Here at the sports desk located somewhere below decks of the Good Pirate Ship RedState, we have finally sufficiently recovered from last weekend’s quartet of NFL playoff insanity to compose some thoughts on the season’s penultimate weekend finally arriving. The AFC finds the Cincinnati Bengals — yes, really, the Bengals — traveling to Kansas City for a match with the Chiefs. At the same time, in the NFC, the San Francisco 49ers are heading down I-5 to meet up with the Los Angeles Rams.

Cincinnati Bengals at Kansas City Chiefs — Chiefs fans have become almost blasé when it comes to Patrick Mahomes working his magic in-between State Farm commercial shoots. They’ve also become inured against having domestic violence specialists on the roster. Kansas City believes having everyone’s grandfather Andy Reid as coach somehow makes signing head cases such as Damon Arnette a sign of rehabilitative power and not willful blindness to a felonious character.

Cincinnati fans have become so used to being mired in mediocrity many of them were unaware the NFL season extends for some four or five weeks past the last weekend in December. They are still trying to wrap their heads around the notion that football players in their city with those silly tiger stripes atop their heads are actually but one game away from the Super Bowl. The Bengals have disproved the notion that you can never go home again, as Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase have picked up right where they left off at LSU.