Sparking NFL Teams.

“Where the hell is that outlet?”

I said as I fumbled a white iPhone wall charger in my hands while leaning off the corner of my bed, feeling the wall up for an outlet in the dead of night.

“It must be around here somewhere. It’s not like these things move.”

Instead of getting up to turn on a light, my lazy past midnight brain and I decided it was a good idea to reach for a knife coated in Skippy Natural Chunky Peanut Butter from earlier when I sliced my midnight PB&J sandwich in half.

“I know, I’ll use the knife to locate the outlet and just follow the peanut butter trail with my fingers which will lead me right to the outlet. Darn it Brett, sometimes even my own genius surprises me.”

I said as I started to paint the wall with such fine-tuned brush strokes, that even Picasso would be proud. That was until my hand slipped and I inserted the knife into the left eye of the sockets face.

Sparks began to emerge out of the socket like a 4th of July sparkler that your cousin Eddy strapped to his nipples as he pretended to be in Magic Mike, drunk on a 30 rack of Miller Lite and Merlot dunked cheese. I began to feel a tingling shoot up my right arm as my brain started to picture Katy Perry dancing with a school of sharks on a beach at the Super Bowl halftime show singing,

“You just gotta ignite the light

And let it shine

Just own the night

Like the Fourth of July

'Cause baby, you're a firework.”

You know how people say your life flashes before your eyes during a near death experience? That wasn’t the case for me… As Katy Perry serenaded my electrocution, my brain decided to go through a photo album of all the moves NFL organizations recently made in hopes they would spark a dried-out Christmas tree sized fire underneath their teams’ cold bottoms.

When I finally extracted my charbroiled hand from the knife all I could think of was a toasted peanut butter sandwich and who in their right mind would trade Deandre Hopkins to the Chiefs. It’s not like the Chiefs need any more help to win a Super Bowl. They won last year with a bunch of no name receivers they found at truck stop just outside of Anchorage, Alaska with a flickering yellow Shell Gasoline sign. What are we doing Tennessee? I get that you’re not having the year you wanted and Will Levis seems like his eyes are coated in Dukes Mayo every time he drops back to pass but you can’t be desperate enough for a fifth-round pick that you break the entire league by giving Patrick Mahomes in actual weapon to play with. It’s like giving Jackie Chan a gun. He doesn’t need it but if he has it, you better put the whole world on alert.

That’s not the only move that baffled my brain during my electrocution. I also couldn’t believe that Aaron Rodgers (allegedly) got his coach fired and then traded for his long-time friend Devonte Adams and the Jets still stink. It’s been over 1,000 days since Aaron Rodgers threw for over 300 yards passing in a game, and he is out here talking about how the team needs to make peace with the darkness. Hey Aaron, how about you make peace with the fact that you can’t move like you used to and you’re just not the same quarterback that you once were. It happens to everyone (except Tom Brady), getting old sucks and watching the greatest quarterback I’ve ever seen struggle isn’t fun for anyone, even though it comes at the expense of the Jets, which is hysterical to say the least… I get the Jets trying to find some sort of spark by firing a coach and bringing in Aarons friends, but they are all out of moves now. This is the final product, and someone might need to put a peanut butter knife in a socket to help generate some sort of fire underneath these players. Everytime I see The Jets lose I just picture Zach Wilson Pillsbury Dough Boy poking Sean Payton's belly and laughing while saying,

“Can you believe I had a better record last year?”  

The Steelers may have made the most baffling move of all though, by benching 4-2 Justin Fields for a 35-year-old Russell Wilson who hasn’t looked great in a couple years now. But so far Russell Wilson has been great. He has sparked a dormant passing offense into a deep ball throwing juggernaut over these last two games. Geroge Pickens has stopped complaining. Well, he has complained less. Even The Steelers average rushing yards per game are up over the last two games. I thought maybe Mike Tomlin was losing his touch a little after benching Justin Fields, but he was seeing something we weren’t in practice. I’m not the biggest Fields fan as you may know, but even I was a knife in the outlet shocked by this move. Fields hasn’t been anything special but for the first time in his career he was winning and not turning the ball over. That is a Carl Lewis sized leap forward for someone with a career win percentage of 32%. With a coach I will never question again, and his newly found Russell Wilson offensive spark mixed with a ferocious defense led by T.J. Watt, The Steelers might find themselves in a legit Super Bowl race.

It seems like every team that is in contention in the AFC made a dramatic move to try and spark their teams past the Chiefs. Bills went out and got a stud receiver from The Browns in Amari Cooper, who just so happened to catch a touchdown pass in his first game as a Bill. The Baltimore Ravens traded a sixth-round pick to the Carolina Panthers for Diontae Johnson. Which gives Lamar another option to throw too in an already electric offense. The Browns started to eat W’s against The Ravens by starting Jameis Winston after Deshaun Watson went down with an Achillies injury. The Colts decided to bench Anthony Richardson in favor of Joe Flacco after Richardson tapped his helmet asking to leave the game because he was tired and maybe the fact that he has a 44% completion percentage. But if you’re Richardson in that spot, you can never admit that you were tired. You have to fake some sort of injury before admitting that you were tired. I don’t care if you fake grab your Achillies so much so that you need to see a specialist in Germany to figure out what is wrong. You just can never admit that you left the game because you were tired. Your teammates will never trust you again.

While the AFC has been busy, all the teams in the NFC must have taken out their spark plugs because there have been little to no moves happening in that conference. Maybe it’s because they don’t have a Patrick Mahomes to go through or maybe they are just content with their teams at the moment. But some teams might need to find a new set of spark plugs by the trade deadline because those Lions look borderline unstoppable. Not even an Aidan Hutchinson sized bucket of water could put out that spark fueled fire over in Detroit. They are beating teams every way possible. If it’s not offense it’s the defense, if it’s not defense its special teams. The Lions won a game 52-14 over the Titans with Jared Goff only throwing for 85 yards. These aren’t your 0-16 Lions from 2008. These are the new school Lions from 2024, and they just might be the most complete team in the NFL and that’s scary for the rest of the NFC.

There are so many strategies that NFL owners and GM’s use to ignite sparks underneath their players and coaches. They sometimes fire a coach who has lost the locker room. They sometimes make a trade to bring in a player who was on a bad team and is just hungry to win. They sometimes make quarterback change to quarterback that loves to lick his fingers and eat a W. There are a million ways to motivate players and coaches but there is one way I wouldn’t suggest and that’s listening to your brain after midnight as you put your peanut butter dipped metal paint brush in the left eye of a sockets face.

Thanks For Reading and I Hope I Sparked Up Your Day…