The future, glimpsed?

Don't know how many folks out there tuned in the Toy Story Funday simulcast of the Jaguars against the Falcons yesterday, but if you didn't YOU MISSED IT. And by that I mean, you missed what might be the future of football as it will exist somewhere about the time Captain Kirk is seeking out new civilizations whose scenery he can chew.*

(* Gratuitous "Star Trek" reference)

What the producers did was, they equipped the Jags and Falcons with sensors that, I don't know, transmitted technical stuff to a bunch of animated figures who mimicked the real players movements in real time. The Falcons and Jaguars (even Trevor Lawrence) were presented as squatty little guys with huge helmets playing the game on Andy's bedroom floor.

Slinky the Dog was the yard marker. The grappling hook from the arcade placed the football between plays. Zorg was in there somewhere, and Rex the T-Rex punted. I'm still wondering why they didn't put him in the game as the tight end so he could "short-arm" balls across the middle.

Anyway, it was lots of fun. Here's what it looked like.

Now imagine if this is what the actual game will look like in the future.

Because, listen, one of these days football players, who are not squatty little animated figures, are going to be so big, athletic and fast in real life that the game will be impossible to play due to attrition. We're already seeing players going down in batches every week; the effective life span of a running back is down to three or four seasons at best, and more and more players are quitting the game in their late 20s or early 30s because they want to be able to walk and remember their names when they're 45 or 50.

Already this season Aaron Rodgers is done and Nick Chubb is done, and they won't be the last. Human evolution being what it is, it won't be long before you're losing a Rodgers or a Chubb every week. By week 10 or so there'll be no one left to play the games.

Either that, or they'll have to resort to flag football. Some people think they already have.

The alternative is Toy Story Funday. Only every week, with no corresponding live humans playing at the same time.

"Oh, that's ridiculous," you're saying now. "You can't be serious."

OK, so I'm not. I think. Maybe.

Although how great would it be to see Travis Kelce rendered as Rex, getting open up the seam and short-arming Patrick Mahomes' passes while a squatty little Taylor Swift with a huge head cheers from an Arrowhead suite?

I can see it already.