AFC East Preview

The AFC East will always be Tom Brady’s kingdom until he decides to retire to a life of singing Huey Lewis hits while he sanitizes the kitchen after that rat he forced into that lady’s vagina ate through her entrails and just made a huge fucking mess and he’ll be damned if Gisele catches him, not because she would be angry but because he didn’t share with her.

And that is where the king of the NFL stands today, another year older, another psychotic training regimen and diet to keep him from decomposing like a ghoul. I am roughly the same age as Tom Brady, a year or two younger maybe, and I understand the ravages of time. I get it. I feel it, and I know he does too, but while I escape from my own disintegration in a haze of drugs and possibly illegal hormones that keep my testosterone where I want it to be, Tom Brady is in an entirely different universe of anti-aging techniques or wizard spells or whatever the fuck obscenely rich and powerful people do to slow the inevitability of decay. He could probably keep this up for several more years, only leaving on his own terms when he finally finds whatever the fuck kind of satisfaction a competition freak can find.

But that is the rub for Tom Brady. Dudes like him never find satisfaction. They are always chasing down more titles, more glories, more proof that they are superhuman demigods who can fucking beat time and death and the inevitability of a universe’s collapse, a pathological will that takes control of the meat puppet and forces it to win win win until it finally all just breaks apart in a horrid cacophony of injuries and a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that you cannot play quarterback until you are 90 years old. Michael Jordan had to quit, more than once, because of this sickness. It was either that or face the possibility that one day he would no longer be capable of being the best, physically or mentally.

But Brady lives in a different world than Jordan did. Brady lives in the 21^st century, in the fucking future, where every tiny little thing can be micromanaged and controlled and perverted to your needs. He can hire an entire team of dieticians and kill them all and then process their bodies, their marrow, into a tonic that no peasant could ever hope to taste. He can get gorilla cum flown in daily from Africa to lube his aged joints. He could purchase a child from some shithole and nourish himself on its brains, getting only the good stuff because he knows how to do that because he hired the top cannibals to aid him in his quest for more more more.

Brady will do this until one day something crazy happens and he becomes broken. And when it does, the entirety of the Patriots universe will collapse in on itself, Bill Belichick won’t be able to do a goddamn thing about it and Robert Kraft will end up dumping the team so he can move to Florida and hit up the rub and tugs every goddamn day. At some point they will simply all be too goddamn old for all this bullshit, and that is the only thing that is going to stop them. When that happens is anyone’s guess. I wouldn’t count on it happening this season. The Patriots and Brady are fresh off of conquering the world yet again. They have taken their slaves, raped the women and some of the children too. They are all conquering and you know that they will be there in the end and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.

So, until that day comes, when even Tom Brady can no longer cheat the universe, the Patriots are the pick to win the AFC East. Nothing else really matters. The defense will ebb and flow, the running game will be featured more to allow Tom to protect himself from the horrors of age, but in the end it will all come down to that man, Tom Brady, winning until the universe finally kills him.

It helps that the rest of the division is largely a tire fire. The Jets might make a move since they picked up Le’Veon Bell, but in the end, the Jets are always going to be the Jets. I am not sold on Sam Darnold, the latest USC dream machine, echoing Todd Marinovich and Matt Leinart, old butt fumble himself Mark Sanchez, who lest we forget was also supposed to be the savior for the New York Jets. 

That’s how fucked up this team is. Their grand plan is a copy of a plan that already hilariously failed. That is not something that engenders a whole lot of hope and optimism from a fanbase who, uh, aren’t exactly calm and patient people. Darnold will wither in New York because that’s what happens in New York. It eats its own and then wonders why it can’t get a fucking quarterback to save the day. It’s been a long time since Joe Namath called his shot, but even Namath only lasted for that one year and flamed out. And that’s Joe fucking Namath. That is the most charismatic dude, a drunken swagger that fucks anything that moves and knows that he can get away with it. That dude broke in New York, so who the fuck else could handle it?

It’s always the same story with the Jets. They are a team perpetually on fire, and whether that fire just burns in a shitheap that goes nowhere or explodes spectacularly in an out of control run that inevitably still ends with the entire franchise being burned alive, they will be right back where they started, playing with matches and throwing young dumb cum machines into a madhouse of unreal expectations and absurd self importance. Fire burns it all down in the end, and it cracks the foundations and this is the world of the New York Jets in any given year.

The Jets might make a little wild card push, but that’s about it, and they’ll have the Bills nipping at their heals, hoping that finally they get this goddamn thing right.

But they probably won’t. They are all in on Josh Allen, which I don’t think will work out. He is the sort of athlete that can allow you to get exotic with your playbook, but as a passer, he just isn’t good enough and I doubt he ever will be. The Bills will be better this year, just running the fuck out of the ball with Allen and LeSean McCoy and Frank Gore, who is a million years old but still gets after it better than most of the younger dudes.

But that is a pretty brittle house to trust to last through the winter. McCoy is getting older too and didn’t have a good season last year, and what happens when your two backs both break down, which will happen to Gore eventually because the universe is cruel and indifferent, and Josh Allen is left to save the day with a passing game that is almost an afterthought? The Bills will then revert to their base form and lie dying and twitching like a poisoned rat.

Defensively, the Bills will probably be pretty tough, and the hot new kid on the block, Ed Oliver, has the potential to be a dominant sort of dude. But he is also a dude who tried to throw down with his college coach last year because he felt disrespected or some shit. I think it had something to do with a jacket, which is ridiculous, but these are ridiculous times and these are ridiculous people. Whatever the deal is with Oliver, it’s obvious that this could go hilariously wrong. Then again, if those crazy energies are properly harnessed, the Bills might have something here.

But it won’t be enough, because it’s Buffalo, and its people are doomed to a life of slow decay, sitting fat and miserable under an avalanche of snow, trying to revive a heartbeat of a city that had a heart attack 100 years ago, when that part of America, that belt of Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit was a goddamn furnace, making things and making hard ass people until one day people in China started making things cheaper and goddamn that aorta just fucking exploded and left everyone feeble and in need of a transplant that will never come. That sort of energy blankets the Bills. It is haunting and terrible, but that is just the way it goes in this fucked up world.

So, the Jets and Bills are both spiritually fucked and couldn’t topple the Patriots even if Brady suddenly combusted in a hell fire, demons clawing at him, dragging him down down down to pay the fucking bill. And that just leaves the Miami Dolphins, a team rooted in its own decay and misery, a swampland of the soul that they just can’t get out of no matter how hard they try.

For some reason, the Dolphins just can never get their shit together, and whatever vestigial glories remain from the 70’s when Don Shula and Bob Griese were turning out championships aren’t helping at all. In fact, they’re probably hurting the Dolphins, what with Shula and Griese and whoever is still alive infamously toasting themselves whenever the last undefeated team goes down. That sort of slavery to the past can only ruin the team in the present.

And this year, the Dolphins almost seem content to just say fuck it and run this thing into the ground once and for all and then maybe build something new from the wreckage. They’ve dumped a lot of salary and haven’t bothered to replace any of it, and they traded for Josh Rosen, who was kicked out of Arizona after only one year because a shiny Kyler Murray turned up. That’s not exactly a sign that Rosen is a real deal type.

I like Rosen. I think he’s got a weird sort of energy that is probably off-putting for some people, and if he could bend a team to his will, they could really have something. But he probably can’t, and that’s just gonna lead to a lot of hate in the locker room and then who knows what the fuck will happen because Miami is all out of options. They have tried everything and nothing has worked. Maybe they will get lucky with Rosen, but I doubt it.

And so that leaves the AFC East looking the same as it does every other goddamn year, with Tom Brady and the Patriots owning it so completely that the other three teams should just sublet their places and get the fuck out of there.

It’s possible the Jets or Bills sneak a wild card out, but they won’t go far. Meanwhile, we all know that in the end it will all come down to Tom Brady, who has conquered the NFL so thoroughly that there can be no possibility of an heir. He has killed them all, eaten them like Saturn devouring Cronos, and the only real intrigue is whether he does a Jordan and gets out before Time comes for him. Everybody hates him and the Patriots, but he doesn’t give a fuck. None of that matters. All that matters to Tom Brady is that he gets a chance to win one more time, no matter how small or petty the game is. He has to win it. It is the only thing about him that is real. It is the entirety of his being. And he will keep on winning until he is broken down and then he will pathologically crawl towards death and start gnawing its toes, gnawing and gnawing and gnawing until he gorges himself and chokes on it or until death separates his head from his body and buries his dismembered corpse in various places around the kingdom, each hexed and looked after by a witch so that no necromancy can bring him back.

Projected Standings:

1. New England Patriots 12-4

2. New York Jets 9-7

3. Buffalo Bills 9-7

4. Miami Dolphins 3-13

AFC East Preview

Okay, here’s the deal: I’m gonna break down each division, starting with a broad overview and then giving a best case/worst case scenario for each time, followed by my Final Judgment. We’ll start with the AFC East and work our way to the NFC North, which is where I’ll finish in a storm of tears and fits of anger. Let’s begin.

Any discussion about the AFC East is gonna be dominated by the Patriots. It’s just the way it is. Since the Tom Brady era started they’ve won the division every year but twice – 2002 and 2008. 2002 was immediately after things started to get rolling and Tom Brady wasn’t “Tom Brady” yet but “the dude who replaced Drew Bledsoe” and 2008 was the year Brady had his knee taken out in week one. The crazy thing is that the Patriots still tied for the division title both those seasons and just missed out on tiebreakers. So . . . yeah, the fucking Patriots are gonna win the AFC East.

That’s a given. But where things get interesting is that The End is clearly on the horizon for the Patriots. It’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of when. I mean, Tom Brady and I were in college at the same time and I’m so old that I almost shit myself whenever I sneeze. Actually, Brady is a couple of years older than me. Of course, I’m a rapidly declining degenerate and he’s getting virgin blood flown in and transfused from special people farms in Thailand while a team of personal trainers and dieticians keep him alive like fucking Dracula or something out of some Nazi horror experiment wet dream, so he’s not as old as he should be in people years.

Still, there’s a limit to even what Nazi Draculas can do, and it won’t be long before Tom Brady, scourge of Carpathia and the NFL, eventually finds himself picked apart by vultures. And the thing is, is that when it all goes, it’s going to go brutally and spectacularly. This won’t be a soft landing, this will be a fucking crater that leaves the Patriots lost in a sea of despair for years. That’s because none of these dudes, Brady, Belichick, the whole damn gang, will know when enough is enough. They will cling to the last rotting piece of flesh as they cannibalize each other and then themselves before it’s all through. This is because they are insane sociopaths and that is what insane sociopaths do. They don’t retire comfortably to the country with their nice family.

When it ends – and like I said, it’s gonna end soon – it will end with acrimony and despair. Brady already ran off Jimmy Garappolo like a Karate Kid villain because he dared even try to stand in his shadow for a couple of years. He and Belichick have pretty much explicitly said that they are going to be the last ones standing and when they fall they won’t give a shit about who has to try to clean everything up. They are not in this for the Patriots, they are in this because of their own crazed sociopathy and extreme need to win at all costs.

The thing is, is that I actually respect naked sociopathy as an ethos, at least in a superficially sporting context, and let’s face it, this is all superficial and fake and meaningless. It’s fucking football. Who cares? I can respect that. There is no pretense here, no baby kissing and flag humping. Just unrestrained sociopathy and mania. It will be disgusting theater to watch it all collapse, to see Belichick become a broken alcoholic with no one who loves him and Brady trying desperately to cling to a ghost in fucking Arizona or wherever while Gisele fucks their nutritionist. It’s going to happen and it’s going to happen soon.

But not now. The Patriots can still squeeze another season or two out of this godforsaken thing, especially because no one else in the division is capable of stepping up and taking it from them. I mean, realistically, who’s gonna do it? Even if the Patriots start their descent into madness and despair this season, Brady is still enough even as a shadow of himself to hold up against this gang of losers.

The Bills finally made the playoffs again, and then immediately traded their starting quarterback, Tyrod Taylor, even though the Bills looked apocalyptically bad when they tried to bench him earlier in the season. It’s a bizarre choice given that Taylor, while not great or anything, has always been kinda underrated, especially because with his legs he fit the rushing attack that made the Bills just a little bit different than other teams in the league. Sure, the offense was never that good, but it was just enough to squeeze by. Take that away out of some ill-conceived desire to shoehorn in something more conventional, and the Bills have nothing. It’s actually reminiscent of when Rod Marinelli (shudder) ran Mike Martz out of town (with the blessing of a lot of fans, I might add) despite Martz’s air attack being the only thing that kept the Lions afloat. Martz was flawed, like Taylor, which made him an easy target, but “flawed” is still better than “stark, empty wasteland” which the Lions found out when they immediately went 0-16. Now, I’m not saying the Bills are gonna go 0-16, but they ain’t making the playoffs either.

The Jets are the Jets, dysfunctional and spiritually wretched. Like the Bills, they just drafted their quarterback of the future in Sam Darnold. Unlike the Bills pick, Josh Allen, who’s basically a million years away from being an NFL quarterback, Darnold is probably expected to be along sooner rather than later. Of course, he’s just now ending a holdout which will no doubt endear him to the mouth-breathing imbeciles who call themselves Jets fans. It isn’t a good situation, especially for a team coming off back to back 5-11 seasons and with a psychic history filled with the moaning ghosts of Joe Namath’s knees and the frightened screeches of his liver. They aren’t winning shit.

That leaves the Dolphins, who are intriguing only because they actually have a quarterback in Ryan Tannehill and are only a season removed from going 10-6 and making the playoffs. Of course, Tannehill tore his ACL and missed the entire season last year, forcing the Dolphins to turn to Jay Cutler of all people. Naturally, that failed in hideous fashion, and now the Dolphins are left hoping that Tannehill can come back. If he can – and gets better – the Dolphins could be the team to sneak in there if the Patriots collapse sooner than expected. Of course, the Dolphins defense is still nothing special and even if Tannehill is healthy, he’s not exactly Aaron Rodgers either. Still, that 10-6 season the last time he was healthy gives the Dolphins at least a specter of hope, which is something neither the Bills nor the Jets really have.

Patriots Best Case Scenario: Winning the Super Bowl, obviously. Brady is still Brady and buys another year after purchasing an Indonesian boy and draining him of his precious life fluids. Belichick gets territorial and makes a point to build the defense into a monster in order to show that he doesn’t need Brady, the Patriots somehow find a successor to Brady to groom and Robert Kraft gets his dick sucked by one of his black servants.

Patriots Worst Case Scenario: Brady loses it and ages like he drank from the wrong cup at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Meanwhile, Gisele runs off with their dietician before shacking up with Garoppolo in San Francisco. Belichick is caught slapping around a hobo under a bridge overpass because it’s the only thing that can still make him feel, and Robert Kraft ends up sucking the dick of one of his black servants.

Patriots Final Judgment: Brady keeps Bradying, Gisele tells Garoppolo she doesn’t think Italians are human beings, Belichick manages to buy the tape of him slapping around a hobo, keeping it secret for at least another year, and Kraft jacks off to one of his black servants while the Patriots win another AFC East title and then make it to yet another Super Bowl because the AFC stinks like aged garbage filtered through Bigfoot’s asshole.

Bills Best Case Scenario: Somehow, Josh Allen shows that he can actually play quarterback in the NFL right away even though he could never be anything other than mediocre while at fucking Wyoming. The Bills manage to build on last season’s mini-run and win a shitty division when the Patriots fall apart. Gisele blows Josh Allen.

Bills Worst Case Scenario: The Bills don’t have a quarterback and Tyrod Taylor leads the fucking Browns to the playoffs while the Bills go 0-16. Gisele blows Rod Marinelli.

Bills Final Judgment: Josh Allen isn’t anywhere close to being ready, no one else can play quarterback, the defense crumbles under the pressure and the Bills go 3-13. Gisele blows me.

Jets Best Case Scenario: Darnold is immediately ready, and he finally gets the Jets headed in the right direction, a process which accelerates when the Patriots and Brady collapse, Gisele blows everyone, and a drunk Joe Namath is sworn in as President when everyone ahead of him in the line of succession is indicted for Discoursing.

Jets Worst Case Scenario: No quarterback, no fun. A drunk Joe Namath blows everyone.

Jets Final Judgment: The Jets are the Jets, man. They might hang around at 8-8, but then again, probably not. They’ll go 7-9, no one will get blown and Joe Namath will start appearing in commercials for erectile dysfunction drugs.

Dolphins Best Case Scenario: Tannehill comes back from his ACL injury, and comes back better than he was before. The Dolphins take advantage of a Patriots collapse, win the division and ride it all the way to the Super Bowl because the AFC stinks. Gisele blows Don Shula and the entire ’72 Dolphins, cocaine overtakes Miami once again, Michael Irvin reverse ages 30 years and leads Da U back to college football glory, Tony Montana comes to life, Miami Vice is still on the air and I disappear into a haze of drugs and Cuban women and . . . wait, this was supposed to be the Dolphins best case scenario. Either way.

Dolphins Worst Case Scenario: Tannehill can’t come back, the Dolphins have no quarterback and are damned to hang out with the Bills and Jets at the loser table while Brady fucks all their girlfriends, Gisele says she’ll blow them on the roof of the high school, only it’s a prank and they’re all left standing there naked on the roof in January and have to have their dicks amputated. I disappear into a haze of huffing paint and Armenian men who sell me to some rich Saudis.

Dolphins Final Judgment: Tannehill comes back roughly at the same place he was before, the Dolphins finish second in the AFC East, sneak into the playoffs as a Wild Card, lose in the first round and nobody really cares. I sell myself to some rich Saudis because at least they’ll keep me high and have you seen some of their yachts?

AFC Final Standings:

1. Patriots 12-4

2. Dolphins 10-6

3. Jets 7-9

4. Bills 3-13

The World Is Filled With Morons But Who Cares? And Other Observations From Super Bowl XLVI

I have a startling confession to make: I hate the Super Bowl. Okay, that’s not completely true. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with the Super Bowl. I love the game and what it represents but I hate the event that is the Super Bowl, the giant annual episode of Hee-Haw that would make even Robin Williams nauseous with its parade of LOUD NOISES and dull-eyed stupidity.

I didn’t plan on writing this. After all, I am in the midst of a long and hopefully fruitful spirit quest and my Indian guide said that breaking my hiatus to comment on the mortal world was both dangerous and short-sighted, but I told him to kick rocks because I don’t need him, I have The Great Willie Young to lead me down the path of wisdom and, so, well, here we are. The banal truth is that while watching the damn game and the circus which surrounds it, I realized I had to write about it and even though no one will probably read this since it isn’t about the Lions or about Lindsay Lohan deep-throating a Kardashian or some such bullshit, I don’t really care because sometimes – increasingly rarely for me if I’m being completely honest – the spirit just courses through me and I am but a slave, dancing at its behest, and I have no choice but to hit you with the Good Word.

Okay, like I said, I both love and hate the Super Bowl. It’s easy to get lost in the endless hype and idiot noise that bleats through our TV screens and hollers at us from our computers in the weeks leading up to the event and it’s easy to then determine that the best course of action is to build a shack deep in the woods and spend the rest of your days growing your own, uh, let’s say fruit and vegetables and hunting Sasquatch and fucking sheep because at least the goddamn sheep don’t know or care who Betty goddamn White is, but in the middle of all that is an event that is profoundly important. Okay, fine, in the grand scheme of things, compared to world hunger and war and that goddamn neighbor who won’t stop making all that goddamn noise, it’s not all that important, but within the confines of the football world – which is the world we technically write about here at Armchair Linebacker, although I’ll admit that can be a little hard to discern at times – it is the fucking moon landing. For football players, for dudes who have spent their entire lives getting up and running at 6 AM on the beach every day just to get a tiny little edge over the other dude and who have made the devil’s bargain, sacrificing their brain power past the age of fifty for a shot at meaningless glory, it is everything, and that is a revelation that is taut with both high drama and almost obscene and maudlin tension. Once you realize and understand that, it’s impossible not to get caught up in the actual game, no matter who’s playing.

But it’s also impossible to ignore the dumb hype and bleating chaos which surrounds the whole goddamn event, a circus of the dumb, a circus of the absurd, a circus which makes me wish a tiger or a lion would leap through my TV screen and devour my eyeballs and my ears before my spirit horse could whisk me away to a better place. A person could spend an entire year in a coma and as long as he wakes up on Super Bowl Sunday and watches the whole obscene event from start to finish, he will be completely caught up with the rest of the world. Every catchphrase, every hit song, every meme, every star, every movie, everything that has been relevant over the past twelve months will get beaten into the dirt, resurrected and then cannibalized before being beaten into the ground yet again. Hey, look! There’s Betty White! Why not drag out the Where’s the Beef lady while you’re at it? It’s just a parade of wild and dumb noise, of hee-hawing bullshit that appeals to the idiot center of the lowest of the lowest common denominator. It is a world of the dumb and the insane in which tiny dogs moonwalk for no reason, horses fart flames and jackasses sitting at home guffaw and stuff their face full of death and corn flavored hate. And then a midget rides onto the field on a tricycle and Madonna shows up, cackling like the vampire spawn of Satan himself and then our eyes are peeled back like in Clockwork Orange and we all slowly go insane while a dystopian horror show plays out before our bleeding brains. A man in a dress bounces around on a wire and some clowns show up and start singing that goddamn Party Rock song and then there’s a choir because there’s always a choir and then we cut to a commercial of Christina Aguilera fighting with some hick and hey, there’s Betty White again! And she’s intimating that we all want to fuck her! USA! USA! USA!

And . . . breathe. I’m sorry. I kinda got carried away there. But every year it’s the same and about halfway through the game, after hearing for the billionth time some lummox prattle about how “I only watch the game for the commercials!” like it’s a startlingly new thought never experienced by man before, I begin to sharpen my knives and longingly eye the drain cleaner, wondering just what the barrel of a gun tastes like, and I wonder why I even watch this madhouse of the human spirit at all. But then, just like every other year, the game started again, and there was Tom Brady and there was Eli Manning, fighting to be the man who landed on the moon one more time, and in the wake of that simple truth, nothing else mattered.

It’s easy to shit on Tom Brady. He is not a well-liked guy. I get it. He’s rich, he has a hot model wife, he wears Uggs and he generally carries himself like a GQ model. You won’t find him sitting in his Wranglers, drinking beers with the boys. People hate that about him. But none of that matters. Not really, anyway. For all his money, for all his success, for all the times he gets to go home and hump Giselle Bundchen until the rest of the world fades away and he passes out in a hazy cloud of semen and drool until his butler shows up to wipe him off with a diamond studded jizz rag (actually, that would hurt, so, uh, never mind . . .) he is still just a dude trying to land on the moon one more time, and when he’s on that field, none of that other shit matters and that meaningless pursuit of glory becomes his green light across the water, his Daisy Buchanan, and then he’s just Gatsby, like the rest of us, chasing that one thing that actually can give the man a moment of peace in his soul.

And then you have Eli Manning. He’s the anti-Brady. At least that’s the role in which he’s been cast by most fans. They want to project onto him the image of the hard working blue collar good ol’ boy, the down to earth hero they can have a beer with and shoot the shit. He probably votes Republican and believes in the flag and Budweiser and hot dogs too. He probably has a firm handshake and he’s the sort of man you want your son to grow up to be. Yessir.

But not really. He’s almost as rich as Tom Brady. He probably lives in a New York penthouse and he would have his butler wash his hands with soap made from crushed babies if he was forced to shake your filthy hands. But again, none of that matters. Because once that clock starts winding down, he’s just another man in pursuit of a dream, a man in pursuit of his own moon landing.

Every year, by the time the 4^th quarter of the Super Bowl arrives, the dumb commercials and the endless noise all seem to sort of fade away, as reality and the forces of nature reassert themselves and cause all that nonsense to blow away like so much cotton candy caught in the wind. The Super Bowl is an event, a celebration of everything banal and stupid about our Idiocratic society. They should get President Camacho to flip the coin before the game every year. And it’s easy to get caught up in all that bullshit. We all do, whether it’s in laughing like dumb animals at horrible 3^rd grade level jokes designed to sell you some shit you don’t even want or whether it’s in cringing and considering taking up shack building or suicide as a hobby, we all get caught up in it and we let it define the Super Bowl, both the event and the game year after year.

But then Mario Manningham makes the catch of his life along the sideline and then it’s impossible to ignore that there is something real at stake here, something pure. And it’s pure because it’s trivial, because it’s meaningless, because it’s unquantifiable. This isn’t about money or fancy homes or supermodel wives or any of the things we hold up to the rest of the world in order to proclaim our value. It is the pursuit of meaningless glory, of victory, of something that means nothing and in meaning nothing means everything. Because it is not for anyone else. It is pure and it is honest and it is landing on the fucking moon not because you can ever hope to own the moon but because it’s landing on the fucking moon. It’s winning the fucking Super Bowl. It’s the mountain top, the goal, the thing that kept you sweating under the sun while a fat old man screamed at you and told you that you were a fucking shitty football player and that he would throw you off the team if you didn’t run just a little bit faster, hit just a little bit harder, want it just a little bit more. It is the reason why you pick up a football for the very first time, and in the truth of that, the importance of the Super Bowl, its pulsating heart, is revealed.

You can laugh at Tom Brady and you can shit on him all you want but it doesn’t change the fact that he wanted to win this fucking game more than you’ve ever wanted anything in your life. He’s going to see Wes Welker dropping that pass for the rest of his life and it’s going to weaken his knees and hit him deep in his gut, in that place that churns up life’s memories and makes everything else seem a little bit dimmer. That’s his now. For the rest of his life, that’s his.

And then you have Eli Manning, who will remember Mario Manningham making that catch for the rest of his life and when he does, he’ll smile that goofy, hick smile of his and everything will seem brighter and better because of it. It won’t matter if he’s in the lead car of a parade or floating on a fucking iceberg off the coast of Antarctica while the rest of the world burns, he’ll always have that memory and he’ll always have the pure satisfaction that it brought and it will make him smile.

That is all completely insane when you consider that this is just a dumb game, and that win or lose everyone goes home and fucks their trophy wives and counts their money and beats the help. And yet, it’s completely true. You think it matters to the fans? Well, this is the summation of these dudes’ whole lives. Man is a stupid beast and he is never happy, no matter what he achieves or what he gets in life and that is because the deep dark secret that everyone is afraid of is that most things in life are utterly meaningless. The only things that do matter, that do provide long-lasting satisfaction are those perfectly pure triumphs, those conquerings of the soul, those moon landings that validate the emptiness of everything else, that make the tortured two-a-day past and the concussed and addled future worth it. Man is an explorer of the spirit, a mountain climber of the soul, and he is never satisfied by anything other than climbing his own personal Everests, no matter how trivial they seem to be.

And tonight, Eli Manning and the Giants are celebrating because they climbed Everest. They landed on the moon. And they’re celebrating because of inches, because of fractions of inches, because Mario Manningham somehow made that catch while Wes Welker dropped a ball he never drops. They’re celebrating because the world is weird and strange and today it smiled on them and they believe, deep in their hearts, that it smiled on them because they willed it, because they pushed and pushed and pushed and as a result affected the events of the world. It is the ultimate manifestation of the arrogance of man, that secret desire which rests so deeply within all of our dumb hearts – if they fought hard enough, if they believed and struggled and bled and just pushed and pushed and pushed, they could control destiny, they could control the world. That, my friends, is power and power is the one thing we all desperately want because the truth is, is that we’re all powerless. And that’s why it’s so satisfying when you can clutch it in your fingers for just a fraction of a moment, long enough to achieve your stupid and absurd dreams. And that’s why winning – and losing – a Super Bowl means more to these dudes than anyone wants to admit. But deep down, I think we understand it, and that’s why we watch. Fuck the event. We watch for the game, for that crowning moment, for the fucking moon landing.

And just like Eli and the boys are celebrating, Tom Brady and his dudes have an empty feeling inside that they’ll never fill. They’ll blame themselves and each other. Wes Welker will never be the same again. He just got engaged to a hot new fiance but if you think that’s enough to make him shrug his shoulders and say fuck it and count his money and forget this ever happened then you don’t understand human nature. At all. We’re all Gatsby. That’s the great truth of that book and that’s the great truth which drives everything we do as a species. This one loss will diminish Tom Brady’s whole life. And by that, I don’t mean people’s perceptions of him. I mean his perceptions of himself. When he’s lying on his deathbed, he’ll weigh his life out and this game will flash before his eyes. That is enormously tragic and enormously compelling and that’s why the Super Bowl is the fucking Super Bowl. The rest is just noise.