I watched the new Louis Theroux doco on the Manosphere the other day and while it wasn’t my favourite Theroux (either The Settlers or the Weird Weekends about rap), all I could think about was those freaks pandering to the chat about who was ‘cooked’ and who did the cooking.
So, in the interests of being current, I thought I’d do a ‘Cooked Index’.
Basically, this is an investigation into who should pack it up because their season is cooked and who isn’t quite done yet.
Let’s get into it.
Is the Brisbane Dynasty cooked?
As they were in 2024, the Lions have started 0-2 after a Grand Final appearance. Keen readers will remember that they won the premiership that year and have been starting slowly for years now before coming good.
But now the Lions are a little bit older, they’ve lost their captain and most important structural piece to suspension, and are not as dominant in their usual key stats as they were two weeks through 2024.
Even with those problems, I’m not willing to write them off after losing to the two best teams of the first two weeks. As games slow down heading into June and July and Harris Andrews returns, I expect the Lions to return to their contested ball, high mark, front half centric best especially as they integrate Oscar Allen into the team better.
Cooked Index: Sashimi
Are the Saints’ chances for this year cooked?
Oh brother.
Obviously, the Saints’ long-term chances of being good with this group are cooked. Any team that spends as big as they did in free agency basically doesn’t succeed unless they get a Patrick Dangerfield level player.
But I didn’t think it would be this bad. Though, in hindsight, the signs were there.
Who among us could have guessed that paying sticker price for Sam Flanders wouldn’t have worked?
Flanders is and has always been one of the most prolific “Taranto’s” in the AFL, where his only two decisions are to handball sideways or to kick it up 40 metres up in the air to nobody in particular.
Separate to that, it’s shocking that a $1.7m ruckman could get towelled up the way TDK did by an ageing but still all-time great Max Gawn. It’s almost like setting all-time free agency signing records for non-all time great players might not be great process!
Even if I was sceptical of the process, and even if I thought the way they lost to Collingwood was pretty good and even the way they lost to Melbourne was at least a departure from how they lost last year, after the relentless self-promotion that St Kilda did this offseason they couldn’t start 0-2.
Yet they have.
The Saints have changed their game style and will be a pest this season. They also changed a third of their starting 22. They’re closer to average than bad right now.
But that’s a catastrophe given their offseason and the fact that the bills will come due in the coming years.
They need to beat GWS.
Cooked Index: Medium rare about be taken off the pan and rest up to medium
Are the boring teams from the last few years playing boring footy cooked?
The most boring teams in footy over the last few years have been the Simon Goodwin Demons, the Justin Longmuir Dockers, the Alastair Clarkson Kangaroos, and the Ross Lyon Saints.
All four of those teams scored over 100 points last week and did it in exciting fashion.
All four, crucially, have injected real juice into their games this season either with coaching, posture, or personnel changes.
The most marked, however, is the Demons who spent the Goodwin years dominating time in forward half but kicking defensively into congested forward lines and either getting bad shots or not getting any shots at all.
They also added excitement across the midfield with Kozzy Pickett and Caleb Windsor each attending over 20 centre bounces to give them burst that they just didn’t have when Clayton Oliver and Jack Viney were 2/3 of the midfield.
I wrote last week that the AFL has astroturfed an attacking revolution. Watching these once boring teams play has only strengthened that belief.
The only thing holding me back is what happens when it gets colder and games slow down?
Cooked Index: Medium-well
Is the big-bodied mid cooked?
Have you heard? Nat Fyfe is the same size as Wayne Carey! And he’s a midfielder!
What the hell!
But now, as a cousin of the boring teams not being boring any more because teams are trying to get out in space and run, is there less space for the big-bodied contested mid?
This year, the AFL average is 127 contested possessions per team per game. Every other year since 2012 has been over 130 (other than the COVID-shortened games in 2020).
By the same token, the league average for uncontested possessions per team per game is up to 232, the highest mark since 2017.
Games this season are far less congested as teams are getting expansive with their ball movement, finding new and different ways to expand games to the fat side of the ground and stretch defences that have been set up to fail by a faster game.
But, the best player in the competition this year is Marcus Bontempelli, a prototypical big bodied mid. The second best has probably been Christian Petracca, another prototype.
The big-bodied mid isn’t cooked, but the big bodied mid who can’t take his game from inside to out is. It’s why Matt Rowell added more outside strings to his bow last year, and part of the reason why Jacob Hopper is barely a viable AFL footballer at this point in his career.
Cooked Index: Rare