The NFL needs no help reaching maximum market penetration, particularly as, next week, we enter an uncertain and potentially terrifying new world in which one suspects a large swath of the populace is going to be particularly eager to dive face-first into whatever available distraction is within reach. But as the league heads into its divisional playoff round next weekend, it is worth noting this: There are almost no unlikable teams remaining.
Now, if you are of the school that all NFL teams (and, specifically, their owners) are a net drain on society at large as well as loathsome in their own unique ways, I suppose I can’t argue with you, and I won’t try. But think of all the hateable teams that aren’t a part of the final eight:
The Cowboys. The only place you’re going to see Jerry Jones’s Skeletor head is on Landman.
The Browns. The most evil active quarterback in the league — as well as maybe the worst — tore his Achilles and will miss all of next season.
The Patriots. It’s okay to still hate the Patriots even now that they’re terrible and irrelevant; it’s actually the best time. Unleash all that built-up bile, it’s good for you.
The Jets. The most annoying quarterback is gone too.
The Giants. It’s over; you don’t have to look at them anymore.
If your team is one of the 24 whose season is already over, you may need a team to support over the next month until Super Bowl LIX (and Kendrick Lamar) arrives in New Orleans. Continuing an annual tradition around these parts, here are your NFL Playoff Rootability Rankings, a guide for the unaffiliated fan. Want to know where to direct your temporary, entirely fungible loyalties? Read on:
8) Texans.
This is an easy team not to root for, for a very obvious reason: They’re about to get smushed. The Texans won the aggressively weak AFC South this year by process of elimination, and they won a dull playoff game against the Chargers last Saturday in the least-watched, least-compelling matchup of the weekend. Facing the two-time defending champion Chiefs, they’re the biggest underdogs of the divisional round, a mostly nondescript team with 23 seasons of a monotonous football history. (Seriously: Give me your favorite Houston Texans memory. Give me any Houston Texans memory.) They also have the dumbest nickname in professional sports. Do keep in mind, though: Current quarterback C.J. Stroud said this week that his alma mater Ohio State’s football team, playing in the CFP National Championship Game next week, is blessed that “Jesus has his literal hand on that team.” I know these football games are big deals, but that we have found the physical hand of Jesus Christ himself, and that he has chosen to place it on a land-grant university in Central Ohio, strikes me as a bigger story than it is currently being covered as.
7) Rams.
One of the primary considerations when putting together a rootability ranking like this: How long has it been since this team won a Super Bowl? How satisfied/desperate are its fans? How happy for/irritated by them will you be if their team wins? There are exceptions to this — mostly for historical purposes, as we’ll see in a bit when we get to the defending champs — but on the whole: A Super Bowl victory should hold you over for a while, and so we shouldn’t feel obliged to hop on your bandwagon. Thus, the Rams, the most recent team other than the Chiefs to win a Super Bowl and theoretically somewhat sated. Now, you might try to talk yourself into a “the people of Los Angeles could use something good” reason to cheer for the Rams, but if you’ve ever actually watched the Rams play a home game, you know that the opposing team’s fans regularly outnumber Rams fans, because people in Los Angeles do not, in fact, care about the Rams. (Or the Chargers, for that matter.) Save those sympathy cheers for the Lakers.
6) Eagles.
When the Eagles finally won their first Super Bowl eight years ago in thrilling fashion — and everyone got so excited they literally ate horse poop off the street — you thought it might lighten up Eagles fans a little bit. You did it, all! You finally made it! Instead, despite having a consistently good team since then (they’ve only missed the playoffs once since that championship), Eagles fans are as grousing and combustible as ever; if they lose to the Rams, all the positive things they did this season will become severed memories. The Eagles have had as happy a decade as any team in football other than maybe the Chiefs, and their fans are still as miserable as ever. You gotta kind of admire them for it. But that doesn’t mean you have to root for them. After all: Another title is just going to mean more eating of horse poop.
5) Commanders.
Other than maybe the Browns, no team’s fans have suffered more this century than Commanders fans. The reason for that is, of course, former owner Daniel Snyder, who was unquestionably the worst owner in professional sports, a title with an almost unfathomable number of qualified candidates. But, in proof that sometimes people in leadership and executive positions who are both incompetent and venal can be booted out of their lofty perches in order to make a greater world, the Commanders improved dramatically the very second Snyder was forced to sell the team. Their win over the Buccaneers in the wild-card round was their first postseason victory since 2005, and now that they have rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels behind center, this is probably just the first of many. But they don’t need to win a Super Bowl just yet: Commanders fans are simply elated just to not be embarrassed to wear their team’s gear anymore. You’ve all earned this.
4) Ravens.
Quarterback Lamar Jackson has won two MVPs in his career, including last year, and this still might have been his best season. He is one of only seven players ever to win the Heisman Trophy in college and the MVP in the NFL. He remains, nevertheless, forever underappreciated — his jersey isn’t even one of the best-selling in the league — partly because his style of play is so different than any other quarterback, partly because he serves as his own agent (he still hasn’t recovered reputationally from a bruising negotiation with the Ravens two years ago, though he did quite well for himself), and partly because Patrick Mahomes keeps winning Super Bowls, denying Jackson his breakthrough moment. It also doesn’t help that the Ravens themselves aren’t a particularly electric franchise, a consistently successful and stable team that has made the playoffs nearly every season this century. (They’re also coached by the other Harbaugh, the more boring one.) The Ravens have won two Super Bowls since moving from Cleveland 30 years ago, a relatively short time, but Jackson himself hasn’t won one. Even if you don’t like the Ravens, Jackson is a player you can, and probably should, get more behind.
3) Chiefs.
Look: I understand. You’re sick of the Chiefs. You’re sick of the Chiefs commercials. You’re sick of their significant others. Rooting for the defending champs is against the very notion of sports’ democratic ideal. But hear us out. No team — not the Joe Montana 49ers, not the Jimmy Johnson Cowboys, not even the Bill Belichick–Tom Brady Patriots — has ever won three Super Bowls in a row, which the Chiefs have the opportunity to do this season. The men behind those teams, particularly the Patriots, will lose their minds if a team does something that none of them were ever able to do. You might not like the Chiefs, but you surely like them more than Jerry Jones, right? You surely like them more than Brady and Belichick, yes? If someone’s going to do it, it might as well be the Chiefs, who, for all their faults and all our exhaustion with them, will, I suspect, ultimately be viewed positively by fans when all of this is over. At least it won’t be Brady.
2) Bills.
It is the eternal sports question: Is it better to have come close to winning but fallen just short, or to have never come close at all? Whom you root for depends on your answer to that question. There would be something existentially cruel about the Bills having two separate generations of superstar teams, three decades apart, that came within tantalizing close range of their first Super Bowl title but ran into walls each time. The ’90s Bills famously reached four consecutive Super Bowls and lost all four; today’s Bills keep smashing their head against the Patrick Mahomes wall every year, the modern-day version of Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing never being able to get over the Michael Jordan hump. If they fall short again this year — and with Jackson and the Ravens looming, they might not even make it far enough to play Mahomes and the Chiefs — they will be close to running out of time and opportunities during this second golden era of Bills football. To come so near and fall short twice, in entirely different contexts? Cruel. Downright cruel. Hug a Bills fan.
1) Lions.
Four teams in the NFL have never reached a Super Bowl, including the Texans (who started play in 2002), the Jaguars (in 1995), and the Browns (who famously didn’t exist for four years when they moved to Baltimore). The only team that has been eligible for the Super Bowl every year the Super Bowl has existed but has never reached one? The Lions, a team forever known for losing on Thanksgiving and fans wearing paper bags over their heads. But thanks to a new ownership group, front office, and coach Dan Campbell, the Lions have overcome endless injuries this season to establish themselves as the betting favorite to win the Super Bowl this year. It’s a likable team with deeply long-suffering fans, fans who have felt nervous to even hope for competence, let alone a Super Bowl appearance. This is the best Lions team of almost any of our lifetimes, and they’ve never been better positioned to reach the title game: They’re at home throughout the playoffs, their banged-up defense is slowly starting to get healthier, and no one else in the NFC looks all that terrifying. If it doesn’t happen now, when will it? Join the Lions bandwagon. I mean, they’ve even got Detroiters doing their schedule release. How do you not root for these guys?
It’s the LionTron 2000. The idea of it is that it turns on. Go Lions.