I was deeply upset by Scott Hanson’s announcement that Sunday’s edition of NFL RedZone was the 300th episode in the show’s history.

First of all, I do not like thinking of a week of NFL RedZone as “an episode.” If you told me I had watched 300 episodes of a show, I would say “oh no!”, but Secondly, I absolutely do not want to consider the amount of lifetime hours I have spent watching NFL RedZone.

– Rodger Sherman

🧀 Packers 23 🧀
⭐️ Cowboys 13 ⭐️

Look, I know I’m not exactly breaking new ground here by pointing out that the Dallas Cowboys are on TV too much. Our complaints have been heard and rejected.

On the one hand, football fans say “There are a variety of entertaining NFL teams, many of which are better and more relevant to the NFL championship chase than the Dallas Cowboys, and we would prefer to occasionally watch those teams instead of the Cowboys.”

In reply the TV networks say “lmao no you don’t, you love this garbage” and produce decades of TV ratings proving that the American public would rather watch the Dallas Cowboys than do basically anything else in the world.

I think my first article about America’s Cowboys Addiction was published in 2015. (Headline: The NFC East is garbage and we can’t stop watching it.” Eleven years later, little has changed.)

We yearn for The Star. We suck down Cowboys slop like a dog housing leftovers. If there was a battery or a rock in the middle of a Cowboys game, the American public would swallow it whole and would have to be taken to the emergency vet. They would prefer to create a show America would watch as intently as we watch the Cowboys, and they can’t do it. There is no city where NCIS could solve Navy Crimes that would make us even one-tenth as interested as we are in watching Dak Prescott go 24-for-42 with one touchdown and two interceptions. We hold the keys to our own Cowboys Prison.

But this isn’t about us. This is about the Dallas Cowboys, for whom the lights of primetime football are clearly too bright. (Incidentally, they’ve also had issues with the non-metaphorical brightness of afternoon football.)

Fantasy Genius is the must-have fantasy football tool to unlock the lore, stories, and stats of YOUR league. Stuff like “Who in your league is the best at making trades?” or “Who in my league is the most addicted to getting 1.7 points from Kyle Pitts?”

This week’s Fantasy Genius of the Week: Saints QB Tyler Shough! 144 passing yards, 3 passing TDs, 32 rushing yards, 1 rush TD, (26.92 points)

I think the most important thing to remember about fantasy football is it’s kinda connected to being good at Actual Football, but not 100 percent.

For example: Saints quarterback Tyler Shough.

Shough is a roughly average NFL quarterback. This is not meant to be an insult or an opinion, but rather a statement of fact. Out of 32 qualifying quarterbacks, he ranks somewhere between 14th and 18th in passer rating, QBR, completion rate, touchdown rate, and interception rate. His completion percentage is 0.8 percent higher than expectation, while his expected points added per dropback is -0.02. We’ve created a bunch of stats and models meant to indicate whether a QB is better or worse than a theoretical average NFL QB, and they’re all pointing at Tyler Shough and saying “no, he’s doing exactly what we’d expect out there.”

However! He ranks sixth in fantasy points, and was the QB2 on Sunday with 26.96 points. That’s because he plays for the Saints, who are committed to cramming as much football into a 60-minute game as possible. They’re snapping the ball every 26.5 seconds, the fastest rate in the league, resulting in 402 total plays, the fourth-most in the league, with 235 passing attempts, the third-most in the league.

Is Tyler Shough a top-five QB in the NFL? Of course not! But if the Saints are top-five in passing attempts, and Shough is an average QB on those attempts … players with Shough in their lineup might look like Fantasy Geniuses.

Wanna look up stats from the history of YOUR league? Become a Fantasy Genius! Subscriptions start at $3.99 a month and give everybody in your league access — that’s, like, 30 cents per player in a 12-team league. And use promo code RODGER to get 20 percent off!

🏜️ Cardinals 18 🏜️
🐏 Rams 16 🐏

What happens if you cast your scapegoat out into the wilderness to die and God is still mad at you? The Rams are in the process of finding out.

Last week, Los Angeles cut kicker Harrison Mevis after a poor start to the season, including a blocked field goal that lost them an overtime game against the Bills. Head coach Sean McVay took several chances to blame Mevis for his poor performance, specifically pointing out that the kick would have missed even if it weren’t blocked.

But even a sacrificial Ram couldn’t fix Los Angeles’ nagging special teams woes. In the first quarter of the Rams’ game against the Cardinals, new kicker Blake Grupe was injured making a tackle on a kickoff. Dude got BLOWN UP.

The Rams played three quarters without a kicker and lost because of it. They repeatedly left points on the field, failing to pick up fourth downs and 2-point conversions when they normally would have been able to kick field goals or extra points. The result? A two-point home loss to the Cardinals, one of the worst teams in the league.

You could argue Grupe’s injury was just a freak incident rather than a sign of a persistent special teams problem — but Grupe got hurt because the Rams are so bad at special teams. The return man is not supposed to break through the first ten guys on the return unit, requiring a 150-pound kicker to put his body on the line to prevent a return touchdown. A kicker injury is a sign you’re screwing up!

For as long as McVay has coached the Rams, his teams have struggled on special teams — but it’s never been worse than now, when the Rams have the top passing offense in the league, a slew of superstars on defense, and one of the worst special teams units ever recorded. Can historically bad special teams play really kill this supposed superteam?

🦬 Bills 35 🦬
🎰 Raiders 33 🎰

America’s favorite football-playing rhinoceros has done it again. Once every couple of weeks, the ping-pong balls bouncing around in Josh Allen’s skull spit out a Football Idea nobody else has ever had before.

On Sunday it was a flipped touchdown pass to Keon Coleman after juking a bunch of defenders. The shovel pass traveled at least 15 yards in the air and 14 yards longer than any shovel pass any other player has ever thrown in NFL history.

His teammates have come to expect this.

With big Josh, though, it’s tough to discern intentionality. Did Josh do this because it’s part of a larger strategy? Or did he just do it because it seemed cool and most of the time he does stuff that seems cool it works out and he did it and it worked out and was cool?

Let’s examine the evidence:

Bizarre situation unfolding in Philadelphia: Jalen Hurts played two weeks ago with “superficial” blood clots, then was ruled out of this game as the clots became more severe, and Monday it was announced that he’ll miss the rest of the season as the clots have developed into deep vein thrombosis in his leg and pulmonary emboli in both of his lungs. (That’s bad.)

The medical treatment the Eagles gave Hurts sounds like borderline malpractice — Hurts was apparently told it would be too dangerous for him to fall asleep before last week’s game against the Jaguars, but they let him play anyway, and then let him on an transatlantic plane back from London even though blood clots often worsen on long, confined flights.

I was pretty excited to write about this as The Travis Hunter Game, as he became the first player to catch a touchdown and intercept a pass in the same game since Brian Dawkins in 2002. Then the Texans had to go and win it. But I guess “getting really excited about Travis Hunter regardless of whether his team wins the game” is something I’ve been doing since he was at Colorado.

(BTW, I think I’ve got my Texas emoji usage sorted: The Texans are 🤠, the Cowboys are ⭐️, and the Longhorns are 🤘. I will keep you updated on the Sports! Team Emoji Style Guide as we proceed.)

The Colts fired GM Chris Ballard after this one — probably more because of the last half-decade of mismanagement than for losing to the winless Titans, but, well, you kinda do deserve to get fired for losing to the winless Titans.

The Patriots lost three of their five starting linemen in this one — right tackle Morgan Moses, left guard Alijah Vera-Tucker, and right guard Ben Brown — and still iced the game by running the ball eight consecutive times with third-string running back Corey Kiner. Not just bullyball — backup bullyball! Maybe the most impressive thing I saw all Sunday.

Caleb Williams came back, and this scoreline is straight up lying to you — the Bears were up 31-7 before the Falcons hit back-to-back touchdown-2-pointer combos.

The Ravens’ only TD drive came on the opening possession of the game; the Browns’ only TD drive came after a Derrick Henry fumble gave them the ball in Baltimore territory. Tough to say whether the Browns or the Giants is the worst team currently leading their division.

Pittsburgh pulled off a huge fourth quarter as excruciatingly slowly as possible — touchdown, field goal, field goal, field goal — won on the first possession of overtime.

Good news for the still-winless Chargers: They have a bye next week! I think we could all use a week without this deeply depressing team.

In Santa Clara, 8:15 p.m., ESPN

Tuning in for one last round of discussion of whatever the hell went wrong for the Commanders in last week’s tie. I hope they show it on the broadcast 17 times.