Only one thing kept me from repeating my 5-9 performance from two weeks ago, and that was me missing the Thursday night game, so I only went 5-8. I guess that is one way to define progress, just skip all the games and you will never lose one aka Homer’s lesson to Bart to “never try,” which I think he told him after finishing the Iliad and the Odyssey and all of the local Achaean publishers had sent him rejection form letters. Anyway, so yeah, 5-8 and as always I strive to do better, to be better, to make you better, but you and I both always fuck this up, so why ruin a good thing? Here is this week’s Gambling With Sanity.
(post production note: I am going to throw this, the first game up, early so if I somehow do miss the deadline, this will still be there and lol at least it can be read as an appetizer to the whole meal, after all, it is roughly 2,000 words already)
Indianapolis (+2.5) at Tennessee
There was a time when Indiana was one of those Northerny Great Lakes area states that was hard to peg politically or at least Electorally, which includes Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and I guess Pennsylvania, and hell let’s throw Iowa in there too even though they aren’t connected to the Great Lakes. Illinois doesn’t count because they have largely almost always been Blue going back to corrupt and brutal mayors and counting votes from the dead to help elect John F Kennedy, which meant that most of the internal political machine in Chicago, which really runs the state not it’s dumb capital, became notoriously Democrat heavy in the way that union and mobster run machines often are, which is to say that it has never been Progressive, just the financial muscle that helped drive the Democrats for years and years before it found a cozy relationships with banks and insurance companies. Still, Illinois stays largely Blue if only because of political inertia, the same way the South remained Democrat friendly, hell almost exclusively, way past the point that it made any fucking sense and they all switched en masse to Republicans. I can see that happening to Illinois at some point, but for now anyway, the machinery is still Democratic even if it is a muscly socially repugnant Centrist kind that is big on police and union execs getting all the money. And anyway lol I didn’t mean to make this about Illinois, I am just tangentially explaining what I am getting at, so let’s do a paragraph break and reset the discussion. Okay? Okay.
So, Illinois doesn’t really count in the Great Lakes Swing State discussion. But those others that I mentioned have always had a peculiar mix of that Chicagoan Blueness and ornery fuckers who go Red because it is a Populist region and anyone who can gain the hearts and minds of the simple folk often walk away with them as Electoral prizes. But that has started to change, as for the most part, 2016 debacles and anomalies aside, most of them, the Northern tier, have become reliably Blue, and again, if anything the 2016 fiasco and even this year’s election which was uncomfortably close in those states, only points to that Populism. But two have not, as both Ohio and Indiana have been sucked into the vortex of modern day insane Republicanism which is heavy on the LET’S GO LYNCHIN’ BOYS mentality.
I won’t talk about Ohio here because that would start me on a wild eyed rant about those fuckers. But I will talk about Indiana, who, like West Virginia, has stopped even being a place where Democrats can even compete as it cascades into redneck hickery and working class resentment, which is all to easy to prey upon and convince that everything that ails them is the fault of THEM RICH BOYS IN WASHINGTON and THEM MEXICANS TOOK OUR JOBS. I mean, they are always significantly riled up by thoughts of The Others and anyone who leans hard on that message will get their vote time after time. After all, there is a reason why Indiana was at one time the country’s leader in Klan members. These are easy people to fool and quell into a hate filled brigade. And unfortunately it has taken Indiana and Ohio and West Virginia, which somehow joined this conversation even though, like Iowa, it is nowhere near a Great Lake. But Indiana in particular is the biggest evidence of this tonal shift, of the tidal wave of angry white people who feel marginalized and talked down to by the national elites. I mean, they are, but that is an all too easy thing to exploit.
And Indiana has been exploited in a bad mean way, and they are as reliably dark conservative as places like Oklahoma, Nebraska and Kansas. These are the people at the very heart of the insane Trumpian QAnonian hysteria which has seized the Facebooked shriveled minds of the white and elderly. They aren’t even worth trying to win back at this point because the Klan spirit of the past has captured them again. In short (lol) fuck Indiana and everything about it. It’s people are ignorant troglodytes, corn farmers and hillbilly heroin junkies, the sort of people who would be found in a Borat movie. It is a vile meanspirited kind of conservative populism that has always been the foot soldiers of the people who have basically ruled this country since its inception.
Still, the whole Red State/Blue State thing is kind of repugnant In its oversimplification of reality, ironically a way to marginalize people who already feel marginalized, and to focus solely on this is to endorse that marginalization. This is one reason why these people feel and act like they do. Of course, the other is that most of them actually are vile shitheads and not just frustrated desperate people. Then again, one could argue that those are often the same thing. Yet, as easy it is to romanticize and admire in a sort of grossly paternal way Hillbilly Heroism, Bo and Luke Duke running from the law in reality, both Bo and Luke are Klan members, Cousin Daisy is hooked on meth and has 6 kids by 6 different dudes, half the kids are darker than the others, Uncle Jesse sits around all day watching Fox News and Cooter is, well, Cooter is Cooter. Real life is ugly and mean and romanticizing it just enables it. There are genuine Bo and Luke types out there, hell one could argue that I am one of them, like Raven and Paul and TOM and so many others who some of you have no idea who I am talking about but at least I’d say a good half or more do. But for the most part, it is how I have described it, Boss Hogg is elected time and time again by the shithead version of the Duke Brothers.
Tennessee is roughly cut from the same sad cloth, and basically Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Southern Indiana are basically their own super-region of fucked up white people, Ohio too even though the city folk in Ohio are basically on the level as country folk in most other states. Tennessee, of course, is widely viewed through the even broader lens of Southern Wretchedness, and it’s interesting to see that states that used to fit in there, like Virginia and maybe even now Georgia, possibly North Carolina, have kind of drifted away from that mean pack of wolves and been replaced by Ohio and Indiana, toss that swath of shitheaded Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska types in there too. It never really changes or evolves, it just migrates, almost seasonally, West and North, the East slowly being penetrated by Democrats even if it is not exactly Progressive and more the Joe Biden kind of Democrat. Rather than being the Northwestern and Northern tip of that meanspirited George Wallace kind of Populism (which, one could argue, is Proto-Trumpian), Tennessee has kind of become the center point of this shit, with Ohio and Indiana drawing up the Northern tip and Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma the Western tip. In short (again lol) it is waaaaay too comfortable in this new shakeup of ignorant shit people.
And don’t get me wrong, this Shit Populism can be found in all the 50 states, perhaps the majority of them, in perhaps the larger geographical sense, thus those maps which show almost the whole country as Red with only small pockets of Blue. The Blue just happens to be more condensed, urban and walled off in a way while the zombie redneck horde screams in rage at the gates, incapable of getting inside and if they did they would eat everyone anyway. But Tennessee is not one of those states. I mean, does anyone think Progressive when anyone mentions Nashville or Memphis. No, of course not. Even its walled cities have zombies inside.
Eat the Rich is a tempting thing to romanticize, and fuck, go ahead and eat them, but most thieves are not Robin Hood, they are just greedy dickheads. They are not in it for an indignant stand against elitism and the welfare of others, they are in it for themselves, fuck everyone, rich and poor, who are not them, or who especially don’t look like them. Its Eat the Rich and then turn around and eat that little Black Girl with her quivering hands out asking for help and change. These people are not Robin Hood, they are Nazis who hate everyone but themselves. I mean, Nathan Bedford Forrest was from Tennessee.
So, Indiana vs Tennessee is a battle not for Better Things but for that stash of Oxys left behind in a Kentucky cabin by someone who OD’d in it with a half typed Facebook post about how Blacks are actually alien shapeshifters undercover to steal our country and our jobs in front of him. It doesn’t matter who wins because the winner will just OD too and the loser will begrudgingly shuffle off to the store to buy more cough medicine. What does any of this have to do with football? Nothing, I guess, other than that these are the people cheering for these teams in this game and to wish any of them well heading into it is something none of us should do. Also, I plan on camping out like I’m at Bonnaroo waiting to steal that stash of Oxys before either of these shitheads can get to it.
Winner: Tennessee
Cincinnati (+7.5) at Pittsburgh
Maybe I’ll actually start talking about football. Or maybe not, we’ll just have to see. But yeah, Cincinnati, which is as much the team of Kentucky as it is Southern Ohio, has desperately needed the Spirit Warrior energy of their former ace special teamer and wrestling icon Brian Pillman, who quick trivia, was the college roommate of none other than John Harbaugh, and Harbaugh actually helped raise Pillman’s kids financially and backed Pillman, Jr. in his efforts to become a pro wrestler, and Pillman, Jr. is definitely his father’s son and is now with AEW. But anyway, yeah, the Bengals have been missing that kind of energy for years now.
Obviously, that is not something you can just manufacture, and so the Bengals are stuck at 2-5-1 this season even though they are probably better than that, not good, but teetering around .500 maybe. And a lot of that has to do with Joe Burrow looking more and more like a hit, but like I have beaten into the ground, you can’t trust a dude from Ohio who went to Louisiana to engage in the dark arts while women hung in cages. But he’s on pace for around 4,500 yards with twenty plus touchdowns and, maybe more importantly, he doesn’t have Marvin Lewis hanging around his neck dragging him down.
Don’t trust the Bengals, at least not yet, because Burrow is still a rookie, probably sexually frustrated, stuck with the cavewomen of Cincinnati after a year or so of the SEC coeds. And then there’s that lack of a Spirit Warrior thing and until they can get a dude like that, they are gonna be stuck in their losing ways.
The Steelers, meanwhile, are 8-0, but outside of the Titans and Ravens, two games which were close, they haven’t really beaten anybody. Sorry, Browns, you still don’t count. Still, they have a top 5 offense and defense, but they did lose their own Spirit Warrior in Devin Bush. Which means that the rapist has to carry more of the load even though he is 38, just coming off the COVID and is a rapist, which definitely doesn’t make for a Spirit Warrior.
It will be interesting to see how long this can last for the Steelers before they start to break down. I mean, even at 8-0, does anyone consider them the best team in football? Still, it is kind of impressive that they have managed to do this even after losing Antonio Brown and LeVeon Bell, but given that one of those dudes is a fucking lunatic and the other was cut by the fucking Jets of all teams after destroying his own career in Grand Sparty Fashion by holding out for an entire season while in his prime, perhaps the Steelers actually know what they’re doing. Anytime you can reload on the fly like this, you’ve got a good program running.
It will be interesting to see whether Burrow and the Bengals can take the next step or if Roethlisberger and the gang just stomp them into the dirt. To be honest, I see neither happening, with the Bengals putting up a genuine effort and the Steelers hanging on to win.
Pick: Cincinnati
Washington (+3) at Detroit
Listen, there is only so much I can say about the Lions that I haven’t already said. But their tiny mirage of success has disappeared and their desert oasis turned out to be all dried up. Matt Patricia is still the coaching version of Ben Roethlisberger, only, you know, without the success, Bob Quinn is still a baseball bat wielding embarrassment and nothing they do has worked and nobody likes them. Lions fever, catch it!!!!!
Still, I wish better things for Matthew Stafford, who has also been put through the personal wringer with his wife’s brain tumor, which just makes his professional hell all the darker. If anyone deserves a break, it’s this dude. But any success for Stafford means success for Patricia and Quinn so this is a real Catch 22 for me.
The Lions have one of the worst defenses in the league, which is extra buffoonish when you consider that Patricia is supposed to some kind of defensive Wizkid and has revealed himself to be a charlatan of epic proportions along with being a probable sex pest. This is all Bill Belichick’s fault to a degree, especially because he is being shown up this season, and part of it is Tom Brady’s for enabling these fuckers and giving them a false shine all these years. Also, Patricia reigned as DC for the Patriots when they had their worst defenses of the whole Belichick run. How he is the coach of an NFL team is beyond me, but how he is a coach of the Detroit Lions only makes perfect sense. Fuck.
Washington, of course, is terrible, both the football team and the government, and the Lions will probably beat them, which is fine with me as Washington is karmically evil and I still remember them blowing out the Lions in the Lions lone NFC Championship game appearance. And yet, if the Lions win, somehow they will be 4-5 even though it feels so much worse and the Fords are lazy enough to reward that “progress” rather than tell these vile fuckers to get out. I mean, vileness begets vileness here as the Ford family was made famous by a dude who once received The Grand Cross of the German Eagle, which the Nazis awarded to their favorite foreigners, and who was mentioned favorably by Hitler in Mein Kampf. I mean, shit, Hitler kept a portrait of Henry Ford on his desk, and Himmler once said about Ford that he was “one of our most valuable, important and witty fighters” which JESUS CHRIST. And, of course, Ford’s own International Jew publication is widely credited for influencing Nazism itself, with even dudes at the Nuremberg trials testifying that it was Ford and the International Jew that influenced them to become Nazis. This dude was so much more than just a Nazi sympathizer. He was one of its icons and founding figures. It’s great that he championed the worker and high wages, but when Hitler says he wants to model his entire empire on Ford, it really doesn’t matter what else you do.
So, I mean, it’s no surprise that his family turned out to be preposterous dickheads. Sure, Henry apparently repented later in life and was said to have stroked out, eventually fatally, when confronted with scenes and stories of the Holocaust, but it doesn’t change everything that came before. Those millions of people died in part because of what Ford had done and written. Sometimes, it’s really, really hard to even morally justify being a Lions fan.
Pick: Detroit
Houston (+4) at Cleveland
Houston has pretty much packed it in on the season after firing Bill O’Brien, and a lot of that remains the product of having an unreally difficult schedule to start the season, which seems unfair, but fuck it, that’s just life. I imagine they bounce back next season, but for now they are just a team playing for a high draft pick.
Honestly, I feel bad for the people of Houston, who have endured much with hurricanes and flooding, which, if anything, has gone largely overlooked as everyone becomes numb to the world’s horror stories. New Orleans and Katrina got all the publicity and care people could bother with, and so Houston struggles on, largely alone. I mean, I remember after their big flood a couple of years ago, people tried to get in touch with my Aunt Connie who was basically MIA for a week or so. This was some scary shit, and Houston is primed to get hammered with more of this kind apocalyptic weather with global warming changing up the game. It would be nice if Houston fans could have at least a winning team to distract them. I mean, everyone hates their cheatin’ ass baseball team, and now this. At least they still have the Rockets for whatever that’s worth and honestly, probably not that much.
The Browns, of course, are my backup team and given everything I just wrote about Henry Ford, maybe even my primary team. I’m not quite there yet, but I felt pleasantly surprised to be as happy as I was that they are a favorite in this game. But at 5-3, they probably deserve it. Then again, they profile similarly in a lot of ways to the Bengals, they just happen to have more Spirit Warrior energy going on with Baker Mayfield. Still, they have a pretty shitty defense and Mayfield’s stats are actually only average at best, so they have to lean on a strong running game which they have with Kareem Hunt and Nick Chubb. Odell Beckham, Jr. has largely underperformed and Jarvis Landry hasn’t been much better. The more I look at it, the more I wonder how they are 5-3, but fuck it, I’ll take it. Maybe Dan is a magical talisman, I don’t know.
Pick: Cleveland
Jacksonville (+13.5) at Green Bay
Pick: Green Bay
Philadelphia (-4) at NY Giants
Wanna know how putrid the NFC East has become? The Eagles are in first place with a 3-4-1 record. That’s good news I guess for Mook Nation, but somehow leaves the door open for Jerry Jones and his shitty team to get a run going and steal it all away and nobody wants or needs that. But as long as everyone else is shitty, the NFL fixers will probably find it justifiable to get the Cowboys in there because they think the Cowboys equal money, which is a thought process going back to before I was born and Tom Landry literally had a stick up his ass.
But shit, this isn’t about the Cowboys. It’s just that anything NFC East related ends up being about the Cowboys so I guess I am as guilty as anyone. But it’s gonna be hard for the Eagles to hold this lead so long as the Cowboys loom and Jerry Jones and Roger Goodell call in the ref shock troops.
And it’s not like the Eagles are somehow better than their record. They are basically a barely better than the Bengals team statistically, and when the Bengals are your peers, things aren’t going so goddamn well. Still, they maintain a tenuous hold on the division which idiot types still believe is the NFL’s premier golden boy division instead of the worst of the worst. People are fucking dumb, what can I say?
Part of that shittyness comes down to the Giants being awful once again, and those Super Bowls seem awfully far away now, don’t they? And now that I look at the standings closer, they and the Cowboys are both 2-7 so, uh, maybe scratch that whole Fixin’ It For the Cowboys theory. Then again, the NFL is vain and stupid enough to try it. But, the point is, is that without the Giants or the Cowboys performing, the NFC East is pretty much a wasteland. I mean, Washington is in second place for fuck’s sake.
There’s a very good chance that the Eagles are 2.5 games up after this week and that’s gonna be tough to overcome with the second half of the season already underway. The Giants only hope right now seems to be yet another high draft pick, but the one thing the Giants do have going for them, and this can be a double edged sword, is that unlike, say, the Lions, they are impatient and have no qualms about bringing in a new coach and a new quarterback already. But, for now, it’s just ride the misery to a shot at Trevor Lawrence, but even then, they have to rely on the fucking Jets going on an inexplicable run. lol New York football is such garbage. I love it.
Pick: Eagles
Tampa Bay (-6) at Carolina
Tom Brady was shockingly sonned by the Saints and Drew Brees, which sent everyone frothing at the mouth with schadenfreude. I mean, damn, people hate Brady. Part of it is petty jealousy and part of it is because he has boots made from the skins of drowned orphans. Gisele holds their heads in the toilet, it is a very dark scene.
But Brady is actually a Spirit Warrior, which nobody I know except maybe Turbo Alex will agree with and indeed, some will even come at me for saying it, but fuck it, I know what the dude is, I am under no illusions about his personal sociopathy, but sometimes it’s that single-minded sociopathy that creates a surprise Spirit Warrior. That’s because said sociopathy is channeled into ferocious competitiveness, a Never Say Die (unless talking to the orphans) attitude that is not so much infectious for his teammates as it is terrifying and demanding. The dudes on the team become almost literally terrified to fail and that means the only alternative is to Just Win Baby, which is how a Dark Spirit Warrior is born.
Of course, it probably only gets darker when he has to go home and there is no outlet for that sociopathy other than skinning orphans and chasing the housekeeper around the house naked wielding a chainsaw. But enough about he and Gisele’s sex games, the point is that once this dude finally does retire, there is a genuine chance that he goes all OJ Simpson. Dudes like this need an outlet, and fucking golf ain’t it.
So… yeah, he’s probably a little shook-up by how thoroughly he and the Bucs were beaten down, but then again, I don’t think he’s capable of feeling shook-up. I mean, this is still the dude who destroyed the Falcons life with that epic Super Bowl comeback, and the thing is, is that nobody was that surprised that he did it. He’s like a horror movie villain that just keeps coming after you no matter how many times you think you’ve killed him. That Saints game will mean nothing to him. I mean, it probably already does. The dude has won 6 Super Bowls for fuck’s sake, and played in 9, no one in the history of the NFL even comes close to him. He is the greatest like Jordan or Babe Ruth and you never fuck with those guys unless of course you own a casino in Jordan’s case or a hot dog stand in Babe’s. The world has long been looking for Brady’s casino or hot dog stand, but Bubba, they ain’t there. I joke about skinning orphans and the like, but Brady probably doesn’t even talk to his own kids let alone the poor ones.
The Panthers finally got a healthy Christian McCaffrey and almost upset Kansas City so they may have some life to them that thus far I have been pretty dismissive of, but at 3-6 still, I think it’s okay to be a little dismissive. And you probably don’t want to be the team facing Brady the week after his own humiliation. Of course, that require the ability to feel humiliation which sociopaths don’t have, so instead, the Panthers will just get single minded wrath and humiliation of their own.
Pick: Tampa Bay
Denver (+3.5) at Las Vegas
I dance around with the idea of doing a full-on exploration of Vegas every week with this thing, but I am already nearly at 5,000 words with half the games left so lol it will have to wait another week or maybe for its own post at some point. I don’t know. What I do know is that The Raiders corrupted souls probably fit in Vegas more than I have acknowledged so far, but that is only because I have had such a hard time squaring this franchise with who they used to be when Kenny Stabler was the world’s greatest Spirit Warrior and they had a whole team of degenerate outlaws and a renegade owner who might as well have been a fucking pirate or gangster. How did that team, performing in front of bikers and tow truck drivers, become this soulless wasteland? Through lots of Poor Choices, ugly nepotism, that old gangster losing his mind and becoming a fucking vampire, and one too many moves. And it is that soullessness that makes them the perfect team for Vegas. It sucks, but that is America in the Year of Our Lord 2020.
I’m also surprised that the Raiders are doing a halfway decent job this season, holding on at 5-3, playing for a Wild Card because, come on, they aren’t passing the Chiefs. Maybe Jon Gruden really is the Real Deal, rare amongst coaches who almost always turn out to be charlatans, even the “good” ones, at least to a degree. But Gruden built the Raiders the last time they were any good, went to Tampa Bay and won a Super Bowl and now here he is after taking a million years off, doing it again with the Raiders. I don’t like acknowledging it either because he is complicit in this soul crushing Vegas regime, but here we are.
The Broncos, of course, don’t have anything like Gruden or even a vampire Al Davis, they just have horse faced John Elway munching on hay in his suite while the Broncos flounder yet again, in the midst of their 4th straight losing season and 5th playoff-less season since winning the Super Bowl. Of course, they don’t have Peyton Manning even if Manning was in his knuckleballer phase, so the offense is pretty putrid, but the real culprit is the defense, who although still better than the offense, was the secret behind the Broncos former success, propping up an elderly Manning for one last run. It’s not horrible, not with Vic Fangio as head coach, but it is mediocre and mediocrity cannot come close to saving this offense. You would think Elway of all people could figure out how to field a good offense, but he can’t even identify a decent quarterback which is pretty ironic given that he’s a top 10 all time QB himself. But I’ve said it before, like Michael Jordan or Isiah Thomas, sometimes these dudes can’t translate their own abilities into managing others or even identifying talent. They are like idiot savants, and maybe Elway is one of them. And that’s a thing, more than anything probably, that will keep the Broncos down and allow the Vegas boys to jump them in the AFC West pecking order.
Pick: Raiders
Buffalo (+3) at Arizona
You know we live in strange times when this is a must-see game with playoff pecking order ramifications. I mean, shit, it’s the Bills and Cardinals. But the Bills have to be taken seriously now after beating Seattle and Josh Allen has surprised me by becoming a legit NFL quarterback. It helps that he has Stefon Diggs now, and with Allen passing and running the ball, it’s a dangerous offense to overlook, one which surprisingly has transformed itself into a top passing offense while the running game actually lags behind a bit. Their defense is okay, not great, but okay, and honestly maybe the worst its been in a few years given that the defense used to carry the entire team.
That’s how big a difference Diggs has made, and Allen exploding into a Pro Bowl caliber QB is not coincidental. Still, the pedestrian running game and average defense is tough to square with a genuine contender, but any team that can take down the Seahawks as part of a 7-2 start deserves the benefit of the doubt. And so I applaud my loser brethren, that Lions/Browns/Bills Great Lakes triumvirate of sadness and despair. Much like I do the Browns, I consider the Bills sort of a brother or at least a cousin, and although they are probably the proudest of the three teams thanks to all those Super Bowl runs and that famous trio of Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed, which gives them a genuine Golden Era that neither the Lions or Browns have had in 60 years, they still lost all those Super Bowls and that was almost 30 years ago. Really? 30 years??? Shit, I feel ancient.
And then you have Arizona, who lost to a surging Miami last week, but don’t let that fool you. Even though they are “only” 5-3, they have a top ten scoring offense and a top ten scoring defense and are second in the league in rushing yards thanks to Kyler Murray blowing up and a solid Kenyan Drake. And then there’s DeAndre Hopkins, a true Ace receiver who combined with Murray make for one of the most explosive QB/WR tandems in the league. It’s amazing that the Cardinals should be even better than that 5-3 mark and a real sign of how good they have looked that their record is actually somewhat of a disappointment. Then again, they did lose to the Lions this season so let’s not get carried away.
But the Cardinals have become rattlesnakes in the desert and unwary travelers will be lucky to get out alive. Of course, all of Arizona is basically one big snake pit, filled with lizard people and venomous monsters who unlike their chill neighbor New Mexico are racist shitheads who don’t so much live with the desert as they do battle it with their AC’d into oblivion homes and water sucking madness. At some point, it will all break down and they will die miserable in their sweat boxes, slayed by Apache ghosts and thirst, but until then they actually have a football team to be proud of for a change. The only problem, as I’ve mentioned before, is that they are all despicable Cowboys fans, befitting a state filled with transplants with no real roots in the state other than a shared sort of mean ignorance. Fuck them. The Cardinals deserve better.
Pick: Arizona
Seattle (+2.5) at LA Rams
Speaking of Josh Allen, he went for over 400 yards and 3TDs against the Seahawks who, naturally, lost after I had talked them up so much. Still, Russell Wilson kept pace for the most part, and Seattle is still in first place in the most competitive division in the NFL, just nosing out the AFC North who are stuck with the Bengals. Then again, with the 49ers injuries, the Bengals may actually be better and anyway I am starting to ramble (starting?) but the point is that Seattle still are top dogs in the NFC West and I still think the best team, they just have less room to work with at the top now, that’s all.
That becomes especially true with the Rams right behind them, and the Rams are another team who I have talked up and then looked like an idiot after they lost. But that loss to Miami suddenly doesn’t look so bad, and the Rams are still legit and underrated, I think.
Interestingly, these two teams are basically perfect opposites, as Seattle has the league’s top scoring offense and 30th scoring defense (shit, I didn’t realize it was so bad, maybe they are more flawed than I have noticed) while the Rams have an offense in the 20’s and the number 2 ranked scoring defense. Of course, scoring offense and defense stats are not really the best measurement of a team, but they do help contextualize things. Things like Seattle having the absolute worst passing defense in the NFL. But they also lie a bit, as Seattle has the 4th best run defense. But passing is where it is at in the NFL now, so you really, really don’t want to be the worst there.
The Rams, meanwhile, are 14th in passing offense and 7th in rushing offense so the scoring stat is a liar there. And yet, there is value in knowing whether that translates into points or not. But a better than it seems offense and a kickass defense (2nd against the pass, 5th against the run) make the Rams a dangerous team who could steal this from Seattle.
All of this is a lot of nerd talk that I usually don’t do, but the NFC West’s power structure demands it, and it becomes important to understand such things if we have any hope of correctly identifying just what in the hell is going on. I refuse to apologize for it.
To be honest, all of the NERD DATA points to the Rams actually being the better team, but Seattle does put up a ton of points and Russell Wilson is still the most underrated of the superstar QB’s I think, and to count them out while he’s The Man is never a good idea. Torched by Josh Allen, the defense has been exposed as a real weakness, but that just means a lot of fun duels between Wilson and everyone else. He has to open it up and the Seahawks can’t play conservatively if they have any hope of being the team I thought they were. All of that means that Wilson is gonna put up a ridiculous stat line this season and maybe finally get the credit he deserves.
The problem this week, is that he has to stare down Aaron Donald, who is the best defensive player in the NFL, and a dude capable of eating even Wilson’s soul. And the Rams haven’t really missed Todd Gurley at all, proving once again that this is no longer a running back dominated league and hasn’t been for years. When Darrell Henderson and Malcolm Brown are enough to power a top 5 running team, you know things have really changed. As long as the Rams get enough out of Jared Goff, who is having a pretty good season, they are very tough to beat.
Of course – and here we are again – all of this would be even more exciting if there were actual fans, and I don’t just mean the COVID emptied stadiums, I mean in LA. At some point, their apathy has to weigh on the Rams (and Chargers) who are robbed of any real sense of a homefield advantage, unlike Seattle, whose homefield advantage is almost legendary. Of course, none of that means a goddamn thing for this season, but I am just looking into the future as these two teams seem destined to tangle for the title year after year, and the Seahawks are gonna have a huge advantage in the fans department.
It is perhaps surprising that Seattle of all places should be so passionate and intimidating. Almost comically absurd in its improbability, it’s nevertheless true. I mean, I guess they do get a lot of caffeine up there. And they are always at the forefront of Fucking the Police and rioting over the WTO, which even earned the nickname The Battle of Seattle, so maybe Seattle is super underrated when it comes to being a Spirit Warrior city. And once you see that, you can understand how they could take over a football game.
But LA, despite its own riotous history, can’t be bothered with sports, it seems, with the rich folks all fucking and doing blow in the Hills and the poor folks laying on the fucking floor as the police shoot up their houses. The obvious solution is that the poor folks need to storm the Hills and hang the rich folks from the Hollywood sign, but the fucking city (cities, really) can’t even keep the coyotes out and everyone is too busy trying to get by to get after social revolution, which is the secret behind this corrupted America, it’s hard enough not being ground beneath the wheel every day to fight for real change.
Still, people are out there, protesting, fighting with the police, which speaks to both how wretched things have truly become and how strong people can be. The Rodney King riots were largely the work of people who lived day to day, paycheck to paycheck if there even was a fucking paycheck, and we should always remember that. The poor, the beaten up, the lost, are the ones fighting for a better world, for what this country is supposed to be. And when you have to spend all your time fighting, either just to survive or for a greater cause, when the fuck are you gonna have time or money to drop on a fucking football game? So I don’t blame the people of LA. Maybe the rich folks, but most of them aren’t even from LA and their fan loyalties lie somewhere back East in another lifetime. Maybe it’s time to try to sell season tickets to the coyotes.
Pick: Rams
San Francisco (+9.5) at New Orleans
lol I’m basically writing a fucking novel here, this is ridiculous even by my standards, but you like the words so fuck it I guess. Also, I think someone should finally pay me for this shit, but let’s not get bitter and start gibbering about that. Still, this entire site is some kind of legacy, isn’t it?
Anyway, I don’t know why I started rambling about that. Let’s talk football and maybe other nonsense. Start with San Francisco, who have been absolutely ruined by injuries, so they’re pretty much done. Growing up in the 80s and into the early 90s, the 49ers were the Boss Team in the NFL, and as much as I was supposed to hate them and Joe Montana, who is likely a huge shithead, I actually liked them. That is a startling and terrible admission, and yet, here we are. I don’t know why I liked them, other than they seemed cool with larger than life players and I was young and impressionable and the alternative was the fucking Cowboys and lol fuck them. But Montana and then Steve Young were both False in a way, Montana a Notre Dame shithead and Young a BYU Mormon shithead.
I have an ex-girlfriend, childhood sweetheart really, who was a Mormon, but she never talked about it and never let it get in the way of being a human being, so the levels of Mormonism vary, but I suspect Young was and still is, I guess, a Very Practicing Mormon. Also, I am still in love with that girl and always will be probably, but that is the promise of youth, the untainted innocence of it all.
But the 49ers, the fucking 49ers, were a team I had no problem with. Jerry Rice seemed like Superman to me, Roger Craig a deadly ninja, Tom Rathman smashing heads. If they were around today, I would almost certainly hate on them, but 9 year olds have terrible taste.
What I’m getting at, I guess, is that there is always a part of me that feels good when the 49ers rise up from their humbled place. The Jim Harbaugh years were fun, and now this run, but this run may die before it really got a chance to live and that’s kind of a shame because the 49ers were doing it in the way I like aesthetically, a kickass running game and mean defense. That is my Bo Schembechler indoctrinated favorite kind of team. But the Super Bowl seems a million years ago, probably because this year has been so fucking wild and dramatic and life changing, culture changing, historic in a frightening way, and it’s easy for these things to get lost.
Maybe the 49ers come back next season, or maybe last year was it, and now they will go into hibernation again, which is where they have spent the majority of the last 25 years. Also, Jed York is a huge shithead, so fuck being a 49ers fan.
New Orleans is fresh off of that Brady humbling and they have established themselves as the Kings of the NFC South, with Drew Brees getting to bask in football glory once again in between waterboarding children in his basement. It always sucks for me that he is the quarterback here because I would love to love the Saints, representatives of one of America’s prime Spirit Warrior cities. Perhaps interesting fact: I am descended from the dude who founded New Orleans, so that bitch is mine by inheritance rights. I will be a good and noble King of New Orleans, with Heinie by my side.
But shit, I’m supposed to talk about football, aren’t I? Yes, so anyway, the Saints are carving everyone up again and I will give the credit to Alvin Kamara because fuck Drew Brees. When I am king he will be up against the wall.
Pick: Saints
Baltimore (-7) at New England
I am honestly surprised that the spread is this low. The Ravens have one of the best offenses in the league, a fucking machine when it wants to be, and they have the best defense. Meanwhile, the Patriots have a coach who is knighting his horse and staffing the assistant roles with his kids. It’s over for him. The Patriots will never fire him, but it’s over and it will end up being an amicable “retirement” or separation if he can’t control his own sociopathy and need to win football games.
The Patriots can run the ball, but that’s about it, and the Ravens do that even better, so it’s tough to see where the Patriots have the advantage. Belichick will still get the benefit of the doubt from certain quarters but it just isn’t happening. There is no miracle comeback, no Tom Brady to save the day.
And the Ravens are a fucking punisher of a team, maybe one of my favorites, and not just because of the Harbaugh connection, although that story about John being Pillman’s roommate and taking care of Pillman’s kids reveals him to be a Spirit Warrior coach, the real winner in the family (much to my Michigan Man chagrin.) It makes for a startling contrast: the old ogre in his ragged sweatshirt vs the family man who even takes care of other families, and perhaps there is karmic justice in Belichick being humiliated at the end while John Harbaugh just rolls on, reinventing the team offensively behind Greg Roman while maintaining that now iconic defense, which has been the Ravens calling card for going on 20 years.
Also, I like that the people of Baltimore have a good football team, as they were jerked around by the Colts back in the day, and it is a tough city, like my Detroit, and its people deserve something nice amidst the horrors of reality. And then there’s Boston, which is a revolting city, racist and mean, Irish rejects everywhere, New York’s drug addict younger brother. I did kick it with a girl from Boston, and after, like, two days spent in her constant presence, I started to slip into a Boston accent. It was horrible. I didn’t love her, but I do miss her from time to time.
Anyway, it is perhaps startling how quickly the Patriots have fallen, but this was always gonna happen at some point. This was never a team that was going to go gracefully. It was just gonna collapse under its own weight. I have seen it before, fuck I have lived it with my Detroit Red Wings and maybe even my Michigan Wolverines football team. Throw the Tigers most recent run in there, which should have produced at least one, maybe two championships, and of course the Bad Boys Pistons and their sons, the 2000’s Pistons. I have known this all too well, and once it happens, you’re looking at a wasteland for years. And that’s where the Patriots find themselves today.
Pick: Ravens
LA Chargers (+1.5) at Miami
Cautious optimism. That’s what this line reflects, I think. But maybe it’s time to throw the cautious part out given the Dolphins have won 4 straight, including wins over the Rams, Cardinals and 49ers, just slaying the NFC West I guess. And they have a top ten scoring offense and defense. The yardage numbers, not so much, which, again, reveals the lie that is often scoring offense and defense stats.
But I said all this last week and the Dolphins still walked out of the desert with a win. Something they are doing is translating to points and to keeping the other team out of the endzone. The ultimate bend but don’t break defense and an offense that executes efficiently. That seems to be the tale here, and it is what is keeping Miami in the AFC East race, chasing Buffalo, and whoever thought we would be saying that?
The poor Chargers, meanwhile, are basically a forgotten team. If no one cares about the Rams in LA, no one really, really cares about the Chargers. Who have had an underrated decade when it comes to shittyness. They’ve had a couple of pop-up seasons, but 2009 was the last time they won double digits save for a 2018 12 win season which is looking more and more like a mirage, and this might be it for Anthony Lynn.
Pick: Miami
Minnesota (-3) at Chicago
First of all, fuck Kirk Cousins. Had to get that out of the way. It’s obligatory at this point. I bet he was devastated when Trump lost. That is the kind of place he comes from. This area is super conservative and even more so in Holland. It is one of the most Republican friendly counties in the entire country, which makes me living in it something of an ironic joke. Would I be happier in Ann Arbor? Almost certainly, but this is home and I love the lake and the beach. It just sucks that I have to share it with MAGA scum. Cousins may or may not be that, but I highly suspect that he is, a good Christian boy and a Sparty. Has he become my arch-nemesis? Perhaps. I have written weirder things into being true and real.
Hopefully, the Bears defense decapitates him, maybe an internal decapitation like what happened to Misawa, or maybe the gruesome kind. Is it wrong to wish such things on a fellow human being? Probably, but these are strange and terrible times and we’re in a genuine war for the soul of America and shitheads like Cousins are not my brother, they are The Enemy and this Civil War will go on and on probably my entire life, or what’s left of it anyway. It’s no wonder I am a drug addict.
Okay, shit, football. For as bad as the Vikings have been, and a lot of that comes from Cousins throwing interceptions like candy in a parade, they do have a scary offense thanks to Dalvin Cook who is on pace for like 1,700 yards and 25 touchdowns, which are numbers you just don’t see anymore. He is rescuing whatever dignity the Vikings and Cousins have left. Which, of course, isn’t much.
The Bears are fraudsters. They can’t run the ball at all, which means it’s all in the hands of Nick Foles, himself a fraudster who got lucky at the right time in a big way. And yet, they still have that tough defense. Vic Fangio may be gone, but Chuck Pagano isn’t exactly a downgrade. I mean, the dude is above .500 as an NFL head coach so he can do the damn job.
Put it all together and you have a typical Bears team, which is an aesthetically ugly team, but a team capable of annoying everyone and picking up enough turnovers to make a rickety run at the playoffs where they will be butchered like hogs.
I don’t write often about Chicago, the city, which is weird because I have hit it up many times, almost as close to me as Detroit, yet still foreign, but I like Chicago even if its sports fans are monsters. One of my most enduring memories is my mom talking shit to a cabbie in Chicago about the Pistons and Bulls. In many ways, it is a city that should be my arch-rival, and it is, I suppose, in sporting terms. Fuck the Blackhawks, Bulls, Bears, and White Sox. The Cubs don’t really fuck with my Detroit boys, but Cubs fandom has become so trendy it is disgusting.
But that is just sports shit that doesn’t really matter. I like the soul of Chicago, and it’s unfortunate that it has become a killing ground for the poor and desperate, held up as proof of… something… by conservative shitheads, and it doesn’t help that you have dudes like Rahm Emanuel who are just soaked in the blood of young Black people and don’t care because they are centrist grifters tied to banking and police, the ugly fracture line between Democrat liberals and angry flaming lefties like me. It’s dudes like Emanuel who have broken the back of this country, and Chicago is worse for him being in charge there for the last decade. Chicago has a notorious history of shady mayors, power brokers who are in it just for the thrill of The Game. Rahm Emanuel is just the latest.
And yet, there is something charming about Chicago, city of Al Capone, and it really is the capital of the Midwest, nestled on the shores of Lake Michigan, just as I am, only we’re on opposite ends, and in a parallel universe I am a Bears fan, a Cubs fan, a Blackhawks and Bulls fan. That is how close it is, but it is not my Detroit, which bleeds Soul, which has seen Hard Times and will probably see Harder Times, and while I like Chicago, at the end of the day, I am a Detroit Piston bad boy and the Bulls are my hated enemy. Which is probably why, growing up, the Bears were my most hated team. Are they still? I don’t know, the Cowboys get my wrath, but the Bears will never be a team I can root for, unless of course they are trying to take down Kirk Cousins. In that endeavor, let this unholy alliance commence.
Pick: Bears
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