America has been in election fever for months, reaching its peak on Election Tuesday. Meanwhile, the NFL is catching one or two headlines with its trade deadline, at least in the sports sector. And here and there it even has parallels to big politics!
For a long time, the NFL Trade Deadline was more of a small stepchild in the gigantic football league’s pumped-up sensational calendar. While the NBA and the NHL have been celebrating their swap meet finals in a spectacular way for years and have recorded monumental shifts in their league’s balance of power, the most profitable sports league in the world has more or less been languishing. Hey, a slot corner for a sixth-round pick, stop the printing presses!
But things have slowly changed, or at least that’s how it seems. More and more teams are hoping that they can somehow manage one or two trades, media interest is growing and people are hoping for a step forward, especially in certain positions. The behavior of the individual teams is always a very clear positioning, a kind of choice if you want to strive for the zeitgeist. The parallels between the US presidential election and the deadline may be a little lame, but somehow they drag their way forward. Ultimately, the NFL remains a reflection of society, a playground where real, albeit hyper-sterilized, life takes place.
NFL Trade Deadline creates new realities
Those who play there certainly couldn’t escape the political sensationalism that hit Hinz, Kunz and all their friends even here in Germany. A storm circling around two highly suspicious and questionable candidates, in which countless supposed experts with expiring New York Times subscriptions wanted to know exactly what was right and what was wrong, only to ultimately fail to understand that almost that Half of “Land of the Free” has somehow seen things differently for years. In addition to the proof of widespread futility, the path of the storm leaves one thing above all: one now has to come to terms with every reality. Whether you want that or not.
If your favorite NFL team sucks right now, it’s trade deadline time… pic.twitter.com/ek9DRDwabB
— Brent Sobleski (@brentsobleski) November 3, 2024
The same is true for many NFL teams and their fans. The Cleveland Browns now know that a rebuild is on the cards. Likewise, the Saints now have certainty because they have chosen a certain path. Just like in politics, no one knows exactly what this will look like and what the next few years will bring. Nevertheless, the newfound knowledge can provide some stability, no matter how painful some of the meters on the way back to real NFL life may be. And in the case of the two teams mentioned, you will certainly need some strong painkillers so that you can cope with the Watson case or the simmering in your own cap hell. But at some point a new, more beautiful tomorrow will come. And it becomes all the more beautiful when you remember the darkness of the past.
Detroit Lions are doing everything right again
We don’t know for sure whether the Detroit Lions are still doing that these days, but one can assume that they have long since moved beyond the often cheap situational motivation of supposed “disrespect” or dispelling old demons. Rather, they make a highly professional, pragmatic franchise that deserves every bit of success that it seems to be solidifying week after week. In the end, there was no alternative to the move for Za’Darius Smith after Aidan Hutchinson’s injury and whoever is now upset about the ex-Brown’s declining qualities is probably living in a dream world. There’s an old saying that “beggars can’t be choosers” and that’s exactly how it is at the NFL negotiating table. Sometimes you have to take what you can get. If it fits like a glove, like in this case, all the better.
Things are much less fitting for the Dallas Cowboys, whose move for Jonathan Mingo is one of the big head-scratchers of this year’s deadline. As small as the move may be, it is a typical illustration of what has been wrong in Texas for years. You plan with ideas that aren’t real, you strengthen parts of the team that won’t work because they’re weak in other areas. On top of that, you get lost when it comes to cost control. At some point you start to wonder that somehow everything turns out differently than you expected. It’s similar in politics, where many people do the same thing over and over again, but are then surprised that the results only change marginally or not at all.
And at some point, yes at some point, reality strikes back despite all the castles in the air.
