Mood: Missing Tom Brady

To answer the questions in advance that the title may bring to mind I am not an emo blogger who starts each post with an emotion, I don't have a man-crush, and I do not have Tom Brady on my fantasy football team.

Most years in the NFL we have an idea of the elite teams by the quarter mark of the season, or certainly by the half way point. In the upside down world of the 2008 NFL season I'm still waiting for the Titans and Bills to be exposed and any other franchise to step up and take the season by the reigns.

The Colts dominated the Ravens in week six, only to crumple to the Packers on Sunday. Dallas was clearly the best team in the NFL a few weeks in, and now has back to losses and Brad Johnson at the helm. The Broncos and Saints were offensive juggernauts and now are looking sluggish with defenses that ride the short bus to games.

So with no team really stepping up to look truly dominant, I can't help but miss the evil empire to cheer against. I'm not from New York, but that doesn't mean I can't hate the Patriots as much as everyone else. Without the villain or the dominant team to cheer against, the league is a little duller in 2008.

There are still great matchups each week and my Bears keep every game interesting, even to the final play, but the season of true parity is making me miss some predictable blowouts. The Rams shouldn't be beating the Cowboys and Redskins. The Bills' one loss shouldn't be to the Cardinals. The Lions shouldn't...nevermind, I don't know where I was going with that thought.

What I'm really getting at, is that while I love the 'any given Sunday' mentality of the NFL, I do miss the one team that you love to cheer against and can get mad at when they smoke your hometown favorite by three touchdowns. At least for Lions & Bengals fans they'll have plenty of beat downs to suffer and a host of losses to experience, regardless of the mediocrity of the rest of the NFL.