This weekend your Cincinnati Bengals beat up on my Buffalo Bills. As expected. The game was simply a formality. I didn’t even watch it, just watched the score updates come in on my phone as the Bengals had an easy victory to stay undefeated.
To be honest, I’ve only watched probably about half an hour of NFL games this entire season. It just doesn’t excite me anymore – and not because the Bills aren’t winning and haven’t won since the 90’s. The NFL is becoming much like the NBA, which I’m also not a fan of. Individuals dictate the outcome of games, not the teams.
The NFL is simply a quarterback league. If you have a quarterback, you win. That’s it. Your running back doesn’t matter, your wide receivers don’t matter, your defense doesn’t matter that much, and even your offensive line really isn’t that important as long as they can give the quarterback two seconds to run a slant play.
Look at the elite teams and who they have at quarterback. New England has Tom Brady who simply doesn’t age. Green Bay has Aaron Rodgers who’s throwing to a bunch of receivers you’ve never heard of. Denver has Peyton Manning who while he isn’t what he used to be, is still probably the smartest guy in the league. And Cincinnati has Andy Dalton who despite his playoff performances is a fantastic quarterback that any team except New England and Green Bay would kill to have.
Look at Dallas, Tony Romo goes down and they’re now sitting at 2-3 barely beating out the helpless Redskins for last place in the NFC East. Colin Kapernick isn’t performing in San Francisco this season and they’re in last place.
The Bills have had one of the best defenses in the league for a few years now and can’t even make the playoffs because they’re busy choosing if Tyrod Taylor or E.J. Manuel is going to start. It doesn’t matter who starts. Neither are good enough to win in the NFL so it doesn’t matter if you traded for LeSean McCoy and have arguably the best defensive line in football, if you don’t have a really good quarterback you can’t win.
Philip Rivers threw for over 500 yards and had no turnovers at Green Bay. Doesn’t matter. Rodgers is better so Green Bay won. At this point the NFL is basically a game only played by quarterbacks. The rest of the players on the field just have some really nice on-field seats.
Bengals fans, enjoy Andy Dalton while you can this year, because if he goes down with an injury, you’ll become the Cleveland Browns in an instant.
Reach Charles Grove at 937-544-2391 or cgrove@civitasmedia.com.
