A look back at the 2022-23 NFL regular season

This year’s National Football League season has been, for lack of a better word, lackluster. Good teams played at a mediocre level. Many players didn’t live up to their potential that we know they can play at, officiating jobs that made the sport unwatchable at times, offenses that looked like the coaches overthink every play and games that weren’t exciting. If you asked someone to name the worst defensive coordinator of the year, you’d get 10 different names overall. 

There are probably only three legitimate, rock solid teams that are playing up to their par, like the Kansas City Chiefs, the San Francisco 49ers (before the injury wave) or the Buffalo Bills before the playoffs. All of the other teams make even the Houston Texans look decent. 

There are at least three teams that made the playoffs that definitely should not have; namely the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Seattle Seahawks and Jacksonville Jaguars. But all the other teams in the playoffs have a chance to come up short due to most of them being undisciplined, unmotivated and overall just not as good as they could be. 

The Los Angeles Chargers choked another big lead in the playoffs against the Miami Dolphins, giving the Atlanta Falcons a run for their money in the regard of choking big leads in important games. The Seahawks were obvious first round exits, when they didn’t deserve to be in the playoffs in the first place. 

I honestly can’t think of any other team in the National Football Conference other than the Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles, 49ers and Minnesota Vikings that should be in the playoffs, just because the league has been that bad.

On the other hand, you have the American Football Conference and they weren’t anything that special either. There were four teams that even come to mind that are actually good and that is the Bills, Chiefs, Bengals and Dolphins. The Chiefs are the team that had a lot of support from the referees, from the controversial holding call in the final minutes of the Super Bowl, to tiny things like a holding penalty during a regular season game.

The officiating over the course of the NFL season, through playoffs, was atrocious. The fact that we, as part of the fanbase, are able to notice the fact that more than half of these referees are making either uneducated or emotional calls rather than keeping the game on a fair playing field is beyond us.

Kristopher Johnson ‘23 agrees, “The people you want to watch are the players and not the f****** refs.”

 We don’t even know if the Dolphins should be in the top four either, considering the second half of their season. We had a lot of hope before the start of the season because of all of the trades that were made, the biggest being the Russel Wilson trade with the Broncos, which ended up being nothing short of disappointing. 

Another promising trade was Davante Adams to the Raiders. Adams and Derek Carr were supposed to be a deadly offensive weapon, but just came out of the season as any other average wide receiver-quarterback duo.

 In all honesty, we had high hopes for this season and they were definitely way too high. This season was also riddled with injuries that took some of the team’s key players, like Debo Samual with the 49er’s, or Damar Hamlin with the Bills. Hopefully next season has more to offer and rekindle the once beautiful sport that is football.