No Place Like Home for the Holidays

There were three NFL games on Thanksgiving Day, and each one was its own kind of ugly. 

I know that a certain percentage of home teams lose every week in the NFL, and yet there is something more poignant about it, it seems to me, on a holiday.  All these folks who have left their family and traditions behind in order to come out to the stadium, only to get their hearts stomped on.  And all three home teams did lose on Thanksgiving Day this year.

In the case of Detroit, yikes!  How much longer will Jim Schwartz last there?  And how many things can go wrong for these guys?  And how many ways will they find to lose?

I don't feel sorry for them, mind you.  I dislike Suh a great deal, I am not favorably impressed by Schwartz, and I am weary of the "megatron" hype.  Plus, while I don't have anything personal against Matthew Stafford, I continue to be inexplicably bothered by his resemblance to a grown-up Bobby Brady.  So all in all, I was happy to see the Texans throw another shovel of dirt onto the Lions' 2012 season yesterday.  But I am astonished at what has happened to them -- both in the small picture of individual games, and in the big picture of the season.  They are definitely in the running for the Most Underachieving Team award.

Also in the running, of course, are the other two losers from Thursday -- the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Jets.

The Cowboys are still in the hunt in the NFC East.  No one is running away with that division yet, but they do seem to be a bipolar group down there in Dallas.  One moment they are a talent-laden team that can score a ton of points quickly.  The next moment they are the Keystone Cops.  The Redskins buried Dallas early, arousing the hometown fans' anger.  But then, what made matters worse, is that Dallas made a heroic and promising comeback.  They had pulled off such a comeback against the Browns, and it looked like they were going to do it again.  But, no.  And so the fan went from furious, to hopeful, to disappointed.  That's a rough and unhappy ride. 

And then there were the Jets.  A New York newspaper portrayed them as a clown car at the beginning of the season, and they are living up to that billing.  That second quarter is one for the ages.  I wouldn't be surprised if Jet players and fans are still working through those 15 minutes of their lives with therapists ten years from now.  Wow.  The Patriots could have played the other three quarters with one arm tied behind their back, for their second quarter onslaught was by itself enough to beat the bumbling Jets.  

So the quarterback controversy remains.  The all-talk-but-no-results reputation continues to mount.  And the irascible New York fan base grows more and more impatient. 

Now it may be that, if the Jets (and especially their coach) were not such talkers, their humiliations would not garner so much attention.  After all, who outside of Kansas City is really paying much attention to that 2012 disaster?  But the Jets have made themselves so high-profile, so full of bluster.  They annually scream out, "Pay attention to us!", and so we do.  And thus their troubles become so scrutinized. 

So it was a memorably bad day for home teams on this holiday.  Let's hope the trend continues through Sunday night!