It's a nervous time for teams at the bottom of the table and at the top of it.
Down the divisions, promotion chases and relegation battles are in full swing. In the top tier, the motivations are harder to decipher.
When it was put to Kevin McStay by local reporters that his team were, then, in second spot and thus in good shape to reach a league final, he reacted like a chap who'd been asked to deliver a best man's speech at five minute's notice.
"Down with that sort of talk," McStay said, breaking out into a smile.
Paudie Clifford, meanwhile, indicated they'd have to hear from the management whether a league final appearance is an encumbrance they're willing to accommodate at this time.
Enda McGinley had already told us at the outset that a third place finish was the prize, avoiding the final but also entailing minimal looking over one's shoulder.
The league has been lionised as the best competition in Gaelic football for several years now, partly as a means of expressing dissatisfaction with the shape of the championship.
It is a strange 'best competition' that has several contenders at the highest level admitting they don't care if they win it. As ever, the man from Mars would require a lengthy debrief and a fair deal of background colouring in before he could wrap his head around things.
Mayo are currently Exhibit A in the dangers of winding up in a league final. In McStay's first year, they were cavalier enough to win the whole thing a mere seven days out from their Connacht championship opener, when the Rossies were already crouched in wait, primed to deliver one of their trademark ambushes.
From a competition and even a novelty perspective, the GAA is missing a trick not dispensing with these extraneous showpieces. It would give the league an added USP if it simply concluded in Round 7. Score updates flying in from around the country, ideally finishing in a score difference foot-race.
TG4 split-screening. Des Cahill on Sunday Sport interjecting, "We're going to have to interrupt you Marty, Darren Frehill has news of a goal in Pearse Stadium." This desk's bumper live tracker may have never known a Sunday like it.
The only snag may be having to shell out for a couple of replica league trophies, although most people struggle to recall what it looks like in any case, perhaps even some of the players who've lifted it.
Most importantly, it may also have the effect of lessening the competitiors' ambivalence of winning the Division 1 title in the context of a heavy fixture schedule.
The resistance to going this route is stout.
GAA remains in thrall to the day out, meaning a competition that hasn't had a final simply isn't finished yet.
To those reared on soccer, the term 'league final' will always be an oxymoron. In America, where the 'playoffs' are an embedded concept, there is no such confusion.
One fancies that the Yank owners who evangelised for the Super League find it unforgivably anti-climactic that the league champions are crowned when they can no longer be mathematically caught. An EPL Grand final at Wembley could be just the thing to drag English professional football out of the shadows.
Perhaps, in that light, we could see the insistence on finals as part of the de-Anglicisation process that was such a central part of the GAA's original mission.
We got a taster of the alternative during the pandemic, when the radically shortened timeframe entailed all sorts of sacrifices.
Not that it counted for a whole pile when Peter Keane's term was up but Kerry were crowned league champions in 2020 without the necessity of a final. They ran out 14-point winners against Donegal in Tralee in the final round of games to pip Dublin to the title by a point.
You'd be half surprised the GAA were prepared to declare a winner in such circumstances. Certainly, it could have gone down another way.
Kerry: "Tá an áthas orm..."
GAA: "No, there's been no final. The whole thing is f****d. Give it here.
Kerry: "What?"
*Wrestling sounds.
GAA: "GAA: GIVE. IT. BACK."
*Kerry relinquish trophy because they ultimately don't care that much.
Covid-19 truly upended many conventions in Irish life and this was one of the most shocking.
The denouement of the league already collides with the unofficial foreign training camp season. Lee Keegan has recounted how extra-time in the 2012 league semi-final (at least they've dispensed with them) caused panic about whether they'd make the flight to Portugal that evening.
The association's reluctance to dispense with the traditional showpiece is understandable.
League finals weekend is a big money spinner for the GAA and also gives a chance for Division 3 and 4 counties to get a runout in Croke Park. The killing they're making on the carveries on both days in the premium section - while 'the other final' is on - is presumably off the charts.
Leitrim fans surely enjoyed their day in Croke Park after reaching the Division 4 decider in 2019, where they faced, ahem, Derry. It was their first outing on the hallowed turf since the county emptied out a full-quarter century earlier, back when the old Hogan stood and the half-built Cusack was roofless.
As for the rest of the campaign, what impact will the apathy around league finals have on the more consequential matters on the other end of the table?
With the leading teams potentially casting their eyes further down the track, is the form-book as reliable a guide for the final fortnight?
Monaghan finally took their leave of Division 1 last night, going down swinging against Tyrone. But who'll be joining them?
The normally ebullient Davy Burke appeared to have all the stuffing knocked out of him after his side's dispiriting fadeout in Castlebar.
Legendary Shannonside commentator Willie Hegarty was going a mile a minute with the homespun metaphors as he sought to convey the extent of Roscommon's inertia after half-time.
Both lads may have perked up on hearing that Jack O'Connor was contemplating 'using the panel' the next day.
"We're not sure yet," O'Connor clarified.
We wondered whether the Dubs might have felt they'd proven their point to the early season naysayers and felt content to slip into a lower gear in Salthill.
Joe Brolly's conversation with Mr O'Callaghan Snr at the March for Gaza is already shaping up to be this year's answer to James McCarthy's wedding - the moment when it all turned around.
Of course, folk who paid zero attention to the early rounds of the league - and many who did - might well be sceptical that things needed turning around for the All-Ireland champions.
Either way, they won in fairly routine fashion against a novice Galway team still shorn of their A-list forward line, floating to the top of the table for the time being.
Neither Dublin nor Kerry have much to concern them in their provincial championships. It would probably make little odds to the Dubs if their league final and provincial opener formed a double header.
Derry, the likeliest league finalists, do have plenty to worry about in their provincial championship, as they seek to become the first county to win three Ulster's in a row since Armagh in the mid 2000s (the Croke Park years).
Derry have adopted a 'rest is for weaklings' mantra since their sudden emergence as contenders a couple of years back. But even they gave Conor Glass and several others a rest for the visit of Dublin, possibly with a view to not showing their hand for later on.
They have a curiously strong record in the league going back the decades. The 90s team won no fewer than four of them. They subsequently reached league deciders in 2008 and 2014 - winning the former and losing the latter - after which they achieved nothing of note.
One more win and the dubious prize of a league final will be theirs, by which time the spectre of Jim McGuinness and co will loom largest.
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