The American nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki can be understood in two ways.
First, they essentially ended World War 2 and kickstarted the age of American hegemony. Secondly, those bombings were the first act of the Cold War.
The race was basically built on shoddy intel and mutual mistrust, but ultimately led to each side creating crazier and crazier weapons, each of which would bring about the end of the world more quickly than the last.
The goal was to beat your greatest rival to having the biggest gun in case the other side fired first.
My sense is that the Eagles’ win in Super Bowl LIX was the NFC’s Hiroshima moment.
In that game, the setup was simple. The Chiefs had Patrick Mahomes, who was clearly the best player in the league at that point. The Eagles had the next 15 best players on the field. Their dominance across the trenches, the playmakers at receiver and on the second and third levels of the defence was enough to neuter Mahomes and help Jalen Hurts play well enough to become a champion.
The key thing was that the Eagles, despite having already signed Jalen Hurts to a roughly $50m AAV contract prior to winning the Super Bowl, could still stock the roster with the amount of talent that they did because of a few things:
- The way they structured their cap,
- The fact that the cap has gone up outrageously every year over the last decade, and
That Super Bowl win has kickstarted an age of adding around the quarterback in the NFC, to strengthen the infrastructure particularly across the two lines, and therefore prop up B+ players into A+ producers because the system was so good. The NFC has taken that strategy and supercharged it.
If this year has been the 1962 equivalent of the arms race in the NFC, then the last week has been the NFC’s Cuban Missile Crisis. This week has been the moment that the arms race has come to a head, and every side has made their intentions clear. Across the top of the NFC, every single team is the George Clooney and Brad Pitt scene in Ocean’s Eleven where George says “you think we need one more?”.
The Rams started it in the offseason by adding both Trent McDuffie and Myles Garrett a year after trading for Davante Adams. Now in-season, the rest of the NFC’s top contenders are getting in on it as well.
We saw two of the key acquisitions go head-to-head on Monday Night Football. This last week, the Seahawks traded for legendary offensive guard Quenton Nelson while the Bears added Jeffery Simmons as both teams tried to shore up key weaknesses in the trenches for otherwise strong rosters with expensive superstars.
Each of those moves, both complete and purported, speak to that bigger trend in the NFC. It’s the Dan Andrews conference of the NFL: it’s all about infrastructure.
The contrast is with the AFC, which risks getting left behind after losing the last two Super Bowls and four of the last six. In each of those losing games, the AFC indisputably had the better quarterback (Mahomes, Burrow, Maye) but the worse constituent parts.
The trend of having the better quarterback is true across the AFC, irrespective of whether the star quarterbacks have made the Super Bowl. It’s the superhero conference with Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, Drake Maye, Trevor Lawrence and Lamar Jackson when he’s healthy.
You can feel the AFC trying to add around their superhero quarterbacks across the conference both on an off the field, but to less success than the NFC has had. On the field Patriots and Bills both traded for veteran receivers in AJ Brown and DJ Moore, but both have been injured, while the Chiefs have added a running game. Off the field, Baltimore is a good example of trying to prioritise things around their quarterback with the hire of defensive guru Jesse Minter and highly rated offensive coordinator Declan Doyle. Again, it’s been a whiff but it’s a good start. The point, though, is the AFC is trying to turn a tanker to catch up with a speedboat.
The AFC is Batman, while the NFC is a well-funded and properly functioning police force that’s dedicated to fighting crime. But now the AFC is starting to invest in having a bit of both.
The only team bucking the trend is Cincinnati who traded the tenth overall pick for Dexter Lawrence in the offseason and have reaped the benefits massively. However, on offence, irrespective of how improved the offensive line is around Amarius Mims, it’s still the Joe Burrow show. The Bengals cannot run the ball, and they’ve officially given up on Burrow getting under centre. They now stick him in the gun and let him work exclusively.
While it’s worked over the last month, the NFL has become very much about how well you run the ball and how well you defend the run. The Bengals are zagging on at least half of that equation in a supremely aggressive way.
With a week left until the trade deadline, and with a few borderline star-level players potentially being moved, the AFC risks getting left behind the NFC. Your superstar quarterbacks are superstars, but the NFC is in an arms race and the AFC is standing pat like it’s Switzerland.
They need to get involved, or risk just copping the blowback.