This weekend served as the perfect reminder as to why the NFL is the best professional sports league in America.
The Buffalo Bills emerged from having a player retire at halftime last Sunday and early talk of going 0-16 to nearly shutting out the heavyweight Minnesota Vikings.
En route to a 3-0 start, Patrick Mahomes broke Peyton Manning’s record for most touchdown passes to start a season, while inserting himself into MVP candidacy and the Kansas City Chiefs into Super Bowl contention.
Following an embarrassing offensive performance in Detroit for the AFC juggernaut New England Patriots, the undefeated Miami Dolphins now lead the AFC East by two games.
Oh, and the Cleveland Browns won for the first time in 635 days.
Recently, it’s become accepted as fact by so many in the sports world — or at least in the Twittersphere — that the NBA is No. 1. While the NBA is better at supporting its players and communities, what ultimately sets the NFL apart is that it offers a large group of fans hope for a championship.
As former New York Jets Head Coach Herm Edwards said, “You play to win the game. You don’t play to just play it.”
Considering the recent dominance of the Golden State Warriors, most NBA teams are playing to just play.
Before the season begins next month, 24 NBA teams can be reasonably counted out at having a legitimate shot at a championship, barring major injury to stars on the Warriors, Boston Celtics, Toronto Raptors, Philadelphia 76ers, Houston Rockets or Los Angeles Lakers.
Even with that generous list, most fans would be surprised if it’s not the Warriors defeating the Celtics in the NBA Finals next summer.
For the past four years, it’s been the same two teams, Cavaliers and Warriors, in the NBA Finals. That’s not to diminish the excellence of their rivalry in the Finals.
Each year's Finals have been objectively compelling, except last summer's sweep by Golden State.
But, in the leadups to those series, neither team usually faced a serious threat to its championship appearances.
The better team wins a higher percentage of the time in the NBA, but it lacks the excitement of the NFL. Every NFL game majorly sways where a team finishes in the standings.
The stars of NBA players shine brighter than the stars of the NFL, but these are both team games. Fans don’t buy tickets to see 33-10-10 stat lines from a star basketball player in a loss, they go to the games to see their team win.
Because of the increasing focus on fantasy sports, it’s become commonplace to focus on the gaudy stats of elite players. For example, Russell Westbrook won an MVP award for breaking the record for most triple-doubles in a season, but his team finished sixth in the Western conference and was bounced from the playoffs in five games.
“Any Given Sunday” could not be a better way to describe the unpredictability and urgency that NFL fans love. And in the NFL, this week continued to prove that every game matters.
