The Draw Play

So you root for a loser and your season is over. Now you are stuck without someone to support and bitter at every team that made it. Do you pick a team and go with them to hope for a player you like? Sure, if you’re lame. Real fans choose chaos. Pure, uncontrolled, unbridled chaos. If your team can’t make it to the show, then everything should burn. Hearts should be broken. Root for the results no one expects and would drive pundits, reporters, and legions of fans up the wall into the realms of insanity while you sit by, eating popcorn and watching the world burn. If this is how you like your playoffs, you’ve come to the right place.

EDIT: Some people are confused by the rankings of certain teams, so I want to clarify that the rankings are based on multiple forms of football chaos. Chaos is a lot of things. For the playoffs, it is mainly driven by two factors: chaos of expectations, and chaos of execution. Expectational chaos is based around what is expected of your team. The TEAM, for example, has very low, exceptionally low expectational chaos, being a losing record team from the worst division. Chaos of execution is how the team tends to play football. Do they score a lot? Are they a kind of slowly grind it out methodically team (low chaos) or get a bunch of yards with big plays team (high chaos)? Do they do a lot of weird shit? The Chiefs, despite having very low expectational chaos due to being the #1 seed, play an astoundingly chaotic game of actual football with absurd plays. A strong contrast to the Packers, who are far more methodical and effective at all times. Basically, Executional chaos is how much fun and unpredictable to watch the team is, while Expectational chaos is the meta, how much that team winning would upset the balances of power.

HIGH CHAOS TEAMS – Teams that command little respect, little attention, but have high potential for infuriating everyone
Team, Bears, Browns, Titans, Ravens
-The TEAM is the obvious frontrunner for Chaos this year. They aren’t actually even that interesting to watch. They play sloppy safe conservative football trademark of Ron Rivera and Alex Smith. However the fact that they are 7-9 and don’t belong in the playoffs anyway means that any victory they manage will just further upset the supposed sanctity of the sport. Their very existence here is a stain on the league, and their success burns larger holes into the foundation of everything we know. Go Team. Ruin everyone’s day.
-The Bears are the other highest potential Chaos frontrunner thanks to being the 7th seed and most people not even knowing how they managed to pull this one out. Mitch Trubisky is in the playoffs, nobody respects the Bears…but this is when defense shines. The Bears have defense.
-The Browns would likely be medium chaos as they are a solid, fun team. However, they are in the middle of a horrible Covid outbreak and won’t even have the likely coach of the year on the sideline for their first playoff game in 18 seasons. They are also facing their rivals first. A win this weekend sets the league on fire.
-The Titans should be Mid-level as well, but every Titans game this season has been a high scoring masterpiece of action thanks to Ryan Tannehill and AJ Brown, Derrick Henry pancaking anyone in his way, and a defense that is so bad they have to score 30 points just to stay in it.
-The Ravens are effectively the same team that took the league by storm last year. However this time they aren’t getting attention because they slumped in the middle of the season due to another Covid outbreak. Then Lamar took a shit and now they might be the betting man’s choice for Super Bowl. They face the Titans first. That could potentially be the best game of the entire postseason and the one we cannot afford to miss.

MEDIUM CHAOS TEAMS – Championship contenders with major flaws or dark horse favorites that might be better than anticipated
Bills, Chiefs, Saints, Colts, Hawks, Rams
-The Bills are legitimate championship contenders with the team they have. What makes them mid-level and not low-level chaos is that IT IS THE BILLS. They’ve had no success for so long and now look unstoppable. Also the Mafia is the most entertaining fanbase in the league and I look forward to them generously donating 500K to some random charity an opposing player set up and then also filming themselves running into a brick wall while on fire.
-The Chiefs should be low chaos, but Patrick Mahomes by himself is high chaos. He’s not Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady, who do amazing stuff by making the incredible look easy. He does absurd nonsense and makes it look impossible, as if he simply ignores the laws of physics. The Chiefs also have a major problem. They take full quarters, even full halves, completely off and look like absolute dogshit for no reason. Then they score 21 points in 4 minutes. You know they can score at any time, but the chaos is in the wait and confusion
-The Saints are excellent all around but not allowed to have nice things so it is just a matter of when the inevitable nonsense heartbreak happens. They are less a force of chaos than they are a vehicle for chaos.
-The Colts are a 7th seed, which gives them chaos, but they aren’t a very interesting team to watch.
-The Hawks are like the Chiefs in that they should be more solid and predictable then they are. The Seahawks have always played notoriously weird games.
-The Rams are capable of beating anyone. They are also capable of losing to the Jets because Sean McVay got too cute. On a regular day, they are mostly dull and Jared Goff is the QB equivalent of store brand cheerios

LOW CHAOS TEAMS – Championship favorites that are just all around solid teams and play so effectively that little goes wrong
Bucs, Steelers, Packers
– The Bucs are just a Tom Brady super team. The only thing that makes it interesting is that the team still hasn’t quite coalesced as they should have and now Tommy has to face NFC competition instead of the same junk the AFC threw at him for years. Also fuck Antonio Brown.
– The Steelers are good again and they aren’t even the usual Steelers good. Ben isn’t Ben anymore. He can’t throw deep and he’s thin now, so his game is now short passes instead of being the jolly weeble wobble we knew. Their only aptitude for chaos is they might be a genuine paper tiger that coasted on an easy schedule.
-The Packers are just an extremely solid team led by the probable MVP. The only interesting thing this team could possibly do is lose. The Packers have low-key been the NFC’s Patriots for years now. I don’t find this team entertaining to watch unless things are going wrong.

So have fun this weekend folks! 6 games for the first time ever! Wall to wall playoff football. Lets hope for upsets, thrills, chills, and spills.

Also, apropos of nothing, when I was analyzing the Steelers season because many think they are a paper tiger who coasted by on an easy schedule, I came to a realization. The NFCE was by far the worst division this year, and one of the worst divisions in history. Guess which divisions played the NFCE? The AFC North and the NFC West. The AFCN had 3 teams make the playoffs. The NFCW had two teams make the playoffs, and the Cardinals came inches from being a third. I can’t help but think the success of those divisions is very much related to who they got to play.

MAY CHAOS REIGN.

AMEN