The NFC North is a frozen wasteland of the soul, a place
where beer-soaked Norsemen and artery clogged Polish war hammers do battle, a
place where cheese and beer are the staples of every diet, a place where the
wolves howl and no one answers because we are too busy huddling in our ice
castles thinking of the ways of bloodletting, of how and where and when we will
descend on our neighbors in an orgy of blood and violence kept hidden most of
the year beneath our fake Midwestern cheer. We plan for these times, these few
cold months when everything dies and the snow falls and the ice stabs you
everywhere and the wind howls with the fury of a spurned lover, bitter and
implacable, spitting in the face of summer, laughing at spring’s weak fragility,
until there is nothing left but silence in the cold dead heart of winter. It is
during these times that we renew old rivalries, when we bleed each other on
frozen fields, sabotaging each other’s domes and remembering that we all hate
each other forever.
This is the backdrop to the eternal war for the soul of the
NFC North, where every season four teams, okay fine, three teams battle to see
who will get to trigger Ragnarök in
the frozen wastelands that the rest of you fuckers run from. It is a savage
battle, full of old hates and remorseless gunslingers, of monstrous defenses
built to kill in the snow, and whoever survives lives only to be hunted the
next season.
For the
longest time, the Green Bay Packers have been the ones standing when the snows
finally melt, but the Packers have been humbled. Mike McCarthy has finally been
run out of town, presumably on a snowmobile with cheese wheels. In his place
steps a cocky young buck named Matt LaFleur, who wants to bring some of that
Los Angeles flash to these icy haunts. And he has to do it all while playing
nice with Aaron Rodgers, aka the devil himself, who is used to doing shit his
way and doesn’t have time for this smarmy new used car salesman of a coach.
It will be interesting
to see how Rodgers and LaFleur get along because make no mistake, this is Aaron
Rodgers’ team, just like it was Brett Favre’s team before him, and the offense
will run through him. The Packers will live and die on Aaron Rodgers’ health
and on his intelligence, which comes from the devil within that drives him and
keeps him coming back like the monster in a slasher film to ruin the hopes and
dreams of everyone else in this division of ice and pain.
It almost
doesn’t matter who he has to throw the ball to because the Packers always come
up with some new pass catching beast to replace the old ones. It is the same
story year after year and in the end it always comes down to whether or not
Aaron Rodgers is healthy or not. That’s it. That’s all that has mattered here
for years now. If Aaron Rodgers is healthy, then the Packers are always legit
players in the NFL’s Game of Thrones. We all know this by now, right? You can cycle
in sidekicks one after the other, but Aaron Rodgers is the dude who always
remains, the fucking devil himself, just waiting for an opportunity to remind
you that this is his kingdom and that we are all just miserable souls waiting
to be fed to the fires of hell.
Of course
it helps to import fresh new killer dogs every now and then like my man Rashan
Gary, who can play anywhere along the defensive front, and it will be fascinating
to see how the Packers deploy him. He has unreal athleticism for a dude his
size, but he has never been the finisher, the killer, that you would think.
Maybe that all changes if the Packers free him up to chase down Matthew
Stafford, Kirk Cousins and lil’ Mitch Trubisky. I say maybe, but of course, I
already know that this all ends with Rashan wearing Stafford’s head as a hat,
barking at his dying wife while we all stick our heads in the oven and pray for
The Great Willie Young to burn our corpses before Rashan and his dogs eat them.
But that is
another tale for another time. What’s important here is that the Packers are in
transition, and we all have to band together and beat them while we can, before
Rodgers and LaFleur get on the same page, before Rashan Gary can grow up to be
a man who eats people and shits out their souls.
I know my
Lions aren’t up for the job, and we’ll get to that later in a separate post,
which will see much gnashing of teeth and vile oaths sworn to dark gods in the
witching hour. I’m not even going to talk about them in this preview.
The best
hope for killing the devil probably lies with the Chicago Bears, which is fine
for them, but shitty for the rest of us who grew up hating the Bears even more
than the Packers. They lost defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, but they should
still have a murderous defense led by Khalil Mack, who was generously given
away by Jon Gruden in his own con game out west. Mack terrorized Rodgers last year,
flipping the script on the division and carrying the Bears to the division title
in a race that wasn’t even really close.
Mack and
the gang are back to raise hell once again, but you can’t quite count on them
to go back to back because the Bears have a long, hilarious history of doing
this, of surprising with a monster defense only to roll over the next year and
go back to getting their shit pushed in by the Packers or maybe the Vikings.
The hope is
that Mitchell Trubisky will finally be the answer at quarterback, allowing the
Bears to not have to rely on their defense until it finally breaks down like it
always does. He’s already better than most of their previous false saviors, but
to be honest that really isn’t saying all that much. But if Trubisky continues to
get better, and maybe Mike Davis shows out at running back after coming over
from Seattle, the Bears will have something real going on offense. They already
have Tarik Cohen, who is one of those southern fried little electron dudes who
show up in the big city and start fucking everything that moves. If Allen
Robinson stays healthy and Anthony Miller makes a next step towards being a
legit option at receiver then the Bears might finally have the offense to match
their fearsome defense.
If they do,
then they are probably the favorites to win the division again. Khalil Mack and
Akiem Hicks can take care of the murderin’ that needs to be done in the cold
December snows, and all Trubisky and his pals have to do is not fuck it up and
fall into an ice cavern or some shit.
The Bears
are the favorite to win the division again, which they managed to do last year
when the Minnesota Vikings flopped as the favorite behind Mediocrity Man Kirk
Cousins, who took his 8-8 game from Washington and swindled the Vikings into
giving him fuck you money. This all made me very happy because Kirk Cousins is the
golden son of my West Michigan neighbors and I know the kind of spiritually
depraved people who grow up on the shores of Lake Michigan. I know this because
I am one of them, only I’m not because I’m a misfit star child who lives to be
everything these fuckers hate. I know Kirk Cousins because I have known
countless Kirk Cousins my whole life. I have grown up with them, I have gotten
drunk and high with them, corrupting them because there’s nothing better to do
and it feels good to poison them, to watch them struggle with their fucked up
hearts buried beneath their Sunday School smiles.
I know Kirk
Cousins. Kirk Cousins is a cop. Kirk Cousins is the dude we all get drunk and
then shave his head when he passes out. Kirk Cousins is the dude who teaches Bible
study while we fuck his girlfriend. Kirk Cousins is Blackwater. Kirk Cousins is
Betsy DeVos. Kirk Cousins was born and bred in the heart of MAGA country. I
have pissed on the steering wheels of countless Kirk Cousins, pissed all over
their leather interiors because they were dumb enough to leave their windows
open while I run through the night. I have spent a lifetime fucking with Kirk
Cousins, of going into his house and fucking his sister and drinking his parents’
liquor, of doing shots with him around a bonfire until he starts shouting
racial slurs and making a fucking ass of himself before passing out. I know
Kirk Cousins, and it makes me so happy when he fails year after year. I grew up
with dozens and dozens of Kirk Cousins and I know their darkest secrets and I
know that they are weak and that when they are left alone with only themselves
and the pressure to lead a team that they will shit themselves over and over
again. Fuck you, Kirk Cousins. I laugh at your pain.
Anyway,
that doesn’t bode well for the Vikings, who bought that ticket and now have to
take the ride down to shitsville with Kirk Cousins sobbing and mutilating
himself in the passenger seat. It doesn’t even matter that the Vikings have the
best receivers in the division. It doesn’t matter that they have a potential
star at running back in Dalvin Cook. It doesn’t matter that they have a
ferocious pass rush, killers at linebacker and in the secondary, because in the
end, it will all come down to Kirk Cousins with the ball in his hands, and he
will do what he always does, and he will fail himself and his team and his family
and all the other Kirk Cousins who I have to tolerate on a daily basis as the
price I pay for living in this place of rivers and lakes, of sand dunes and
beaches.
You can always
rely on Kirk Cousins to fuck it all up for everyone else. It’s in his nature.
It’s just who he is. Just as it’s in Aaron Rodgers’ nature to be the goddamn
devil himself, a dark trickster prince who will steal your soul just when you
think you’re finally safe. It’s tempting to cast this as a battle between the
two, but we can’t forget the Bears, who have the defense that neither Cousins
or Rodgers has backing them, and if they can pick up where they left off last
season, when they ran away with the division and left the devil himself a
wounded wreck, then they have to be the favorites here. Remember, I’m not even
gonna talk about the Lions, and even if I did, it would just be to let you know
that they will finish last, the eternal victims of this horrible never ending
battle in the frozen hearts of our darkest dreams.
We know
Cousins will keep the Vikings treading that 8-8 water, and really it all comes
down to whether the devil can get good with his new coach and if he can play
devil games with Khalil Mack and Akiem Hicks long enough to beat God for
another day. Never, ever count out Aaron Rodgers because even when you think he’s
beaten, he’s really just stalling so all the Failure Demons can swarm out of
hell and choke us all in a frozen wasteland. He is the Night King, the master
of ice and cold terror. My poor boys never even stand a chance. He just kills
them while the first snow falls and then he goes on to conquer the realms of
men, those Vikings who don’t understand that the devil is oh so real and that
hell is just what lies beneath the heavy snows.
But in that
hell, some bears snuggle up, waiting for the snow to melt, and when it does,
they might just be able to make a meal of the goddamn devil. I hope they do,
but even then I’m just left with a bunch of bears with blood on their lips and
oh lord, how long must I endure this? How long must I watch my Lions get torn
apart by those murder bears and get fucked by the goddamn devil and Kirk
Cousins too? When is it enough? When do I get to be the winter king?
Oh well,
fuck it. The NFC North will be fought in the same way it is always fought and
we will all go on hating each other until Ragnarök comes and then we’ll all
feast in Valhalla, and I’ll laugh with the devil and with Loki and we’ll gang
up on Kirk Cousins and bully him into madness and despair. This is all I have
left to hope for. This is the world of the NFC North.
Predicted
Standings:
1. Chicago Bears 11-5
2. Green Bay Packers 10-6
3. Minnesota Vikings 8-8
4. Detroit Lions ??? TUNE IN TOMORROW TO FIND OUT
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I WILL SEE YOU ALL IN HELL
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