Funny Pages: The All-Powerful 'Slingshot Year'

Everything suddenly feels amazing, doesn't it? Now that “The Bachelorette” is over, and we no longer have to say the name "Chad," or talk about swooshy hair, the 2016 NFL season has finally returned to us. Football is BACK. Football brings the kind of pure joy that makes people (me) spend 20 minutes of their lunch break gushing about how incredible the new grass at the stadium is. (It's a mixture of Bermuda and rye grass, and it's honestly delightful.)

In addition to the field, we have a lot of actual football things to be super-cautiously hyped about:

#1: all of the players that spontaneously combusted last year are back

#2: we basically got to draft our rookies an entire round ahead of where we're used to drafting them

#3: our schedule is "easier" this year thanks to the season that we'll never speak of again

This phenomenon is known as a "Slingshot Year." It happens when a playoff-quality team gets the draft picks and the schedule of a rebuilding team. HAVE I MENTIONED THE GRASS?

Welcome Eric Weddle! Also, Sorry.

Every year we seem to sign that one guy who feels like he's been a Raven for his entire career. You see so many teams sign free agents, and it always just feels like it's their second team, but when the Ravens snag players like Shannon Sharpe, Rod Woodson, Derrick Mason, Anquan Boldin, Steve Smith Sr., and Eric Weddle, it feels like we're rescuing them from a team who had stolen them from us.

When you find those special players, it's important to learn as much as you can about them. For example, I've learned that if you take Eric's beard and put it on his head, he looks like the Kramer painting from “Seinfeld.”

What a day we're having.

I understand there's a chance Eric reads this article and gets a little upset, but the end of the day, I, Ryan Mink, am a proud photoshop artist and have always stood by my work.