Week 7 handed out trophies and therapy bills with the generosity of a billionaire giving away advice. The league’s best play was a timeout, the worst play was also a timeout, and America learned that game clocks obey only chaos and whoever fed them after midnight.

Winner: Punters, who finally got the respect reserved for quarterbacks and people who can silence a group chat. Field-position gurus stared at spirals like real estate agents seeing waterfront property, and every coffin-corner kick wrote a tiny haiku about suffering.

Loser: Clock management, which remains a haunted theme park where rides are named after regrets. Coaches treated timeouts like commemorative spoons—pretty to display, catastrophic to use.

Winner: Backup quarterbacks, whose names sound like Wi-Fi passwords and whose confidence looks like it was won in a raffle. They took snaps like substitute teachers taking attendance: bravely, incorrectly, and with three kids named Aiden.

Meanwhile, fans developed advanced coping technologies. One section produced a stadium-approved collapsible seat cushion and began meditating on third-and-forever until the scoreboard tried to join in.

Loser: Analytics, but only when a chart disagreed with a coach’s ancient gut feeling shaped like a meatloaf and wrapped in folklore. On fourth-and-1, the spreadsheet whispered “go,” the gut yelled “punt,” and the franchise chose “delay of game” because compromise is important.

Winner: Defensive coordinators, who disguised blitzes as grocery lists and hid coverages inside package tracking numbers. One rush arrived so late it was declared fashionable and sacked October.

Loser: Kickers, who spent Sunday auditioning for a Greek chorus in cleats. To battle the wind, special teams recommended a handheld crosswind gauge, two Hail Marys, and finding a supportive breeze on LinkedIn.

Winner: The Injury Report, which now reads like a Victorian novel where every hamstring writes a goodbye letter. Teams upgraded half their rosters to “questionable,” which is also the relationship status with their fan base.

Loser: Fantasy managers, who benched 40 points with the grace of a person ignoring a fire alarm because it sounds judgmental. The waiver wire currently resembles a post-apocalyptic bazaar where you can trade hopes for a tight end with targets like a mirage.

Winner: The Chain Gang, the only analog truth left in a digital age. While tablets freeze and headsets crackle, two humans and a stick say, this is ten yards, and the league nods like it just discovered gravity.

Loser: The Rulebook’s Soul, summoned only to explain why common sense is unsportsmanlike conduct. We reviewed reality for four minutes, slowed it to 1/1000th speed, and confirmed that physics committed a personal foul against vibes.

Week 7, then: a collage of intention and ricochet, where strategy meets slapstick and the moment breaks like a huddle tripping over its own metaphor. I brought the narrative and the box score, and the box score leaned in, smirking, to whisper the punchline: everyone won the coin toss, nobody won the time.