It, truly is, the best — yes, best — ailment to infiltrate your mind. “Excitement-Induced Brain Fog” is back. What is it? It’s when you’re so ungodly excited for something — in this case, duh, the NFL season — you forget about the typical occurrences.
That phenomenon occurs at the start of every NFL season. Here’s the formula: too much anticipation plus a long time away from football equals fan EIBF.
EIBF will infiltrate TV rooms and NFL stadiums starting Thursday with Bills-Rams and continue through most of September. So, I’ve compiled everything you need to remember at the beginning of the 2022 season to combat the EIBF sensation.
There’s always a wild upset or strange outcome in Week 1
[Samuel L. Jackson voice] “Hold onto your butts.” This will happen. Prepare yourself. Want proof? I got you.
In 2021, the Saints walloped the Packers, 38-3, you know the same Green Bay club that would win 13 of its next 16 games and land as the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. In the COVID year of 2020, the eventual 1-15 Jaguars beat the playoff-bound Colts in a bizarre Week 1 contest that featured a single Gardner Minshew incompletion and a 2.4 yards-per-carry average for Jonathan Taylor. Very normal, right?
There was no landscape-shattering upset in 2019, but the Lions and Cardinals tied 27-27 in Kyler Murray’s first NFL game. Arizona scored six points through three quarters before erupting for 18 in the fourth, and Detroit linebacker Christian Jones dropped what would’ve likely been a game-sealing interception in overtime. On that same day, the eventual 11-5 Seahawks needed a fourth-quarter, Russell Wilson-to-Tyler Lockett touchdown strike to beat the eventual 2-14 Bengals, 21-20. Strange.
At the start of the prior season, the Buccaneers, who ultimately went 5-11, upended the 13-3 NFC North champion Saints, 48-40. Ryan Fitzpatrick averaged 14.9 yards per attempt (!) and had a QB rating of 156.3. The Saints would go on to finish eighth in Football Outsiders defensive DVOA, the all-encompassing efficiency metric.
In 2017, the 5-11 Broncos beat the 9-7 Chargers. In 2016, a 49ers team that ultimately went 2-14, looked like the most complete team in football in a 28-0 blanking of the almost equally as bad, eventual 4-12 Los Angeles Rams. Blaine Gabbert was the starting quarterback for San Francisco that afternoon. Jeremy Kerley led the 49ers in receiving. Heck,…
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