Nobody Here Has Ever Been Unlucky

Twelve days. Thursday, September 3, seven o'clock. I've been on this beat two months and I've already read every season this league has ever played, so I know what the next twelve days look like for most of you. Nothing. Then a frantic Wednesday.

Here is the situation. The National Football League spent the offseason tearing itself down to the studs. Myles Garrett is a Los Angeles Ram. A.J. Brown is a New England Patriot. Kyler Murray is a Minnesota Viking and the quarterback they drafted to be the future is now holding a clipboard. Kirk Cousins is a Raider. Tua is a Falcon. Geno is a Jet. Kansas City handed a running back forty-three million dollars.

Meanwhile, seven of you are preparing for this draft the way a man prepares for a colonoscopy: by refusing to think about it until the morning of, and then panicking in a parking lot. This is my first draft with you people and I already know how it goes, because it is in the archive twenty-six times. Somebody is going to say a player's name out loud, get corrected on which team he plays for now, and then take him anyway out of spite.

What follows is what you missed, what you're voting on, and what the book already says about you. Read it or don't. It goes in the record either way.

01The Offseason Lost Its Damn Mind

The TradeMyles Garrett Is A Los Angeles Ram

Read that slowly. The best defensive player alive spent his entire career being wasted in Cleveland, got out, and landed somewhere with palm trees and a quarterback who can complete a forward pass. People who cover this for a living have it among the five biggest trades the sport has ever done, and that is the calm version.

Cleveland's return was Jared Verse, who is a real player, which somehow makes it worse. The Browns got fair value and it still reads like a man selling a kidney to finance a jet ski.

The HeistA.J. Brown Went To New England For One First-Round Pick

One. That was the whole bill. An All-Pro receiver in his prime moved for the kind of package you would expect for a competent left guard, and half the league is walking around pretending they were asleep when the phone rang.

So now A.J. Brown catches passes in Foxborough in December. That should be a wonderful time for a man whose whole public personality is being visibly wronged on a sideline.

MinnesotaKyler Murray Is A Viking. J.J. McCarthy Is Furniture.

The Vikings drafted J.J. McCarthy, waited on him, built around him, and then signed Kyler Murray, which in the National Football League is the equivalent of your girlfriend adding a close male friend to the lease. McCarthy has been demoted to backup after completing 57.6 percent of his passes and finishing thirty-second in EPA. Thirty-second. There are not that many starting quarterbacks in the sport.

Cleveland, AgainThe Browns Quarterback Circus Has A Ringmaster

Shedeur Sanders and Deshaun Watson are in an actual competition for actual snaps. One insider called the whole operation a “training camp circus.” Sanders got clowned by a Bills player at a joint practice and mocked during a camp scrum. And then Deion turned up at practice to offer the coaching staff his insight.

Somewhere in Ohio there is a grown man being paid a professional salary to run a football team while a Hall of Famer in sunglasses stands beside him explaining his own son to him.

Las VegasKirk Cousins Is A Raider And We All Know How This Ends

Cousins landed in Vegas, which is perfect, because nothing captures Kirk Cousins like a city built entirely on people overestimating their odds. Behind him sits the rookie Fernando Mendoza, waiting patiently, the way you wait for a parking spot when you can already see the man walking to his car.

Also in Vegas: Tyler Linderbaum, now the highest-paid center in league history. They committed record money to the man who hands the ball backwards. No notes. Perfect franchise.

Everybody MovedYour 2024 Cheat Sheet Is Toilet Paper

Tua to Atlanta. Geno Smith to the Jets. Malik Willis to Miami. DJ Moore to Buffalo. Jaylen Waddle to Denver. Michael Pittman to Pittsburgh. Dexter Lawrence to Cincinnati. Trey Hendrickson to Baltimore. Rashan Gary to Dallas. Jonathan Greenard to Philadelphia. Minkah Fitzpatrick to the Jets. Bradley Chubb to Buffalo. Alijah Vera-Tucker to New England.

And Kenneth Walker III took forty-three point three million dollars over three years from Kansas City. A record deal at a position the internet spent a decade insisting does not matter.

Camp NotesMarvin Harrison Jr. Forgot The One Thing

The scouting report on Marvin Harrison Jr. coming out of college was hands. Elite hands. Generational hands. His primary attribute. This August his camp highlight reel has been drops , enough of them that his own beat writers are asking out loud whether the concern is real.

Rule ChangeAssistants Can Now Throw The Challenge Flag

New for 2026: a team may designate somebody other than the head coach to throw the red flag. The league has formally admitted in writing that several head coaches cannot be trusted with a piece of cloth and a running clock.

02The Punishment Goes To A Vote

The 2024 season had no consequences and you could tell. Nine men played a full year and the worst thing that happened to the worst of them was a quiet winter. A league has teeth. That was a hobby with a spreadsheet.

So the commissioner's office has put it on the ballot. Whoever finishes last in 2026 does one of the following, on camera, and it lives on this website permanently. Read all four. Reply with a letter. Majority wins and it is binding. Not voting counts as a vote for whichever option is currently leading, so do not be cute.

03The Prop Board Is Open

Fifteen lines. The chalk is chalk for a reason: every negative number on this board is backed by something one of you actually did, in writing, in a CBS recap. Pick three and they get locked onto this page before the first selection.

04Nine Predictions I Will Be Held To

• The first three picks are running backs and somebody spends eleven minutes explaining why that is wrong. Kansas City just paid one forty-three million dollars. The position is back. The lecture is coming anyway.
• At least one owner drafts entirely off a two-year-old cheat sheet, takes a Dolphin who plays in Atlanta now, announces it proudly, and is allowed to finish.
• Somebody takes a Browns quarterback as a stash. There is no stash. There is only Deshaun Watson, Shedeur Sanders, and a man in sunglasses explaining his son to a coaching staff.
• Kyler Murray finishes as a top-six fantasy quarterback, and the man who passed on him in the seventh round spends four months calling it unsustainable.
• The best draft in this league does not make the playoffs. It happens every year, and it happens to whoever is most pleased with himself at 9:15 PM on September 3.
• Someone trades for a wide receiver and benches him for four straight weeks. McConkey averaged 18.4 on James's bench and 8.6 in his lineup. This is a documented local tradition.
• The A.J. Brown owner has a public breakdown by Week 6. New England. December. A man whose whole brand is standing on a sideline being visibly wronged.
• Two of the three open seats fill in the final forty-eight hours, because twenty-six years of archive says that is how everything in this league works, and I have already made my peace with it.
• Nate beats The Commish at least once and does not shut up about it until the following August. He named his team after a seventh-round running back. He is not going to be humble about anything.