(Okay, so I fucked up and got behind and failed to get this out before the Thursday night game. Still, I’ll leave that pick as part of this piece because it wouldn’t be whole without it. I plan on getting a Lions preview up sometime before the game on Sunday, so look for that too. Now back to the usual gibberish.)
Week one was deeply weird in that the fake crowd noise all sounded like the dying moments of a gang of robots which matched the soulless nature of the football being played on the field in a let’s just get this done and get out of here kind of hustle, which is I’m afraid what this season of the damned in the year of the damned is going to be. But fuck it, I have decided to bring back Gambling With Sanity if only to keep ourselves entertained with maybe a few laughs and a few insights into this thing called life along the way. As usual, it will break down into a ghastly bunch of gibberish filled with in-jokes and weird references and I will curse you all as I write it and you me as you read it. Anyway, let’s just get on with the fucking thing with the caveat that I know nothing and all lines are provided by the lovely folks at Vegas Insider who I should probably link to and plug and maybe get some money from them but I’m too fucking dumb and iconoclastic to even try so fuck it, let’s just do this already.
Cincinnati (+6) at Cleveland
Well shit, week one was not kind to either of Ohio’s shitty teams, which should come as no surprise since they have long been shitty and Ohio is a shitty state. Still, I hoped for more from the Browns, who I have adopted for some dumbass reason as my second team. I think it is because I still hold out hopes that Baker Mayfield can be a new Kenny Stabler and also because of Dan, sweet Dan, who has adopted this wretched team for some reason too. But Baker looks like he’s going to bust, which is sad and yet not that surprising in the new NFL, which would have driven Stabler out of the league too with its oppressive corporate misery one soulless game at a time. But fuck it, and butt fuck it, Baker still has some time before its officially a wrap and he’s set loose on a life of drunken houseboating and venereal disease. As for Dan, well, he made his bed and now he has to lie in it, and unfortunately it’s filled with crabs left over from the time Baker freeballed it with a stripper. Sorry, Dan, but that’s just the way it goes.
Meanwhile, this other young shithead, Joe Burrow, was introduced to life as a Bengal, which is not a good life, and on his return to Ohio where he once sat the bench for Ohio St. before transferring to LSU and living out an unlikely fantasy Heisman national championship season, he was reminded of life’s harsh realities. Things are just different down in the deep south where you are a hero in a way that is lionized by generation’s past but is abhorred by today’s modern society. Joe was probably drowned in coed pussy juice and probably even had a black servant but then he returned to the wretched north, with its grey skies and the smell of old iron in the air, and he was reminded that he is just another idiot, that the war is over, antebellum whatever the fuck doesn’t exist anymore in Real America where everyone is addicted to opioids and despair, waiting for the virus to come get them. And in that America he is still just the loser sitting on the fucking bench or getting demoralized as a worthless Bengal. Welcome to your life, Joe Burrow. It’s just like the old one.
Pick: Cleveland
LA Rams (-1) at Philadelphia
Not a good start for the Eagles, who are always tough to peg. One minute they’re up, the next they’re down, sort of like a bipolar crackhead, which is appropriate enough for Philadelphia’s football team. The Rams lost Todd Gurley, but you’re reminded that running backs don’t mean a fuck in the new NFL as they held off the hated Cowboys in week one. Take the two results and its easy to see the Rams pulling this one out, but you never know when the Eagles are gonna pop back up and be worth a shit. It’s in Philly, for whatever that’s worth, which isn’t much in this mostly fanless NFL, where everything is played in the same soulless robot hell, which sounds a lot like LA on a regular day so maybe it favors the Rams? I don’t know, much as I never know about these fucking things. Neither team feels like a big winner or a big loser so they should both be 1-1 right about now which means the Eagles should win.
Pick: Eagles
Carolina (+9) at Tampa Bay
Tom Brady’s pre-retirement vacation years left everyone in Tampa Bay upset, as if they had been sold a bill of goods but fuck them, what did they expect? This is a 40 something dude who just wants to fuck in the sun and make some money before he calls it a day, and expecting him to be Warrior Tom is a fool’s game. Still, he’s better than Tampa Bay deserves, which makes their hissy fit after week one all the more repugnant. Fuck these people. This was never going to be a thing that worked out the way they wanted it, with Tom and Gronk rolling to glory once again. This is about dudes having some leisurely fun and making millions in a place where the sun shines a lot and you don’t have to pay state income taxes and Gisele can lie on the beach while the undocumented Filipina maids watch the kids. Gronk will pop on over to WWE to fuck around and nobody cares about your wretched football team, Tampa Bay. Nobody fucking cares.
Meanwhile, you got Carolina rolling with Teddy Bridgewater which isn’t exactly inspiring, but they do have Christian McCafferty there to make things fun. But fun probably isn’t enough to keep the Panthers from being, well, the Panthers, which is to say a monument to mediocrity. Still, it may be enough to at least keep within a touchdown of a half-assing it Tom Brady while he talks to his broker on a special phone grafted into his helmet.
Pick: Carolina
Denver (+7.5) at Pittsburgh
There were moments when Ben Roethlisberger looked like he drank from the wrong cup in week one, but when it was over, the rapist got away with it yet again, as he threw for 3 touchdowns against no interceptions. Time comes for us all, but some assholes just get a little more time than others, and this asshole has already gotten more time than he deserves, but life is not fair and often life goes to those who grab it by the pussy as that other jackass fool sex pest famously has said, and while it is a horrible thing to say and a horrible sentiment it is too often true, as things in fact are easier when you have no moral compass and are a narcissistic monster bent only on your own pleasure and success. I mean, it’s one way to live for sure. Most “great” men of history are not nice men, that is why the world is a piece of shit for most people. Those who move history are often monsters and degenerates and crazed demons playing around with the world’s people like little men on a game board, stopping only to shake their dick at whatever gets in the way. Of course, it’s absurd to count a goddamn football player as a history mover, but Roethlisberger is a junior member of the Monster Club and has made his way through life doing whatever the fuck he wants to because he wants to.
And then you have the Broncos, who are perpetually tied up in John Elway’s Vanity Play, which is another case of a dude doing what he wants to with people just because he can. It doesn’t matter that he’s bad at it, he’s John Elway, he gets to play with his toys. The result is a smug descent into misery and despair for anyone who cares about Broncos football. There are certainly worse tragedies in the world and it’s not like Denver didn’t have it good for quite a while so, hey, fuck them I guess.
Pick: Steelers
Atlanta (+4.5) at Dallas
The Falcons still haven’t gotten over the Super Bowl fucking they got from Tom Brady and they are pretty much a haunted team, a cursed team. Somewhere in New Orleans, there is some dark magic being used and I won’t even call it by its name because I am legit afraid of that shit, and even by writing this I am giving it power and oh god KEEP IT ON THE FALCONS THE FUCKING FALCONS NOT ME I’M NOT EVEN HERE
So the Falcons are spiritually fucked, but Dallas is the devil with no soul, and I almost guarantee you Jerry Jones has had to write a six digit check a time or two or at least make room for a couple of corpses from getting involved in the shit going on in the last paragraph. Or something like it anyway. He’s too close to the border, so he can’t help fucking around with anything young and brown and fuck it you can just roll through with a Dallas Cowboys bus and pick up undocumented ass and turn it into something fucked and then processed by whatever the fuck they use to destroy poop on a bus. And then Jerry Jones brushes his teeth with whatever’s left over.
Yes, it’s a savage business, Cowboy business. It doesn’t matter who Jerry picks to coach the team because it’s always the same goddamn thing, time after time. Mike McCarthy has all the cool toys yet somehow they will break or get coked up and start throwing money at strippers. Something always gets in the way of the Cowboys ordained success, and to be honest, it’s probably Jerry doing obscene things and thinking he’s a genius football mind. He’s a fucking parasite, on the league, on the country, he’s probably a 4 star general in ICE. This son of a bitch has probably turned the Cowboys into an ICE outfit. Fuck, the Cowboys were ICE all along.
Pick: Dallas
San Francisco (-7) at NY Jets
The 49ers didn’t expect to get taken by the Cardinals in week one but there you have it. You never know with teams like the 49ers, who might have been a one year wonder kind of deal. I mean, it happens. The 49ers are used to dynasties so they probably expect this one to do its part, but what if the whole thing was a fraud? What if Jimmy G is just that Brady backup? This hasn’t been fully resolved and it could just piss away. I’m not sure what to make of the 49ers but they should be able to beat the fucking Jets who remain lost in their own ideas of grandiosity that never actually get going. It’s basically just one drunken quarterback sending his well wishes to a bunch of pretenders to his throne as they butt fumble and pout because they’re all just the same goddamn USC quarterback who can’t get the job done. That Joe Namath shit was over 50 years ago. Half a fucking century. They don’t make them like that anymore, and it’s almost embarrassing that the Jets keep trying to bring back the sex pest past when everybody knows that boy is just gonna fumble with his butt.
Pick: 49ers
Buffalo (-5.5) at Miami
The Bills are a trendy pick to finally unseat the Patriots, which is kind of crazy considering they have spent most of this century floundering and suffocating beneath a mountain of snow. The Dolphins, meanwhile, are starting over again with Tua, but who fucking knows how that’s gonna go. It seems clear that it won’t go well for a while, which has become the Dolphins calling card after years of being a respectable outfit, the Don Shula years, which stretched through decades and is now only a cruel reminder of what once was, not only for the Dolphins but for the entire NFL as they congregate to suck each other’s dicks every year when the last unbeaten team falls. It’s just a tired legacy that means nothing today, old men smoking cigars on their yachts as they sail towards death which gets closer and closer with each passing year. These Dolphins don’t know anything about that shit and are likely to get flopped around with the goddamn Jets as the Bills seek to dethrone the Patriots, which is not as likely as everyone wants it to be. Sure, things are changing in New England, at least with Brady gone, but probably not enough to collapse the team, and it’s not like the Bills are some waiting power. They are a delicate flower in early spring and those don’t always make it to summer, especially when the Bills of it all is taken into account. It didn’t always used to be like this, but the Bills have a sort of creeping dread hanging around them known only to Lions or Browns fans. It’s not a place you want to be because at a certain point, that creeping dread is just reality and you’re in hell and you’re never getting out. The Bills aren’t quite there yet, and they may rescue themselves after all, but it’s gonna take more than just beating the shit out of the Dolphins, but that’s something we’ll come to down the road.
Pick: Bills
Minnesota (+3) at Indianapolis
Neither team got off to a good start, but that’s what happens when you tie yourself to the rotten core of Kirk Cousins or the Not Quite Good Enough talents of Philip Rivers which was excessively risky because he’s an old man now. Trusting your quarterback is the most essential thing to having a quality NFL team and neither of these idiots are trustworthy. Cousins is a Disciple of God Megachurch kind of guy, which is all about self-hype and getting rich off the tears of goobers who are dumb enough to believe what you’re preaching. But when it comes time to truly face Jesus, Cousins invariably crumbles into a Charlatan miasma which stinks up the place and requires you to just burn the building down rather than try to reconsecrate it.
Rivers is just an old dog that is gonna drag its ass on the carpet because his back legs don’t work anymore, and Indianapolis was a goddamn fool for getting involved with him. But they’re desperate since Andrew Luck cashed in his chips before the house could swindle him. This won’t go well for them, which isn’t so much their fault as just a thing that happened to them. The bottom will drop and they will have to rebuild, and trying to look respectable is just gonna drag out the agony. But no one likes to lose, so I get it. But still, Rivers is just smearing shit all over the place.
Pick: Minnesota
NY Giants (+5.5) at Chicago
The Bears defense is always gonna give them a shot. The Giants are still trying to move on from a long and oddly successful run with Eli and Tom Coughlin and all his miseries. It’s a franchise in search of an identity right now, which would be fine but it’s the NY Giants and so it is never fine as a bunch of loud mouthed cab drivers and Sicilians will let you know. They don’t have the patience or the crude basics to let a team find its way. It’s all melodramatic shouting and dudes being buried beneath the endzone so the moment Khalil Mack strip sacks Daniel Jones don’t be surprised if the Brooklyn Bridge is shut down again because the fucking zoo got loose.
The Bears were beneficiaries of the Lions being the fucking Lions more than a great success story week one, and their deal is the same as it always is. Good defense, no quarterback, head coach shoveling shit so fast the beasts are literally shitting on the shovel as he does it, and a fanbase that knows that it will just get fucked up in the end. Still, that is actually a midlevel fan experience in the NFL House of Horrors, and it should be enough to beat the Giants and start giving False Hope to LPOY and the gang. If you’ve read this far, you know who I’m talking about so I’m not gonna fucking explain my friends to you which are, of course, the only ones reading this. Hi, friends!
Pick: Bears
Jacksonville (+7.5) at Tennessee
We’ll keep the Bizket in the basket for now and actually try to engage with the Jackonsville Jaguars football team, which probably isn’t a good idea given that they’re, you know, not any fucking good. Of course, there’s always that random chance season that blesses the Jags every now and again, and they do have some genuine Spirit Warrior energy in Gardner Minshew who may be sipping from the Stabler cup in between quarterbacking and boating in international waters with Tony Khan and Cody Rhodes and whatever women get wrapped up in a mixture of a billionaire’s son, pro football and professional wrestling, which is to say something demented and fucked up is almost assuredly happening down there right now, or at least would be if the world wasn’t stumbling about in pandemic isolationism.
But we all know that dudes like Minshew just swat away pandemic related annoyances if it means doing cocaine while being balls deep in some omni-racial exotico on a boat going 90mph just close enough to Cuba to get mixed up in an international incident that would be smoothed over by cash and drugs and more exoticos. Anyway, that is some heavy energy to bring to Jacksonville, maybe get some dirty Skynyrd shit going and see what happens, I don’t know, I’m just saying there is a lot of potential here which is the exact opposite of what I said when I started writing this soon to be Classic Neil Paragraph but that’s just how this shit works and you know that.
Tennessee, meanwhile, is boring as fuck, which isn’t a bad thing necessarily as they rely on a simple dose of Derrick Henry and defense to drag their asses to a wild card. Sometimes, you just have to know who you are and play to that. I don’t begrudge the Titans any of this, it’s just that I don’t really fucking care.
Pick: Jacksonville
Washington (+7) at Arizona
The Washington Football Team. lololol a classic fiasco that could only happen to a bunch of rich entitled white asses, forced to give up their offensive team name but with nothing to replace it with because they are all vacuous assholes. I mean, just pick something. It’s literally a team without an identity, which is a deeper metaphor that I will probably dig into throughout the season, but not necessarily right now because this thing is already too fucking long and I’ve already missed posting this up by the Thursday game and I want to at least get this shit down before the weekend hits. You know how it is in Neil Land.
The Cardinals, meanwhile, jumped the 49ers behind Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins and it served notice that this duo may be a problem for everyone, which is a nice thing for long suffering Cardinals fans, which isn’t actually a thing due to their vagabond history and also everyone in Arizona being transplanted or dedicated to Mexican Football so I guess it’s just a nice thing for whatever the fuck their fanbase is made up of. Arizona is a fucked up place, really, lacking the soul of New Mexico or the vitality of California. It is an Americanized Desert, a suburban hellscape terraformed by ruthless colonizers spreading the perverted disease of the American Dream to one mall after the other. But again, I could go on and on here, and none of this will bring us any closer to understanding whether the Cardinals are legit a good team or just a pesky brat who can trip you up every now and then. For that, only time will tell. I’m not sure whether whooping on the desecrated corpse of the Washington Football Team will tell us anything either.
Pick: Arizona
Baltimore (-7) at Houston
Now this is a big game, and early too. Houston runs the risk of getting knocked back to 0-2 by having to play the Chiefs and then the Ravens back to back, and that could start to demoralize a team that should be able to have a say in the AFC South race. But shit can get bad quick in the NFL, and with DeAndre Hopkins lighting shit up in the desert, people might start pointing fingers if the losses start coming quick.
But Baltimore is a steam train coming, and the Texans probably won’t be able to stop them. They shit the bed in the playoffs last year, but Lamar Jackson is the MVP and they crushed the Browns in week one so I’m guessing it will be a lot like last year when the Ravens were a admirable machine, a Harbaugh machine, which is a Schembechler machine which is me sucking my Michigan dick again but only because it feels so good. Anyway, this is a big game because either the Ravens prove themselves on their way to a collision with the Chiefs in the AFC Title game and the Texans are sent into desperate scrambling mode early, or the Texans muscle in and things get murkier. Either way, it’s nice when the football means something, you know?
Pick: Baltimore
Kansas City (-8.5) at LA Chargers
Patrick Mahomes has established himself as the NFL’s alpha dog, which is a heady place to be and the Chiefs are likely to keep right on rolling until either the Ravens can beat them or they end up beating themselves. And that’s not likely to happen because it kinda already did happen with some of their best players getting put in the sewer for being wife beaters or sex pests or what have you, and the Chiefs still won the Super Bowl. That’s a machine that’s hard to fuck with. It’s a shame they have such shitty ass fans, Trumpian goobers who are stuck in a world decades past, but to be honest, most NFL fans are probably Of The Shit when it comes to things like that because the NFL is a mouthbreathing league for mouthbreathers and is the national pastime because that’s who most of us fucking are. But anyway, enough of that, or I might go off on an extended diatribe on top of the extended diatribe which is already this fucking post.
In any case, the feckless Chargers are unlikely to do anything to derail the Chiefs. Sure, they beat the Bengals week one, but one crippled kid tripping up another crippled kid is never anything to get excited about unless there is some strange cripple feud that can only be solved with bloodletting, but let’s not delve into your childhood and move on. The Chargers are sans Philip Rivers for the first time since the Eisenhower administration and have turned to Tyrod Taylor of all people to start their new world. Essentially, this seems like a plan to blow everything up and start fresh in a city where no one cares about them and everyone involved is destined to be background characters in a Bret Easton Ellis novel in the streets and hills of LA. So, its bad times, spiritually and in every other way for the Chargers, and that’s no way to come at the defending champs.
Pick: Kansas City
New England (+4) at Seattle
Not sure how Seattle’s infamous homefield advantage will be an actual advantage given the fans are off dying in a pandemic or fighting the police in the streets, but fuck it, I guess maybe the Patriots plane flight might leave them groggy? I don’t know. This line is also probably because Vegas doesn’t trust the Patriots all the way without Brady at the helm, and that’s the story, you know? The Patriots took care of the Dolphins week one with Cam Newton doing his thing, but how does Cam Newton’s thing mesh with Bill Belichick’s thing? That sounds vaguely sexual and I didn’t mean it to, especially because no one needs to be thinking of Cam Newton and Bill Belichick grunting and quivering with love’s epic flesh slapping. I would apologize, but there are only six of you reading this and we’re all friends so fuck it, you know?
But how the Patriots do without Brady is a story that will have to unfold as it unfolds. There is no way to get in front of it and know what will happen, and that is what makes it interesting, I suppose. It’s the whole chicken and the egg argument only messier because what happens if the egg is cracked or the chicken starts fucking another chicken or I don’t know, any number of things can happen that will blur the Brady vs Belichick argument, and as more start to happen, the further away from Pure Truth we will get, never to return. But that is just the way these things go sometimes. Nothing is ever so clear cut as It Was Brady or It Was Belichick. The two bleed into one another, outside events dirty everything up and pretty soon you can’t see what in the fuck is what.
Meanwhile, the Seahawks appear to be good and much of that rests on Russell Wilson who doesn’t get enough credit, I think, as one of the game’s best QB’s. He has to be considered in that elite territory, doesn’t he? He shows out year after year for Seattle and always somewhat by surprise to people, but he’s been doing it for almost a decade now and he keeps elevating it. With him, Seattle is always in the proverbial conversation. So I suppose given that, and the Still Too Early To Tell of it all with New England sans Brady, you can see why the Seahawks are favored.
Pick: Seattle
New Orleans (-6) at Las Vegas
Drew Brees’ old ass outgunned Tom Brady’s old ass week one, the winner getting the pleasure to drown an undocumented baby in the loser’s toilet. Tom has one that sprays water up the ass too so Brees had some fun with that before putting the wailing bastard out of its misery. And now he lives to continue feasting on the souls of innocents and making dark alliances with Q supporters in a moldy New Orleans mausoleum, trying to hide from The Great Willie Young and Heinie as they ghostbust their way through another New Orleans autumn. But I am getting ahead of myself and carried away, so let’s just move on with the knowledge that Drew Brees is still a Shithead and still a Top Gun NFL QB even if he only mustered 160 yards in the victory. The gun hasn’t backfired in any rate.
And the now soulless Raiders, which is a shocking longform heel turn the likes of which we’ve maybe never seen before going from the Ultimate Rebel Stone Colds to the Sleazy Corporate McMahon Snakes over the turn of decades and decades of gutwrenching football drama. How slow the wheel turns, and when it does, the heroes reemerge unrecognizable, now villains corrupt and grotesque. Only everybody saw each torturous transformation, each hideous malformation take place and couldn’t do anything to stop it.
Kenny Stabler is dead. He is the Pure Essence of the Spirit Warrior Philosophy, its Heart and Soul, dead and gone at 69, naturally. And in his place, rising from the desert, is this corrupted Raiders Brand, all glitzed out in perverted Vegas style, fucking Elvis come to die on the toilet. Ruined are lifelong fandoms, the dreams of postal workers and tow truck drivers who branded themselves as real renegade Raiders before these fuckers choked the life out of all of it. And now they get to be the team of the Tourists, the team that belongs to no one and means nothing other than a transient weekend spent on blow and hookers before real life begins. That is the fanbase now, or at least it will be once the pandemic has burned through this land, but even so, it’s apropos that the Vegas Raiders will be playing in front of an empty stadium in an empty city reflecting the empty American Dream, mirrored and warped on the glass hardened from the desert sands, leaving only a bunch of carpertbagging fake rebels in masks to welcome everyone to the fucking future.
Pick: New Orleans
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