Last week, we went 5-9, and if you’re still reading this for any other reason than entertainment purposes, I apologize but I will not pay for your broken legs. It is a season of misery, a sort of hell if you will, and I am Virgil, guiding your Dante through it all in the hopes of finding sweet Beatrice, who you damn know well and good is in the Paradiso and not stuck here in the Inferno with us, but you look anyway because you are chasing your own demons and I don’t know what the fuck I’m babbling about, let’s just get to this week’s picks.
NY Giants (+4.5) at Philadelphia
Two teams turding it up, one in perpetual rebuilding mode post Manning & old What’s His Face, that cranky fucker who fucked off back to Jacksonville. Listen between the Poor Choices and the Aging, the Memory is not as razor sharp as it used to be, and I don’t feel like looking it up. Oh right, Tom Coughlin. THERE. HAPPY??? The point is, is the Giants are on a conveyor belt to nowhere, and nothing they do fixes any of it, it just seems to drive them deeper and deeper, past the body of Jimmy Hoffa buried in the endzone, into some squawking hell where every voice is some Jersey asshole Tony Sopranoing his thoughts on the Giants and it’s all awful and anyone caught in that culture should be 9/11ed all over again and that is a terrible thing to say but these are all terrible people, these fucking idiots.
Of course, Eagles fans aren’t exactly a nobler breed, and between the two fanbases you could probably melt an entire talk radio network, the cacophony of vile bullshit looking like something out of David’s head in Legion if that’s a show you’re familiar with, and if not just imagine the noisiest most violent horrible hellspace you can imagine. Just vile shitheads, except for sweet Tosh, dribbling GABBA GOO EEEEHHHH YA MOTHA insipid noise at one another across the battlefield of New Jersey, meeting in some toxic dump of the soul that is too despicable for an episode of The Jersey Shore. In this game, in this life, there are no winners.
Pick: Eagles
Cleveland (-3.5) at Cincinnati
The poor sweet Browns were put in their place by the Steelers, which was no real surprise. There is, as always, a pecking order in this division of hatred and merciless bloodletting. The Browns did take my man Devin Bush’s ACL with them which is a victory of sorts for them but a crushing blow to me and my Michigan Man love, which had a tough weekend as we’ll also see later on. But Cleveland is still probably the number 3 team in the AFC North, which is not as bad as it seems since it is such a tough division and they are at least on the same field I think with the Steelers and the Ravens, way ahead of the Bengals anyway, and they can still fight for a wildcard.
Baker is having a tough time of it, let’s not kid ourselves, and may not be The Guy that the Browns need him to be, Stabler genes or no. Of course, the Browns never, ever find The Guy, so this shouldn’t be a huge surprise, and yet it is more disappointing on a more personal level for me this time, I think. I wanted him to be The Guy simply because I need a Stabler to root for, but I have to face the facts which is that Kenny Stabler and his era is long gone and now it is all corporate jackasses and insurance salesmen, literally in Aaron Rodgers’ case, and it’s probably only gonna get worse. But that’s why I cling to the boy so tightly, I think. Any whiff of the Stabler drives me crazy, like a cat with fucking catnip.
The Bengals are not Good, but they’ve been vaguely competitive, well, more so than I anticipated, which still amounts to a bunch of losses, and mostly it seems to be because they hit on Joe Burrow, who I suspect is a sex pest, but that is just my own biases showing through probably. I mean, he is an Ohio guy at heart, which is like a thousand strikes against him, he should probably be chemically castrated just based off of that alone, but he also spent a year doing GOD only knows what down in Louisiana where there are no laws, just a sort of social pecking order and if you’re on top like a young football god would be down there, you can pretty much get away with anything, and I’m talking really dark shit, like Carcosa type shit, the sort of shit that gets Matthew McConaughey investigating you with a horned up Woody Harrelson. Did you see Alexandra Daddario’s sweet titties in that show? Also her business, like ALL of it. A star making performance. Anyway, Joe Burrow probably had himself a whole fleet of Daddarios that he chopped body parts off of while deep in his cups, grumbly old Cajun Clown Ed Orgeron urging him on like a character in the fucking Waterboy. So dark.
Pick: Browns
Dallas (Pick ‘Em) at Washington
lolololol how low these degenerate Cowboys have fallen, yet another season and year where anus mouthed Jerry Jones purses those asshole lips together and pouts like a little bitch because he can’t figure out where he keeps going wrong with this team. Well, let’s see, it’s a team where the Jackoff Oil Degenerate Owner also GM’s the fucking team and runs everything else pretty much including his handpicked coaches who he probably draws up shitty ass plays for. You think there might be a theme there, Jerry? You fucking loser. It’s pathetic assholes like this who stumble blindly into money and then try to swing their pin dicks around in a pretense of power, ruining lives just because they can, doing blow and probably knocking up paperless immigrants, and the young ones too, the ugly ones he just stuffs in his burn barrel back at the ranch YEEEE-HAAAAAWWWWWW what a fucking monster.
Of course, his falling to pieces team coincides with the falling to pieces regime of his boy Donald Trump, and you know that they are boys, and if there was any decency in this world, or if this were a nobler and better time, they’d be forced to fight for the soap in the prison showers so one of them could at least get some slipperiness going on his asshole while the other just was barebacked dry by a Nation of Islam member and I always abhor when people wish prison rape on other people because it’s fucked up and really just says a lot about what an awful person you are, but fuck, there are some exceptions and the only reason I chose this route is because if I chose the scenario I REALLY wanted, I’d be put on a list and maybe black bagged at some point. You can only say so much about the President even if he is a fucking game show host clown without getting hell unleashed on you, but I will say that I would like to see Jerry Jones slathered in honey and tied down before a hoard of carnivorous ants, they will strip a fucking deer like it’s nothing, they wouldn’t have a hard time with Jerry Jones’ gristle.
Anyway, it’s fucking embarrassing that the Cowboys can’t even get Favored Nation status against the soulless and broken Washington Football Team (lolololol) deballed for all time by Daniel Snyder’s impotent ways. By the way, there are two Dan Snyder’s out there, one is this dude who we’ve covered extensively, the other is the kingpin for all those teenie shows on Nickelodeon that launched Ariana Grande and Amanda Bynes and Victoria Justice and Britney’s sister and a whole slew of fucked up young ladies and, well, it’s pretty much an open secret that he Weinsteined those girls and who knows what the fuck else and anyway, it’s not a good thing to be a Dan Snyder in this shitty world. Also, that Dan Snyder was also the fat guy in Head of the Class if anyone remembers that show which I watched as a kid. He and Brian Robbins, who played the greaser dude on that show, basically run Hollywood now because it is a fucked up town full of sex pests and monsters. Oh, I guess his name is spelled Schneider not Snyder but fuck it, same thing really. YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME YOU TUB OF GOO. Anyway, goddamn, what a collection of horrible characters in this matchup. Even Tom Landry wasn’t this bad and he kept shaved young boys hung in a closet like suits. I’m just kidding, I don’t know if that’s true or not but it could be and that’s all that matters.
Pick: Cowboys
Detroit (+2.5) at Atlanta
Shockingly, the Lions looked like an Actual Professional Football Team last week with an emphasis on Professional, which is something seen only once every 76 years like Haley’s Comet or Trump seeing his own dick. But it happened, and naturally, everyone is sticking their jaw out like Glass Fuckin’ Joe again just waiting to get knocked out because no one ever learns. I mean, yeah, it’s nice when this happens, but it’s nicer in context, when it’s part of a tangible whole, a normal series of events which speaks to a sense of genuine momentum instead of a dusting of a suddenly hapless Jacksonville squad whose owners don’t even give a fuck about the team anymore because they are too busy with their ‘rasslin federation, probably getting in over their heads on blow and steroids if it’s a true wrestling promotion, probably sitting on the edge of a tomorrow that sees them getting sued for sex pesting the lady wrestlers because there is only one Insane Svengali in wrestling who can get away with that shit and he’s a senile old lunatic in Trump and Jerry Jones’ rowboat to hell and anyway, why am I talking about the fucking Jags here so much?
Oh yeah, it’s because the Lions managing to put down another dysfunctional gang of degenerates doesn’t necessarily translate to bigger and better things, and even worse, it perhaps prolongs this shitty immoral regime and lets them puff their shitty chests out like they just marched on Paris and maybe aren’t even any better than the last shitheads who did that. Yes, I just compared Patricia and Quinn to Nazis, it has come to this, and I imagine Lions fans are rolling their eyes at me and asking me why I can’t just enjoy this and that’s just it, these fuckers have robbed any joy or potential joy that can be had for me here. I hate them. Not in a sports specific way, but in a very human way. They are awful people and to try to square my fandom with them even when they win, maybe especially when they win, is nearly impossible. Them doing well is rewarding the Bad Guys of the world. Your team, my team, are run by fucking Nazis, and this is barely an exaggeration, let’s not forget that the OG Ford pretty much lived in Hitler’s ass.
Anyway, the fucking Falcons finally brought in a Young Priest and an Old Priest and exorcized, well, something from their fucking closet full of Failure Demons. It turns out that maybe Dan Quinn was possessed and had the stink of literal death on him or something, or maybe he was abusing deaf kids at practice or something, I don’t know, all I know is that the Falcons needed a cleansing, they got one, and whipped up on Kirk Cousins’ worthless ass. This is perhaps somewhat of a miracle, and also makes for a weirdly intriguing game between the Lions and the Falcons as one team will take another step towards dignity while the other will go back to picking crabs out of their assholes and fistfighting fans. Dark times, but historically, these are two of the darkest NFL teams of them all, so it’s appropriate, I guess.
Pick: Lions, FUCK IT WHY NOT
Carolina (+7.5) at New Orleans
The Saints and Bucs will battle for the NFC South and the fucking Panthers are gonna have to haul ass just to stay ahead of the Falcons, who are staggering like cough syrup addicts towards a slightly less dark and obscene future maybe. In any event, it isn’t good for the Panthers, who are 3-3 but it is a shitty 3-3 and Teddy Bridgewater isn’t bringing this home, folks.
The Saints, especially Alvin Kamara, are repping New Orleans proud again, even if Drew Brees is a spiritual hindrance and his dark soul is the reason they’ve only won one Super Bowl because there comes a time when you have to reach for your inner Spirit Warrior and when Drew Brees reaches down all he finds are pornographic fantasies of him waterboarding brown people with his own cum. He is not a good person, and it is only the ridiculously Spirit Rich New Orleans that covers for his heartless ass.
I don’t have a ton to say about this game. I mean, the Saints are gonna win, right? It’s only a question if they cover and I’m guessing they do. Like I said, the Panthers are really not that great. They have an okayish defense, but Teddy Bridgewater and Mike Davis aren’t exactly Cam Newton and Christian McCaffrey, so you know how it is. Just a team that can beat shitty teams but can’t beat anyone with a real pulse. I’m a Lions fan, I recognize this kind of shit.
Pick: Saints
Buffalo (-12.5) at NY Jets
The Jets are being dragged like Hector being dragged by Achilles before the walls of Troy, just beatin’ and flappin’ on the ground like an animal hunted and disgraced, not even fit to be held up as a trophy, just corpse abused and wrecked to make a fucking point. King Priam weeps for his son while loverboy Paris gulps and maybe rethinks the bride stealing or maybe he’s just a dumb hard dick and is willing to sacrifice his brother, maybe even a brother who he’s a little jealous of having grown up in his heroic shadow. Anyway, the Jets are getting dragged like that and this isn’t even a very good metaphor because there is nothing noble about the Jets. They aren’t Hector. They aren’t even Paris. They’re just some dickless eunuch run over by Achilles and Achilles didn’t even fucking notice, didn’t even feel the bump.
Somehow, the fucking Bills, meanwhile, have staked themselves to a double digit spread here, and even though it’s against the woeful Jets, this is still the Buffalo Bills we’re talking about and this is some turn of events for them, isn’t it? Finally, after all these years, they seem to have found their way back, much like Odysseus finally returning to his wife. Fuck it, I don’t want to twist this stupid metaphor any more than I have to, so let’s forget all that shit.
The Bills haven’t had this much hope since they were famously losing all those Super Bowls, which is the Long Winter with only a few hours of sun that is their history. I mean, even their Great Success is notable for its Epic Failure, but fuck, at least they made those Super Bowls. My shit ass team has only won one playoff game in 60 plus fucking years. Let’s have some perspective here.
Still, my team’s most famous player and star running back didn’t kill his ex-wife and a waiter, or ALLEGEDLY kill anyway and lololol the fucker has all but admitted he did it so why should we hide behind cowardly words like ALLEGEDLY? Anyway, if anyone can fuck this up aside from the Lions, it’s probably the Bills. But they are actually on season two of this thing and are legit contenders and maybe even the favorites in the AFC East, the first time that hasn’t been the Patriots since, like, pre 9/11 days. They’ve lost a couple now, but they were to the Titans and the Chiefs, which is not really a disgrace, just more of a pecking order being established in the larger AFC race, which has already broken out with clear favorites in each division. The only one that maybe isn’t so clear is the AFC East with the Bills and the Patriots, but that is really more about the overwhelming weight of history than anything that’s been seen on the field so far this season. Taken in isolation, I think the Bills probably are the favorite, as fucking wild as that sounds. Still, never count out Bill Belichick, even in his Nominating a Horse Senator phase of his career. At the very least, the Bills should roll the fucking Jets though, so everyone calm down.
Pick: Bills
Green Bay (-3.5) at Houston
Houston made a noble run at Tennessee but lost again and this is just a tear up the script and order a full rewrite of a season, guys should start catching the COVID soon, or “catching the COVID” to avoid having to play the rest of the season. Fuck it, you know it’s gonna start to happen. Just forget about them, they’re finished.
The Packers, on the other hand, just got sonned by Tom Brady and the Bucs, which was a HOW BIG IS YOUR DICK game in which Tom Brady flopped out his HOG on the motherfucking devil himself whose tiny dick curled back into his body while his demons laughed at him, not to his face of course, and told their wives about it and their wives just shrugged and said they already knew and the demons were like lol good one honey and then were like wait… what? How did their wives all know about the devil’s dick? And so no one in hell was left happy that night, especially not the gluttons who are forced to eat a giant wheel of cheese that never runs out no matter how much they puke.
No, it wasn’t good for Aaron Rodgers and his Hell Boys, just faced down by the Greatest of All Time, a serial killer with nothing in his veins but the mixed blood of his victims, from whom he receives a fresh transfusion every morning under the auspices of Uncle Dr. Klaus while Gisele feeds cats into the woodchipper. Even the devil can’t stand up to such monstrosity, such cold hearted menace, and he buckled and wept and begged God to TAKE HIM BACK or at least get him away from Tom fucking Brady, but the only bigger dick then the devil when it comes to fucking with people is God and so the devil was just forced to sit there and take it, his carefully crafted kingdom of hate and fear crumbling all around him.
Still, like I said, the Texans are just fucking lost and the devil, in the end, has No Shame, and he will come back and be extra cruel to these poor fuckers because, hey, that’s just the way God made him.
Pick: Green Bay
Seattle (-3.5) at Arizona
Seattle is just out there beating everyone they play, fresh off a bye, Russell Wilson making a run at the MVP that no one sees because they are all balls glued to the ass of Patrick Mahomes. But Russell Wilson might be the best of them all right now, a 5’11” anomaly who can run around with it just like the young kids can and can throw it around just like the old dog warriors can. He is maybe not The Best at any one single thing, but taken all together and mixed in with that whole intangibles thing the fucking geeks throw a hissy fit about because IT’S NOT QUANTIFIABLE SO IT MUST NOT EXIST in their tiny sad little minds, prisoners of their own myopic blandness, he might be The Best of them all. I mean, Mahomes is Mahomes, he is a fucking ridiculous animal, but year in and year out Russell Wilson just gets this shit done and usually with Seahawks teams that just get shittier and shittier.
Maybe the Seahawks have upgraded again a bit, which makes Wilson all the harder to fuck with. He has a good running game around him now, and Bobby Wagner still holds shit down on defense. Pete Carroll has made things happen like a caveman with only sticks and a few rocks to make fire and has proven himself to be kind of a hippie Belichick, or maybe not a hippie, but a California Ah Fuck It kind of Belichick, the sort of dude who will take his team to get ice cream or some shit instead of making them eat dog shit while erasing their mother’s name from their brains like Billy B.
The Cardinals have regained Their Shit and whipped up on the sad ass Cowboys which lololol fuck you, Jerry Jones, Jimmy Johnson made your ass 30 fucking years ago and you were too fucking dumb to understand it. Ahem. Anyway, Kyler Murray is that new breed of rocket fueled quarterback, a mighty mouse type, sort of like Russell Wilson, I suppose, only even shorter and faster. He also has a big arm, but he’s not the I’M THE CAPTAIN NOW sort of QB that Wilson is, at least not yet, and odds are he never gets to that level, especially playing in the soul suck of the Arizona desert where nothing good ever happens for very long, their quarterback history a shriveled dichotomy between Jake “The Snake” Plummer, and yes, he was a Stabler acolyte only he was destined to be stuck in that Arizona hellscape leading shitty teams to nowhere, and that Megachurch Christian Kurt Warner, who was actually a Nazi frozen in ice like Captain America or some shit, thawed out and “tamed” by the CIA in an attempt to lead children into a dark new operation that we still know very little about. He actually took the team to a Super Bowl, which they lost of course, but he did far more damage spiritually, like some awful antichrist of the desert, made up of sand and lies, doing just enough to steal souls but not enough to actually bring anyone to the Promised Land.
Anyway, Kyler Murray has all… that… to live up to, which isn’t very promising, and my point is that it’s easy to see him turning into the worst version of himself stuck in that hellhole, where everything is the same stucco suburb, gulping up electricity and stealing water in a desert that wants to kill everyone. Just a miserable fucking place, peopled by nasty racists and first generation “Cowboys” who are all transplants from some other shitty part of the country that didn’t want them. Fuck Arizona. Just bad vibes all around, man.
Pick: Seattle
San Francisco (+2) at New England
Jimmy G and George Kittle resuscitated the 49ers season, at least temporarily, with a must-win over the Rams, so maybe they aren’t as dead as I pegged them to be, but they are still a team battling injury and disappointment, and perhaps that ever-present Super Bowl Loser hangover, but maybe they pull their shit together and make something of this, who knows? Half their fair weather fans have probably bailed already, but fuck it, this is a season with No Fans, so that might not mean anything. I mean, does it ever for them? Their stadium is built on a literal winery. Okay, I just made that up, but you bought it for a second. It’s actually built on a Yoga Retreat.
Who knows what the fuck goes on with the Patriots. So much hinges on Cam Newton who is dying of the plague or maybe he has already recovered and is being quarantined like a sick horse, I don’t know. Is he gonna play again soon? I’m not gonna check. But there is a deeper rot here. I already alluded to it with the Belichick Nominates a Horse for Senator comment earlier, and that’s not far off. His defensive staff is fucking embarrassing. Not one, but two of his young idiot sons are key defensive assistants and the cornerbacks coach is a fucking former lacrosse player. Scattered in between are a bunch of young sycophant types who read like Bill’s Young Boys that he keeps on the road, making them do… things, claiming he’s training them but he’s really just a sick old man who doesn’t care about or believe in anything anymore, even less than what little he maybe once did when he had a family he pretended to love.
But Belichick’s assistants have almost always proven to be incompetent clowns when let off the farm, as I only know too fucking well, so maybe this has always been his eccentric way and maybe he is just a mad genius who runs literally everything all of the time, or maybe he was REALLY REALLY bailed out by a certain quarterback all those years who covered for a lot of rot in the system as Emperor Belichick ordered his too young girlfriend to fuck Senator Horse.
I don’t really know what to expect from this game, to be honest. Maybe this is Jimmy G’s revenge against the old man who threw him away like garbage to soothe his sociopath quarterback. Or maybe Belichick is a Mean Old Ogre who has been looking forward to breaking the spirit and the will of Jimmy G just to show that he still can, like your old stepfather who threw you out of the house after getting your mom hooked on Oxy and now he shows up at your new place after you got yourself a job and everything and he tells you he’s gonna tell your boss about the time he caught you stealing from the till at the shitty overpriced corner store that he runs where he mostly sells booze, tobacco and lottery tickets to ruined souls. If you’re Jimmy G, you only have two choices: let this old man ruin your life all over again or you fucking kill him, make it look like an accident, or better yet, just dump his body in the fucking woods or feed it to some pigs. It’s the only way forward, son.
Pick: Patriots (I just checked and Cam is playing, so… yeah, sorry Jimmy G, looks like it’s another ruined life)
Kansas City (-9.5) at Denver
How dark did shit get for the Patriots without Cam Newton? They lost to the fucking Broncos while John Elway ate a bale full of hay up in the luxury box. I mean Denver is just no fuckin’ good. I mean, they’ve won 2 in a row but the other win was against the Jets so let’s not go nuts here. They are trotting out a collection of skeletons and ghosts at quarterback this Halloween season, Drew Lock against the Patriots, and he didn’t even throw a TD against 2 INT so let’s not pretend again that they actually played well and didn’t just take advantage of a suddenly confused Patriots team.
And the Chiefs are the fucking Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes throws the ball like Superman in one of those corny scenes where he tosses it halfway around the world or some shit and some farmer’s eyes bug out of his head. I mean, Superman did live in Kansas after all, so I guess it’s an appropriate reference, down to the hick farmer who then went inside and punched his wife in the eye because he caught her talking to a negro the other day at the market. “He was the cashier, George!” she screams, begging him to stop, but George says he “don’t care if it was Martin Luther Koon” and he laughs a toothless laugh and Superman hangs himself from a fucking tree rather than help these fucking people with a giants MAGA sign in their front yard. Nobody tell George about Mahomes for fuck’s sake, for now he thinks he’s “just got a nice tan”
Pick: Chiefs
Tampa Bay (-3.5) at Las Vegas
I’ll admit it, Jon Gruden has Derek Carr playing at a high level and is maybe proving that he actually is that guy who built the Raiders back in the day before going into TV for a decade. Some guys are just the real thing and as much as it pains me given the seemingly soulless cash grab of it all along with the Vegas affair leaving frumpy old Oakland wives in despair, maybe Gruden is it, I don’t know. But it’s still early and Mark Davis still owns this team like a fucking parasite lingering in the mind of a dude with multiple personalities, just waiting to set the whole thing on fire while Gruden shrugs and gets the big buffet comped to him at whatever casino hotel he lives in, jerking off to overpriced porn, his hammy face getting redder and redder with every limpish tug. Fuck it, I’m not giving him credit for shit yet.
Meanwhile Tom Brady just did all that shit I wrote about to the devil, which is just another day, another year, in the life and times of this dude who spends six days a week doing tantric yoga and putting his wife in the camel clutch during depraved sex games where he pretends he is the Iron Sheik which is how he justifies gassing Iraqi orphans while they are forced to watch the whole sick game.
But I mean, shit, while the Patriots crumble into fucking horse senators and fiddling while certain parts of their fair empire burn to the fucking ground, Tom Brady is putting up ridiculous numbers and making an honest contender out of fucking Tampa Bay even though he is two years older than me and I would probably shit my pants if I had to run 100 yards these days, and it’s not like I’m out of shape, I’m just old and chemically dependent although I’m trying to do better with that last part, which honestly just makes me feel even sicker lol life is hell.
I exaggerate no doubt, I’m sure I could run a few sprints up and down the field and then be carried off like one of the other two dudes who were slapped on the cross next to Jesus. The point is that this man should not be doing this shit if only because no man has ever done this shit at this level. Tom Brady and I were in fucking college at the same time and I was literally a different human being then. No, I mean it, I was swapped out by aliens and the CIA around 2006 or so. I don’t know what happened to the Original Neil. Fuck him, I guess.
But Tom Brady has just been out there like a fucking narcissist robot, dystopian to most, cherished by a strong minority and not just Boston grotesques but Michigan Men the world over and there are so fucking many of them. All of New England is held under his sway even though he doesn’t play there anymore and now he’s added Florida. He’s like the original colonists, just stealing land from the natives and indenturing poors to run his household under the auspices of his harsh Exotico wife who he met during a native hunting party on a Brazilian plantation with the King of Portugal. But he only thinks she’s an exotico because he’s an old racist, she’s actually a GERMAN and even more racist than he is. How long can they keep up this Game? As long as the blood bags are hooked up to the IVs every night.
Pick: Bucs
Pittsburgh (+1) at Tennessee
From the Ultimate Michigan Man to the Trail of Tears for Michigan fans as Devin Bush had his ACL ripped apart last week causing Sparty fans to rejoice and openly mock him on Twitter and in their troglodyte halls where the cave walls are made up of rape panties and ski masks. A whole legion of Kirk Cousins. Fucking Brian Lewerke, the latest loser Sparty QB who saw Michigan redominate the series under his “watch” actually FAV’d the tweet announcing Devin Bush tore that ACL. What fucking trash people they are.
Anyway, that leaves the Steelers D torn apart and puts more of the onus on the Rapist again, which is terrible news for everyone, not least of all those women he raped, who have to be reminded week after week, year after year, that this fat faced fucker is still out there running free and raking in millions of dollars. I mean, fuck. It does mean I no longer have to pretend to give a fuck about the Steelers and can turn my AFC North rooting interests firmly towards the Browns and Ravens, which is anathema to both Browns and Ravens fans that I could do such a thing, but that is the beauty of the Hate of the AFC North and also why I can enjoy it from my removed position here in the even Colder North.
But it wasn’t just Michigan Man Devin Bush who tore an ACL last week. No, the Titans best player offensively, LT Taylor Lewan, also a Michigan Man, tore his ACL too, and that’s a really big fucking deal for the Titans who lean so heavily on running Derrick Henry behind Lewan. So, both of these teams are gonna have to make pretty big adjustments moving forward. I think the Steelers are probably better suited because they can re-gear and try to outshoot teams, they still have the personnel for that, while the Titans don’t really have that extra gear. They need to rely on their running game or else their defense is gonna be on the field too fucking long and the whole gameplan falls apart. It sucks for them because they had perfected the whole boring thing, but it also shows how delicate it all is. Just one bad bend of a limb can fuck your whole season.
Pick: Steelers
Jacksonville (+8) at LA Chargers
Pick: Chargers
Chicago (+6) at LA Rams
What did I say about this just being one of those seasons for the Bears? They never look, like, really good or anything and yet they are 5-1 with a win over Brady and the Bucs. Maybe if Nick Foles can at least bring competency to the QB position, this thing might have legs, but relying on a SPUNK kind of guy is always a dangerous proposition. I mean, yeah, the dude won a Super Bowl but so did Trent Dilfer so let’s calm down a little. I mean, he’s definitely a few steps above Drew Stanton, who I originally attached the SPUNK name to (no Dave Walsh division) and he’s not reeking of Failure Demons like Sad Mitch who appears to be yet another Bears QB thrown on the pile in a Years Long Scene reminiscent of the BRING OUT YOUR DEAD scene in The Holy Grail. I mean, it’s been an even shittier situation on the whole than the Lions. At least we’ve had Matthew Stafford, Failed State though he may be, for the last decade. The Bears would have killed for him at any point in the last 30 years or so.
The Rams were tripped up by the 49ers, who were fighting for their lives, and they still seem to be a quietly good team to me, mostly ignored as yesterday’s Teen Dreams, but given the line here maybe they have some respect still amongst the Vegas Sharps. Aaron Donald is still playing like Forrest Whitaker in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and the offense is still comfortably competent if not lights out explosive like they were for that stretch a few years ago.
The only drawback, of course, as I have beaten home, is that they play in LA where no one really cares about anything. Maybe they pretend to care about the Dodgers a little, and the Lakers to be trendy and to be seen, some hipster types clinging to the Clippers, but football has always been a brute’s game to the LA Pretty People. I mean, they even pretended to get excited about Gretzky and the Kings for a couple of years there once upon a time, but they have never given a fuck about the Rams. The Chargers might as well play their games in the fucking theater where they shot Lucha Underground. They “cared” about the Raiders because the Raiders were fashion, they were Hollywood, they were One Of Them even if they were just visiting from Oakland for a spell, but no one cared because no one is actually from LA and the people that are live very different lives than the people everyone thinks about when they think of LA. They aren’t getting into games to be on TV or doing anything other than working their asses off to try to survive in a sprawling city or many cities that thrive on casting you as a Have or a Have Not and most of the Haves are the transplants and the Have Nots have to dodge an occasional bullet and keep out guards in watchtowers to blow horns whenever ICE is spotted nearby. I may be dramatizing that last bit but you get the point. LA’s sports teams are mostly an extension of their celebrity culture and none of those people are from LA or give a real fuck about the teams. It’s a lucrative market and yet it’s always vaguely burned out, isn’t it?
But again, this is the season of No Fans, so I guess it doesn’t really matter to the Rams. Besides, they are all rich assholes too, transplants, and they probably just wanna get high and party in the hills like everyone else in between trying to get their headshots in front of the right people. And meanwhile, the whole state burns, smoke rises over the city and fucking coyotes still run wild in the streets. It is the weirdest city in America and in a lot of ways I am fascinated by it, but most writers who have thought the same thing have tried to take it on and come away ruined and unable to string two sentences together. The place does something to you. It does to everyone. I might catch a bus there someday like Axl, become one of The People, but I sure won’t give a fuck about the goddamn Rams. They’re just lucky no one gives a fuck about anything.
Pick: Rams
