32 NFL Teams, 32 Fanbase Delusions

It is getting harder and harder to tell what individual NFL fanbases are delusional about.

Facebook memes now drown out local voices. AI slopbots are replacing local reporters. The search engines have seized up, the social networks splintered. No one knows what fans really want to talk about in the algorithmic echo chamber formerly known as the Internet. Heck, Mike Florio has resorted to criticizing Justin Herbert on camera to drive engagement. It’s as if the Tower of Babel has been rebuilt and we have lost the ability to communicate with each other.

Yet Too Deep Zone perseveres in our effort to puncture the silly little lies each team’s fanbase tells itself. This feature may look like the work of an angry old crank eager to tinkle on your Cheerios. But I’m really a friend telling fans hard truths that they don’t want to hear! I do this out of love! I swear! 

“Fanbases” are not hiveminds, of course. Each NFL fanbase consists of optimists, pessimists, skeptics, true believers, realists, cultists, haters, hardliners and the dreaded “casuals” who show up in late August and ask who Omar Cooper is.

Claiming that every member of any fanbase shares some mass delusion is an insult to each team’s silent majority of relatively-normal supporters. But if you feel offended by your favorite team’s delusion, I suggest you also read your arch-rival’s delusion. You are sure to agree that one is 100% spot on.

Arizona Cardinals

Mike LaFleur is not a designer Sean McVay knockoff. He's the baby brother of a designer Sean McVay knockoff, wearing a McVay costume like a toddler dressed as Spider-Man for Halloween, and he only looks semi-competent because he hired Nathaniel Hackett to stand next to him.

The 2025 Cardinals offense did not start playing better when Jacoby Brissett replaced Kyler Murray. They started falling behind 35-10 and then scoring meaningless fourth-quarter touchdowns when Brissett replaced Murray. Brissett only “deserves” a new contract because all de facto starting quarterbacks deserve a rather lofty minimum wage, and because Cardinals management deserves public humiliation, not because he is any good.

Receiver Michael Wilson isn’t some breakout superstar. Wilson racked up 327 of his 1,006 receiving yards last year in two games the Cardinals lost by a combined 86-39 score. 

Marvin Harrison isn’t due for a breakout campaign; he’s due to perform just well enough statistically to squeeze a $160 million contract from the Bidwills so he can go back to coasting on nepo thrusters.

Jeremiyah Love will rush for about 1,000 yards, and some folks will posit on blogs/podcasts that drafting him third overall was “worth it” when he goes 24-120-2 against the Giants in Week 4. All of those takes will sound like find-and-replace Saquon Barkley takes from 2018. No one will believe them, nor will anyone bat an eyelash when Love averages 2.7 yards per carry for the month of November.

Cardinals fans may be aware of all of these truths. But the Cardinals exist solely as a fantasy football entity for 99.5% of general NFL fans. So it’s important to set expectations appropriately.

Atlanta Falcons

Falcons fans died inside long ago. They no longer have the capacity to feel anything. They follow the team out of a sense of obligation. The team’s offseason storylines – Kyle Pitts trade rumors that are constructed entirely out of smoke; James Pearce’s depressingly-successful efforts to wriggle free from justice for his Lifetime Original Movie-caliber misdeeds – have a desultory vibe which only adds to the numbing ambivalence. These are not the offseason headlines of a team that’s going anywhere. 

Michael Penix is healthy and has been participating in OTAs, even taking snaps under center. In other words, the third-year “franchise” quarterback is not irrevocably damaged, still mastering remedial skills and just might be able to hold off a training camp challenge from Tua Tagovailoa. That’s the “good news” coming out of Falcons OTAs. The bad news is the best quarterback on the payroll currently runs football operations. 

Baltimore Ravens

Many Ravens fans were sick of John Harbaugh, which is understandable: longtime coaches soak up old disappointment like kitchen sponges.

Some of those fans reached the conclusion that Harbaugh was a bad coach who was holding the team back, which is ludicrous. Factor in the Patriots’ sudden 2025 turnaround under next-gen Belichick surrogate Mike Vrabel, and some Ravens fans expect immediate success under the Harbaugh-scented Jesse Minter.

Yeah, the Ravens should bounce back a bit if Lamar Jackson stays healthy. But the Ravens, like the Bills, are late-stage contenders whose top brass has resorted to throwing each other overboard to keep the ship afloat. 

The Ravens braintrust hopes to sell 10 wins, followed by a playoff loss, as a “return to form.” Don’t fall for it!

Speaking of the Bills …  

Buffalo Bills

Bills fandom has long been ironic Homer Simpson donut hell. The BillsMafia gorges on victories that they cannot really enjoy all season long, all the while bracing for the playoff rug-pull that will plunge them into despair. Already half-mad from years of tantric denial, BillsMafia must now play along with Brandon Beane’s palace coup and pretend to be enthusiastic about newly-promoted head coach Mesh Brady. 

Sure, Brady stunk as an offensive coordinator and spent his entire college and NFL career riding the coattails of great quarterbacks. But don’t worry, new defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard will fix everything. Leonhard is a hometown hero! And some podcasters just loved his work as the Broncos defensive passing game coordinator, because podcasters know how assistant coaching duties are divvied up on all 32 coaching staffs and are never just belching methane into the air on such matters. Leonhard is a total upgrade over crusty old Sean McDermott, whose defenses only finished in the top ten of fewest yards allowed six times in the last eight years!

Remember when Beane added Stefon Diggs and Von Miller to the roster in an attempt to catapult the Bills into the Super Bowl? Now it’s DJ Moore and Bradley Chubb. Beane keeps spamming the same moves, and the returns are rapidly diminishing. But don’t say anything or you’ll end up with a knife wound in the back and a bus ticket to Charlotte. 

Carolina Panthers

The Panthers have settled into a groove as the NFC South’s least embarrassing franchise, and as spoilers who ambush the top contenders when they least expect it. Who needs to compete with the Rams or Seahawks when you can just sucker punch them now and then? Panthers fans already have this year’s Week 17 home game against the Seahawks circled. They’ll win 23-21 on a fourth-quarter pick-6, raising their record to 7-9 while dropping the defending champions to 12-4 and taking away their first-round bye. 

Panthers fans seem to enjoy rooting for what they know is the NFL's 13th-to-15th best team. It’s less of a delusion than an optimistic worldview, and Too Deep Zone is not here to yuck anyone’s yum.

Just kidding! Too Deep Zone is here to yuck EVERYONE’S yum.

Chicago Bears

This isn’t a Bears fan delusion, but a Bears opponent’s delusion: NFC North rival fans are trying their darnedest to litigate away Caleb Williams’ 2025 season. They’ll cite his low completion rate, scoff at his overreliance on late-game heroics and hand-wave away anyone who points to indicators of broad-based improvement as the season wore on. 

No-no-no, [thumbs jammed into ears], Williams just got lucky on a bunch of hero balls, he’s not really developing into a superweapon under Ben Johnson’s tutelage, and don’t you DARE suggest that he looked at least as good as Jordan Love by season’s end, lest it prompt a very huffy 3,000-word response from the CheeseDoodle-dot-com blog!

As for a Bears delusion: no, the Bears defense is not very good, despite last year’s 33 takeaways. There’s a LOT of Shedeur Sanders, Joe Flacco and Geno Smith in that interception total, plus Jayden Daniels fumbling a handoff, George Pickens volleyball-punching an interception to Tremaine Edmunds, and other feats of squishy schedule and good fortune.

If the Bears decline in 2026, it won’t be because Williams is a mirage, but because they face some decent quarterbacks at the start of the season.

[Checks Bears early-season schedule] Yeah, that last thing’s probably not going to happen, either. 

Cincinnati Bengals

“We mean business, and we're ready to win games,” B.J. Hill said of the Bengals last week. “Ready to win now."

You are forgiven if you have no idea who B.J. Hill is. He’s been one of the Bengals’ starting defensive tackles for four years, averaging about 3.5 sacks per year in that span. Hill is also besties with new Bengals defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence. They both hail from North Carolina, and they played together on the 2019-20 Giants. 

Nothing screams “We mean business, and we’re ready to win games” like reuniting the 2019-20 Giants.

Cleveland Browns

ESPN is gaslighting Browns fans about Deshaun Watson.

The tag-team of Daniel Oyefusi and Jeremy Fowler published a longform whitewash of Watson’s career for ESPN this week. Frankly, their romantic partners should give them the Lysistrata treatment for it. It was that gross.

Oyefusi and Fowler wait until paragraph eleven to mention Watson’s sexual assault allegations, casting his escape from consequences as some silly old he said, dozens of shes said. It plays the “There were no criminal charges/He served his suspension/He underwent treatment” shell game, allowing readers to choose which contradictory rationalization they wish to swallow.

The ESPN piece also tells us how wonderful Watson’s year away from the Browns was – with pay, naturally – because “he had time to reflect on how he can get the best out of this year.” So we’re barely pretending that he was injured anymore. Watson just took a much-needed mental health year, the poor guy.

The piece has the temerity to blame fans for booing Watson in 2024. Jimmy Haslam even dispatches one of his business lackeys to admonish fans for their disloyalty. “If he's our starting quarterback, I know that there are people that probably won't be supportive, but they should need to be supportive as much as they can,” some suit-filler named J.W. Johnson said.

Haslam may be a scoundrel and a dipstick, but he’s shrewd enough to not put his name on that rancid puff piece. (Haslam’s only quotes in the piece came from interviews at the owners’ meetings.) The same cannot be said of Fowler and Oyefusi. I would teach seventh grade pre-Algebra at a school that banned antiperspirant before I would let myself be reduced to carrying overflowing chamber pots for the Powers That Be as they try to squeeze a few drops of ROI from an unrepentant sex offender. But maybe that’s why I’m self-employed.

Will Browns fans swallow this claptrap? They’re Browns fans, folks. Their team broke their spirits long ago. Many of them would follow the Joker into a green gas cloud just for the brief rush of manic euphoria, followed by the tender release of oblivion. 

Dallas Cowboys

Being a Cowboys fan in 2026 is like being a KISS fan in 2026. Fans know they like something that is objectively dreadful and has been culturally irrelevant for decades. But their support is an act of mild defiance for folks who aren’t bold enough to be Juggalos or Jets fans.