And now, the En Eff Ell

 The NFL season kicks off tonight in Kansas City -- Chiefs vs. Ravens! Patrick vs. Lamar! -- and, man, I am stoked. My fantasy team is jacked. I have Patrick. I have Lamar. I have Caleb Williams and CeeDee Lamb and Christian McCaffrey and Anthony Taylor and Taylor Swift's boyfriend and ...

Nah, I'm lying. I don't have any of those guys. I don't even have a fantasy team.

I got out of my league a few years back, even though it was a bunch of us who used to share a newsroom back in the 1990s and therefore was a lot of fun. Lots of inside jokes. Lots of team names only we got. I hung around for five years or so, which is a long time for me to stick with anything on account of I have the attention span of a gnat.

This does not mean Roger Goodell's magic kingdom won't hold my interest for, I don't know, a couple of series tonight at least.

For one thing, I want to see if I can figure out the league's new kickoff rules, which no one seems to understand. The way it works (I think) is the kicker tees it up at his own 35. The other 10 guys on his team line up at the receiving team's 40. Meanwhile, the receiving team must have at least nine players between their 30- and 35-yard lines.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "How will the kicking team know when they can go if their kicker's behind them and they can't see when the ball is kicked?"

I don't know.

"And how do teams execute an onside kick when everyone but the kicker is already 25 yards up-field?"

Beats me.

"And what's the point, anyway?"

Who do I look like, you friendly neighborhood back judge?

All I can say is, it's the En Eff Ell, where stuff doesn't have to make sense. Catches that used to be catches aren't catches anymore unless you make a "football play" while you're making them. And what's a "football play", exactly? 

A pirouette? Jazz hands? Who knows?

Also, if the ground can't cause a fumble, how can the ground cause an incompletion if the football touches it microscopically while a receiver has both hands securely wrapped around it?

I don't know that, either.

I also don't know what constitutes roughing the passer anymore, unless it's pretty much everything. I once saw an Atlanta Falcon get flagged for it because he landed on Tom Brady while tackling him, which is virtually impossible not to do while tackling someone. Of course, it was Tom Brady, whom the rules said you couldn't tackle unless you did it very gently and didn't leave any smudges. Still ...

Still, tackling in general in the NFL has become something of a lost art -- or, to put it another way, "illegal." Can't hit a guy high. Can't hit a guy low. Can't hit him too hard in between. And you absolutely, positively cannot touch his helmet with your helmet, even if the ballcarrier lowers his head a microsecond before you hit him and thereby makes helmet-to-helmet contact unavoidable. 

Before long, I figure, the league will dispense with defense entirely and just let Patrick and Lamar and Joe Burrow cavort up and down the field unencumbered.

Best jazz hands wins.