We can see knockout football looming on the horizon, albeit not quite yet.
We'll lose three more teams from the championship this weekend, and there's some sorting out to be done as regards who goes straight through to the quarter-finals and who has to navigate a preliminary quarter-final.
But in reality, it's not enough yet to properly hook the public. The air of listlessness remains pervasive and the crowds have been fairly underwhelming.
Clare are already gone and the great likelihood is that Louth and Westmeath will be joining them unless either of them can orchestrate a massive shock this weekend. (For Louth to go through, it really would have to be a seismic shock).
Sligo are probably doomed, in my view. They're already trailing Kildare in the score difference stakes and Dublin will probably be seeking to rack up a big tally in the hopes of ensuring top spot in the group and the direct route to the last eight.
The championship structure has been talked about endlessly but I feel the lack of jeopardy resulting from the preliminary quarter-final safety net has contributed to the laboured and lethargic play we've witnessed up until now.
It's the other Group 3 game in Tullamore that could potentially - and I stress the word 'potentially' - throw up one of the interesting contests of the final round.
Davy Burke's consistent and well-drilled Roscommon side are coming up one of the most enigmatic and frustrating teams in inter-county football.
We simply don't know what in God's name Kildare are going to bring.
They're often abysmally bad but it's also entirely possible they could pull a rabbit out of the hat and actually take down Roscommon.
Based on form alone, the notion sounds daft. But glancing at the raw talent and potential in their ranks, there's no reason they should be overawed.
When you consider their population, the fact that they've won two U20 All-Ireland titles in the last five years - although the second one was only this year - it's not as if they're lacking in quality.
They have ability in spades up front in the form of Daniel Flynn, Neil Flynn and Jimmy Hyland. They just don't seem to have evolved a structure that allow them to play to their capabilities.
Being blunt, they've had a pretty pathetic year until now. They barely stayed up in Division 2, scraped into the Sam Maguire thanks to other results (I'd say the relief when Louth came through in extra-time against Offaly was overwhelming).
Kildare play like a team with no sense of identity. You don't know what kind of shape or structure they're going to adopt on a given afternoon.
This was perfectly summed up by the pair of games against Dublin this summer.
We all applauded them after the provincial semi-final, where they put in place a really solid and well-organised defensive structure, frustrated the life of the Dubs, and but for some poor shooting near the end could have scraped a famous win. The automatic instinct after that afternoon was to re-evaluate their chances.
Then they go out a few weeks later in Nowlan Park, go man-to-man and get hammered. Not only that, in between, they were held to a draw by Sligo at Markiewicz Park.
If you go against the Dubs at Croke Park and set up one way, then play them a few weeks later and set up the total opposite way, that's not going to create identity or personality in a team.
A team needs to develop a strong identity to generate consistent performance year on year. Prior to James Horan's arrival in Mayo in 2011, our identity was that we were a soft, weak bunch that other teams loved playing against. And that's what we were.
If you look at the five All-Ireland finals Mayo reached between 1989 and 2006, they were almost one-offs. They had an out-of-the-blue quality to them. They weren't based on consistent high performance over a long number of years. We developed that under Horan.
And that's what Kildare are missing, in my view. It's 2010 since they last reached an All-Ireland semi-final. The outlier year recently was in 2018 when they knocked us out in Newbridge, when we were coming in on the back of a poor season.
You'd wonder is it their presence in Leinster in the shadow of the Dubs that has demoralised them. The example of Meath certainly strengthens that theory. They've fallen even further in the modern era.
Has it bred a sense of fatalism? That they approach the Leinster Championship with a mindset that they're not going to win and so 'what's the point?' And perhaps that's filtering through to the rest of the championship.
The probability is they'll make it through to the last 12, given the disparity in quality between Dublin and Sligo in the other game. However, if they go in on the back of another defeat, you'd have to assume confidence would be on the floor for their knockout tilt. In five matches, they'd have only beaten Wicklow and would still be standing somehow (again this is if they lose on Sunday, which is certainly far from an inevitability).
From the purists point of view, it probably also highlights the deficiencies in the current structure, whereby a team can survive to the last 12 after such a miserable run.
There was plenty of hand-wringing when we lost two matches in 2019 before catching Donegal - who'd been in super form that year - with a sucker punch in the third Super 8s game. The difference is we had only had lost twice and finished second in the group. It again highlights the needless mistake that was made in allowing the third place teams to progress.
As for the remainder of the groups, I'd expect Monaghan to get through against Donegal, though there were some shafts of light for the latter in their displays in the group, especially with the stellar performance of Oisín Gallen against Derry.
The two top seeds will likely win in Group 1, although Cork have shown signs of improvement in the round robin and Kevin Walsh has a track record of devising gameplans which unsettle Mayo.
And I'd anticipate that Galway will bolster their credentials with another win against Armagh to take spot in Group 2. It breaks my heart to say it, but they look like the most convincing team at the moment - with the caveat that the championship hasn't really started yet.
Watch Roscommon v Kildare in the All-Ireland Football Championship on Sunday from 1.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on RTÉ.ie/Sport and the RTÉ News app or listen to live updates on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
Watch Galway v Armagh in the All-Ireland Football Championship on Sunday from 3.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on RTÉ.ie/Sport and the RTÉ News app or listen to live updates on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
Listen to the RTÉ GAA Podcast on the RTÉ Radio Player, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts
