| There is no neat and tidy way to sum up the wildness that was the 2021 National Football League season, where Sunday night’s extraordinary closing formed the only appropriate conclusion to a campaign that resembled perennial, unadulterated, jaw-droppingly entertaining carnage. All year long, nothing went to plan. Nothing could be taken for granted, or even at face value. On Sunday afternoon, hours before the unthinkable took place and left us all wondering what the heck happened, the Detroit Lions (winless until Week 13) beat the Green Bay Packers (Super Bowl favorite and NFC No. 1 seed). And it was one of the least surprising things of the day. Sounds about right. The regular season that just came to pass and ended with unfeasible drama involving the Las Vegas Raiders and the Los Angeles Chargers seems to have been the creation of the most mischievous of all the football gods. Teams playing at home won the same amount of games as those on the road. Underdogs on paper turned into winners in reality. Even at the end, when Week 17 seemed to have shuffled most of the postseason situation into some kind of sensible order, Week 18 brought twist, upon twist – and then, for the Chargers, a devastating final twist. In pure watchability terms, was this the greatest NFL season ever? If you like order, consistency and predictability, the answer is a resounding “no.” If you enjoy having your mind blown and were willing to embrace the weirdness? Then, quite possibly, it’s a “yes.” It was a year where a team – the Baltimore Ravens – could lose its last six games and yet only see its postseason hopes extinguish on the final play of the campaign, in overtime no less. Where another – the Miami Dolphins – could win seven straight and eight of its last nine but still miss the postseason, and then proceed to fire its head coach right afterwards. Or where the Indianapolis Colts could turn things around from a miserable start and head into the final week as a dangerous playoff contender, only to miss out altogether by failing to beat the Jacksonville Jaguars, an opponent bad enough that even an upset victory won’t stop them from picking first in the 2022 NFL Draft. “We didn’t help ourselves,” Colts head coach Frank Reich said. “Poor on third down, missed a couple of fourth downs that we should never miss. That goes back to coaching and playing.” It was a season where Ben Roethlisberger effectively said goodbye because it looked so improbable for the Pittsburgh Steelers to stay alive, yet all the outcomes required to make that happen did indeed transpire. Where one of the most unfairly derided quarterbacks in football, Jimmy Garoppolo, booked the San Francisco 49ers’ playoff ticket with a season-saving 88-yard drive in 61 seconds, while plagued by an injured thumb. Where the two quarterbacks with the best record are a guy who began the year considering a future as a game show host and a 44-year-old who just keeps on going. Where the top seed in the AFC, the Tennessee Titans, played without its best player for half the schedule. And where for one week, the football world was smirking and joking about the quirky possibility of a tie between the Raiders and Chargers, with the smart heads admitting there was no chance of it working out that way. Only for it to get to the point where it was about to happen. Destined to happen. Except, ultimately, possibly thanks to an ill-advised timeout from Chargers coach Brandon Staley, it didn’t. “Staley’s timeout was 100 percent defensible,” FS1’s Nick Wright said on “First Things First.” “But folks don’t like his aggressiveness so they’ll take any opportunity to crush him, even for the most obvious things.” Maybe, but that won’t stop the chatter that stopping the game allowed the Raiders to adjust to a less cautious third down option that ultimately set up the winning field goal. Who knows? With sympathetic thoughts to the long-suffering Chargers fans, whose team continues to find imaginative ways to leave them in tears, it was perhaps only fitting that there was one final shakeup to the game of the year. In just over a month from now, there won’t be any more Mondays like this for a while, the ones when you greet a new week uplifted by what you saw yet exhausted by all the plot turns. Maybe it’s for the best. Our nerves might not be able to take much more of this. What a week. What a season. What a way for it to end. OK, NFL playoffs, it’s your turn now. And you’ve got a heck of a lot to live up to. Let’s see what you’ve got. |
