Only Answer to What We Learned From NFL's Preseason: Ask in 22 Weeks

Now that the NFL's practice games are over and we are done enduring the "What did we learn from . . . ?" pieces in which we learn that we didn't learn anything at all except that injuries are still bad, what will football fans do with the next 10 days?
 
Well, 49er fans, just to name a group at random, will muscle up their love for Kyle Shanahan because he's really all they have for the moment. They can't fully trust Brian Hoyer, they don't know what to make of a draft class people like only on conjecture, and 2-14 is a deep ditch from which to climb. Shanahan has been praised as one of the superior offensive minds of the day, which reminds us that Lane Kiffin has also been praised as one of the superior offensive minds of the day. Correlation is not causation, though, and Shanahan might indeed be the face of a franchise that has only Jed York's, and we see from the Levi's Air Force how well that plays.
 
Raider fans, on the other hand, are watching their window of opportunity rise while wondering if they are destined to sneak in one last Lombardi Trophy in the last three years of their existence or forever be known as the Quebec Nordiques of the NFL – building a champion just in time for it to be crowned in another city.
 
Derek Carr is playing just the way you would expect the second highest-paid quarterback in the NFL would, and the offense is tasked with averaging 34 points a game just to stay ahead of its still too-generous defense, thus reaching the old AFL nostalgia freaks who are entering their dotage.
 
But we knew all this going into the practice season, and given that Roger Goodell keeps trying to shorten the practice season to add more games that count (because CTE is good for you, damn it!), the real thing we're learning is that we are choosing as media conglomerates to lavish more attention on less important things based solely on the fact that people need their needles.
 
So enjoy the holiday weekend and strap in for the next 21 weeks of Armageddon rehearsals in which we will learn how quickly Kyle Shanahan's image ages and how close to the New England Patriots the Raiders really are, because those are the questions that will be asked most often because they are ones that most completely will define their years.
 
And only then, 22 weeks from now, when we are asked what we learned, we can answer with a straight face, "Only 81 days until the draft!" because we like it on the hamster wheel and have no intention of ever getting off.

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