Imagine

LA Rams (-2.5) at Seattle

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, a Golden Boy ever since you could stand up as a toddler and awkwardly throw a huge football right in your dad’s nuts and everyone laughs and then you realize that there is magic power in that football. It made your mom laugh even if your dad was doubled over in agony and saying the no no words that mama doesn’t like.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, a little older, throwing a still oversized football around to his friends on the playground n 4^th grade. Whenever they play, he is the quarterback, both because he can throw it the farthest and because he just has a way about him, teachers tell him he is a leader even if he doesn’t understand all that that means yet. He just likes playing with his friends and they flock to him.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, a JV football player, 14 maybe, throwing rockets all over the fucking field, making the varsity QB look weak, but it’s okay because Matt’s a good kid and he and Kershaw built their arms by firing flaming bags of turds at the principal’s door, but the principal is also the athletic director and the head football coach and so he doesn’t forget what Stafford and Clayton Kershaw did. They are just leisurely playing catch, tossing the baseball around and the coach is damn mad, but he can’t do anything about it while they’re playing baseball.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford and the baseball season ends, you want Kershaw to come hang out with the football boys but he laughs and says “fuck you, I already got a call from the Dodgers. That’s in LA, baby, far away from this fascist shit.” And so you’re all alone, with just your rocket arm and a coach that has it out for you because you threw flaming bags of shit at his door.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, and being so good that even your fascist high school coach/principal/bogeyman can’t fuck with you. You’re throwing it all over the fucking place and you jump on the first wagon out of Texas. It just so happens it’s headed to Georgia, but fuck it, they got girls in Georgia too.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, tasked with bringing Georgia back to its glory days when Herschel Walker ran like a fucking mutant horse and the defense just had to lay out the other team’s quarterback and everyone’s getting laid by tri delts or whoever, but Matthew Stafford can never quite hit the level that they want, can’t win the Big One, can’t take Georgia to the promised land and everyone knows it, but he’s the best they got and so Stafford hunkers down with his cheerleader girlfriend who he will later marry, and she tells him he’s the best and he’s doing just fine and it’s these other assholes that keep Georgia from winning like they should.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, and it’s draft day, and everyone knows you’ve got the bazooka arm, your cheerleader babe is still hot for you, and there’s this team that wants to draft you, the Lions, and you’ve heard some things, some really fucked up things, and you can’t shake this shadow that has just seemed to start following you around. Your cheerleader asks if everything’s okay, and you smile and say “Sure, baby,” because why wouldn’t it be? You are about to become a millionaire.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, having been hit with the Shock and Awe of the Lions football “culture” but you’re the guy that’s gonna finally turn it around, just like you did at Georgia, only… wait, shit, that’s right, you never reached the mountaintop at Georgia. Still, you’ve got the cheerleader, you’re a millionaire and you’re definitely more talented than the goobers who cleaned out their lockers after you took their job.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, and oh shit, this NFL stuff is fucking wild, way faster and harder than college and your ribs and shoulder are ripped away like Saturn eating his children or Prometheus having his liver pecked away, and your new team, sad as they are, are losing to the fucking Browns of all teams and you think back to throwing those shit bags with Kershaw and buzzing the cheerleaders with “errant” passes in college just so you can awkwardly meet her, and this is not how it’s supposed to fucking be and so you run onto the field and you lead your horrible team to an improbable victory, ligaments and limbs hanging from trees, you are torn apart and ruined but you won the fucking game and its something that the long suffering fans of your team cling to, and they start to make a folk hero out of you, all because you weren’t gonna just lay down and die.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, a few years in now, putting up some huge numbers, but the team keeps fucking itself. Ndamukong Suh ate a baby last week, and Jim Schwartz is about to say fuck it and go listen to some GWAR albums in his single room apartment which he still hasn’t furnished or even unpacked all those boxes. It’s a hard time, but all you can do is throw the fucking ball when they tell you to and trust in the magic of that arm.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford and Schwartz is gone, Suh has been traded to a local zoo, and now all there is, is the promise that you once showed maturing into an elite NFL talent, but the problem is that, just like at Georgia, you can’t quite get it done and no one wants to say its your fault, but it’s frustrating and it becomes a haunting chicken or the egg argument lasting for eons. But you are at your physical peak and you have a Hall of Fame receiver to work with and Jerry Jones is up in his box sneering like the hooker made eye contact with him, and you’re gonna run these Cowboys out, just like Barry did in ’91, and now here you are, the conquering hero returned home to glory.

 

But you are a Detroit Lion.

 

 

Failure Demons and refs possessed by witch doctors conspire to keep the Cowboys hanging around and, oh shit GODDAMMIT, here you are again, and how the hell did this one slip away? A Failure Demon licks its lips and flings its poo at you like a little monkey.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford and now there’s some gross fat asshole cursing at you, and you heard rumors that he laid on some poor girl in a hotel room and so you already don’t like or respect him, and behind him there is some other asshole who has clearly never played football in his life waving a baseball bat around and telling anyone who will listen about the time he got to smell one of Tom Brady’s farts on a team plane. He wasn’t in first class like Tom, but that odor definitely lingered and made its way into coach or steerage or wherever the fuck they keep the cattle. He is Brady Fart Blessed, and he even claims he managed to get a hint of a Gisele squeaker even though she wasn’t in first class either, but kept in a stand-up cooler in the cockpit because it slows the aging process. Imagine listening to that asshole talk about the farts of his betters as he waves that baseball bat around.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, and it’s just all gone to hell. The fat piece of shit and his friend are getting kicked out of town, but it doesn’t matter because a few years ago, that Hall of Fame receiver walked away from you too, not believing in you enough to complete the journey together, so discouraged and broken that he becomes an enemy of the franchise or at least it’s moneyed owners, and even the shadows that replaced him are galloping off to New York for fat contracts. Imagine being in that moment and knowing that it is all just… nothing. A failure imprinted on your soul for all time, and shit, maybe you should have gone with Kershaw and played baseball for the Dodgers.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, childhood dreams marred, college days talked about in open disappointment, your adopted city starves for something, anything, and you know you aren’t ever going to be the one to deliver it, and oh yeah, your cheerleader wife is sick now too.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford and having to break up with the city and the team and the fans that have embraced you even as you all failed spectacularly together. The entire family burns alive in this house fire. You have to do something different, one last chance to prove that you can fucking *win* something. Your old high school coach is screaming in your brain, crying “It’s poop again!!!” and your college peers are just happy that your legacy has been papered over and it’s almost like you were never there, and your pro team, your adopted hometown, once again lies in ruins and you can’t do anything to save it or them or yourself. AND YOUR CHEERLEADER WIFE IS SICK!!!

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, looking out across that great Pacific Highway to that great Pacific Ocean, landing in LA, which is the very last place you can tumble to when the world is shaken up and people like you, well, you don’t want to use the word failure, but… yeah, people like you are looking for that one last shot. There’s nowhere left to go after this, just endless ocean and sharks.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford and you are at a house party in the hills and some dude keeps wanting to show you the tattoo of the god Krishna he has on his taint and you scan the room and see your wife’s face, she’s healthy now, she’s recovered, and you just want to get back to the field. You’re from Texas, hung out in Georgia and then made a home in Detroit. LA is fucking weird to you, and you’re not sure if you can fit in, but you look around and everyone in the room feels the same way, everyone on the sidewalks outside, on the beaches, turning Venice Beach into a cartoon town everyday all because, like you, this is the last fucking place they can go. The world of America Ends Here.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford and this is your last chance, not just to win in the pros, but to win *anything*, to erase all those haunted memories and coat them with sugar and gauze as everyone fades away into a perfect LA sunset, but you actually have to do the damn job, and it just so happens that you are in an absolute cauldron of fire of a football division, with quarterbacks younger than you, faster than you, and more accomplished than you, all daring you to be the Thing that you have never ever been able to truly be, a winner.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford coming off of getting dazzled by Kyler Murray and now you turn around and there’s Russell Wilson, who already lived the life you are trying to live, has the hot celebrity girl he’s dicking down, and if you don’t beat him and his team, suddenly you’re just another jackoff with a broken dream wandering around the dark parts of LA, of Hollywood, maybe you get mixed up in porn or worse, network television.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford and you never won a fucking thing. You’re retired now, those LA days were fun but ultimately kind of a disappointment, You’re too country for TV, Kershaw is rich and so are you, but neither of you are happy because you never got to throw that final turd bag in the face of a world that wants to beat you down, that wants to ruin your soul, that wants to take you to edge of the world, Los Angeles, California and make you watch as the world ends on the horizon.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford, standing in front of the gates of heaven and hell, and all your friends are being sucked into the hot place and all you have are your regrets and all those moments when you could have been Great, Transcendent even, but you aren’t and you weren’t, because that is not who you are, and you don’t deserve to go to hell for this, but the universe is cruel. You were a Detroit Lion for too long, the stench will never leave you.

 

Unless.

 

Imagine being Matthew Stafford and you take this one last shot, piss in hell’s face and say fuck the Failure Demons, fuck Fate, fuck Texas and Georgia and Detroit and even LA and just throw the goddamn ball like it is a glorious flaming bag of turds and maybe you can recapture the innocence of youth or at least have the satisfaction of knowing that someone else is being pelted with shit, and you’re the one who threw it, and for at least one day, that makes you one of the universe’s winners.

 

 

Pick: Rams