Gambling With Sanity: Week 9

Friends, Romans, Idiots . . . lend me your ears as we descend deeper into the bowels both of this NFL season and my own hideous psychosis. Last week, I was the perfect picture of pointless mediocrity. Also, I went 7-7. That brings my season total to 52-62-9, which is the mark of a failed man, a sad idiot past the point of relevance, licking the floor for crumbs dropped by his betters in the hopes that one of them maybe dropped some opioid dust or something. Anyway, our lines are courtesy of VegasInsider.com, as usual, and as usual they have ignored my pleas for sponsorship because I’m not a WHITE MALE!!! At least not on the inside, which is what matters. Also, Happy Halloween, may you slip poison and razorblades into the mouths and souls of children everywhere.

Oakland (+2.5) at San Francisco

lololol how sad do you have to be to be an underdog to the fucking 49ers right now? Such is life for the Raiders, but I suppose it’s an appropriate metaphor. After all, these two teams have always represented the duality of the Bay Area. The Raiders, the team of Oakland, have always been wild and always pushed and pulled by the whims of a degenerate slumlord owner. Poor and dirty, they worked their asses off and took what was owed to them back in the day, but then the NFL gentrified and now they don’t have any recourse and just have to take what’s given them, which is almost always shit. Their fans are bikers and tow truck drivers who will stab you in the parking lot.

The 49ers, on the other hand, represent the gentry, San Francisco and Silicon Valley. They were never worth shit until the NFL gentrified and cold-eyed sociopaths like Joe Montana took advantage of it. When I was a kid, they were the team, adopted by posers nationwide as they smiled with clean faces, their fans in their polo shirts sipping wine and wrinkling their upturned noses at the bikers and tow truck drivers.

It would all too easy to say that this is a battle for the soul of the Bay Area, and as such a deeper metaphor for the soul of America, but the reality is that battle is already over. Both teams stink, rotted and ruined by megalomaniacs. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, you’re all fucked now. Of course, the poor get it first, which is why Raiders fans are being abandoned – again – so Mark Davis can slither into Las Vegas. I mean, the con isn’t even hidden anymore. Fuck this.

Pick: Oakland

Kansas City (-8.5) at Cleveland

The Browns finally fired Hue Jackson, 17 years too late, but still, it was a necessary step if this team doesn’t want to constantly crumble under the weight of incompetence. It was also kind of an acknowledgement by the Browns that “shit, we tried, I guess it’s on to next season again,” so . . . yeah, that ain’t good at least in terms of the present. The Browns need a plan, dudes and lady dudes. That means they’re gonna have to take a step back and figure this shit out long term. Unfortunately – and trust me, as a Lions fan, I know this – Browns fans don’t have time for that shit. It’s like telling a starving child that he needs to eat better and taking away the twinkie he found half-eaten on the ground. Shit, that twinkie isn’t good for him, but neither is his stomach bloating like an Ethiopian. Hue Jackson was a half-rotten twinkie and no one should be, uh, eating him, but now Browns fans don’t even have that. They just have a new plan, a new idea, a new season . . . which means this season is done and they just have to hope they don’t starve to death before someone can airlift in some goddamn bread.

Pick: Kansas City

Pittsburgh (+3) at Baltimore

The Steelers looked like they were falling apart – or at least like they didn’t have their shit together – at the beginning of the season. Le’Veon Bell was holding out, Antonio Brown was unhappy, and Ben Roethlisberger was still a rapist. The weird thing is that Bell is still out, who knows about Brown, and Roethlisberger is still a rapist, and yet, they seem to have put all that shit behind them and just gotten on with it. I think they just mentally moved on from Bell, they know who Roethlisberger is, and just got down to getting down with who they are and what they’ve got. And that means that they’re, well, they’re the Steelers. They always win this goddamn division. Meanwhile, the Ravens look like they’re ready to finally move on from Joe Flacco, which means that, like the Browns, they have to sort of mentally reset. Good for the long term, but probably bad for right now.

Pick: Pittsburgh

Tampa Bay (+6.5) at Carolina

Man, the fucking Buccaneers are wild this season. Jameis Winston was back and then he was gone by the end of last week’s game, throwing interceptions all over the goddamn place, replaced by Ryan Fitzpatrick, the dude who stepped in for Winston early in the season and ran wild until he threw interceptions all over the goddamn place and Winston came back. Got all that??? And now? Who the fuck knows? Both Winston or Fitzpatrick could throw for a billion yards and beat anyone or they could let their inner Failure Demons overwhelm them again and . . . shit, that sort of wild nonsense is no way to go through life in the NFL. That’s the sort of shit that leads a Heisman winner to steal crab legs and rape, or a fucking Harvard grad to devote his life to getting concussed. It makes no goddamn sense, and neither do the Buccaneers.

Pick: Carolina

N.Y. Jets (+3) at Miami

The Dolphins are probably the worst 4-4 team ever, but the Jets are the Jets, so . . . I don’t fucking know. Leave me alone.

Pick: Miami

Atlanta (+1.5) at Washington

The NFL East is such shit this year. The Redskins are in first place and by a decent margin already. That is fucking sad. This is not a good team. I mean, Adrian Peterson is carrying them right now and he’s 96 years old. He’s so old that he beats his children with tree branches and shit. “Cut me a switch, boy!” That’s something a 100 year old grandma from deep Mississippi would say, not an elite athlete in his prime carrying a fucking NFL team on his back. Peterson is gonna break down. It’s inevitable, and then the Eagles will pass the Redskins by and lol how weird does it look in 2018 to see the word “Redskins” in print? REDSKINS. It is an obscenity. Why not just call them the Savages or some shit? Yeah, I sort of non-sequitured my way through this, but it’s Halloween and I’m already half fucked-up, peeking through the blinds waiting for children to come to my door . . . so I can give them candy! What the fuck were you thinking? You’re sick!!!

Pick: Atlanta

Chicago (-10) at Buffalo

On the one hand, the Bears are “the Bears” and can’t be trusted to cover this. I’d rather trust Teddy K with delivering my mail every day. But the Bills have no quarterback. Or no receivers. Or no running game. Or . . . you get the point. The Bears could score only 13 points and still probably cover this.

Pick: Chicago

Houston (+1) at Denver

How long before Denver cannibalizes John Elway? There is no dumber idea than letting one of your former heroes take control of your team. 99% of the time, you’ll just end up hating the fucker. I’m forever thankful the Pistons never gave Isiah Thomas control of the team. As it is, I ended up hating Joe Dumars and that dude won a championship for the Pistons! The point is that it never ends well. It just ends in acrimony and fans bitching about the dude being incompetent. Even though John Elway has already won with Denver – both as a player and the dude in charge – he’s tanked the team and Broncos fans will forever think of that whenever they think of Elway. That is a tragedy. Sure, it is mostly because fans are unreasonable and ridiculous monsters, but that is life in the big city, Bubba. Still, I want – no I need – the Red Wings to hire Steve Yzerman. We’re all just idiots trying our best.

Pick: Houston

L.A. Chargers (+1.5) at Seattle

Fuck! The Seahawks were supposed to be bad now!!! What the fuck, man??? Sorry, still not over last week. Anyway, somehow, the Seahawks have survived the loss of damn near everyone who mattered – except, notably, Russell Wilson – and Pete Carroll continues to roll along in his Hall of Fame career, which is fucking crazy when you consider that way back in the day he was basically Hue Jackson. The world is so ridiculous and unknowable. That is why the only thing you can do is laugh and get high. Fuck it, there’s no point trying to control any of it.

Pick: Seattle

L.A. Rams (+1.5) at New Orleans

That’s right, the 8-0 Rams are underdogs this week. Meanwhile, the Saints have only lost once all season – to the wild Tampa Bay Fitzpatricks – so who fuckin’ knows? It’s weird because the Saints defense looked like dogshit early in the season and Drew Brees hasn’t thrown for a billion yards, and yet the Saints are 6-1. I mean, all this is relative I guess. Brees is still on pace to throw for over 4,000. It’s just not the 5,000 it usually takes for him to carry this team. He’s also got a 14-1 TD to INT ratio and a quarterback rating of 118.2 so . . . uh, fuck it, never mind my dipshittery. The defense is pretty bad, though, which isn’t exactly good news given the Rams are scoring 33 points a game this season. The difference is the Rams defense is legit. Holy shit, this might be the most actual analysis I’ve done all season.

Pick: Rams

Tennessee (+6.5) at Dallas

I forget sometimes that as powerful as Jerry Jones is (I’ve said he’s basically the owner of the entire NFL) he’s actually a natural-born fuckup. This is a dude whose entire success in the NFL was built on Jimmy Johnson. Jimmy was the Cowboys. He drafted everyone, made all the trades, coached them up . . . he was everything. Of course an egomaniacal fool like Jerry Jones had to fire him. Since then, Jerry has taken control of the Cowboys in every way, and they’ve fucking failed the entire time. He makes horrible, dumbass trades – the Amari Cooper trade was vintage Jerry – and just generally makes dipshit redneck decisions because he thinks he’s smarter than he is. He is America summed up, a braying jackass whose sheer hubris and shamelessness is enough to get him over on almost everyone else (sheer hubris and shamelessness are the two most necessary traits for success in the capitalist world) but he’s still a witless fuckup, and like most rich idiots, he has no idea how or why he’s really successful. He thinks he’s smart. He’s not. He’s just a fucking sociopathic monster. Still, that’s enough for him to lean on the poors, or teams like Tennessee. But when he meets someone who can fight back, he gets fucking fleeced and ends up looking exactly like what he really is: just another dumb fucking hick.

Pick: Dallas

Green Bay (+5.5) at New England

And the ground shook, and the trumpet of the herald cracked and was broketh as the Lord sayeth “What the fuck? This shit wasn’t supposed to happen!” and the Dark One rose from the bowels of hell, feet clad in Uggs, and sayeth “lol owned” as the heavens trembled and wept and a thousand years of darkness ruled the Earth.

Seriously, as much as I talk about Aaron Rodgers being the devil, Tom Brady is the real fucking thing. I don’t even mean this in a negative way. I mean it almost admiringly. I’m impressed. Aaron Rodgers is the devil from the Bible we all know and loathe, the dude who makes life hard on everyone, fucks up everything and still loses in the end because he’s actually a fuckup. He’s like Skeletor or some shit, an evil fiend doomed to be whipped up on by He-Man in the end. Yes, this is how I learned the Bible as a kid. But Brady . . . Brady is something else, something even deeper and darker, a fucking FORCE that transcends our petty knowledge of the universe or our little tales of good and evil, the ones easily understood by simple peasants in the cheap seats of the church, tales told to keep them in line while the rich folk fleeced them. Anyway, Brady is above all that. He is not a comic book villain. (And really, isn’t Satan just the archetype for all comic book villains?) As much as I like to joke about it, he transcends petty evil, living in a sort of amoral realm all his own that only cares about one thing: winning. In the end, when the trumpets blare and the heavens fall, he’ll still be there because he has to be. Because that is the essence of his being. He can’t lose. He wins therefore he is. Gisele is the devil, though. That bitch is evil. You can just tell. Still, I’d like to fuck her.

Pick: New England

As Men Do

Can Vs. Will

When you’re bad, one of the lost souls of the earth, doomed to wandering in the desert of the damned for your 40 years (or 60 . . .) everything is a battle against the self. Sure, there are other things there to be survived, but the true battle is always against yourself, against your own Failure Demons, and so whatever else is there is just a part in that larger story. It almost hasn’t mattered who the Lions have played because it has really just all been about the Lions themselves, about the Failure Demons and the 60 years of misery and the ether huffing and the Drano smoothies and all the rest of the horror we’re all too familiar with.

There comes a point, though – or at least you hope it comes – where you can finally stop fighting yourself and start fighting the external problems. It would be absurd to say the Lions are there already – hell, for most of us, the Lions could win for the next 60 years and we’d still keep a gun trained on our inner Failure Demons, afraid that if we look away they’ll just move right back in. We’re never getting over this. It is molecularly part of who we are. That sucks, but at a certain point you just have to accept it and try to move. Keep that gun trained, but start looking outside yourself too.

In simple football terms, that means it becomes about the other team every week as much as it is about the Lions. Most weeks, I just sit here and gibber on, barely even mentioning the other team because it honestly never really feels like it matters. The story has always been about the Lions being the Lions and their quest to overcome that. But like I said, there comes a point when in order to take the next step, you have to stop trying to beat yourself every week and start focusing on beating the shit out of the other dude.

It is kind of remarkable that I’m even feeling this way. It’s a completely alien feeling to me. It’s even more absurd when you consider it was only a month or so ago that I was completely out on this team, ready to burn them before the gates of hell in an offering to the Dark Lord in the hopes that he would let me go free. I mean, how do you get from there to here in such a short time?

I don’t know. I can’t really explain it. It’s just something you feel. It’s an observable phenomenon, but not one that you can really quantify with numbers or even a halfway decent explanation. It’s a copout for sure, but all I can tell you is this: watching the Lions the past few weeks has just felt different. They seem like grown-ups, in control of themselves and increasingly the other team. Maybe it’s Kerryon Johnson. Maybe it’s Frank Ragnow opening holes for him. Maybe it’s the idea that there is something coherent coming together here, an actual plan that seems to be – gulp – working.

Trading for Damon Harrison just makes it feel all the more real. This is not something a team that feels like it’s a million miles away does. It’s a move a team that thinks that it can win right now does. Despite all the obvious and rapid improvement, the Lions have had one unfixable weakness – they can’t stop anyone from running on them. Enter an 800 pound behemoth whose entire planetoid existence is devoted to sitting on the other team at the line and not allowing them any room to run.

It’s not just that the Lions traded for a dude who was an All Pro only two seasons ago and who is still playing at a high level, it’s that they somehow managed to trade – in the middle of the season no less – for the one dude in the entire NFL who could best fix their biggest weakness and who fits perfectly with Matt Patricia’s defensive philosophy of gap soundness and space integrity. And they only had to give up a 5^th round pick to do it. That is incredible. That is almost miraculous. That is the sort of thing that never happens to the Lions. It is the sort of things the Lions never make happen for themselves.

But they did this time, and that is another piece of evidence that this is different, that maybe they’re ready to move on from fighting themselves, from trying to fix themselves, to fighting everyone else.

So . . . I guess I should actually focus on the mysterious Other for a change. The Seahawks are not the team that won a Super Bowl and should have won a second. Richard Sherman is gone, Earl Thomas was last seen flipping off his own team as he was carted into oblivion, and Russell Wilson has been left running for his life behind a shitty offensive line with no receivers to throw to. So, there’s that.

The thing is, is that given all the above the Seahawks should probably be worse than they are. They’re 3-3, they’ve won 3 out of their last 4 and even though their offense does suck, their defense is still really good thanks to the presence of dudes like Bobby Wagner and Frank Clark. Their only loss in that stretch is to the Rams, and the Seahawks nearly pulled that one out too. So . . . yeah, they’re still the Seahawks in some ineffable way. Maybe it’s Pete Carroll. Maybe it’s Russell Wilson. Maybe it’s something almost the reverse of what the Lions are going through. The Seahawks have been self-actualized for long enough that the Failure Demons are gonna take some time to catch up to them.

Then again, maybe not. I mean, the Failure Demons are already there. You could see them riding on Earl Thomas’ shoulder, cackling in his ear, whispering horrible things to him, raising that middle finger with invisible demon pullies. This is a team on the brink of total destruction mentally, spiritually, and in all the ways that are so horribly familiar to Lions fans. It is only a matter of time.

There is a real chance that the Seahawks completely melt down here, that the trajectories of these two teams cause a violent explosion when they collide in opposite directions, leading to a ridiculous rout and Lions fans stroking obscene boners as they race through the streets, hooting with a sort of savage joy that defies language while Seahawks fans Cobain themselves.

Or the Seahawks could hold it together long enough to blunt the Lions own march to bonerville. I don’t know. But that’s what’s fun now. It’s actually a battle between two teams instead of the Lions fighting themselves with another team just incidentally helping wedgy them into the anus of hell.

The Seahawks can’t pass the ball really, which is more a function of them not having any real receivers and no pass blocking than anything having to do with Russell Wilson. He’s still Russell Wilson, and he can probably will himself to winning games on his own. But, since the Seahawks passing attack is less an attack and more the feeble slapfighting of an anorexic junkie, they try to run the ball a lot. That would sound bad if the Lions hadn’t just traded for an ogre nicknamed Snacks whose entire raison d’etre is eating opposing running games. But the Lions did trade for him, and if he’s ready to go – professionals should always be ready to go – then it’s hard to see how the Seahawks reliably move the ball on the Lions.

That is fucking crazy to say, to even dare to think, after how this season started, but here we are. Such is the absurdity of life.

Like I said, the Seahawks defense is another story. They’re still good even if they aren’t as wildly intimidating as in years past. But I don’t really worry that much about that when it comes to the Lions offense. Or at least I shouldn’t. Matthew Stafford is at least in Russell Wilson’s league when it comes to Dude Who Can Win It On His Own status, Kerryon Johnson and Frank Ragnow have completely transformed the running game, giving us something we haven’t see in at least 20 years, and Kenny Golladay looks like he’s heading to monster status while Golden Tate and Marvin Jones are still terrific A- options. That is a ton of firepower for any defense to have to deal with.

Add it all up, and I see no reason why the Lions can’t beat the Seahawks. That feels good to say. Shit, it feels amazing to say. And that’s where the transformation lies. It’s no longer a matter of “can they?”, it’s a matter of “will they?” This is a necessary step that all good teams have to take. It is not the final step, but it’s one step closer.

The Lions could never beat teams like the Seahawks before. That was the dirty underbelly of the whole Caldwell era. It was never a matter of “will they?” even when it seemed like it should be. It was simply a Fact that the Lions wouldn’t beat these teams. Or teams like the Packers. Or the fucking Patriots. But they’ve already beaten the Packers and the Patriots this season. “Can they?” has finally been answered. It’s been obliterated and replaced by “Will they?”

It’s kind of funny that throughout my infernal NFL preview, I kept referencing the Patriots, the Packers and the Seahawks in the same breath as teams that have degenerated around great quarterbacks. It almost feels serendipitous that these three teams have become so literally crucial to the Lions development and to the Lions season. My boy Raven Mack and I have a thing we say to each other, and that’s that we “write the future.” By that, we mean that inside of all the gibberish, we somehow find something profound, something True. That is our secret. Maybe this is one of those things. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’m sitting here and I’m believing. A month ago, I was slitting throats and threating to hold Matt Patricia down and shave him. Only a week ago, I was still saying that this wasn’t a good team that would do anything this season even if I was now hopeful about the future. Today, I’m saying that the Lions can win, and I don’t just mean this week. I mean this entire season. It’s there for the taking and the Lions actually seem, somehow, like a team that can do it.

Again, “will they?” is the question now. Making a move for Damon Harrison tells me that they at least think they can. Beat the Seahawks this week and this becomes a full-blown hysteria. This is partly because Lions fans overreact about everything. I do it too. I’ve explained the whys of that over and over again. But it’s also because this just “feels” different. It feels True, and I can’t remember the last time I felt like that as a Lions fan. Maybe not ever.

This probably means more wild overreactions in the weeks to come, but fuck it, that is part of the masochistic “fun” of being a sports fan. And for the first time in a long time, I can allow myself to get caught up in it all. I will allow myself to get caught up in it all.

Prediction: Lions 24 Seahawks 14