Now that the NFL has found a way to extract the zest of Major League Baseball’s Hot Stove and purify it into it’s most potent form, they’ve also ensured a way to make long-deflating storylines bleed into the regular season when the games actually count.
This winter and early spring has been especially consequential, with some of the league’s biggest stars changing teams. It ensures that every week this fall, there will be some type of callback to this moment. We’ll be trapped in a bad, recurring episode of True Detective (the year it wasn’t good), forced to remember milquetoast details of the past.