In life, a surprise can be good or bad.
Same goes for the NFL. And isn't that ironic for a league that emphasizes the control of any variable known to humankind?
Each week, something happens in the NFL that makes us question whether we knew anything about the league at all. That’s the beauty of following the sport, though.
The nuclear nature of professional football makes it easy to be surprised in the moment. But what about the “sustained surprise”?
As we enter Week 9, the midpoint of the season provides a checkpoint for those first-half surprises – the good, bad and ugly.