Sticks, stones, broken bones. And a few words to follow: 

Among the most comically, dull-witted and repetitive exercises that signal the start of the NFL season is the calling for sage football media experts to predict the entire season’s records of every team. This year there are 17 games to grind on. 

The sagacious must dismiss reality before making such deeply considered predictions, as by Week 3 or earlier “key injuries” — the kind that in Wednesday night’s opener disallowed Super Bowl QB Sam Darnold from playing beyond the Seahawks’ first possession (see: 2023 Jets, Aaron Rodgers) — could appear. 

When will the media learn that football is not played in a test tube, that it’s not the Strat-O-Matic they played in their parents’ basements?