Is New York Giants rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart the Timothée Chalamet of the NFL? Is this year’s resurgent 9-2 New England Patriots squad the NFL equivalent of Chloé Zhao’s Oscar frontrunner drama, Hamnet? Is Netflix’s Jay Kelly, with graying star George Clooney at its center, the closest movie the race has to the 5-4 Pittsburgh Steelers, with graying star Aaron Rodgers under center?
If all of the proper nouns in those sentences mean something to you, then you’re the kind of person who treats the Oscars as their Super Bowl and also the real Super Bowl as your Super Bowl. I like to think Oscar nerds like me are in a class all of our own when it comes to punditry. But the NFL draws in fans for so many of the same reasons that the Oscars do — the narratives around winners and losers, the stars to root for, the teams that seem never to be able to catch a break. And so, today, on Prestige Junkie After Party, we’re putting all of those things together.
In what I’m calling our first-ever Oscars Super Bowl Mashup Extravaganza, I’ve gathered four people who, unlike me, speak the language of the NFL and the Oscars equally fluently. My After Party colleague Christopher Rosen, The Wakeup’s Sean McNulty, and two returning guests — Vulture’s Joe Reid and the indomitable Kara Warner — join me to explain how this year’s NFL season maps onto this year’s Oscar race, and whose narratives might line up in surprising ways.
Take the New England Patriots, for example. As Chris argues, they’ve run ahead in the AFC thanks to one of the weakest schedules in the sport, making them what Chris calls “paper champs.” That’s not dissimilar from the run we’ve seen from Hamnet, which has been racking up audience award wins at film festivals for months but hasn’t really had a head-to-head showdown with its biggest Oscar competitors like One Battle After Another or Sinners, both of which skipped the festival circuit.
We’re also eager to find comparisons between NFL stars and actual celebrities — the flashy Dart has the Chalamet personal style going for him. Still, as one of the most promising rookies in the league, maybe Dart’s more like Chase Infiniti, the thrilling newcomer star of One Battle After Another. As veteran players trying to push their way toward one more winning season, Rodgers and Clooney form a light match… or maybe the controversial future Hall of Famer is more like Leonardo DiCaprio going for that second Oscar?
Join us as we dive down these rabbit holes on today’s bonus podcast episode. By the time the NFL playoffs are fully underway in January, we’ll have our list of Oscar nominees, so count on a revisit of this argument — and a whole new lineup of comparisons — sometime around then.
If you have your own hot takes on how the NFL and Oscar seasons overlap, or any suggestions for our next wild rabbit hole, get in touch as always: katey@theankler.com. We’ll have another special episode solely for paid subscribers next Friday — come back then, and now keep reading for Chris’ latest update from the Prestige Junkie pundits.
