I Am Standing By For News

It’s Monday morning and I’m ready for the start of NFL free agency. The window to sign players doesn’t officially open for another two days, but Monday represents the start of the league’s open tampering period, which comes on the heels of the league’s actual tampering period, which begins sometime over scotch and sodas at Prime 47 during the NFL combine. There are deals already locked and loaded, ready to be formally announced the second the tampering window cracks open. And I am ready for them. In fact, I’m so hyped for free agency that I slept poorly the night before, which means that my wife slept poorly too. She’s not happy about that. But you have to understand, my darling … no reasonable person can get a good night’s rest if they don’t know which midlevel center will be playing for their team next season.

Today I’ll finally get some answers. Or at least, vaguely worded dispatches from Josina Anderson that may or may not ramp up the process of guiding me toward an answer. The wheeling and dealing already began in earnest days earlier. The Rams decided to fuck them picks in order to get stud Chiefs CB Trent McDuffie. The Bills fucked them picks by trading for Bears WR D.J. Moore, whose contract runs through the year 2046. And the Ravens SUPER fucked them picks in order to snag Raiders edge Maxx Crosby, a move certain to shift the balance of power in the AFC so long as there are no snags with Crosby’s impending physical (OOP-DEE!!!). That’s all the hot stove action I need to get my nipples poking out.

I have to work today, but my head isn’t in my work. It’s in my phone, where I’m already swiping down constantly to refresh my Bluesky feed for news. I’m also toggling over to our company Slack’s football channel (named #clumpdogs) to see if one of my co-workers has dropped in a nugget that I would have otherwise missed. I do a little work, then I check again. I do a little more work, and then I check another time. When I refresh my Bluesky feed, nothing has changed, same as when I last refreshed less than a minute earlier. I’m still seeing the same post about Trump doing evil Trump shit. I hate this single micropost now. It’s holding back the impending flow of NFL information, and in the rudest possible manner. I think about muting that account just so that I have something new to get pissed at on the next refresh.