Putting way too much pressure on the Vikings

I don't think I am being too dramatic here, but if the Vikings don't win the Super Bowl this year, they have completely missed their shot with this window. This season is a crucial one for the Vikes, and they can't screw it up. The problem is that I don't believe they have the ability not to.
It is difficult to maintain a core of talent for much longer than 2 or 3 years, and the Vikings are likely approaching the end of such a cycle. Players will either age out of their most effective ability, or they will reach free agency, and their contracts will no longer fit. It's not an issue of team management, it's just the way things work in the NFL. The exception is teams that have a broader period of contention.
One thing that most teams who reach a contending window, and are able to lengthen that window, is a stable, home grown quarterback. The Vikingsgave up on Teddy Bridgewater, just as they have had to do with all of their drafted quarterback talent, excepting only, perhaps, Daunte Culpepper and Brad Johnson, so they broke the bank on Kirk Cousins.
So this season is just as much a referendum on Cousins as it is on the Vikings' window. He still has two years left on his deal, including the coming season, but if Cousins can't lead the Vikings deep into the playoffs, or if he does and still looks shaky thereafter, the final year of his contract will likely consist of keeping the seat warm for the next man ready to fail as Vikings quarterback.
The problem is that Cousins is a deeply flawed player, who has never really proven himself of leading a team into the postseason. Washington was just as successful, if not moreso with Alex Smith at the helm last year, before he got hurt. Quarterback statistics are hard to assess. Often because a bad team is behind early, a quarterback's numbers are inflated as his team tries to catch up. The only way, in my opinion, to judge whether or not a quarterback is effective is if his team wins when he is on the field. Has Kirk Cousins proven that he wins? Not consistently.
That's the biggest albatross on the Vikings' neck this season. Next season, they will need to worry about retaining core pieces of their roster if they hope to sustain some modicum of success. Their last challenge is time. They'll find out, either this year or next, that they've run out of it.

The Colts are just going to keep building through the draft

There was a lot made of the Colts' 2018 season and their position as the off season approached. They were a team on the upswing, and they were in a place of great financial flexibility, so some massive moves were expected, with holes on defense and a wide receiving corps that was very shallow, as well as a widely stated need for a running back.
The free agency glut came and went, and the Colts came away with.... Devin Funchess. Later, the Colts went out and added Justin Houston and Spencer Ware, but that was long after the premium names were already off the board.
The Colts then went to the draft, and the general consensus was that they crushed it. They traded out of the first round, and had three picks in the 2nd round, which they used to fill three pressing needs: Rock Ya-Sin, a cornerback, Ben Benogu, a linebacker and Parris Campbell, a wide receiver. This is the second year in a row that the Colts have potentially done extremely well with the draft.
That's a great thing to have in their back pocket. As they continue to develop internally, with young players breaking out, they will be able to either retain players in the long term, or in the short term, add that final component to a potential championship team.
Which, uh... I guess is what the situation was this year. To me, that signifies that they could get more out of the prospects they are adding than the entirety of the free agent pool, which is incredibly arrogant. Of course, Chris Ballard, the GM, is yet to be proven wrong in his Indianapolis tenure. We can call it confidence, since Ballard has already started to turn the team around using similar methods in previous off seasons.
The Colts could have added a bunch of free agents to round out the roster. They didn't. They could probably do it again next year. They probably won't. That doesn't seem to be how this organization wants to operate.

It's all bad news

We are at the beginning of the summer dog days for sports media coverage. There is only one of the big Four sports that is currently active, and it is the longest, steadiest season of them all. The crush of free agency is through for the three primary winter sports, and all the drafts are complete as well. It allows MLS to sneak up a little bit, but really, there are no big headlines to be made right now.
Unless it's bad news.
There is usually a buffet of stories about the offseason misbehavior of athletes - usually NFL athletes (there are just more of them), ill worded statements from executives and entirely too much attention paid to minor roster machinations in all leagues. Everyone tunes into every story more closely, developing strong opinions about everything they read.
And then the worst happens. Perhaps it is because we have so few distractions, except for those miscreant headlines, but it seems like the passing of Tyler Skaggs has a real chance to settle into our collective psyche and really, really hurt. With other bad news, and lord knows there is plenty in the course of the year, we can soldier on, but Skaggs sudden passing will likely have a chance to sit with us.
I think there is more to it than the headline desert of summer, or even the relative youth of Skaggs. There are other deaths that come in the summer in other sports. Jared Lorenzen, former NFL quarterback with the Giants and at the University of Kentucky just passed today, for example, at the tender age of 38. I think it's because baseball is a local sport, and fans of the game really have a chance to come to embrace members of the organization.
Baseball is part of the cadence of summer. Whereas football, and to a lesser degree basketball and hockey are events, baseball comes around every day, and we hear the announcers say the players' names so often they become interwoven in the humid summer air. The rhythm and the persistence of baseball make the players seem more akin to family.
And we watch them grow up with our organization, anticipate their success for longer. Players in other leagues are certainly younger, but they arrive ready to play, either out of high school or overseas. Maybe we saw them in college, but surely not the one in our back yard, or the one our local news, or the blog we read is most dedicated to.
Baseball players are part of the fabric of summer, in a way players in other sports are not enmeshed, and regardless of age, we become invested and engrossed in their development, and have a built in patience, almost like the players are our children in a way. We may never meet a professional baseball player through their career, but losing them so young has a special sting.
RIP, Tyler Skaggs. You will be missed.

I don't like country music

I want to first preface this by saying there isn't anything wrong with you if you do like country music. It's a personal taste and I do not share it. Too many people conflate an opinion on music, especially, as some sort of moral test. One is more legitimate if one prefers one kind of music over another, and they talk about the virtues of one kind of music and the fans of said music have. A genre of music is not and cannot be more virtuous than any other, and if you believe it can, then you are pompous. Country simply doesn't sound right to my ear, and that is OK, just as if hip hop or grunge or whatever doesn't sound right to yours.
Because I titled the post this way, I figure you expect an explanation. Sure, I'll give it to you. Die hard country fans espouse the lyrics and the instrumentation, the originality of the music. I don't want to put words in your mouth if you are a fan, so I'm just going off of common refrains that I have heard. I am going off of my taste, and arguing with anonymous voices that may or may not reflect your opinion. I'm trying to be very diplomatic here, over something that really makes people salty.
I find the lyrics of country songs to be too saccharine for my taste. More broadly, most that point to lyrics as something they appreciate in a song do so because they find the words to be relatable. I don't relate to country music. I grew up in suburbs, went to school in the city and am rather cynical. Country lyrics ring a bit treacly to me. I roll my eyes instead of enjoying the sentiment.
Some country songs border on pop or rock, depending on whether or not the instruments accompanying the lead guitars are fiddles or not. I don't like the way fiddles sound. If you remove the fiddle and replace it with a powerful bass line, it will definitely sound better to me, but at that point, is it really country anymore? I'm honestly asking, because I'm not sure where the line is.
The originality thing isn't really an issue for me. Country is no more or less original than any other brand of music. Thematically, most songs are the same, which is true in any genre, though those themes are the same. Country is just as prone to covering previously performed songs as rock or pop, and in my view, covering someone else's song isn't that different from sampling, which is often performed in hip hop. What I'm saying is that Country doesn't distinguish itself in my view on originality. This wouldn't matter much, but the themes and tone it sticks to generally don't appeal to me, and I don't identify with them.
Now all of that said, and this is the important part of this post: I have come to have so much respect for the talent of country singers. When they want to, they definitely can make a foray into another genre of music. Look at pop stars Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and now Kacey Musgraves and Maren Morris on the female side, and Dan and Shay and Florida Georgia Line among the men.
I bring all of this up to say that this spring's hot song, Old Town Road was terrible when Lil Nas X performed solo. It took Billy Ray Cyrus to make it the hit it became. When country artists take their talents to other genres of music, It almost always adds positively to the song in question. Tim McGraw and Chris Stapleton have perhaps done this the most effectively in recent years, and now Billy Ray Cyrus, somehow, has done it again.
I have all the respect in the world for country artists, and I appreciate their talent when they have cross over hits. I just don't like country music.

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Since there will be movies...

Donald Trump - Bob Odenkirk
Bob Mueller - Sam Waterson
Don Jr. - Will Arnett
Eric - Paul Dano
Melania - Penelope Cruz
Ivanka - Katherine Heigl
Jared Kushner - Colin Hanks
Mike Pence - John C. McGinley
Kellyanne Conway - Laura Dern
James Comey - Vince Vaughn
Steve Bannon - Brendan Gleeson
Michael Flynn - Matt LeBlanc
Paul Manafort - Colin Firth
Michael Cohen - David Duchovny

I am open to other possibilities and additional casting.

Marvel seems to just make good movies

For most of us, I think, the superheroes we grew up with were Batman, Superman and to some degree, the Justice League. That is to say, DC Comics really dominated the 80s and 90s, from TV shows, including cartoons to movies. Heck, they probably had a firm grip on things before that, too. Spider-man was perhaps the lone Marvel superhero in the mainstream, and that turned into two different movie franchises, even predating the current glut from Marvel.
Now just think about how the comic industry has turned on it's head in the last decade plus. Sure, we were vaguely aware of, if not terribly excited by, Iron Man, Captain America, and the Incredible Hulk. Now, they are the centerpieces of a historic movie franchise, which is presently dominating the silver screen.
Sure, next month the next round from the Avengers is going to be released, and that gets its fair share of fanfare. But it's Captain Marvel, this months blockbuster, that is most indicative of the success of Marvel's franchising.
I'm not particularly surprised that a superhero movie with a female lead is doing well. Wonder Woman was an excellent film and did very well at the box office. The difference is that people heard of Wonder Woman before Gal Gadot donned the outfit. Until the movie was announced, I had never heard of Captain Marvel, despite the enthusiasm of so may comics aficionados.
Even other lesser known characters, like Black Panther, had been introduced before their standalone movie, but Captain Marvel's logo was merely seen on Nick Fury's beeper in an credit cut scene. The best comparison, I think, would be Ant-Man, a not so well known character who now has a pair of movies.
And they both did great. Hype was created essentially from nothing, and these movies, first Ant-Man and now Captain Marvel did very well. Heck, Captain Marvel was eagerly anticipated. It's pretty clear that the excitement is simply that Marvel is releasing a new movie, rather than the desire to see a particular character (at least for the general public). Marvel's reputation is wonderful after a long track record of good movies. They aren't getting lazy, only better, and we're all just going to keep eating them up until they stumble.