Inspirational Thought of the Week

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

“Time”, by Pink Floyd

Here at Floundering Five headquarters, located in a place where time seems to fly by, we have been considering the specter of Daylight Savings Time and why we get robbed of an hour of sunlight for four months during the year. Sure, it can be all due to the “seasonal changes” and winter coming to the Northern/Western Hemisphere, but still living in Southern California, we don’t experience winter in the same way that other people in other parts of the country experience it. Unless you go up to the mountain ranges(if they have a lot of snow), then you feel as if winter is like a longer version of spring in SoCal. Not to make anyone living in colder areas envious, but we get plenty of sunlight, so being in a longer version of darkness can be kind of depressing for those who love the warmth of a solar light shining on them(hope that exposure doesn’t lead to skin cancer or something like that). Thankfully, I’m a night person and “embrace the darkness”. That is a paraphrase of a quote that Aaron Rodgers said last season when he was on a 2-7 JUTS team and they wore all-black jerseys in their next game, which they won on Halloween night. Enough of that, let’s get to a preview of teams who find themselves in a perpetual state of darkness.

We have three holdovers from last week’s rankings and one new team who just fired their general manager and yet somehow still have not canned their head coach. That might occur sometime soon in the future. Also, we have a trinity of teams in the north who lost their respective home games, with two of those teams losing in devastating fashion. So, I can’t wait to break down that in the Coveted Fifth Spot. Let’s time-whirl into it.

With apologies to Tyler Shough, Sebastian Joseph-Day, Dante Trader Jr, Jarrick Bernard-Converse, Tucker Kraft and Zac Taylor, here are the post-Week 9 Floundering Five rankings for the 2025 NFL season.

1. New Orleans Aints(1-8)

So, we start with these Fleur-de-Lis losers, who were beaten senseless against the Lost Mangeles Lambs. Tyler Shough made his first career start and had a couple of good scoring drives in the first half. But the Aints defense gave up a load of points to Matthew Stafford, who celebrated his good buddy Clayton Kershaw winning his third World Series ring the night before by dropping four TD passes and nearly 300 passing yards. The NOLA offense tried their best, but they weren’t able to finish some good-looking drives as a couple of turnovers plunged them down to a 34-10 defeat. Now back at the top bottom spot, the Aints will travel to take on the Artists formerly known as the Carolina Punthers, who have ascended to a record of 5-4 and that is good enough to be on the verge of the mid-season PLAYOFF??! Picture. Funny how a couple of years and some coaching changes helps improve a franchise. Kellen Moore isn’t having a good first season and not having a solid idea who your long-term QB is kinda stinks. But maybe in a couple of years, this team will be marching back into playoff contention. Or not. At least they have Taysom Hill back. If only he could play every position.

2. Tennessee Titanic Buffoons(1-8)

The Buffoons in NashBille had a couple of lucky TDs against the Lost Mangeles Dolts in a home game on All Souls Day, but unfortunately their offense was like Squidward Tentacles in not having any soul. At least they held the Dolts down until Justin Herbert stopped fooling around and put his foot down. Leading a 99-yard TD drive after Tennessee failed to score on 4th & goal will definitely get you a win. At least the Buffoons covered the spread, making Clay Travis’ prediction of having the entire nation bet against them to finally end the national debt of nearly $40 trillion look extremely stupid. Clay, I’m sorry, but you can’t trust the Dolts to do anything right on the road. After all, “Chargers gonna Charger!” In this case, it’s Buffoons gonna buffoon. Under Mike McCoy, this embarrassing season for a team that gained the only bye seed in the AFC four seasons ago continues to find new lows. As Nissan Stadium crumbles, the Buffoons will go on their bye week to take on the Flailing Byes of Open Week Inc. and then they will take on the Houston Texthens in Week 11. The Titanic Buffoons got shutout against the new Houston team in Week 3 before getting their only win of the season due to a running back dropping the ball at the goal-line in Russ Holiday fashion. Lucky not to be winless, this team is hoping that Cam Ward survives this rookie season without suffering a major injury due to all the times he has been sacked. Better to stay in the pocket than to get creamed outside of it. Just ask Jayden Daniels. Yikes!

3. Miami Delphins(2-7)

Now onto this Flipper team, who is looking upsides-down after another home defeat in primetime(they got a win in a primetime home game in Week 3), this time to the Beltimore RuffHens, who had Lamar Jackson return and he looked more or less himself being back home in South Florida. But the Phins had a rough game, featuring fumbles, missed opportunities and a controversial low block foul on Ollie Gordon that led to a heated confrontation on the sidelines. Only scoring six points for the entire game, the Delphins had their fans booing loudly down onto them and an extra costume was brought by some of those fans in the form of a brown paper bag with sad faces on them. That’s not a good sign when that happens. After the game, Mike McDaniel(aka Squints from The Sandlot) ran off to the locker room to avoid further public damage to his frail image. Losing twice on TNF is tough. Don Shula never had to play a game in the middle of the week. He definitely would not approve of this modern absurdity. But the day after the game(aka Halloween), the Miami franchise didn’t part ways with their head coach, but just their general manager in Chris Grier, who had clearly overstayed his time in South Beach. McDaniel is somewhat like the Sonic the Hedgehog meme of “How are you still alive?”(asked by his good human buddy) and Sonic says “I have no idea!” Well, we don’t have any idea why the Phins haven’t been the second team to fire their head coach in-season yet, but the due date could be coming soon. Next week, these Flippers host the BufferLow HillBillies, who have a chance to tie the all-time season series between these two franchises located in different corners of the USA. Then, the Delphins travel to play a “home game” in Madrid, Spain against the DC Brigade of CommandSkins in what is looking like an unexpected Blanket Fight of the Week: Ay Caramba! Edition. So, stay tuned folks. This team might find itself in these rankings way more often than we thought. Hoo-wee!

4. New Yuck FatBall G.I-Ants(2-7)

So, on the same week that the GlennJUTS were on their bye week, the Army Ants lost their seventh game of the season to match the loss total of their stadium tenants down in Jersey. Losing three straight games following a thrilling home primetime victory over the Phatterdelphia Seagles is tough, but that’s what happens when you choke in the Mile High City, get robbed due to a controversial non-fumble call on a Tush Push and play a Sand Fransicko FortingMiners team that keeps on suffering injuries to star defensive players(the most recent victim of the injury bug of that team is Mykel Williams, a tough ACL tear on a field that has claimed many victims over the years) but still keeps on managing to win games. An opening drive TD by Jaxson Dart gave the G.I-Ants an early lead, but then the Miners scored 20 straight points and a missed field goal by Graham Gano before the end of halftime did not help matters either. The Army Ants wore their throwback jerseys to their glory days of the 1980s and early 1990s and had a Phil Simms bobblehead giveaway(because why not on the day after the baseball season ended). But the team from a metro area with a baseball team with the exact same name as them won in the end. At 2-7, Big Blue is feeling the blues and now must travel west to the Windy City to take on the Chicago Bores, who were just involved in one of the most insane games in the last several years of football. At least the NFC Least is looking sloppy and these G.I-Ants might actually have a chance to finish as high as second place in the division. Wild how things work. Maybe that could save Brian Daboll and Joe Schoen from getting squashed at season’s end. Or not. It’s hard to predict what an owner with cancer will or won’t do. Sorry John Mara, but your franchise has only had one good season in the past ten years. How much longer will that continue on? I dunno, and neither do the folks in New York/Jersey who dress up to support these fools.

5. A Trio Of Norteh Teams Lose In Tough Fashion At Home In The Same Time Window On The First Day Of The Darkest Period Of The Year(0-a lot of unset clocks)

So now onto the Coveted Fifth Spot, which features a trinity of teams in the Norteh divisions suffering tough defeats on the first day of DST. An interesting curse there as two of the teams play in the Eastern Time Zone, two of them play in outdoor stadiums and one of them shares both of those criteria. Two of the teams are in a tight division race with each other, while the other is fading in their weaker division race. One of these teams wore horrendous jerseys dating back to their original uniform design that had leather helmets back in the day. So, let’s get into this and see how these northern teams lost by close margins on their home fields.

First we go to the Motor City where the Dumtroit Flyins witnessed the return of Jonathan James McCarthy onto the field and they were not prepared. The Flyins gave up two early scores to My Minnesota Vikings Who Welcomed J.J McCarthy Back And Have That StreetDawg Mentality Now and they countered with two TDs on fourth down gambles by Gamblin’ Dan Campbell. But their offense was stifled by the Brian Flores defense and couldn’t muster up enough points. Along with having a fumble occur that led to another TD and a blocked field goal that led to three more points, Dumtroit benefited from a couple of controversial catch calls but their game was ended on a third down pass by McCarthy to Jalen Nailor. Sounds familiar, because it is to the Flyins. Now at 5-3, Dumtroit has lost more games than it won last season when it went one-and-done in the NFC Divisional playoffs. With them losing, they missed a chance to go into first place in the NFC Norteh because of what happened a bit to the west in Wisconsin.

The Grinch Bay Fatkers decided to wear their Acme jerseys from yesteryear back when those unis looked good in black and white photography. Except they weren’t wearing actual leather helmets, those were outlawed after the 1950s. Instead they put the brown leather look onto the modern plastic-filled helmets. Not a good look with those old school retro jerseys to Curly Lambeau’s days at Lambeau Field. The Fatkers were also celebrating the birthdays of two of their best players in QB JordyLove, who looks to follow in the path of Starr, Favre and Rodgers in winning a championship at age 27, and tight end Tucker Kraft, whose b-day fell on the Monday after this game which should have been an easy win over the Carolina Black KittyKATS. Instead it was anything but as the Punthers’ defense did well to contain Love and forced a couple of turnovers against the Grinch Bay offense. Rico Dowdle had a good day on the ground with a couple of TDs, including one where he got flagged for an inappropriate celebration due to a referee not knowing the social media trends of dancing(so disconnected!) that led to a missed PAT. A missed kick by Brandon McAnus at the start of the 2nd half was rough for the Fatkers, who were able to get a game-tying TD with a little over two minutes left in regulation. But the Carolina offense had a strong drive that bled off time and Grinch Bay timeouts to have their kicker Ryan Fitzgerald attempt a field goal from around the same length as that missed long PAT. The kick curved a bit to the left, but it went through the uprights as the Black KittyKATs won the game by a meager score of 16-13. An unbelievable upset that was soured by the season-ending ACL injury suffered by Tucker Kraft, who had guard Sean Rhyan get pushed into him and Kraft had to be carted off. So, without their Mac-and-Cheese tight end, the CheeseHeads’ offense looks less lethal. At 5-2-1, their grip on the NFC Norteh is weakening and that’s because of the Vikings’ win and also another surprise win by another one of their hallowed division rivals.

The game between the Chicago Bores and Cincinnata Bungles was a thriller in every sense of it. But that was a bad thing for the home team, who just lost against the previously winless New Yuck GlennJUTS in choking a double-digit lead. Now against a 4-3 Chicago team, how would Cincy fare? They gave up some points in the first half, but led 20-17 at halftime with some good offensive playcalling. Unfortunately, the Bungles’ defense forgot to show up again and gave up a few big scores in the second half, including a TD run by DJ Moore that looked like the ball had popped out before crossing the goal line but the replay center upheld it as a touchdown. Cincy was down by 14 points and Joe Flacco led a couple of drives that ended with a fumble, missed field goal and an interception. Somehow getting the ball back after forcing a three-and-out versus the Bores, the Bungles would score a swift TD with under two minutes left and decided to attempt a two-point conversion(because why not?) and they converted. Then, they lined up to attempt an onside kick with no timeouts left and the kick had to travel at least ten yards unless touched by a Chicago defender beforehand in order to be legal. Well, guess what? A Bores defender ran to get the ball in not knowing that rule, with the ball hitting off his foot at the 43-yard line and the ball was live. A mush pile ensued and Oren Burks of Cincy recovered the ball. An unbelievable recovery that kept this game going and gave the Bungles a chance to end it on the winning side. With two timeouts left, Chicago needed a stop but they weren’t able to get one as Flacco got a couple of big passes to TEEEEEE Higgins, who also got hurt after making the second one of those catches and that stopped the clock at 1:11. Cincy was already near the red zone and they would be smart to force the Bores to call timeouts. A Flacco pass to Chase Brown went out of bounds for 15 yards and stopped the clock again. Still with over a minute left, a run by Brown forced Ben Johnson to call one of his timeouts. On 2nd & goal, Flacco threw the ball to Andrei Iosivas, who caught it in the end zone for the game-tying touchdown. The extra point by Evan McPherson was good and Cincy had a 42-41 lead. But with still a lot of time left on the clock, Chicago’s offense had a chance to get into field goal range to win the game and with one timeout left they could still use parts of the field without going out of bounds. After a couple of negative plays to start out the drive, the Bores got a big play out of Williams, who scrambled for a good gain of 14 yards and was taken down in bounds for a first down. The Bores called timeout with 25 seconds left and on the next play, Williams threw the ball to rookie tight end Colston Loveland, who galloped through the Bungles defenders in front of him and sprinted all the way to the end zone for a super huge touchdown with 17 seconds left. An unreal feat that pretty much doomed Cincy, which needed to have a Hail Mary by Flacco in order to try and win the game. But that final pass was intercepted as Cincy lost a second straight home game where they scored a load of points only to have their defense surrender more of them. A tough loss that had them miss a chance to keep up with Beltimore and the RodgersBurgh Stellers, who both won their Week 9 games. In the AFC Norteh, the Bungles are in a hole and clearly heading into their bye things are not looking good. Three straight home games of scoring more than 33 points and only one of them was a victory(the IcyHot Bowl on TNF). The defense gave up 30+ in each game, and Chase Brown called out his team on it. This has been an issue since last season and kind of like the Dellas ShotBoys, they can’t seem to get a win at home in a close tight high-scoring game. Lou Anarumo isn’t the problem, he was simply a scapegoat for an organization wide issue. Developing a good defense to be alongside a legendary offense with a healthy Joe Burreaux, who needs a better O-Line to protect him from getting hurt all the time are the problems. So, Cincy is 3-6 and they should really be better. But they aren’t, so they are deserving of three appearances in the CFS so far this season. See if that lasts for other weeks as they are paired with ugly teams from the Norteh divisions. That’s all for this time-stretching, mind-bending funtastic edition of the Coveted Fifth Spot.

• Waiting List: New Yuck GlennJUTS, Cleveland ClownShow, BradyDoors of the Punk Carroll Ark, Losing Your QB To Another Tough Injury, Almost Winning But Falling Short After Your QB Got Concussed, Losing Against A Team That You Have Beaten Numerous Times In The Playoffs In The Regular Season Again, Getting Beaten Against A Lowly Franchise That Has Your Number In Recent Years, Adjusting To Daylight Savings Time, Off-Year Election Races Ending, MLB Season Over With A Repeat Champ In That Sport(Ugh!)