AFC North Preview

The AFC North might be my favorite division in the NFL because all the teams and fans hate each other. You’ve got the Browns leaving to become the Ravens and then the “Browns” being brought back for revenge, and then you have the Steelers and Bengals trying to cut each other’s throats, throw in the fact that this division represents a corridor of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Cincinnati, and you have just an unreal cauldron of hard people trying to stab each other in the face to not be so fucked up as the next town over.

I mean, this is ground zero for MAGA bullshit because it is a fucking furnace of layoffs, the plant closing, the dying of a million bullshit American dreams sold to desperate people in a desperate place, and the fire is just getting hotter and hotter and hotter. These are the places where angry low class white trash motherfuckers are so far past the point of salvation that the idea that it was ever even offered to them is a sick sort of joke. They are hatred made animate, crushed beneath the weight of a society that never had much time for them anyway other than as beasts of burden in the steel mllls, fucking Carnegies and Rockefellers pitilessly sucking the life out of the people like vampires, bleeding a people dry just because they fucking can and when you’re dead in the dirt, they’ll own that too and have your bones removed and thrown into the furnace of their greed because they will get your fucking marrow and everything else that is you as a human being in this horrible fucked up world.

And this is where the heart of American football has always been. And it’s appropriate, I think, a violent game, run by cartoon villains with cutthroat brutality, like pimps in the night, and you best believe they will get those dollar bills and leave you broken and crying, wondering what the fuck happened to you, fleeced shamelessly with the implicit understanding that tomorrow you will do it all over again. This is what exists in the hellmouth that is the AFC North. Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide yourself, because these streets are raw as fuck, and the only way to survive is to cannibalize your own, eat the fucking dead and hope that maybe if you make enough noise someone will finally see what the fuck is going on but probably not because we’re all in the fire and even though your smoking husks were the first ones to go up in flames, no one will come back for you because they’re all too busy trying to figure out how to avoid getting immolated themselves.

This is the metaphysical energy that permeates every game played in this division. It is raw and evil, it is Ray Lewis stabbing motherfuckers and Ed Reed barking because he knows that you either eat or get eaten. But that doesn’t even begin to explain the petty resentments, the longstanding grudges and feuds, everyone jealous of the Steelers, the fucking Browns burning like the Cuyahoga River year after year after miserable year, and the Bengals, always the second wife of Paul Brown, knowing that Cleveland resents them for even existing. And then there are the Ravens, who were the fucking Browns before utterly savaging Cleveland and moving to Baltimore. Oh, and everyone usually has a nasty ass defense and it’s cold as fuck in December and whoever gets out of it alive will do so only because they are the most merciless, raw dogged assholes imaginable. I mean, shit, the division’s one longstanding star of stars is a fucking rapist.

And that is where we start from here, in 2019, after a season that saw Baltimore sneak in at the last minute to steal the division from the Steelers, who left Le’Veon Bell behind and now Antonio Brown too, and there is a real sense that anyone could win this fucking thing this year because maybe the Steelers are vulnerable, the Ravens are always seemingly on the precipice of a collapse that they stubbornly hold off year after year, and the Bengals and Browns are, well, the Bengals and Browns.

But that is what makes this season so interesting. You can’t just automatically slot the Steelers in there. I think they’ll actually be better this season without Bell and Brown because, well, they pretty much played without Bell last year anyway and Antonio Brown has become too goddamn ridiculous to indulge. Still, that is a lot of talent to just let walk, but the Steelers do have JuJu Smith Schuster and James Conner ready to be younger, maybe better versions of Brown and Bell and without all of the ridiculous bullshit gibberish drama those dudes carry around.

They also drafted Devin Bush, my man from Michigan at linebacker, and he is tailor made for being the whirlwind destroyer for that defense. He’s gonna be a huge fucking star for the Steelers. I guarantee it.

And yet, I’m not picking the Steelers to win the division. That’s how hot the AFC North is right now. You’re gonna laugh when I tell you who I think will win the division, but fuck it, here we go. I think the Cleveland Browns are about to explode from their shit befouled kennels and finally get some of that Jim Brown energy back.

It all starts with Baker Mayfield. A lot of people don’t like this dude, and I get it, he’s probably a gigantic dickhead, but he has a sort of renegade energy that I can sniff out. I’m not saying he’s Kenny Stabler (r.i.p.) or anything, but he is the sort of dude who will shit down your throat and make you beg for more. He’s a cocky piece of degenerate shit but that’s exactly what your quarterback is supposed to be, all cock and balls and ready to plant a flag in the heart of the enemy, which he fucking did back when he was at Oklahoma and they went into Columbus and whipped Ohio State, He went in there, beat them and then desecrated their shitty field and God bless him for it.

That is the kind of wild spirit warrior energy that can ignite an entire team. And it’s not like he’s alone. He’s got Odell Beckham Jr and Jarvis Landry, two LSU cats who probably got up to god only knows what in the bayous back in the day, and then there’s Nick Chubb, who looked like a bluechip running back fresh out of Georgia last year, and then they went out and got that crazy motherfucker Kareem Hunt, a savage outlaw banished from Kansas City for beating his lady on tape. Now, I don’t condone that shit, but my God, this team has all the makings of a fucking hit squad from hell, all wild energy and feral madness channeled into blowing up out on the football field and dragging Cleveland back from the dead.

It also helps to have Myles Garrett, maybe the best pass rusher in the league, taking care of things on the other side of the ball. But really, it’s all about the potential of all that wild energy. It takes a special dude to harness that and turn it into magic, like Stabler did with those wild Raiders teams back in the day. I think Baker Mayfield may be cut from that same cloth, and if he is, and he can harness all that wild spirit warrior energy, this team is gonna be the next big thing, which is fucking crazy given the whole CLEVELAND BROWNS of it all, but here we are, and I honestly think it could happen.

Of course, odds probably favor it exploding in some horrific yet spectacular meltdown only a couple weeks into the season. I mean, the Browns aren’t fucking around. They have brought in some combustible elements and now they’re asking everyone to trust them with a box of matches and a drunk teenager spraying lighter fluid everywhere while Sabu jumps off the ECW Arena or some wild ass shit. That’s the kind of scene that they are counting on to hold together long enough to burn everyone who isn’t them. Is it insane? Yeah, probably, but fuck it, man, you buy the ticket you take the ride. Everybody Dies, and you might as well fuck a lot and maybe wild out on a terrified Goodell, ripping his clothes off and setting them on fire and shit. Vaya con dios, boys, leave everything burning behind you as you go.

But we can’t count out the Ravens either, can we? I mean, they did win the division last year, and they might have something with Lamar Jackson if they can find a way to uniquely tailor the offense to what he does best, which is run really fucking fast by people and also sometimes throw it past them too. And I think they’re gonna go all in on that approach, with Greg Roman at offensive coordinator because if there’s one thing that dude knows how to gameplan it is running the goddamn football. Jackson can be fused with the whole hardass Harbaugh way and coupled with a defense that always manages to find its way near the top of the league, especially with Earl Thomas coming in at safety, which just feels like a natural fit, they could very well be the ones who survive the orgy of violence that is going to be the AFC North this year.

I mean, the Ravens never really fall too far back, having established the kind of winning culture that just spills over from year to year, team to team. It’s a culture built on strength and brutality, and if the power run game gets going like they want, they’re gonna be hard as fuck to knock off.

And that just leaves the Bengals, who are finally moving on from Marvin Lewis’s corpse. And the Bengals are, well, they’re the Bengals. You never know whether they are going to shit it up or surprise everyone with a division title run. They still have a core of decentish players, with Andy Dalton at QB, AJ Green at WR and Geno Atkins on the defensive line, and they have Joe Mixon’s scandalous ass out there too running the ball. That talent, aside from Mixon, is aging, though, and you have to wonder whether the team will take one last shot at it with this group or whether they’ll choose to blow it all up with a new coach.

They could be feisty, but my guess is that there just isn’t quite enough there and after this season, they will scrap and rebuild.

And so where does that leave us? Well, I already put my ass out there for the Browns (Hi, Dan!) and I still think the Steelers are probably the smart choice to win the division, but I still can’t dismiss the Ravens. In the end, I just have to go with my gut and ride with the Browns or else end up looking like a bitch of some kind, which, well, I am, but not like this.

But it really doesn’t matter who wins this division because the fun will all be in the wrecking hate that ruins all of these teams and their fans while their left behind cities decay into sour memory and grief, a last angry white trash cacophony of shrill terrified shrieks from ghosts who were dumb enough to believe that America was anything other than a con right from the fucking start. That is what will be the story of the AFC North this season and I can’t wait to watch it because I am a fucking ghoul just like you and these little hatreds keep us from looking out across the terrifying plane of Americana and seeing what vicious hatreds and monsters are waiting for us, that live with us, that are us. Are you ready for some fucking football????

Predicted Final Standings.

1. Browns 11-5

2. Steelers 10-6

3. Ravens 9-7

4. Bengals 6-10