The Saddest Stories of the 2021 NFL Season
As the season draws to a close and the teams have determined whether they will play meaningful football in the future, let’s take a trip down memory lane. Some people think the worst place for a team is in the gutter. Bottom of the barrel and bottom of the league, but most of the teams you see at the bottom of the league are waiting for you. For Texans fans, no one has walked into this season with any hope, so when the Texans finished near bottom no one was shocked. However, some fans have entered this season with one of the worst feelings from the outside. This feeling was a false hope. False hope that they can do something, that they will recover from a bad season. False hope that maybe their young flagman would leap forward only to have all their hopes and dreams dashed. Let us now return to all the misplaced optimisms of the past season.
At the start of the season, the Browns entered the season with genuine Super Bowl aspirations. Phrases like “Baker will prove the skeptics wrong,” “Odell is finally back and healthy,” “Our defense is an elite,” were just a few of the many things Browns fans thought about their team. Fast forward to the present day and the Browns are not only out of the playoff race, but there are plenty of rumors that the Browns will be looking for a new quarterback during the offseason.
Baker Mayfield was truly a beacon of hope for Browns fans since they hadn’t had a quarterback since Tim Couch. Now Browns fans are in shambles pointing to the same man they once hired. Norman Osbourne addressing Peter Parker in the original Spiderman sums up the Browns and Mayfield perfectly:
They found you funny for a while, the people of this town, but the only thing they love more than a hero is seeing a hero fail, fall, die trying. Despite everything you have done for them, they will end up hating it.
The NFL stands for Not For Long, and it looks like the Bakers ran out of time with the Browns.
It’s the end of an era in Seattle, whether or not they bring Russel Wilson back. The talent around isn’t good enough to sustain a Super Bowl run and his defense is too heavy to carry them through. While no one really thought the Seahawks would be Super Bowl contenders, most people, including myself, still had them as a relevant team. Wilson has always been a good quarterback in the regular season, but this year, thanks to injuries, terrible defense and an inferior offensive line, the Seahawks have really fallen flat.
The worst part of it all is Jamal Adams. The Seahawks don’t even get their first-round pick thanks to Adams and now they’ll be forced to pay it off for the next few years.
Should the Seahawks fire Pete Carroll? I think so, it’s just time for a change in Seattle. It’s nothing against him. It just doesn’t work and it will only get worse.
Should the Seahawks trade Wilson? Whether he asks or not, it would be wise to trade him. I know he’s a fan favorite, but even if you keep him, what’s your ceiling with him? Can you honestly tell me that Wilson can take his team to another Super Bowl? Even as they fire Carrol and Ken Norton and bring in new players, that Seahawks roster is on the decline while the 49ers, Rams and Cardinals are all downhill. They have parts for the future, so put your good years behind and move on.
I hate the Minnesota Vikings with a passion. This one is personal to a hurtful degree. At the start of the year, we picked our division winners, playoff teams, Super Bowl games, and Super Bowl winners. I saw the Vikings win the division, and that’s not all, after a few weeks into the season I didn’t admit it was a bad prediction, I doubled down. Now I might be stupid, but I’m not stupid, and it doesn’t take a genius to see Vikings suck.
Mike Zimmer had to be sacked and the whole defense needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. As much as I hate the Vikings, I can admit they showed flashes of what they could have been. They beat the Packers and faced off against some of the best teams in the league, and they lost all of their games except one by eight points or less. The Bengals, Cardinals, Cowboys, Rams have all lost one score. This team could have been great, but they just lost tight games, and that usually comes down to the coaches. As much as everyone wants to blame Kirk Cousins, it wasn’t his fault. This team has a competitive roster in place with Pro Bowl talent scattered throughout the roster. The Vikings are up there with the Browns as the biggest disappointments of 2021.
The only reason he made the cut is because of the gravity of the situation at DUVAL. The best thing that happened to the Jacksonville Jaguars was that they beat the Indianapolis Colts, which knocked them out of the playoffs, and landed the first overall pick in back-to-back draft. Other than that, it was a mess.
Trevor Lawrence was considered the quarterback’s best prospect since Andrew Luck and John Elway, and Urban Myer was no random college coach either, he was very successful and one of the best to do so. At the start of the year it looked like a good game, but it fell apart very quickly. On the football side, few expected the Jaguars to be good, but they were a complete wreck. Lawrence looked horrible and the play call wasn’t helping him. His defense gave up free and easy points, except against Buffalo. I don’t call Lawrence a bust by any means because I still think he’ll be a great player, but it’s been a terrible year for the Jaguars.
