Inspirational Thought of the Week

If you leave me now
You’ll take away the biggest part of me
Ooh-ooh, no, baby, please don’t go
And if you leave me now
You’ll take away the very heart of me
Ooh-ooh, no, baby, please don’t go
Ooh-ooh, girl, I just want you to stay

A love like ours is love that’s hard to find
How could we let it slip away?
We’ve come too far to leave it all behind
How could we end it all this way?
When tomorrow comes and we’ll both regret
The things we said today

“If You Leave Me Now”, Chicago

Here at Floundering Five headquarters, located in a place where there are plenty of breakups and divorces(that’s America in the past fifty years), we have been considering the prospect of fan loyalty to teams that constantly let them down. In football, there can be loads of definitions regarding teams who don’t quite live up to fans’ expectations. There’s the team who constantly misses the playoffs with bad starts to the season that they can’t recover from. Then there’s the team that builds up hype with offseason acquisitions meant to change the makeup of a team, but that team doesn’t translate that hype into meaningfully sufficient results. Then, there’s the team that gives fans so much playoff heartache that they just come back for more. But there are fans who quit rooting for their teams for a lot of reasons, whether that be due to the high prices of being a hardcore NFL fan(don’t have to attend every home game, y’know?), their team constantly stinking badly like rotten sewage or some other taboo reason like “male cheerleaders” or political messaging in the end zones. Either way, there will always be millions of fans of a team to fill the void of those who basically say “Bon voyage, ya suckas!”

Well, there are a couple of teams in this list that have long droughts when it comes to winning a division title, a playoff game or even making the playoffs at all. One of them got blown out big time following a rough home opening loss under the bright lights of their aging stadium. The other two got beat badly by division rivals following tight defeats of their own in Semana Numero Uno(it’s Hispanic Heritage Month after all). Only one team remains from last week’s top(or bottom) four teams in continuing a long losing streak dating back to last season(and specifically their starting QB at the moment, who can’t seem to win his first start ever). Then, there are a pair of teams that make the Coveted Fifth Spot(two teams in the CFS for a second straight week, how bout that?) whose offenses couldn’t crack the end zone and committed a load of unfortunate turnovers. I know trying to score against modern defenses might be harder than it looks, but c’mon you gotta score at least one touchdown. Every other team this week did besides these two teams who faced off in the 11th edition of the Pro Football Championship(back when the Super Bowl was super affordable to any random fan). So, let’s lunge into this week’s cesspool of sloppy gridiron teams.

With apologies to Ben Johnson, Justin Fields, Teven Jenkins, Velus Jones Jr, J.J McCarthy and Michael Mayer, here are the Post-Week 2 Floundering Five Rankings for the 2025 NFL season.

1. ChicagOaf Bores(0-2)

So, after blowing a double-digit lead against My Minnesota Vikings Who Have Only Had One Good Offensive Quarter This Season So Far, the Bores traveled up north to take on the Dumtroit Flyins in a Blanket Fight Of The Week: Gamblin’ Coach Addition. Ben Johnson returned to take on his old mates in Honolulu Blue and the game early on was a close offensive shootout. Then, after an odd reset of the clock after it had seemingly expired in the first half that allowed Dumtroit to score an important TD before the end of the half, ChicagOaf could not keep up. The Flyins had their classic 50-plus point offensive scoring, meaning they out scored the Bores 31-7 from that controversial out-of-bounds ruling on the catch by the EV wideout known as TeSlaa. Tough luck there as Caleb Williams couldn’t keep up with Jared Goof and his company of offensive weapons which included Ammonia-Ra St. Brown, the Gamblin’ Receiver JaMo Williams and Sam The Man LaPorta. Yikes. And dating back to the fourth quarter of the Vikings game, the Bores defense under Dennis Allen has given up a combined 73 points over the last five quarters. Yeah, that’s not very good. Coming up for ChicagOaf is a home game at Sucker Field against the Dellas ShotBoys, who somehow managed not to lose(or tie) with the New Yuck FatBall Army Ants in a game that featured a lot of scoring in the final few minutes of regulation. So, buckle up Bores fans. You are in for a tussle in America’s Game of the Week. But don’t worry, Ben Johnson isn’t the only former Dumtroit coordinator having a hard time in his new digs as a head coach, there’s also room for the…

2. New Yuck GlennJUTS(0-2)

So, after losing their first game by barely a long field goal(and a missed two-point conversion attempt that they didn’t need to do) against the RodgersBurgh Stellers, the GlennJUTs had their second home game in a row at JetLife Stadium, hosting the BufferLow HillBillies, who were lucky not to start 0-1 due to a Comeback of the Century game against the RuffHens. Unlike last season’s Week 6 MNF game on the same field, this game was an old-fashioned beat down. The HillBillies dominated offensively and defensively, forcing seven punts against the JUTS offense and sacking Justin Fields a lot. Josh Allen ended up getting his head banged into his teammate’s knee, forcing some gauze pads on him and a brief appearance by Mista Trubisky as his backup. But he came back in and dominated the New Yuck Gang Green defense just enough to make it a blowout. The score could have been worse if not for a garbage time TD drive led by Tyrod Taylor, who has been a backup QB drifter his entire career(but led BufferLow to the playoffs in 2017, the year before Allen was drafted). The reason Taylor came in was because of poor Fields getting his head banged onto the turf and having to be placed in concussion protocol. So, this is actually the JUTS’ first 0-2 start in a few years, something they managed to avoid in the two seasons that Rodgers was their QB(or mostly resigned to the bench). Now they have to go down to Florida and play a pair of games in the Sunshine State on back-to-back weeks(they will also play the Jack In The Cracked Jags later on in the season in DooVall County). So, a Sunshine two-step against the Tampa Ba(y)ker MayfieldNeers and the Miami Delphins might be a bit tough for these JUTS, who are definitely not walking on sunshine right now.

3. Cleveland ClownShow(0-2)

The greatest ClownShow from northeast Ohio returns as the orange helmet team took on their old selves in the Beltimore RuffHens, who took out their anger from blowing a 15-point lead to the HillBillies in prime time on poor Joe Flacco, who led this 30-season old franchise to their second SB title in 2012 with a great offensive line and powerful defense besides him. After losing by one point to the Cincinnata Bungles the week before, CleveLand had a typically lousy performance in staying close enough early on only to give up a lot of points to Beltimore, including a strip-sack on Flacco that Roquan Smith ran back to the house. Flacco only led two scoring drives and was replaced late in the game by Dillon Gabriel, who led a garbage time TD drive for his first appearance in the NFL. Many Clowns fans might be wondering if it might be time to put the only other active left-handed QB(besides Tua Tagovailoa and Magic Mike Penix) into the fray as they will be hosting the Grinch Bay Fatkers, who have a monstrous defense spearheaded by Micah Parsons, next week. Regardless of that, there’s a real chance that the Clowns don’t win a single game through their first six weeks of play, as they will be burdened with three straight weeks of games against NFC Norteh opponents(including a London duel against the Vikings eight years in the making) before having to take on the RodgersBurgh Stellers on the road. The only probable win that could occur might be in Week 7 against the Miami Dragos at home, so it might be lucky number seven for the Clownies, who are due to have back-to-back horrid seasons after being “playoff contenders” under Kevin Stefanski, who might find his time as head coach running out in the town known as The Mistake By The Lake. Another QB could be added onto the long list of passers who have started a game for the resurrected ClownShow, which was only brought back due to Dee and Jimmy Haslam’s interest in owning a football team. Well, how has that turned out? Not so good.

4. New Orleans Aints(0-2)

So, the Aints actually did respectably good enough to be knocked out of the top bottom spot. The problem is that they still lost to a Sand Fransicko FortingMiners team with no Brock Purdy, George Kittie or Brandon Aiyuk. Instead GoldenMac Jones led a band of misfits into a StupidDome invaded by a bunch of Faithful Miners fans and was able to manage to hold off the New Orleans defensive effort to garner up enough good drives that resulted in scores. A missed field goal on the opening drive by Blake Groupie(nice wordplay there) did not bode well for the Aints, who had only three successful drives led by Spencer RattlerSnake, who has now lost his first eight career starts in his NFL career. A fumble by Alvin Kamara that led to a Miners TD didn’t help either as the Fleur-de-Lis squad started 0-2 for the first time since 2017, when they managed to recuperate and win the NFC Sourth, won one playoff game and then got beaten in heartbreaking fashion in some game that had a famous play called The Minneapolis Miracle. Unlike that Aints squad, there ain’t no Drew Brees or Sean Payton. Kellen Moore will look to get his first win as a head coach next Sunday on the road against the Seattle SamChickens(a BeastQuake event occurred on that field nearly a decade and a half ago that knocked the defending chump BountyGate squad out of the playoffs that year). If they can’t win that game, then they are likely to start 0-4 as their Week 4 game will be in western New York against the HillBillies, who beat the Aints in a Thanksgiving game at the StupidDome back in 2021. Man, where does the time go? That’s what NOLA pro football fans are wondering as they prefer to watch the Tigers or Toxic Green Wave college football squads than this sorry excuse for a franchise. Sacré bleu!

5. Thou Shalt Not Score A TD In Week 2 Of The 2025 Season If Thou Art A Team Who Playeth In Super Bowl 11 At The Rose Bowl(0-a historic prophecy?)

So, for this week’s Coveted Fifth Spot, we jump back in the DeLorean time machine to 1976(or Jan. 1977), when there were two teams who played in the first Super Bowl ever played at the Grandaddy of Them All. The Rose Bowl hosted its first ever Pro Football Championship between a team who would go on to play for 13 seasons in the metro area where the stadium is located and another team from 1500 miles northeast of its holy ground that was looking to win their first ever Super Bowl title in its fourth crack of the barrel in the Big Game in eight years. Unfortunately, the team with the eyepatched logo won its first SB title and the defeated team has not made it back to a Super Bowl ever since. Now, some prophecy about a Rapture of faithful religious people might be happening this month(next Tuesday perhaps), or it might not. But unlike the return of Christ, this prophecy states that those two teams would not score a single touchdown in a season that would occur roughly fifty years later, where cars do not fly(but other things certainly do), television quality is so good that it makes you feel like you are actually at the live event and some football player named Travis is engaged to a beautiful pop-singer named Taylor. Got that? Well, that “prophecy” was fulfilled over two separate nights when these teams played in prime time windows that were nascent back in the mid-1970s but commonplace in modern times.

This is a breakdown of the MinuteSoda ViQueens and the BradyDoors of the Punk Carroll Ark(formerly located in some town called JokeLand) both not garnering a single touchdown in their games against defenses that played to the same standard as those vicious violent ones of the 1970s. We are talking defenses like the Purple PeopleEaters(how ironic), the Steel Curtain(how fitting for the Cold War era) and the Fearsome Foursome. But these are just defenses led by masterminds named Raheem Morris and Jesse Minter. They made the ViQueens(sounds like Freddy Mercury would be the owner of that team) and BradyDoors look so flat that they couldn’t even score on paper. Well, let’s be fair. The refs might have played some part in this, including disrupting a potential TD drive by MinuteSoda in the second quarter and also calling a load of penalties on the EyePatch Squad. But both offenses committed a trio of turnovers that cost their teams dearly. One guy became a dad just a few days prior and had to play a game(he didn’t give birth though, he’s not a seahorse) a few nights later. Poor J.J McCarthy got swarmed by a bunch of Atlanta ChokingBirds defenders and sacked for a six pack of ground pounds. He also sprained his ankle and will now be out for the next few weeks, leading to the ViQueens to turn towards Carson Wentz Onto The Field to start for them next week. Jeepers creepers. The ChokingBirds kicked their way to victory along with only one TD drive on a stadium built on a dome where a team of theirs from 1998 broke the hearts of all Minnesotans with a game-winning field goal that was only possible due to a missed field goal by the home team’s kicker. Talk about bringing up that trauma in prime time. That’s some Naughty Bull Crap, if you know what I mean.

Well, after the purple team from up north only garnered six points on two field goals kicked in the first half, the next night the BradyDoors of the Punk Carroll Ark(that famous movie starring Harrison Ford didn’t even come out until five years after that infamous SB11 matchup) played a night cap of a Monday night doubleheader against the Lost Mangeles Dolts in their home opener at the DeathStar Stadium off the Strip. In the first half, their defense gave up 17 points and their offense only scored six on two field goals(how fitting). This occurred while their partial owner(and partial namesake) was in the offensive coordinator’s booth during the first half wearing a suit and tie after he broadcasted a game featuring their arch-nemesis team in the Heartland(who lost to go down to 0-2) the day before. That might not have been the best sign of luck, considering that this guy was the author of one of their greatest heartbreaking moments in franchise history(due to some dumb rule that was enforced by the refs regarding QBs “tucking” the ball into their grasp). But two INTs thrown by their current QB in the first half(along with two field goals made) didn’t help either. A super long drive in the second half gave the BradyDoors a field goal(which was preceded by a super long drive by the Dolts, who decided to have their kicker attempt a rare 20-yard field goal). A turnover on downs gave the Punk Carroll Ark Bearers(on the other team namesake’s 74th birthday) some hope, but then another deflected interception occurred that drained any momentum that they had to win this game. A late fumble by the rookie RB on Lost Mangeles didn’t matter, the game was already over at that point. And thus, only nine points were scored by the team who won the 11th playing of the Super Bowl(back when it was super and not overtaken by corporate marketing goons) in their home opener of their sixth season in the ultimate desert oasis town. Both of these touchdown-less teams are 1-1, not the worst thing in the world. But what is concerning is the path ahead for both of these teams. One of them is more healthy, while the other is battered and bruised in a lot of ways. Whatever happens next, the prophecy does not know. It only stated that both of these teams would not score a single TD(not even one that was nullified due to penalty) in the middle of September 2025 Anno Domini. Wow, how true was that? I guess some prophecies do come out of nowhere, like the one where a man nearly assassinated twice would become president again but the life of someone beneficial to his return to power would be taken in his place. Where are the palm readers and fortune tellers when we need them, right? That’s all for this weird prophecy-predicting edition of the CFS.

• Waiting List: Tennessee Titanic Buffoons, Miami Delphins, Carolina Black KittyKATs, The Team Who Almost Completely Collapsed Against Carolina On Their Home Turf, Playoff Odds For All 0-2 Teams, Not Knowing The New Dynamic Kickoff Rules And Costing Your Team Dearly, Throwing 450 Yards And Still Losing The Game Due To Long Field Goals And A Late Interception, Dropping The Ball In Front Of Your Fiancée In The Rematch Of A SB That You Got Blown Out In, The End Of RedZone As We Knew It