Ah, the holiday season. Time for family, food, festivities and a whole lot of football.
Usually as we reach Thanksgiving, it’s pretty clear who the frontrunners are to win the Super Bowl.
Sure, you can have fun with the classic “In The Hunt” graphic that will be plastered across your television screens for the next few weeks, but normally you know who is a contender and who is a pretender.
But as we get ready to celebrate Thanksgiving 2021, it’s impossible to figure out the top dogs of this NFL season.
The last few weeks have had a March Madness-type feel, albeit with the exception of the “win or go home” aspect. You name me a top team, and I’ll find you their head-scratching loss.
The Titans have losses to the Jets and Texans.
The Bills lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The Buccaneers lost to the Washington Football Team.
This NFL Season has basically taught me to expect the unexpected. It’s been far and away the toughest year of picking games that I can ever remember, and I believe the postseason uncertainty will get that much wackier now that we have an extra week of games that will allow for even more chaotic twists and turns.
As of Thanksgiving Weekend 2021, the NFL could not be more wide open. That’s a good thing, because it allows more fans across the NFL to dream.
New Yorkers (well, Giants fans!) know the feeling of rooting for of a team who got hot at the right time and rode that momentum all the way to a Lombardi Trophy.
Sadly, the miracle runs of 2007 and 2011 for the New York Giants are a distant memory for fans searching long and hard for a winner.
There will be a team between now and the end of the year that will become the favorite to win the Super Bowl, but I bet the title of “team to beat” is passed around like a rag doll over the next couple of weeks.
With no clear favorite in the AFC or the NFC, my advice is pretty simple: get into the dance, because if you do you’re dangerous.
With that, enjoy the Thanksgiving triple header. Even the Lions at 12:30 p.m.!
Listen to my podcast “New York, New York” on The Ringer Podcast Network this Wednesday & Sunday on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.
