While each NFL season is often defined by the Super Bowl and its champion, there is often a game within the folds of a regular season that perfectly encapsulates what the year was all about—its trends, its shortcomings, its stars.
Maybe last year it was one of the dreadful slogs through the officiating doldrums; teams winning and losing thanks to the complete brokenness of reviewable pass interference and general helplessness of an overmatched cadre of referees. Maybe the year prior it was the Rams-Chiefs game with 105 total points, representing the offensive evolution that throttled defensive coordinators across the sport and fundamentally changed the way teams drafted players, hired coaches and took risks.