Football Season 2026!
The NFL is back, and while I'm not expecting much as a Dolphins fan, some of my best memories revolve around football.
Growing up at my congregation, it was tradition to have a weekly football match after services ended, and so many classic games were had. We would draw up plays, copy celebrations from TV, run trick plays, and have a "super bowl" match every year during the Sukkot holiday. My brother and I would play the Original 1999 Backyard Football on Windows and that cemented my love for the game along with playing outside with friends. (I played with the mouse; my brother used the Keyboard…. Pretty genius how they designed multiplayer on the computer, although the keyboard allowed you to make passes off the screen further downfield and the mouse forced you to only pass to someone on the screen). We would create our team, draft players, and watch each other play the single season mode. Barry Sanders and Randall Cunningham were my favorite players to pick along with Mikey Thomas for whatever reason (he was so slow, but he was a good lineman), while I remember my brother picking Pete Wheeler and the infamous Pablo Sanchez. Creating your own player and your own full playbook was a 10/10 experience, the devs were cooking and really ensured that kids got to understand football concepts and make the game their own.
Super Bowls as a kid were so much fun, I remember going to my Pastor's house and my grandparents' house watching the game, laughing at funny commercials, and always skipping the half-time shows. My favorite Super Bowls was definitely the Giants Patriots games, as some of my best friends at the time were huge Patriots fans and it was crazy to watch Eli Manning come back each time.
Football was my favorite sport growing up and I wanted to play on a Team, but I was pretty lightweight and my parents watched the Concussion movie and were rightly concerned about whether I would survive a hit from a linebacker…so my football dreams slowly ended and I switched to focusing on playing basketball as my main sport.
Now as an adult, the football fanfare isn't what it used to be, and that's ok. That being said, it's pretty cool to see the next generation of kids carry on the legacy, and when I'm not too busy, I love to get out there and recreate some highlights from my adolescence. I hope to go back-to-back as a Fantasy Football Champion, (whoever invented the concept of Fantasy football was a genius btw, it really makes you care about those random Thursday night football games just a little bit more) and also shoutout Prime Video for hosting Thursday night football (and more sport games/live TV in general), that's the only streaming service I have. Talking football is a great conversational starter with the average dude, and retro football games are honestly the games that I play the most as of lately. I'll probably make a blog later going more in depth about retro football games, but here are the games I played the most growing up:
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Backyard football on PC
Madden 95 on (Sega Genesis Plug and Play game)
Madden 09 and Madden 13 on the Wii (5v5 and franchise mode went crazy)
NFL 2010 and Madden 12 on mobile
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I don't really plan on owning any of the modern football games, but I do enjoy
Retro Bowl and Legend Bowl which are both Pixel-art styled games and offer so much customization.
There are so many football themed board games out there, and at some point I want to play the Tecmo Bowl board game and the NFL licensed board game…I'll probably make a blog about Football-Themed games in the future!
As for my thoughts for this NFL season, I know that the Dolphins won't win a lot of games (at best we will go 8-9, worst case 0-17…realistically we will go 3-14.) I just want Achane to be a pro bowl candidate, Malik to put up top 15 QB stats and be our franchise QB (shoutout to the LU Alum), and our offensive line to actually be good. Maybe we can draft Jeremiah Smith next year, get a couple more defensive pieces, and make a playoff run in 2-3 years… For the rest of the NFL though, here are my predictions:
AFC Playoff Teams:
Ravens
Bills
Texans
Broncos
Patriots
Chiefs
Chargers
NFC Playoff Teams:
Rams
Eagles
Lions
Panthers
Cowboys
Bears
Vikings
Super bowl: Ravens v Rams, my heart says Ravens, but my mind says Rams…. Going to pick the Ravens though!
Feel free to share some fun football memories and predictions for the 2026 Season!
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