If the 2022 NFL season was the Kentucky Derby, it would be the 1989 Kentucky Derby.
That year, Sunday Silence required two minutes and five seconds to negotiate the Derby's mile-and-a-quarter distance, preceding arch-rival Easy Goer by 2 1/2 lengths for the win on a track labeled "wet-fast," a designation that was struggling to gain recognition as an official track condition at that time.
One has to go all the way back to 1948 to find a Kentucky Derby that was run in a slower time — Citation's 2:05 2/5 (Tim Tam won the 1958 Derby in 2:05 flat, same as Sunday Silence; both Citation and Tim Tam were owned by the fabled Calumet Farm, which is best known to younger generations for producing Alydar, who finished second to Affirmed in all three Triple Crown races in 1978).
The "track" upon which the NFL is running this season, at least so far, is in a much worse condition than "wet-fast" — as the Eagles are the lone remaining undefeated team, at 4-0.
And wouldn't you know? Field conditions played a huge role in Sunday's 29-21 Philadelphia home victory over the Jaguars, who turned the ball over five times, four of them via the lost-fumble route.
But the Eagles have two huge tests coming up.
This Sunday, they must travel to Arizona to take on the slowly, but steadily improving Cardinals: 3-13 the year before Kliff Kingsbury took over as their head coach in 2019, the Cards improved to 5-10-1 that season, then to 8-8 in 2020, and to 11-6 in 2021, eerily echoing Chuck Noll's early years in Pittsburgh. Not only did the Steelers finish 1-13 in Noll's inaugural season of 1969, but they lost 38-7 to the Bears, accounting for the "1" in Chicago's identical 1-13 1969 record. But then Pittsburgh's slow but steady rise followed — 5-9 in 1970, 6-8 in 1971, and 11-3 and their first division title in franchise history, in 1972. Two years later Pittsburgh won the Super Bowl, and repeated the following season, as well.
And the last time the Eagles won a game in the Grand Canyon State, a loaf of bread set you back $1.58, a gallon of gas cost $1.21, and Mary J. Blige's Family Affair was the nation's number-one hit single.
The date? November 4, 2001. Since then: five consecutive losses in the desert by a combined score of 143 to 98, or 9 points a pop.
After that, the Eagles must host the Cowboys, who have "pwned" them of late, winning seven of the last nine meetings, including the last three by a combined 129-64. And Dak Prescott will be under center for Dallas in that Sunday night game.
At the other end of the scale, there are no 0-4 teams at all — although the Texans are 0-3-1, giving them the early lead in the Bryce Young Derby (Young could be a two-time Heisman Trophy winner by the time the 2023 draft is held).
The extension of the regular season schedule to 17 games has been a major contributing factor to the increased competitive balance — or increased mediocrity, depending on one's point of view — because the "17th game" is an inter-conference game matching up teams that finished in the same position in their respective divisions the season before, and whose entire divisions had met two years prior (example: all four teams from the AFC North played all four teams from the NFC East in 2020 — so this season, the Cowboys host the Bengals, the Eagles host the Steelers, the Commanders host the Browns, and the Giants host the Ravens, the NFC getting all of the "17th games" at home this year because the AFC got all of them at home last year, the idea being that all 16 teams in the same conference get to play an equal number of home games).
This puts two all-time NFL records in the "endangered species" category: the worst winning percentage that was the best record in the league for that year — .750, which has occurred in 10 different seasons (1935, 1947, 1952, 1958, 1979, 1980, 1988, 1993, 2002, and 2014) — and the best winning percentage that was the worst record in the league for that year, which the 1956 Eagles hold solely, with .273 (3-8-1).
Will no team finish better than 12-5 or worse than 5-12 this season?
Don't bet against either — or both — happening.
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