There have been plenty of scary storylines to fill the NFL season thus far. So, on Halloween, Boardroom explores some of the league’s most ghostly observations to date.
Has your favorite NFL team been a trick or treat this season? By the time Halloween rolls around, you typically have a good idea where your team is headed, whether it’s good, bad, or downright horrifying.
There are a number of specific spooky storylines from this season we could include on this list. Tom Brady looking like a ghost of himself and being 3-4 for the first time since 2002 certainly has an argument to occupy some space here. Or perhaps Aaron Rodgers saying how a scary Sunday Night loss to the Bills — the Packers’ fourth straight — could be “the best thing” that could happen to them might crack the list.
Yes, both are frightening in their own right, but there’s been so much ghoulish activity thus far through eight weeks that they didn’t quite make it. Below are Boardroom’s five spookiest observations thus far in the NFL regular season.
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The Lyin’ Lions
If you based your NFL knowledge solely on fantasy football, you’d think these guys are a top team in the NFL. Not so fast, fantasy gurus.
Despite a talented team headlined by Amon-Ra St. Brown and D’Andre Swift, the Lions are the worst team in the league at 1-6. They’re averaging 24.7 points (No. 8, tied with the Vikings and the Bengals, who play the Browns on Monday Night Football) and 395 total yards per game (No. 4).
Defensively, Detroit is allowing a league-high 32.1 points and 421.3 yards per game. Making matters even worse, it has the third-highest total cap in the league ($214 million). Reminder: The Lions have not won a playoff game since 1991. Spooky!
What’s Happening In Vegas?
Talk about an offseason bang to revitalize fans’ hopes. They committed $566.6 million in salary to the team’s roster, a figure that ranks No. 2 in the NFL after only reigning Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams. The Raiders acquired Davante Adams and made him the highest-paid WR in league history by total contract value ($140 million), while also dishing out hefty contracts to Derek Carr ($121 million), Darren Waller ($51 million), Maxx Crosby ($95 million), and Hunter Renfrow ($32 million).
Despite all that money given out, they fell to 2-5 (0-4 on the road) on the season after getting blanked by the 3-5 Saints in Week 8. Very spooky.
Jagged in Jacksonville
After a Week 3 victory over the Chargers, Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence got a little too confident. “Obviously, the way we have played, you can’t deny that we are a really good team,” Lawrence said. “But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what they say about us. We know who we are.”
The Jaguars have lost five straight games since then, dropping to 2-6 on the season. Oh yeah, and they have the highest total cap in all of the NFL ($231.6 million). Perhaps Jacksonville wore its costume of “really good team” too early this year.
Broncos Country, Let’s Ride (Home)
Remember when we all thought the Broncos would be real players in the AFC West because they landed Russell Wilson? Nasty business. Watching them is about as cringy as his contract. As has been well-documented, Denver paid Wilson $242.6 million over five years immediately after acquiring him. This made him the third-highest-paid player by total value and the second-highest-paid player by annual average value ($48.5 million).
The team is paying him $13,368 per hour and nearly $1 million every three days! Denver is 3-5 and Wilson has a 35.9 QBR (No. 28 in the NFL) with a 58.8% completion percentage (No. 30). To make matters worse, Wilson’s former team in the Seahawks sit first in the NFC West at 5-3, while his QB replacement, Geno Smith, leads all NFL starters in completion percentage (72.7%).
When factoring in the extension, Wilson is on the books through the 2028 season. Denver fans, can you imagine six seasons of this? This trade may haunt the Broncos for years to come.
Patriots Haunt The Jets
I don’t wanna be too harsh on the Jets — they’re 5-3 and nobody expected them to be this good. They haven’t been so good against the Patriots, though.
In Week 8, New York suffered a 13th consecutive defeat to the Pats, tying the Broncos’ losing streak against the Chiefs for most of all time. New England (4-4) is only a game back, and to make matters worse, Bill Belichick moved into sole possession of second place all-time in coaching wins.
Better luck to the Jets when the teams play again on Nov. 20. Hopefully by then, quarterback Zach Wilson and wide receiver Elijah Moore, should he still be with the team then, can fix what’s been a nightmare connection thus far.
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