Like a junkie uncle (I almost went with “dad” but that would get too dark too quickly) I have failed you again, missing your birthday and maybe Christmas too while your parents try to make excuses for me, not for me, they are really for you because they don’t want to spoil your innocence, and if your dad sees me bringing my junkie shit around you, he’s gonna beat my ass with whatever he has at hand, maybe a hammer or a fucking saw or some shit that dads like. I won’t even fight back because I know I’m wrong and the only thing that I can call upon is your tender mercy because you don’t want to see your favorite uncle get beaten to death by your dad. Anyway, that is where we are yet again, another Thursday night game missed and this time I didn’t even try to write about it because I was sick, non Covid division, so that is my weak excuse for this week.
As for last week, I went 5-9 which is just no good, no damn good at all, and probably means my degenerate friends who for some reason (Poor Choices) actually bet based on my picks are probably mad at me and maybe someone lost a thumb or something, I don’t know. I just want you guys to stay safe or at least don’t get reduced to sucking off truck drivers at rest stops because you lost all your goddamn money. Who’s ready for some football???????
Seattle (-3) at Buffalo
The Bills are still swinging their dicks at 6-2, but they are not a legit 6-2 I think, they are more a 4-4 team that just plays in a shitty division. The division essentially vacated by Tom Brady now belongs to the Bills because who else is there? The Patriots have been mercilessly exposed as Brady’s sycophantic parasites and are now starving because the host is gone, the Jets are the fucking Jets, probably the worst team in the NFL and that just leaves the Dolphins, who might actually be better than anyone thought and are the only team that seems to stand between the Bills and their AFC East Kingdom.
But Seattle doesn’t play in the AFC East, they play in the NFC West, which is pretty much the exact opposite of the sorry state of the AFC East in terms of competitiveness. The Bills would be swallowed down into the mad desert air if they played in the NFC West, probably get trapped in a cave, have to gnaw their own arms off to even get the chance to wander parched miles and miles with nothing but emptiness and maybe an Apache ghost to keep them company as they fucking die.
The Seahawks are battle tested with one of the best QB’s in the game, probably the most underrated one, and have been doing this long enough now that an upstart like Buffalo just isn’t gonna be able to even get their fucking pants on in the morning before Russell Wilson kicks open the door and starts shooting everyone. I mean, the dude is on pace for nearly 60 fucking touchdowns and he’s running for 7.4 yards every time he bugs out of the pocket. If I’m starting an NFL team, shit, I might pick Russell Wilson to be the QB, even over Mahomes. And he’s 5’11” which makes this all even wilder. Some dudes are just born with that Spirit Warrior heart. Even if he does look like an asshole sometimes who left his wife to fuck Ciara, but I mean who among us?
Pick: Seattle
Denver (+4) at Atlanta
The lower classes get together to put on a football game. Of course, the Broncos probably think they’re above that thanks to Elway days of yore and also that time when Peyton Manning showed up in his knuckleballer phase, but Time stops for no man and all of that is forgotten because the Broncos of today are a listless pile of nothing sucking oxygen at a mile above the earth. They have no real identity, their offense is shit, and the only thing they have is John Elway himself to try to fix it all, but Elway is probably like that breed like Isiah Thomas or Michael Jordan, dudes who can play but have no fucking idea how to run a successful sports franchise. Shit, throw Matt Millen’s name in there. And you don’t ever want your name next to that jackass.
The Falcons have all the pieces, at least on offense, just an embarrassment of talent, from Matt Ryan to Calvin Ridley and Julio Jones, who is still dangerous, and Todd Gurley running it and how in the fuck is this team so bad? We’ve discussed curses and maybe that’s still in play, haunted by Brady turning into Daniel Plainview on them and drinking that fucking milkshake and then bashing their heads in with bowling pins. If it really is that curse, I feel for them because Bobby Layne cursed my team and we know how that shit turned out and Atlanta does not need 60 years of misery and pain, they have actually broken away from the solid south to say fuck you and vote for black ladies and such, and at some point people should be rewarded for fighting the good fight. Right? RIGHT???
Pick: Atlanta
Chicago (+6.5) at Tennessee
The Bears are frauds. It helps to know that even if their defense and whatever ineffable luck that always seems to strike them keeps them punching above their weight. But the offense is dogshit, and that really runny shit too, like you might need to take your old boy to the vet. But that is what Matt Nagy is supposed to be a master of, which means he is basically fucking useless as the Bears lean on one more defensive coordinator. I mean, it’s in their blood, from Buddy Ryan to Vic Fangio to Chuck Pagano today. But this goes back even further, I think. I mean, they had Walter Payton forever and were never any damn good anyway, like Barry with my Lions. Sure, he got that ring in ’85, but that was won by Buddy Ryan and his murder squad, and Walter was just along for the ride at that point.
Tennessee remains terminally boring, and maybe it’s because I harbor resentment towards Mike Vrabel for being an Ohio St. dude, or maybe he is looking at this thing turning on him without Michigan Man Taylor Lewan. I mean, they did just lose to the fucking Bengals. But they are still 5-2, and seem to have rehabilitated Ryan Tannehill into being a viable NFL playoff QB starter. That is a huge win for whoever their QB coach is, and I checked and it is Pat O’Hara who has mostly Arena League coaching experience, so shit, this really is a brave new world, just scooping up mad geniuses and letting them teach your QB the dark secrets they learned in the pervert leagues.
Good for that dude, I guess, but the Titans offense is still built around Derrick Henry running it into oblivion or an early retirement to treat his encephalitis. Tannehill is just another option they can work with, which means that the Titans, in the middle of Trumpanzoo, have figured their shit out and will take that boring team and be kings of the AFC South.
Pick: Tennessee
Detroit (+4) at Minnesota
Everyone knew the Lions flirtation with .500 was fool’s gold… you didn’t actually think those gold bars were real did you? Even though the Fords swore it was legit German gold you had to have known things were either fake or taken from those folks who just got on that train and now you’re complicit in both spreading Lions Disease and the fucking holocaust you monsters. But none of you fell for that shit, right? Right. There are no outcomes that would please me as a Lions fan, no matter how many simulations I run in my brain which is a madhouse of riotous japes on its best day, and when you reach that point of NO ACCEPTABLE OUTCOME you just start to laugh a little and then you vomit and you ruin all the good towels and everything smells for a while. You’re a Lions fan, you understand all this.
The Vikings, though, managed to throw off their Failure Demons for a week that saw them beat the goddamn devil, and Kirk Cousins didn’t really even have much to do with it because Dalvin Cook just ran it on them. It’s, uh, not hard to see them stick to that script as various Lions fling themselves into the shredder or maybe a wayward tale of The Great Willie Young, and all Cousins has to do is not fuck up, which isn’t a given, but then you’re left with Kirk Cousins Falseness against the Lions Lionsness and what spiritual truths are to be torn away from that hairspray can on fire? None that I can see, which is why I will mention Dalvin Cook again, and even when the Vikings are bad, they are not the Lions, and that is a gross and sobering truth. For us. Or me. Or whoever reads this fucking thing.
Pick: Vikings
Baltimore (-1.5) at Indianapolis
The Ravens let a rapist shuffle their feathers but now they just have to deal with an asshole named Phil Rivers. Of course, Rivers has the Methuselah thing going on and man when they get into that dickhead’s brain when he’s on the slab they will probably find all sorts of dead zones and squished parasites, because every sack is like letting a bear throw you around for a bit, but for now he is giving the Colts an amiable Phil Rivers season and that’s good enough, throwing 3 TDS on the Lions helps, but still, the Colts are the only thing keeping Tennessee from bludgeoning the division.
But while the Ravens lost, it was a rivalry loss and a close one, and everything was still running on time, it was just a case of getting caught out in the open field with the rapist and he knows which way each ear of corn leans out on them rape fields and he did what he does and let’s not turn this into a rape diary, especially because this isn’t even the Steelers I’m talking about but the Ravens, and the Ravens still run and throw the ball in concert with one another better than anyone else by my maybe half biased eyes because it turns out that the Ravens got the Top Model Harbaugh while my Michigan was left in the hands of the defective model, whose fire was left behind when he decided to settle down and have the whole family live together, no seriously, he moved his parents in next door. I still believe in the John Harbaugh way which as I have said is traced back to the Bo Schembechler way which was really the Woody Hayes way but we don’t like to talk about those conflicting and confusing reports that sometimes trap Michigan Men in parallel universes where their heroes were baked in Ohio St labs.
Anyway, the point is that the Ravens are a team with an almost glowing identity and those are the teams you don’t want to fuck with. And Phil Rivers is too busy trying to impress Amish teens with his flip phone that he uses as a burner for just such occasions to be able to do anything to keep up with the Ravens.
Pick: Ravens
Carolina (+10) at Kansas City
Carolina isn’t doing anything other than maybe taking a long look at Trevor Lawrence and wondering why they bothered to win 3 games instead of just rolling out a hotdog cart and some Jack Chick tracts for the kids. Maybe they try to see what Cam Newton put on his Instagram but oh shit he blocked them and now it’s just those hotdogs and those Jack Chick tracts to wile away a Sunday afternoon.
Kansas City, of course, comes with a dude wielding a blowtorch which he uses to throw touchdown passes instead of cooking meth which is what most of the rest of Kansas City is up to, just making really shitty meth and jacking off to whatever qanon posted last night. IT WILL ALL MAKE SENSE WHEN THE DRAGON ALIENS COME BACK FOR THEIR OBAMACARE.
But until then, they’ll just have to settle for Mahomes knowing how to wield that blowtorch.
Pick: Kansas City
Houston (-7) at Jacksonville
Pick: Houston
NY Giants (+2.5) at Washington
Nobody cares about this game, they just want to know what the scene will look like when Trump has to get the fuck out. Violence? Riots? I doubt it, maybe a few rednecks shoot some guns but Trump isn’t one of them, he’s one of the grifters like Jerry Jones that sleaze their way through life, collecting a vast assortment of assholes who prop their shit up whenever it comes time to cut and run, move on to the next town. But lol shit, Trump grifted himself the Presidency of the United States of America, there is no next town after that. But that’s still who he is and so there will be some bizarre shit but probably not as wild as some expect. He’s just a fat piece of shit who sheds his skin like a fucking snake, leaving the old skin for everyone else to clean up while he slithers up some unsuspecting drain pipe. I wonder if he retains memories after each shedding.
Winnner: Washington (why not? Cut to Biden naming Dick Cheney his Offensive Coordinator)
Las Vegas (-1) at LA Chargers
Do either of these teams even have fans? Obviously no one in LA gives a single fuck about the Chargers, and the Raiders are currently doing a residency in a fucking ghost town I have to imagine. I might check up on this and see how Las Vegas is handling the Corona shit. It’s possible I could even write up a full fledged post about it. I’m not sure what that would look like but maybe it would be just a quick one time thing or maybe I could unfold it into something, I don’t know what, but shit, I am just typing as I am thinking here and anyway, neither of these teams have a fucking fanbase.
It is apropos perhaps that the Raiders, who have jerked everyone around more than anyone because Al Davis was a degenerate always chasing the glitz of LA while trying to retain the biker Oakland mystique, have finally come to a place where they have no fans because everyone is quarantined and even if they weren’t, does anyone in Las Vegas really identify as that? I mean, I doubt there are multi-generational families at the core here aka how you build a loyal fanbase of moms and dads. Instead, Vegas is kind of transient, isn’t it? No one plans to set down roots there, it’s just a carnal Sodom and Gomorrah in the middle of the fucking desert, one prong attached to the Colorado River/Lake Mead and another attached to whatever the fuck they need to keep the neon and AC flowing year round.
You could swap the Raiders and Chargers, and now that I am on that tip, I think that would have been more natural, the Raiders finally giving in to LA and admitting that they are in their coke years, not their biker meth years anymore, and the Chargers finding something of a home in Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Chargers even sounds right to me, but that’s not how things ever work out so instead the Chargers get treated like stepkids in LA while the Raiders burn their entire identity for some shit that hasn’t even been able to struggle onto dry land yet.
Pick: Raiders
Pittsburgh (-14.5) at Dallas
I have skewered Jerry Jones probably more than anyone here these past couple of years of doing this, and the more he fails and his team gets broken in a new way every week, the happier I feel. Fuck him and his entire line, which I imagine has seen some dribblings on the thighs of some poor overstressed Latinas after his pull-out game which he makes them sign a release form and a waiver that says that any transactions between parties shall remain either the responsibility of the mother or the dumpster behind Planned Parenthood, Jerry doesn’t care which, but he isn’t writing anyone any checks and one day he will be hootin’ and hollerin’ in the strip club, champagne room style, and the dancer has his same nose but Jerry doesn’t notice because why would he look at their faces?
Yeah, so anyway, a rapist turns up at quarterback for the invading team, and I am almost certain that Jerry and Ben will hit that strip club after the game together, but for now the Steelers will stomp the Cowboys brains in but Jerry is still on MDMA from last night and he doesn’t give a fuck. Push back his meetings until after Amateur Hour at the club and would someone spray some fucking Lysol on that couch that Ben had that hot massage from one of the “young entrepreneurs” that Jerry hooked him up with from the cages at the local ICE facility? Thank you.
Miami (+5.5) at Arizona
Suddenly, this game feels big. Like from out of nowhere, this game is pushing for game of the week. Okay, settle down, not quite, but Miami took down the Rams last week, and that was a For Real kind of win. And I look it up and Miami has the top ranked scoring defense in the NFL halfway through the year and I need to reevaluate some of those columns in my brain, orderings and rankings, and okay I will have to start paying attention to Miami, I guess.
And that Okay You’ve Got On My TV time for the Dolphins happens against a 5-2 Arizona team that is trying to make their play as the hot young team of the NFC. It’s that top ranked scoring defense against Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins, but a closer look and lol I am getting a little too Everyone Else here, reveals that the Dolphins pass defense isn’t really all that good, like bottom third of the league, and now I see Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins sending Miami back to the chum. Maybe the Bills have the AFC East locked up after all?
Pick: Arizona
New Orleans (+4.5) at Tampa Bay
Tom Brady is the QB Drew Brees wishes he was, which isn’t a horrible slight because Brady is the King of Fuck Mountain in the NFL vista and that Brees can even go mountaineering with Tom speaks to the kind of career Brees has had, which I often overlook because he is a bad person with bad views on things, but both of these dudes were really good BIG10 QB’s in the late 90s/early 00s, maybe a year off of one another, Brees was a big star at Purdue, Brady was the guy who came after Brian Griese at Michigan, and no, I won’t pretend like some do that I saw something magical in Brady when he was at Michigan, but he was respected well enough, Drew Henson hype aside, and neither was a first round draft pick, famously so in Brady’s case, and both burrowed their way up to starter status and then stardom. Brees was initially a Charger before the Chargers decided they wanted to run with Philip Rivers, which is where New Orleans came in for Brees. And Brady got the call after Drew Bledsoe, who had been the Patriots QB for most of the 1990’s and took them to a Super Bowl, was injured early in the 2001 season, which is when Brady got the Joe Everyman push to win the Super Bowl with the PATRIOTS after 9/11 over a heavily favored Rams team, which inspired Raven Mack to go into total THE NFL IS FIXED LIKE PRO WRESTLING mode which started a bunch of fires in the hearts and minds of our larger collective and eventually a website called Armchair Linebacker was born to make sense out of all of it with its many writers and teams followed which I was cajoled into writing a little about the Lions by Raven and Harpo in 2008 when both Brady and Brees were redefining the record books, Brees going for over 5,000 yards and Brady 50TDs in 2007 aka the 16-0 season, and I wrote one million words about the Lions as they went 0-16.
And now Brady is 43 and introducing the Tom Brady Way to Tampa Bay, Brees is 41 and has been King of the NFC South since that was pretty much a thing, probably waterboarding homeless teens on his days off, and I am 41 and writing about all this shit and I have no idea what I’m even driving at here other than I just keep thinking and fact checking and writing and I wasn’t meant to be a character in all of this, but I suppose there is something worth pursuing in that vein as I write mad, Sisyphean gibberish for you to read, the King of Fuck Mountain of a singular sort of art and style called New Writing by Raven and okay I share the crown with him, but to be the best at something, to know deep in your bones that you can do something that is immediately recognizable and not repeatable like this or like Tom Brady and Drew Brees throwing footballs, means that you are a snow leopard, and we recognize each other.
I still don’t know what the point of this was, but I think maybe it is that both of these dudes were transformative QB’s in the NFL, like Mahomes and all these dudes putting up video game numbers happened because Brady and Brees did it first (begrudging nod to Peyton Manning, who still seems like a shift manager at Home Depot) and there is perhaps meaning in watching them duel in Prime Time in the Tampa heat.
Pick: Tampa Bay
New England (-9.5) at NY Jets
Honestly, I resent this game for still being here to write about when all I wanted was to close it out with that last thing. Senator Horse blah blah blah, the Ghost of Joe Namath getting its dick sucked by a hooker also named Broadway Joe, NEW YAWK NEW YAWK NEW YAWK FUCK OFF BAHSTAN YEAH YOU FUCK OFF TOO, Pats are bad but Jets are awful, be nice to each other and to yourself.
Pick: New England
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