The Lions have me so down that I don’t even really want to
think about the NFL right now, but I made a commitment to you, my sweet darlings,
betrothed before the Lord for all time, twin souls dancing in the moonlight. At
night, we lay our heads to rest and we dream impossible dreams and when we wake
we discover that . . . OMG we had the same dream!!! And that dream is to someday reach .500 in
this retarded gambling odyssey and avoid having our kneecaps smashed with tiny
hammers or be sold to a gang of Mexican Zetas who use us as human toilets . . .
horrible, horrible. And last week, I went 9-4, the third straight .500 or
better week for your boy, and so we awake anew with twin sighs and we stare into
each other’s eyes and we think one day, darling . . . one day. Today, though,
we are still 61-66-9 on the season, and VegasInsider.com still won’t give me money, but as our dreams merge to become one with
our souls, they will have no choice but to fall weeping to their knees in front
of the Lord to beg forgiveness for besmirching His children. Amen.
Carolina (+4) at
Pittsburgh
A rapist by any other name is still a rapist, especially
ones named “Ben”, but as usual he has escaped his seeming demise to lead the
Steelers back to the top of the AFC North. It’s depressing, not to mention bizarre,
that he’s never been dragged (drag him kweeeeeeeennnn!!!) through the mean
streets of twitter, crucified along the #MeToo road, but these are the
inexplicable vagaries of our dumb culture. Everyone knows, but because no one
has raised a public stink about it (lol if you think this is “public” in any
way and not just the deluded playpen of a mentally ill syphilitic degenerate peeped
at by the same 12 people every week) he just keeps on Roethlisbergering his way
through life, without consequence or feeling, jerking off at random women,
cats, dogs, whatever lands in his line of sight. lol what a world.
Pick: Pittsburgh
Buffalo (+7) at N.Y.
Jets
Eeeeeeeewwwwwww!!! What a horrendous game. The only way it could
be worse is if the earth opened and Matt Millen, Rod Marinelli and the gang led
a 60-year long procession of Lions onto the field. At least that would be
interesting in a “would you look at that shit” kind of way. I mean, the earth
opening up as a ghost train assembles from the darkest depths of hell would at
least be notable, even in these strange and terrible times. It would of course
all be forgotten by the next news cycle when a shark somehow got ahold of an
assault rifle and shot up a school or some shit or the President of the United
States of America pooped on a baby. Anyway, if two shitty teams play and nobody
cares, did it really happen? That’s not for me to say. That’s for you to
contemplate in the darkest places of your ruined heart.
Pick: Jets
Atlanta (-4) at
Cleveland
The Browns tried for a few weeks, but that shit is done now,
and my boy Dan is left with naught but to ride his bicycle through the English
countryside contemplating the absurdity of fandom and life itself. “Why do I do
this?” he asks himself, legs churning under the grey steel sky, the sun disappeared
behind the clouds of time that took his English empire, and coming up with no
answers he asks “Why am I?” and peers towards a horizon which cares less and
less for the world of yesterday, of its empires and implacable belief in the
rightness of its ravenous “enlightenment”. He looks again at the sky, waits for
the sun to peek through, but it never does. It never does. And so he rides his
bike into the ocean, to sleep forever next to Winston Churchill and Hue
Jackson.
Pick: Atlanta
New Orleans (-5.5) at
Cincinnati
I guess it’s time for me to quit downplaying the Saints
after they whipped up on the Rams. If you were doing a power rankings thing, you’d
even have to put them at 1 or 2 now, right? Still, there is something innate that
will always keep the Saints looking like a team that will fuck it all up. Maybe
it’s the New Orleans of it all, loveable as that city is. I don’t know. Some people
are just born with more Failure Demons than others and to trust them is an
exercise in self ownage. Still, I’d rather trust them than Marvin Lewis.
Pick: New Orleans
Washington (+3) at
Tampa Bay
Speaking of Washington, what do you think Donald Trump’s
favorite NFL team is? I know he owned a USFL team back in the day, and he’s a
New York dude, and yet I don’t think anyone has ever gotten a read on his loyalties.
He seems like a natural Cowboys fan, and yet even that doesn’t seem right. He
actually feels like someone who doesn’t love any team because he can’t love
anything, and yet he follows the league carefully, bitching about all the teams
and telling them what they’re doing wrong. A man with no loyalties and yet a
man who thinks he should have a say over everyone and everything, calling up
Bill Belichick at 4AM to tell him what to do with Brady, tweeting Colin Kaepernick
and calling him “Spook” or some heinous shit. Just a force of utter malevolence
addicted to the smell of his own ass as he drops shits all over the place.
Imagine being a fan of nothing and yet caring so goddamn much about all this
meaningless bullshit. Real people at least have a tether to their own misery,
unwillingly anchored to it. That is the tragedy. Donald Trump’s tragedy is that
he has no tether, he is just miserable for its own sake. That is fucked up.
Pick: Tampa Bay
Miami (+9.5) at Green
Bay
It isn’t happening for Aaron Rodgers. I say this today
knowing full well that he’ll somehow ooze up from the toilet to haunt the rest
of the NFC North, trapped and damned by the shadow of the memory of his own
former existence. He ain’t getting out of this house, but he’s gonna haunt the
fuck out of it.
Pick: Green Bay
Jacksonville (+3) at
Indianapolis
What a sad state of affairs for Jacksonville. Also, their
football team stinks. lol owned. Anyway, my boy Al lives in Jacksonville, and
yet he’s a Lions fan. I mean, that sums up the Jaguars pretty well. Their own
people choose to be Lions fans rather
than support them. That is impossibly dark. I wonder if Fred Durst is a Jags fan.
I hate to say it, but he seems like he’d probably be a Cowboys fan. The Van
Zant boys - well, Ronnie at least – seem like Kenny Stabler fans. Man, Kenny
Stabler owned.
Pick: Jacksonville
Arizona (+16.5) at
Kansas City
lol look at that line! It’s always risky to pick a team to
cover that, and yet, it seems insane to pick the Cardinals against anyone this
season let alone the fucking Chiefs. You know what’s gonna happen here. I know
what’s gonna happen here. Let’s not insult each other by pretending to have to
talk about it. Or about Bigfoots or my grandma or whatever the fuck bullshit I
usually talk about here.
Pick: Kansas City
L.A. Chargers (-10)
at Oakland
Say what you will about what the Jon Gruden/Mark Davis tag
team has done to the Raiders, but at least they’re making it easy for their
fans to say goodbye without any regrets. This is so sad and to be honest I’m
glad Kenny Stabler isn’t around anymore to have to see it. Then again, he probably
wouldn’t care anyway. He’d just go fishing with The Great Willie Young. There
is a lesson to be learned in all that.
Pick: Chargers
Seattle (+10) at L.A.
Rams
You could kinda feel that Rams loss coming. It was gonna
happen at some point and now that it’s over they can just move on without the
pressure of being undefeated while Don Shula leered at them from afar with his
shithead ’72 Dolphins. You know something, though? Those ’72 Dolphins are all
old as fuck now. Even the youngest ones gotta be, what, 68? In football years,
that is like 119. None of these fuckers will be around much longer. Wait, what
was I talking about? Oh yeah, the Rams. Anyway, there is a dumb sort of
pressure that comes with being unbeaten, and now that it’s gone, maybe the Rams
will be even better. Fuck Don Shula.
Pick: Rams
Dallas (+7) at
Philadelphia
Jerry Jones hurdling into the black night of despair yet
again will always make me happy. He is a shithead, and I don’t just mean by
football terms. He is a lizard man shithead, the sort of fake swaggering fake
tough guy who fucks things up for everyone else in this godforsaken country. He
is Donald Trump and Vince McMahon, a corny huckster, a carnie who fools the
rubes as they fork over their dollar bills to play the ring toss game because
they don’t understand – or won’t, or can’t allow themselves to understand –
that the goddamn rings won’t fit around the square pegs. It’s all rigged. But
allowing yourself to truly believe that, to acknowledge it in your heart, is
just too hard for a lot of folks. The con is the only thing that keeps them
going, that keeps them moving, because life without it is just so unbearably
grim. Jackasses like Jerry Jones prey on that. They are like vampires, and not
the cool, sexy kind either. Fuck him. I hope the Cowboys never win another
game.
Pick: Philadelphia
N.Y. Giants (+3) at
San Francisco
Another depressing game between two shitters. Listen, I am
not going to expend a single moment of energy on these fucking teams past the
end of this sentence.
Pick: Giants
New England (-6.5) at
Tennessee
I’m almost positive that Tom Brady watches himself in the
mirror when he jerks off. And I’m not just saying that because I spied on him
one time at Michigan. He is the perfect Patrick Batemanesaue villain for these
strange and terrible times, and yet there is something about him that feels
perpetually removed from all that shit. I think it’s because it’s obvious that
he doesn’t care about anything else other than winning, than with being the
perfect embodiment of Tom Brady. His narcissism is so complete that he doesn’t
have time to be a true villain. There is nothing left inside of him to expend on
the mortal peons. He is removed from it all because he doesn’t give a shit. Not
a single shit. He doesn’t care about the con, only himself. He isn’t going to
hurt you because he doesn’t care about you. I’m not sure whether that is more
evil or less. It is certainly more inhuman, and that’s the secret of evil, I
think: it is just a manifestation of something deeply human, taking advantage
of the insecurities, the desperate need to hold power over others. Tom Brady
doesn’t care about any of that shit. His kids grab his shirt sleeves and say “Daddy!
Daddy! Look what I did in school today!” and he smiles and says “Good job,
Buddy!” but there is nothing inside of him that even registers any of it. Even
as he says it he’s thinking of a single play, a single moment, that could have
gone better for him. He is consumed by that, by his own need to be Perfect.
Football allows him an outlet to do that, to challenge himself in a way so
meaningless, so perfectly judged by tangible results, that he doesn’t have to
care about anything else. Football is both his life and his escape, the only
place where he lives, alien and unknowable. This is why he is the greatest of
all time and why the Patriots will never go away so long as he lives there, and
that might be forever.
Pick: Patriots
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