I Love You, NFL

In the sports discussion alone, the outbreak of coronavirus could not have come at a worse time for the NBA and the MLB. The NBA regular season was winding down and the playoffs were about to be at the center of the sporting world as LeBron chased a Championship for the Lakers while Giannis Antetokounmpo hoped to lead Milwaukee to their first title in 49 years. Then, nothing.

The MLB’s Spring Training was in full force and the league was just days away from kicking off the 2020 season with the Nationals defending their World Series Championship and the Astros at the center of every discussion on ESPN. Then, silence.

Then, of course, there is the XFL, an entire league that folded after the season was forced to end prematurely due to the virus.

But while the outbreak couldn’t have come at a worse time for the NBA, MLB and XFL, there’s an argument to be made that it couldn’t have come at a better time for the NFL. Of course, the virus is terrible and horrible things are happening around the world to people around the world. But from an entirely selfish point of view from the NFL, the quarantine and cancelation of sporting events were perfectly timed for the NFL.

Suddenly, we don’t have MLB games to talk about. So what do we fill our time with? Breaking down the latest NFL uniform release.

NBA Playoffs canceled? We’ve got the NFL Draft to break down.

The NFL Offseason fails to live up to the hype that the NBA’s does typically, but with the rest of the sporting world put on hold the NFL has given us enough drama to hold us over until the quarantine is lifted and life can begin to resume like normal.

There’s the release of new uniforms. This topic alone could be its own blog post as you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone as passionate about sports uniforms as I am, but I’ll keep it short. You have the Bucs and Browns going back in time for their uniform release and the two teams returned to their roots in their newest threads.

Then you have a couple of really bad ones. The Atlanta Falcons, and as much as it pains me to say, the Patriots, both released new uniforms that were, well, not great. Each has its own elements that I enjoy. The Falcons chrome facemask and enlarged logo on their helmets look good. The Patriots’ home blue looks good as well, and I like that they changed the shoulder stripe. But each uniform has its elements that look really, really bad. The Falcons’ red gradient look is something out of a movie about a semi-pro team, while the Pats’ white jerseys looks sloppy and the colors just don’t work together.

Then there’s the newest Chargers’ uniforms that instantly became the best in the league. The numbers on the helmets, the redesigned bolt on the shoulders, the number font, everything about them looks great.

Then there’s the drama stemming from the Jacksonville Jaguars organization. The Jaguars have been going through an implode ever since they lost to the New England Patriots in the Playoffs two seasons ago. They signed Blake Bortles to a long extension and then soon-after cut him. They traded their best defensive players, Dante Fowler, Jalen Ramsey and Calais Campbell, and now they are shopping running back Leonard Fournette. It seems like everyone on Jacksonville is being traded except for the one guy who wants to leave the most.

Yannick Ngakoue has been vocal on Twitter as of late about his desire to leave the Jaguars. But most recently, he took to Twitter to go after Jags owner and exec Tony Khan. It’s not every day you see a player and an owner go back and forth on Twitter, and it’s even rarer to see the owner come away with the W.

Then, of course, there is the Draft. All eyes have been on the Draft since the sporting world was put on hold. Whether it would happen or not, how it would work. Yes, the physical draft in Las Vegas was canceled but the draft will go on, albeit electronically, to the delight of sports fans everywhere.

So, who will go where? Will Tua Tagavailoa fall in the draft? Will the Patriots pick a QB? Will the Redskins pass on the best player in the Draft? Who will trade down? Who will trade up? Questions that fans can debate for weeks. And then once the Draft is over, continue to debate who got better, who got worse, and how these players fit on their new teams.

Oh, and the greatest player in the history of the game changed teams just a few weeks ago as well.

So thank you NFL. Thank you for giving us fans something to talk about, something to look forward to and something to fill our time with.

With the absence of the NBA, MLB and other sports around the world, now is the perfect time for the NFL to shine.