on Jamal Agnew for absolutely no reason. Why? Because Baalke and Pederson drafted a rookie wide receiver in the sixth round? Yes, Parker Washington has a lot of hype around him. Yes, he was really good at Penn State. Yes, I may have said, once or twice, that he is Jacksonville’s Wes Welker. And finally, yes, I am excited to have him in Jacksonville. You know what Jaguars’ twitter, Agnew is also excited to have Parker Washington on the team. Agnew is a professional. Agnew has been in the NFL for years. Agnew is a Pro Bowl caliber player. Washington is a rookie who has never played a professional down. Why in the world would we jump on Agnew? Everyone can and will work harmoniously in JAX this season. This team is purely symbiotic (and here I thought 9th grade Biology was a waste). A mutualistic relationship, if you will. Washington doesn’t eliminate Agnew. If anything, competition makes everyone, and thus the team as a whole, much better. Ain’t nobody tweeting about how ETN is out of a job because Baalke drafted Tank Bigsby out of Auburn. What we need to be talking about, instead, is the fact that we are going to be running a wishbone. We’re putting Bigsby, Brenton Strange, and ETN in the backfield and T-Law will be handing it off Lionel Ritchie style (All Night Long - you can’t help but to sing it). On short yardage plays we might as well be wearing the old Georgia Tech unis. That, twitter folks, is what we should be talking about. This NFL dead zone is making people lose it.

As if that weren’t enough, I was listening to 1010XL this morning and my man, Dan Hicken, was yelling about how he hates Boston fans. A mainly NY fan is crying about how he hates Boston fans for being upset that the Bruins (possibly the best NHL regular season team ever to play) were ousted from the playoffs after blowing a 3-1 series lead. This was during the Cat Chat segment and the original Jaxson de Ville couldn’t help but to chime in and talk about how he hates Boston fans as well. Brent Martineau, are you going to let this stand? I realize they have to fill airtime and it’s not easy to talk for hours on end and make it interesting. Every. Single. Day. Look, even though I am a lover of the Red Sox and Celtics, I’m willing to let this segment slide (though I think it says more about NY fans than Boston fans, wink wink Hicken). But this is just another example of the craziness that occurs during the NFL dead zone.

As if it weren’t enough for local twitter fans to jump off the ledge, and if it weren’t enough for local sports radio personalities to head off the rails, yesterday we had a national sports personality completely jump the shark. Kyle Brandt of Good Morning Football fame produced what could be the most ridiculously incorrect assessment of AFC quarterbacks I have ever seen. You know how people say that opinions can’t be wrong because they are, well, opinions? Well, Kyle Brandt proved that opinion wrong! Wronger than wrong. Kyle Brandt proved that he is quite possibly the wrongest. The most upsetting thing about this entire Kyle Brandt debacle is that I love Good Morning Football. It’s fresh, different, and better than most things on ESPN. Better than listening to the regular, outdated, and past their prime football talking heads. Why? Why, Kyle Brandt, did you have to go and rain on my GMFB parade. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, I will share Brandt’s most perfectly wrongest of wrong opinions. He ranked all of the AFC quarterbacks by placing them in tiers. The top tier being the best and the bottom being the worst.

Tier 1: Patrick Mahomes - Makes sense. Can’t argue anything here.

Tier 2: Joe Burrow - I’m fine with that. Josh Allen - Maybe. If it were me I might put Joe Burrow into the top tier with Mahomes and have Josh down here in the second tier. Or, I would make a Tier 2-B for Allen.

Tier 3: Aaron Rodgers - Never played in the AFC but he is a HOFer none-the-less. Lamar Jackson - Pretty sure Trevor Lawrence beat him last year. Justin Herbert - Pretty sure Trevor Lawrence beat him TWICE last year. Also, Herbert has never won a playoff game.

Tier 4: Russell Wilson - How drunk were you, Kyle Brandt? Deshaun Watson - I can’t take anything that comes out of your mouth seriously anymore.

Tier 5: Jimmy G. - By himself in tier number five? Really? How is Wilson not down here? How is Watson not down here?

Tier 6: Pickett, Mac Jones, Tua, and Trevor Lawrence - How are Tua and T-Law in the lowest possible tier for vets? How are Tua and T-Law below Jimmy G? How are they below Russell Wilson? Did Kyle Brandt even watch Russell Wilson’s season last year? It was so bad that Russell Wilson didn’t even watch it. He played with his eyes closed the entire time. Mac Jones from the Patriots couldn’t even hold onto the starting job, and Kenny Pickett is frankly, much like Goose, just lucky to be here. But the piece de resistance (insert the French language accents appropriately) is listing Trevor Lawrence as the last place quarterback in the last tier of AFC QB veterans. The only players listed lower than Trevor Lawrence in this abomination of a list by Kyle Brandt are the newly drafted rookies, CJ Stroud, Will Levis, and Anthony Richardson, all of whom have never played a down in the NFL. I can only surmise that Brandt was completely drunk off his rocker when he made this list. If not, I truly believe that Ted Lasso knows more about European football than Brandt knows about American football.

How it should read:

Tier 1: Mahomes

Tier 2: Burrow

Tier 3: Allen, Rodgers

Tier 4: Lawrence, Jackson, Herbert

Tier 5: Tua, Jimmy G.

Tier 6: Watson, Wilson, Pickett, Jones

Tier 7: Newbies

Put me in coach, I’m ready to mix it up with these GMFB folks. I’m coming for you Brandt. No need to worry, I don’t have a basement from which to emerge with insanely idiotic tiered lists of wrongness. Brandt’s segment was so inaccurately insane that it has gone viral and garnered responses from actual NFL players, including several Jaguars. Christian Kirk said “Wut lol.” Even Trevor Lawrence pointed out that, “the game ain’t played on paper.”

This years NFL dead zone seems to be a pandemic. In keeping with the theme of complete idiotic wrongness, it’s so infectious that Dr. Anthony Fauci would probably triple mask. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.