The Year in Bad Ideas

It has been another NFL season of thrills, comebacks, surprises, inspirational moments, unprecedented achievements, dazzling highlights and gridiron glory.

You don’t come to the Too Deep Zone to read about that stuff. (We’ll have plenty of time to celebrate success throughout the playoffs, anyway.)

It has also been another NFL season of bad ideas, foolish plans, hilarious pratfalls, doomed-from-the-start wishful thinking and the New York Jets.

Ah, yes, let’s plunge that pessimism straight into our veins.

The Intangible Man

J.J. McCarthy’s intangibles turned out to be so powerful that they rendered him invisible.

Even at Michigan, McCarthy hid in plain sight. He was the spiritual son of Jim Harbaugh, a heroic handoff machine, a 1970s Big 10 quarterback trapped in the 2020s B1G. His NFL scouting report was made up mostly of negative space. He got credit for the throws he was never asked to make. He was a slab of tofu who supposedly soaked up the championship broth he simmered in.

The Vikings drafted McCarthy to rescue them from years of mercenary veteran quarterback complacency. McCarthy suffered a serious injury 17 preseason passes into his professional career. Sam Darnold replaced McCarthy and led the Vikings to 14 victories before Darnolding at the very end of the 2024 season.

You could almost hear Monty Hall taunting the Vikings as their offseason decision approached. You can either go home with this lovely living room set, or with whatever is behind Door Number Two.

In this allegory, Kevin O’Connell and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah are dressed in a two-person moo-cow costume; it doesn’t really matter who gets to wear the head.

Kevin O’Connell: quarterback whisperer. Based on whom/what/when? O’Connell has NEVER developed a quarterback, unless you count Darnold, and the McCarthy decision makes no sense if you count Darnold.

Quarterback whisperers are as real as fairy godmothers, anyway. Show me one, and I will show you a bullseye drawn around the dart. Believing in quarterback whisperers makes for shaky analysis. Believing you have become one can lead to organizational disaster.

And then there’s Kwesi Adofo-Mensah: South Jersey guy, economist, analytics advocate, relatable character. Adofo-Mensah understands markets and risks. But economists love to lean their tipsiest decisions on statistical lampposts. The most foolish risks are justified by vacuum-sealed probabilities and the unrealistic belief that people – bosses, employees, quarterback prospects – will behave as predictably as the variables in an equation.

(Adofo-Mensah is also surely familiar with the Monty Hall Problem: once you obtain additional information, the best bet is to switch to Door Number Two! But here’s the thing: if there was a goat chewing on a tin can behind it, Hall didn’t really make the Let’s Make a Deal contestant take it home and live with it, let alone anoint it as his franchise quarterback.)

The Whisperer and the Economist burned the boats. No veteran challengers or mentors necessary! McCarthy spent the 2024 season in private tutorials with O’Connell, at least when not inside the MRI machine or jogging in a whirlpool. Why, the Vikings quarterback room is practically Dagobah: what more mentorship did McCarthy need? Vikings reporters passed along a steady diet of McCarthy agitprop. No one has ever worked harder in rehab, studied a playbook with such diligence, or devoted more emotional labor to building chemistry with his receivers.

When a team spends an offseason broadcasting praise about a young quarterback’s “leadership,” it means that the team’s brass is trying to convince itself, and probably the young quarterback as well. It’s manifest-your-reality self-help rhetoric and fanbase pablum, the sweaty banter of the carnival barker. Steelers fans who remember Kenny Pickett can nod along to this tune.

O’Connell even hid McCarthy during the preseason, giving him one shaky series of work. Fake it ‘till you make it. Ignore the man behind the curtain.

The Intangible Man finally took the field in Week 1. McCarthy won Offensive Player of the Week for completing a few passes in the fourth quarter of a victory over the Bears; something about him inspires a participation trophy mentality. He got hurt at the end of a putrid performance in Week 2, then poofed away for six weeks with a five-week injury.

When McCarthy returned, he looked like oblivion itself: an abysmal void in the shape of a quarterback. McCarthy was a bottle of smoke; the Vikings had just talked their fans – and themselves – into believing he was a genie.

McCarthy developed concussion symptoms after a Week 12 loss. The Vikings eagerly followed protocols to the jot and tittle. O’Connell foisted hometown hero Max Brosmer on Vikings fans. Brosmer was worse than McCarthy. It was like snake oil salesmen offering a full rebate in wooden nickels.

McCarthy returned again. He looked semi-capable in a pair of heavily-scripted appearances against two of the NFL’s worst defenses, tossing a few passes to his Pro Bowl-caliber receivers while the running game and defense did the rest. Michigan-style victories. Vikings fans (and many media members), emotionally drained and desperate for any glimmer of hope, lined up for another swig of that loopy-sauce patent medicine.

Then McCarthy got hurt for a fourth time in two seasons, prematurely/mercifully ending a woeful performance against the lowly Giants. Brosmer returned to produce three net passing yards in a Christmas miracle against the Lions. Sometimes, the best thing O’Connell can whisper to his quarterbacks is “just hand off.”

And thus, two of the NFL’s Smartest Men™ transformed a team on the verge of Super Bowl contention into a laughingstock. It was wishful thinking disguised as wisdom, hubris in analytical clothing, delusion masquerading as due diligence. It was willful malpractice performed in plain sight on a once-healthy patient.

McCarthy probably pulled himself off the all-time cautionary-tale scrap heap with those December victories. O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah will straight-facedly point to McCarthy’s injuries and brief stretches of competence, preserve their jobs, and hitch their reputations and the Vikings’ future to what Adofo-Mensah should recognize was McCarthy’s dead cat bounce. Vikings reporters will gird themselves for another offseason of glowing reports about The Man Who Isn’t There.

Two full seasons into his career, McCarthy remains intangible. He was probably never really “real” in the first place. And the Vikings haven’t even made many friends along the way.

Who’s Your Daddy?

Mark Davis is a very literal Las Vegas “mark.” Sharps see the likes of Davis coming a mile away: wealthy, weak-willed men who are easy to impress and susceptible to flattery. Comp them a steak dinner and they’ll toss their wallet on the roulette table. Flutter your eyelashes and they’ll fall asleep with the penthouse suite safe wide open.

Davis has been living down to the role of the pudding-brained track-suited failson in search of a surrogate daddy since his imperious father died. You don’t need to listen to man-o-sphere podcasts to smell the beta-male energy wafting off him like overpriced cologne.

Davis yearns to be dominated. He becomes helplessly besotted with strutting, hyperconfident NFL alpha-peacocks: Jon Gruden, Josh McDaniels (wearing his Super Bowl rings the way a cocktail waitress wears a Wonderbra), even Maxx Crosby when he decided to switch the power dynamic in 2024 and run the organization from the defensive line.

It was inevitable that Davis would someday dabble in NFL polyamory. Tom Brady arrived bearing both credibility and a line of credit: Davis’ two greatest itches, simultaneously scratched. Pete Carroll was bored with his de facto retirement and uninterested in the distractions his peers enjoy: basketball-college sinecures, much-younger women.

Two very different Pigskin Daddies topping one org chart? Scandalous. Salacious. Sexy. Davis was, let’s say, intrigued.

Brady inserted one buddy in the front office, another in the strength-and-conditioning department, and a third – Chip Kelly – as offensive coordinator. Carroll larded the rest of his staff with cronies and relatives while anointing late-career binky Geno Smith as his unchallenged quarterback.

The Raiders weren’t a football team. They were a proxy war. Or perhaps a real-time strategy game scenario. Crosby, perhaps the smartest bear in the cave, negotiated a $106.5 million extension while the others drew up the Treaty of Yalta, then took a side hustle as his alma mater’s general manager for something to do after practice on weekdays.

Geno performed like a 35-year old journeyman who spent his prime on various benches. Kelly clashed with Carroll and The Carollettes, then checked out mentally, then got fired. Special teams coordinator Tom McMahon, an incumbent with no Carroll or Brady patronage, never stood a chance.

Brady began appearing in the coaching booth wearing a headset. Carroll ended every game looking like General Pickett after the Battle of Gettysburg.

Team Brady slaughtered Team Carroll behind the scenes as the Raiders got slaughtered each week on the field. And what will Brady have to show for his triumph? A franchise with no coach or quarterback. A wasted year for young stars Ashton Jeanty and Brock Bowers. A defense whose lone star is a canny mercenary. And a penniless puppet on the throne.

A fully-invested Brady might well be a crackerjack general manager and showrunner. But Brady is using the Raiders the way a mafia boss uses the Dead Body River Port Authority.

The Raiders are a glorified patronage gig.

And Davis? He has finally completed his transformation into Fredo Corleone. Let’s hope he at least enjoyed it.

Neeson Season

The Philip Rivers comeback saga has not been inspiring. It has been very literally cringe-worthy.

I haven’t needed self-insert characters in my stories since I was a child. (Paul Atreides gets tortured by crazy nuns? HE’S JUST LIKE ME.) I never cared for Jack Ryan or the Taken films. Middle-aged wish-fulfillment superdudes? No thanks. The sensei/drill sergeant is supposed to be a badass in one first-act scene, then step gracefully aside to watch the Young Hero’s Journey.

The Colts chose to do things the other way around. And yes, they had a choice.

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far away, the Colts were 8-2 and cruising toward the Super Bowl. It was true, and yet it was false. DVOA validated them – DVOA still validates them – but they still carried the whiff of Game Stop stock.

Daniel Jones as an MVP candidate? Shane Steichen, going in a month from a -150 moneyline for First Coach Fired to +150 for Coach of the Year? A familiar roster of .500-caliber veterans, suddenly unstoppable?

The schedule was squishy. The Broncos win was fluky. The Colts knew they needed more. They mortgaged the future for Sauce Gardner. All-in. Buy-Buy-Buy. Ignore the cracks in the infrastructure.

The seeds of the 2025 Colts downfall were planted back in 2023. Chris Ballard drafted Anthony Richardson, surely knowing that the frozen bag of raw cookie dough would need two years to bake. Steichen named the still-defrosting Richardson his opening-day rookie starter, then kept force-feeding him into the lineup.

Two years later, Richardson has become Mister Bean spiked with Gen-Z insouciance. He was unable to beat Jones for a starting job or use basic exercise equipment properly enough to be a healthy backup.

So the Colts went on their Young Hero’s Journey without the young hero. Jones got seriously injured, kept playing, then got extra-seriously injured. Third-stringer Riley Leonard took one hit and went down like a faceless henchman.

Remember the scene in Star Wars when Obi-Wan Kenobi went from being a Force Ghost back to a living Jedi to save the day? No? That’s because it never happened, because it’s freakin’ stupid. Actually, Luke Skywalker did something similar in The Last Jedi. Everyone hated it, because it’s freakin’ stupid. And then the Colts did it with Rivers.

You can argue – Ballard and Steichen will surely argue, when called into Carlie Irsay-Gordon’s office and forced to kneel because she just hauled away her father’s beanbag furniture – that they had no better option than to contact Rivers. But if your best option is to call a long-retired grandfather away from hearth and home and insert him immediately into an NFL lineup to save your season/job, then you have already failed, failed, failed in a hundred incremental ways.

Richardson fell out of the Colts’ plans in September and thwapped himself in the face in October. Jones played a game-and-a-half on a broken leg. The Colts had ample warning. They didn’t have to make things weird.

Rivers has never not looked like Liam Neeson climbing a fence since his return. His comeback looks like a publicity stunt. Or, on Rivers’ side of things, a vanity project: a financially-secure dude engaging in midlife thrill-seeking behavior. If your brother-in-law did something similarly unnecessary and dangerous, you’d help your sister find a marriage counselor.

Sure, Rivers has “kept things close.” But that has looked like the primary goal. The Colts spent the last month keeping up appearances. They leaned into the Grampy Rivers feel-good story, to his Waltons-sized family cheering in a luxury box whenever he mustered the strength for a five-yard touchdown pass. They pointed a big flashing arrow at their tumble out of the playoff chase.

Leonard has been healthy enough to make mop-up appearances for two weeks. The Dolphins just won a game with Quinn Ewers. The Vikings just won one with Max Brosmer. Shedeur Sanders has notched a few wins. Third-string rookies win isolated games all the time. The youngsters can usually run, adding a useful dimension to rudimentary game plans. Coaches also aren’t afraid of looking like the fiends who installed the faulty elevator at the nursing home if the rookies take a hit.

Could Leonard have surprised the 49ers or Jaguars? We’ll never know. We were stuck watching the Last Action Hero try to beat up the bad guys without a stunt double or CGI.

So, yes, watching Rivers was literally cringe-worthy, because every time he fell, it was uncertain whether he would ever get up again. Fortunately, Leonard will start the meaningless (for the Colts) Week 18 game against the Texans. Health insurance for middle-aged Americans is expensive enough as it is.

Zen and the Art of Jets Dysfunction

The Jets came up with a fresh new plan for avoiding failure in 2025: they weren’t going to try at all.

Contending? Not a chance. Rebuilding? Nah. The Jets planned to spend 2025 existing.

Call it Zen football. Or self care. Or the NFL equivalent of crippling depression. The Jets abandoned the very concept of expectations. It was almost inspirational in its purity.

The Jets hired a consolation-prize defensive coordinator to replace their previous consolation-prize defensive coordinator as head coach. They grabbed a third-chance prospect to be their quarterback. They swallowed $21 million in bitter cap medicine – their most recent toxic relationship had long-term consequences – and flopped into the Jets-shaped indentation on their couch to rest up for whatever comical caper 2026 might have in store for them.

Somehow, the Jets still fell short of their utter lack of goals.

The Jets did perform two non-nihilist football moves before tuning in, turning on and dropping out: they extended the Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson contracts.

Sauce and Wilson were the NFL Rookies of the Year as first-round picks in 2022. They were impressive in 2023. Sauce tailed off a bit in 2024, but Wilson caught 101 passes.

Tradition required the Jets to sour on Sauce and Wilson in year four, just as they soured on nearly every first-round pick since Darrelle Revis. Damaged people damage people, and the damaged Jets, like dictatorial stage parents, have spent 20 years declaring their brightest young stars to be disappointments, then disowning them. The financial commitment to Sauce and Wilson amounted to a pre-apology: please stand by us while we figure our shit out; we’ll make it worth your while.

The Jets announced the four-year, $60 million (guaranteed) Sauce extension on July 15th.

The Jets traded Sauce to the Colts on November 4th.

Four years and $60 million disappeared in just 112 days.

The Jets also traded Quinnen Williams, one of their best players and the only other pre-2022 first- or second-round pick still on the active roster, to the Cowboys. (Former first-round pick Alijah Vera-Tucker spent this season on injured reserve.)

Then Wilson landed on IR with a knee sprain. He could possibly have returned for the final weeks of the season. All parties shrugged and shelved him until 2026.

And thus, the Jets discovered how to quit quitting itself.

A lot happened in the 112 days between the Sauce signing and the Sauce trade. Aaron Glenn struggled with tactical basics and came across as a surly sourpuss in press conferences. Justin Fields looked the way he always does – like a 1980s Big 8 wishbone quarterback. He slowly ceded his starting job to Tyrod Taylor, then ended up on the back of the bench with a mystery injury.

Taylor eventually vanished, and undrafted rookie Brady Cook arrived to fling passes out of bounds. The Jets lost four December games by a combined score of 153-46. They were embarrassing, even by their own standards.

Yes, but … what did they expect? Wasn’t the rough start the point?

Bench Fields: sure. Roast Glenn: he’s practically begging for it. But gutting the defense of under-contract stars in their prime? Abandoning the closest thing the franchise had to a long-term plan? That’s shame-cycle behavior: tortured souls succumbing to their most self-destructive demons.

Per insider reports, the Jets plan to retain Glenn. He and Darren Mougey – the genius behind both the Sauce extension and the Sauce trade – will get a chance to rebuild the Jets using all the draft picks Mougey acquired by trading the handful of quality players the Jets acquired with the last batch of extra draft picks the Jets acquired by trading the handful of quality players …

You can see why spending a year on the couch to break a cycle like that seemed so appealing.

But if the Jets could even tank properly, they wouldn’t be the Jets.

Happy New Year, everyone! Thanks for all of your support in 2025. See you in 2026! Like, four days from now!