In the grand scheme of things, Week 1 of the NFL season means nothing. There are still 16 games to go afterward, and a lot of teams use that first game as a kind of unofficial preseason game to iron out all the kinks. After just one week, it wouldn’t be fair to make such grand pronouncements as “The Falcons may never win another game,” or “Boy, the Lions are kinda fucked,” or “Justin Herbert has gone from overrated to just plain sucking ass.”
But after two games? Well now, I think that’s a large enough sample size to make the kind of sweeping generalizations that make for good football radio. So that’s exactly what Arif Hasan and I do this week on All Ball.
But before we break down the Week 3 slate for your listening pleasure, we take on questions from you, the All Ball listeners. One of you asked why teams don’t run play action on every down instead of just some downs. Another one of you asked why this podcast exists. For a show that will forever remain free of gambling talk or promotion, tackling these hard questions represents the most daring bet of all. Only the manliest of manly men are willing to stare biting criticism directly in the face and say, “Nah.” That’s us! We’re those guys!
We also briefly explore an as-yet-unverified piece of intel about some behind-the-scenes fuckery with the Tennessee Titans.
So open up the podcast app of your choice and listen as we break down all the results from Week 2 and look ahead to every Week 3 matchup. You can also watch All Ball on the Defector Media YouTube channel if you simply must have faces to match the voices. And hey, make sure you subscribe to Arif’s Wide Left newsletter for in-depth coverage of football (and sometimes politics) that you literally will not find anywhere else. And if you like what you see and hear, tell your friends. To answer one of our hate mailers: This podcast is for football lovers … and for those of us who like trashing any teams that fuck up two weeks running.
