When the NFL year began with stories not of football, but of political protest, racism and the U.S. President, it signaled the beginning of perhaps the strangest year in league history. For a league already undergoing an identity crisis, 2017-18 may go down in history less for who wins the Super Bowl than for how league matters leaked off the field. But for all the now played-out excitement of this year's politics—whether it be flaring racial tensions, concussions and cover-ups, or NFL Network sexual harassment—the ball itself, frankly, has been quite boring. Thus, we have one of the strangest of seasons: boring on the field and exciting off of it (in other words, the exact opposite of ideal).