AFC South

I’m pretty sure I have pinkeye from either getting farted on by a young lady or general Reckless Living, so if this is a little short, don’t blame me. (That’s also what I told her, by the way.)

Anyway, the AFC South is a spiritual shithole. This is because of two things: one, it is basically made up of the castoffs from the other three divisions, teams that no one else wanted and that didn’t really fit anywhere in terms of rivalries because in order to have genuine rivalries you must have history and passion and all of these teams are spiritual autists. And two, all of the cities involved are basically empty wastelands of the heart, home to a sprawling soullessness that just grows and grows like a cancer, which I guess makes it the most American of divisions. This is already getting dark and depressing and my eye might be bleeding, so let’s just get this going.

Wait, I’m not done. Jacksonville is basically the worst place you’ve ever been only if someone took that place and multiplied it by 100. I’m talking in sheer size. It is fucking huge, just miles and miles of sad North Floridians too cowardly to be Georgians. The only good thing about Jacksonville is that my boy Al lives there and I’m pretty sure he’s gonna drink himself to death.

Houston, meanwhile, is basically an even bigger Jacksonville, the asshole of Texas, and can you even imagine how miserable you have to be to be called the asshole of fucking Texas? It is a massive city, a city devoid of character or soul, just a metropolis of doomed humanity waiting to be carried away in The Lord’s next flood, and they almost were. I’m allowed to say such things because my aunt lives there.

Indianapolis is Midwest Jacksonville, a worthless city in the middle of a worthless state, so devoid of character and self that it’s lazily named after the same state. There is literally nothing interesting to talk about here. A car race? Fuck off.

And finally, there’s Nashville, which actually has character, only that character is a warped cartoon of the hillbilly underbelly of America, but a cartoon stripped of the hardscrabble humanity and genuine life of that underbelly. Hillbillies will fucking cut you, man, and they’ll do it with a sort of haunting singularity of purpose in their eyes. That purpose is “Fuck You All,” a ferocious rebellion against the outside world that tries to tell them how to live, a world constantly encroaching upon their “simple” beautiful world.

Nashville takes all that and twists it and contorts it until it is all just an ugly Hee-Hawed cartoon, Disneyfied and stripped of anything Real, anything True. It becomes a bucktoothed farce, full of pickin’ and grinnin’ Uncle Jebs dancing for their clean masters. Shinefaces as your boy and mine Raven Mack calls them.

I could turn this whole thing into a 5,000 word annihilation of Nashville, but the Pink Eye is moving into my brain, like late-stage syphilis and I have to move on.

Okay. Anyway, got a little sidetracked there, haven’t even mentioned football once, but these things happen here at Armchair Linebacker. The reality is that I’m not even sure what to talk about football-wise, owing both to the spiritual and historical emptiness of all these teams and because, honestly, all of them could realistically win the division or finish dead last. There’s no real way to know.

The Jaguars are the presumed favorite since they won it last season and almost went all the way to the Super Bowl. They also have a dominant defense, with stars on each level, from Calais Campbell to Telvin Smith to Jalen Ramsey and AJ Bouye. But the NFL is a league in which consistent winning is achieved only by teams that have a true franchise quarterback. And is anyone about to call Blake Bortles an elite franchise quarterback? Of course not.

The NFL’s history is littered with teams like the Jaguars, who are good one year and then utter shit the next. Hell, the Jaguars own history is one filled with season-to-season rises and falls like that. At least it was for a while, anyway. The last six seasons before last year were all double-digit loss seasons played before perhaps the worst, most passionless fanbase in the country. Seriously, the Jaguars have, like, six fans total. Nobody cares and why should they?

Maybe they’ll be good, maybe they’ll be bad. Who fucking knows?

The Texans probably should be the best team in the division, but that is all based on conjecture and a ghost. That’s because none of their stars can stay healthy so no one really knows what’s there. It’s just a phantom that’s chased every year, usually right into a wall.

The defensive front should be terrifying, with JJ Watt, Jadeveon Clowney and Whitney Mercilus terrorizing opposing backfields, but Watt has basically missed the last two seasons, Mercilus only played five games last year and Clowney struggled to stay on the field until last season. Counting on them seems like a fool’s choice. Everyone still thinks of Watt as this monster destroyer who can dominate games all by himself, but even if he comes back healthy, how many dudes have basically missed two years and come back as badass as ever? Yeah, not many.

Offensively, DeShaun Watson looked like he might be The Man at quarterback, but he got hurt seven games into the season. So, basically, the Texans are relying on the hope that Watt and Mercilus come back better than ever (unlikely) and that they have their franchise quarterback and offensive identity sorted with a dude who’s played less than half a season. This is just too goddamn much to put your faith into. Perhaps it is fitting that the Texans wear red, white and blue. They are a team of broken promises and failed hopes, gambling on an increasingly unlikely future as they fall broken into the abyss. They should be the best, they should lead the entire AFC South, but they’re not. They’re just a ghost of what could be, a failed dream.

The Titans have a new coach, which is weird given that they actually made the playoffs last season. I mean teams don’t usually fire a coach who finally breaks through to the playoffs. On the other hand, that speaks to how much of an illusion the team itself felt that playoff run to be. They didn’t have faith in it. I mean obviously. If they did, they wouldn’t have fired their coach. How do you size up a team like that? In the end, I suppose they’re gonna go as far as Marcus Mariota takes them, and who can say what Mariota will do with a new coach? Again, they could win the division or they could finish last. Who fuckin’ knows?

The Colts, meanwhile, are probably the most boom or bust team in the division. It all hinges on Andrew Luck. If he can actually play – and play like Andrew Luck is supposed to play – he can carry the Colts to the division title. That’s what a true franchise quarterback can do. If he can’t go, or even if he can but is only a shadow of his reputation, then the Colts are gonna finish last. It’s that simple, probably the starkest and simplest situation in this entire godforsaken division. This is a depressing wasteland and my eye hurts. Fuck this. I’m not gonna do best case/worst case because I pretty much already told you. The best case for every team is a division title, the worst case is a last place finish and I get farted on again. We’re all gonna die in the end anyway, and everyone who lives in these cities or who roots for these teams already has a dead soul anyway. Vaya con dios, motherfuckers.

Final Judgment:

Everyone finishes 8-8 except for the Colts, who finish 3-13. We all die and I am sent to hell to be farted on for eternity.