NFL Playoff Quarterback Power Rankings

My initial idea for this week was to rank the teams based on spiritual energies or whatever and by “my idea” I mean I got it from friend of the blog @LowFashionLover. The only problem, I decided, is that it would just be a rehash of my gibberish from the last 4 months or whatever. I mean, this is basically what I did every week with the Gambling For Sanity shit, so I decided I’d do something else instead of explain why the Cowboys are rotten soul ass for the 20^th time.

And lo, my playoff quarterback power rankings were born. These are based on a combination of factors – how good they were this season, how good they’ve been over their career, what they’ve won, what they’ve lost, and of course, the intangible Spirit Warrior quality which isn’t something I just made up but a vital component – perhaps the vital component – in any competitive endeavor or honest life.

12. Lamar Jackson - Baltimore

I assume Lamar Jackson is gonna start for Baltimore since Joe Flacco has finally been drowned in the Baltimore harbor or wherever the hell he fucked off to, and that’s a good thing for Baltimore since their offense only started to click with Jackson and his legs. The problem is, at least right now, there’s not much more to Jackson than those legs, and baby, that’s a hard way to win in the playoffs.

Of course, Lamar Jackson has never done anything either. Sure, he won the Heisman at Louisville, but we’re talking Advanced Concussion Ball here. One bad hit, one twist of the leg by some dirty asshole at the bottom of a pile, and Lamar Jackson is basically useless. So it’s the bottom of the rankings for him. At least for now. I like the dude, and I think he has Spirit Warrior potential, but the world is not fair, especially to Potential Spirit Warriors, who it enjoys snuffing out before they can realize that potential. I mean, shit, just look at me.

11. Dak Prescott – Dallas

Dak Prescott was sort of a sensation as a rookie, but no one has really liked him since. Sure, the Cowboys are back in the playoffs, but that has more to do with the NFL East collapsing en masse than anything the Cowboys did, and more specifically, anything that Prescott did. If Alex Smith had stayed healthy and The Eagles didn’t Philadelphia all over the fuckin’ place, the Cowboys would have finished third and everyone would want Dak kicked out of town. Jerry Jones would have had him buried in an oilfield or some shit or sold into slavery to some rubber tree plantation down in Brazil or Indonesia. They still do that shit, and you best believe Jerry Jones is involved somehow.

Anyway, that’s obviously a rotten spiritual situation, and it’s hard to see Dak Prescott overcoming any of that. Of course, there’s also the fact that the motherfucker is named Dak, which sounds like some futuristic lacrosse player. Just rotten energy all around for this dude. If he didn’t have Ezekiel Elliott to hand off to every game, this shit would get really dark really fast. Some would say that having to rely on a violent lady beater to go through life is already really dark, but shit, welcome to the NFL.

10. Mitchell Trubisky – Chicago

I don’t trust Mitch aka QB10 yet, and more importantly, I know that Bears fans don’t trust him. This is as much because of their woeful history at quarterback as it is anything to do with him personally, but those are the psychic environs he finds himself in. It’s not his fault that the Bears quarterback list reads Jim McMahon and then, uh, Rex Grossman? Kyle Orton? Erik Kramer? Fuck, man. Fuck!

Trubisky has made obvious progress so far, and probably just had the best Bears quarterback season in forever, but again, that’s more about the Bears than him. He is a number one overall pick, so the talent is there, but how the fuck are you gonna back a BEARS QUARTERBACK in the playoffs, especially one who has never won a goddamn thing? There are probably better years ahead for Trubisky, but for now, this dude is still out of his element.

9. Whoever the Fuck the Eagles QB Is

I’m still not sure if the Eagles are gonna go with wunderkind-turned-battery throwing target Carson Wentz, or the dude who won the Super Bowl last year, Nick Foles. This is partly because the Eagles don’t seem to know themselves, and partly because I’m not bothering to find out. Obviously, that means that this isn’t exactly an ideal situation.

Wentz is good, or at least should be good, but Eagles fans seem to be blaming too much of the team’s problems on him, which is probably mostly because Eagles fans are by and large irrational ogres. But this is how a dude’s spiritual energy gets ruined, especially a dude who spent his college years playing second tier ball in North Dakota. This motherfucker is like the farm stud with a big dick who gets off the bus all wide eyed and then gets fucked, both literally and spiritually, into oblivion by the big city pimps. He’s still got a hard dick right now, and he’s off buying muscle cars and making records with Reed Rothchild, but he’s only one year away from turning tricks in a parking lot for hateful Eagles fans that just want to jump him and leave him laying in his own blood to cover for their own self-loathing.

Nick Foles, on the other hand, has a mediocre dick, he’s spent most of his career as the pizza boy in fuck scenes who watches wide eyed as the real stars get the job done, and no one really expected much from him. But then Wentz couldn’t get it up, Foles had to step in, and shocked everyone by fucking good enough to win an AVN award last year.

That means he’s always gonna be hovering just over Wentz’s shoulder, which is not a good thing for Wentz’s spiritual energy or for the Eagles, for that matter. It may seem like a good thing, to have a backup who won the fucking Super Bowl, but it really isn’t. It just meant that the pressure was on Wentz to be fucking perfect this season, and when he wasn’t, Eagles fans tore him apart. They either had to ride with Wentz or Foles, and they chose neither and it’s fucked them.

The problem with turning to Foles is that while he may be the stud for the day, he still just has a mediocre dick. He just managed to have the fuck of his life at the right time. That’s all. Now when he can’t get it up or ends up splooging all over himself, or dribbling on a teammate’s thigh as they think “What the fuck?” Eagles fans are gonna turn on his ass HARD. And then what do they have? A small-dicked loser and a broken big dick that can’t get hard anymore. That’s life in the Big City, I guess. The only reason they’re this high on the list is because Wentz still does have a big dick and because of what happened with Foles last season. 9^th is a position of respect in this case.

8. Jared Goff – Rams

I like Jared Goff. He’s obviously good, and by this point on the list, they’re all pretty good. The problem is that I don’t know if you can trust him. There is just something missing, something indefinable, something ineffable (fuck you, Alex.) I don’t know what it is.

He’s never won anything, obviously, so it’s hard to give him any credit spiritually, and while he’s been good, he hasn’t been great. This is completely unfair, really. I just looked at his numbers again and they’re great, okay? But the thing is, is that I don’t know how much of that is him and how much of it is the Rams and Sean McVay. It feels like this is a system type thing more than a quarterback transcending himself and his team to be great. This doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense at all. I understand this. This is utter gibberish. But I feel like if you swapped Goff with, say, Matthew Stafford, you’d get the same result.

Now this is where we start arguing about Stafford, but I don’t want to do that. From one angle, that should speak well for Goff. I mean, Matthew Stafford is pretty good, right? But from another angle, Stafford is who he is, a talented dude who’s never won a goddamn thing. BUT THAT’S BECAUSE OF HIS TEAM, you scream at me, and that’s sort of the point. I feel like Goff might be similar. He’s a good quarterback, but he’s not a quarterback who’s capable of transcending his team. Just like Stafford. So, yeah, Stafford would do well in Los Angeles while Goff would lose with the Lions. That means they are good enough quarterbacks to win with, but not so good that they can carry you over the hump like, say, Brady or Russell Wilson.

Then again, maybe Goff is that guy. Who knows? That’s sort of the point. We don’t know right now, and we won’t know until he does the damn thing. Is this fair? No. Is it ridiculous? Yes. Will I look like an idiot when this is all said and done? Probably. But welcome to Armchair Linebacker.

7. DeShaun Watson – Houston

Wait . . . what? DeShaun Watson ahead of Goff? Yes. I know this probably doesn’t make sense to you, but here’s my rationale: DeShaun Watson won a Heisman and a national championship in college. The dude has done it before. Sure, not on this level, but being a winner is something that travels. That is good spiritual energy.

And, I mean, if you look at the numbers, he’s basically in Goff’s league there too. But he also runs well, and is a weapon that way. I’m ready to say that Watson is a better quarterback by just about any metric.

The problem, of course, is that he doesn’t have a huge body of work, an entire career to fall back on, to make people confident that he’s truly The Man. That’s really the only thing keeping him from being higher on this list. (And don’t get me started on people who think “higher” means like 9^th or 10^th instead of 4^th or 5^th, which they would call “lower.” They do this all the time when it comes to seeding in the NCAA tournament and it drives me fucking nuts. The argument is that, well, 10 is higher than 7 so should be called a “higher” seed or ranking. This is fucking preposterous. It should be called a “lower” seed or ranking because that is what the number signifies. In this case and in seeding cases, 10 is lower than 7. This shouldn’t be hard for people, but it is and it makes me SEETHE.) Anyway… uh, yeah. That’s it for this dude.

6. Philip Rivers – Chargers

Philip Rivers has had a long and productive career, and when it’s over, he’ll probably go down as being underrated. The problem with Ol’ Phil, of course, is that he’s a colossal asshole and a dude who always blows it in the end. I’ve compared him more than once to Matthew Stafford, and… yeah, that still holds true. Go back and read what I wrote in the Jared Goff section. That all applies to Rivers. The difference is that Rivers has a fucking decade and a half on Goff, and has proven over and over again that he is an upper tier NFL quarterback. Conversely, he’s also proven that he’s exactly what I fear both Stafford and Goff are – good, but not good enough.

In one respect, I feel like I should swap him and Goff, because Goff at least has a chance to prove me wrong. But in another respect, I feel like Rivers maybe deserves the benefit of the doubt. I mean, for all the shit I’ve talked about him, for as big an asshole as he is, you just can’t kill this fucker. He never goes away. And if he manages to win it all this year, all of that noise changes for him. I mean, I don’t think it will, but who’s to say?

If Jared Goff has Philip Rivers’ career, he should be ecstatic. But he should also be disappointed. This is a weird as fuck dynamic, but that’s sports, baby. In the end, I’m sticking Rivers here because it feels wrong to put him behind the two young dudes, but there’s no way that you can put him any higher than this, right? This is who he is. He’s number 6. That is Philip Rivers and it always will be. Jared Goff is number 8 right now. He has a chance to be number 1 someday, but probably not today.

5. Andrew Luck

This is probably too high. Fuck, it’s almost certainly too high, but here’s the thing: everyone kind of shit on Andrew Luck and wrote him off before this season. Some people even said he was finished, his career over due to injury. He responded by dragging the Colts to the playoffs and throwing for over 4,500 yards, with 39 touchdowns. That is a hell of an answer, and gives him some spiritual credibility that the dudes behind him just can’t match.

Maybe he is Rivers. I don’t know. But his career kind of hits the sweet spot between Rivers and Goff in that he’s done it more times than Goff, but hasn’t been ghettoized like Rivers. There’s also this: the Colts are not a good team. Not at all. Yet here they are, in the playoffs. If you swapped Goff with Luck, what would it look like? Luck would almost certainly be the golden boy as he led the Rams to the same sort of season they had this year, maybe even better. While Goff and the Colts probably would have a losing record. That’s my take and I’m sticking to it.

Sure, Luck may sound like Andre the Giant is fucking his throat every time he talks, and sure, he can’t grow facial hair without looking like he posts on Reddit, but you can’t deny that this dude rose up this season and proved something. People like to shit on him for never really earning all the slobbering praise he gets, but fuck it, I think he’s the real deal. He’s just on a shitty team, that’s all. The difference? He can actually transcend his team’s shittiness to drag them to the playoffs. Not many dudes can do that.

4. Drew Brees

Brees probably deserves to be a little higher, but fuck him. There is something spiritually rotten about him. People just never really notice because it’s balanced out by the spiritual richness of New Orleans. But the dude is a shit-smeared torture advocate. Torture advocates are dudes who live their lives in fear. They are cowards. So, yes, Drew Brees is a coward. He’s also a million years old.

Still, I’m not gonna deny that the dude is one of the best quarterbacks ever. He’s thrown for a million yards – check that, he’s thrown for the most yards in NFL history. That’s right. EVER. He’s also won a Super Bowl. The dude is a legend. I’m not gonna deny any of that. That should make him, at worst, second on this list. But I’ll say it again: fuck him.

There’s also this: the Saints have always been pretty inconsistent under Brees. They’ve had 5 losing seasons, 6 in which they never got above .500, and I’m gonna put it out there: it’s because Drew Brees is a spiritually bereft coward. Fuck him.

3. Russell Wilson – Seattle

I said before the season that Russell Wilson was a top 4 quarterback in the NFL. I also said that the Seahawks would finally collapse because they gutted their team and left Wilson hanging. All he did was lead them back to the playoffs. That shows me something. That shows me something huge.

He’s never been a huge OMG STATS guy, but his numbers are always good enough, he’s won a Super Bowl, should have won another if not for the most LOL WHAT ARE THEY DOING plays in sports history, and, again, he’s proven that he’s one of those extremely rare dude who can carry a shitty team all the way with him. I have nothing else to say here.

2. Patrick Mahomes – Kansas City

The dude just had a wild fucking year. 50 touchdowns. I mean, goddamn. He’s the MVP. He’s The Man. One problem: as a great man once said, to be The Man, you’ve gotta beat The Man WHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

1. Tom Brady – New England

And Tom Brady is indisputably The Man.

For all the fun I’ve had with Brady this season, for all the American Pyscho histrionics, you can’t deny the dude. It’s easy to say that he’s spiritually corrupt because of all the obvious affectations and sociopath ridiculousness, but this dude is a wild OG Warrior deep at heart. He is that one in a million motherfucker who will sacrifice everything, including basic decency, to win. This is a dude who would fuck over his own baby to win a game of Old Maid. This motherfucker is a menace, a danger to society, but he is also who I would pick to lead Earth against an alien invasion.

You also have to remember this: the Patriots and Chiefs already played once this season. Who won? Brady and the Patriots. That’s right. If you come at the king, you best not miss, son. Until Mahomes can overthrow Brady, he can’t be number one on this list. Hell, even if he does do it, he’s probably still not number one. This is because Tom Brady is number one all time. He’s the Greatest.

Of course, The Greatest is also at an age where he’s starting to have to synthesize virgin blood in a lab in order to keep going without crumbling into dust in the light and being dragged shrieking to the hell that surely awaits him. Everything ends. Everything dies. And Tom Brady can see The End. The motherfucker can feel it. When he goes, and he’ll go soon, it will be an epic disaster, a noisy and dishonorable end. This is not a dude who will die quietly on his throne. This is a dude who will die raving incoherently covered in his own shit because he can’t control his bowels anymore while his servants loot the castle and his kingdom disintegrates into unholy ruin. It will be a goddamn scene, an utter fiasco that will leave all of New England dead, a ruined crater of human filth, their ghostly shrieks and wails reaching to the heavens, ignored by a disgusted god who will send them all to the gnarliest depths of hell.

That’s all coming for Tom Brady. But the thing is, is that he knows that. He feels it. And that’s just gonna make him even crazier and harder to beat. He’s gonna hang on with everything he’s got, and no motherfucker named Pat is gonna take that from him while he still has his wits, while he’s still Tom Fucking Brady. The man is a Force unto Himself, a spirit that defies things like morality, unbound by human measures of decency. He will absolutely kill Patrick Mahomes entire family if he feels threatened and he’ll get away with it too. Who’s gonna stop him? You with your petty humanity? No. The only thing that will stop Tom Brady is the inexorable erosion of Time itself, its humbling and dispassionate march which trods us all down, turning humanity into little more than a barren desert, unseen by the boots that keep marching, marching, marching . . . to Time, Tom Brady is nothing, the gods are nothing. To Time, even itself is nothing, an utter irrelevance, and in the end, it will crush itself too and we will all disappear, our very dust, our souls, into a black hole, and none of this will have mattered or have even happened. The universe is fucking wild. But the last voice to shriek in defiance as it bends and twists and is disintegrated by Time and that black hole will belong to Tom Brady. And that’s why he’s the Greatest. Now and Forever.

Gambling With Sanity: Week 16

The sun is setting on yet another season of NFL football. Men have been concussed, women have been beaten, lizard men have flicked their forked tongues into the deepest places of our souls, and the Lions have lost a bunch of goddamn football games. It’s been the worst of times . . . and the worst of times. So let’s do it again. Last week, I went 8-8 bringing my overall record to 87-101-10, but I do want to make one point here: straight up, with point spreads thrown out, I’ve actually done a really good job, but that is not how the evil men of Las Vegas feel, and forget about what I just said because it feels like a loser begging on his knees that he can get the money next week or some shit just so they don’t break my thumbs. Anyway, the fine folks at VegasInsider.com would never do that to me, not after I spent an entire season plugging their site for no reason other than the vain hopes that they’ll somehow see this and offer me some pity money or maybe 25% off at the Bunny Ranch or whatever the fuck, not that I’d be into that because that shit is honestly pretty gross and they won’t even let you strangle the hooker after and bury her in the desert after dissecting her in your basement. Anyway, let’s get to the football.

Washington (+10) at Dallas

Once upon a time, my boys Raven Mack and Paul would have been really into this game, but now neither one of them even cares, and I doubt they’ll even know what happens. This is because they’ve both been driven from football by the very things that these two insipid franchises represent, and I don’t just mean in football terms either, but in the cultural things that they both stand for. They are both the teams of lizard-men greedhead owners, and represent larger fanbases that are both despicable stereotypes of America at its worst: in Dallas’ case, they are all fake Cowboys or brainwashed normies who decided to cheer for Dallas because they were always on the teevee and the rich folk said they’re America’s Team Yeeee-Hawwwww, and in Washington’s case, they are literal pigs, fat pieces of shit with snout noses who snort and grunt and oink their way through a game while representing a city that has no permanence, no roots, other than the transitory ambitions of plastic alien men and women putting in their time in the hopes that they can get some kickbacks from a big bank or two. This game is hell on earth, a metaphor for the ugly corruption of the American Dream and the perverse fall of Man from the Garden lo those many eons ago. There are no winners here, only the tears of a betrayed and ruined species.

Pick: Dallas

Baltimore (+4) at L.A. Chargers

I’ll admit, I’ve been really slow to get behind the Chargers, but that’s because they always fuck it up. And they’ll do it again this year too. You can’t trust Philip Rivers. You just can’t. The motherfucker looks like one of the bad guys from Animal House or some shit. Dudes won’t rally behind an asshole like that when things get their grimmest. Still, the Chargers have somehow climbed to the top of the AFC heap this season, and might even grab home field for the entirety of the playoffs. Not that this will help them much, because no one in L.A. really gives a fuck about them. It’s sort of a trap: they can’t stop being the Chargers until they prove that they’re not, and they can’t prove that they’re not because, well, because they’re the Chargers. People see that, they understand it on an instinctive, primal level, and people in LA especially aren’t gonna fall for that. That’s because LA people either need a team like the Raiders to get behind, someone the South Central and East LA boys can both ride with, or they need a winner, a team like those 80s 49ers teams, for all the fake-ass shine-faced Hollywood types to get behind. Those people are gonna cheer for the Rams now, and the poorer folks are just gonna watch soccer now so fuck it, the Chargers are spiritually doomed.

Pick: Baltimore

Tampa Bay (+7) at Dallas

lol . . . well, shit. I just double checked and saw that Dallas is playing Tampa Bay this week and Washington is playing Tennessee, but I’m not going back and changing this shit because 1. that would violate the precepts of New Writing, and 2. what I said is still true regardless of the false football “truths” that are trying to trip me up. You see, football is the devil. Anyway, fuck it. The Redskins are still gonna lose their game and the Cowboys are still gonna win theirs, so what, in the end, is the difference? Fuck off.

Pick: Dallas

Atlanta (-3.5) at Carolina

This has kind of been a sad season for both teams, but in different ways. The Falcons never really got going in the first place, doomed by a shit defense and by the whole Falcons thing where they are never consistently good from year to year. Next season, they’ll probably win the damn division, but this season is a total loss. The Panthers, on the other hand, just sort of collapsed after a decent start, but in retrospect it was probably something of a mirage. Cam Newton’s arm is completely fucked, the team is firing coaches and the whole thing sort of feels like a situation where everything has to be blown up. They either need to put a bullet in Cam behind the barn, or sell him to some other fat white dude who will literally poke and prod him and check his teeth and shit like they do to the rest of the young merchandise at the NFL Draft Combine every year. lol this league is so fucking dark.

Pick: Atlanta

Jacksonville (+4.5) at Miami

It’s the battle of Florida, but not really. Miami and Jacksonville represent parts of Florida that are so vastly different that it feels wrong and fucked up to treat them like parts of the same state. Miami is all cocaine and Cubans and beaches and thongs…th…thongs thongs thongs. Meanwhile, Jacksonville is basically South Georgia, or maybe East Alabama, just a Southern Trash City that is at its core desperate and broken. This is a place that breeds the frenzied freebird soul of Lynyrd Skynyrd, a Kenny Stablerish wild-hair kind of rebellion that is at its heart conflicted and proud of itself, but also a place that breeds a sort of fucked up funhouse mirror of the same thing, a soulless strip-mall mentality bereft of hope, shorn of dignity, in a backwards baseball cap raised on MTV and failure called Fred Durst. It’s a city of people that dream to escape but they never can because the city’s stank is always with them. It’s too depressing to think about.

Pick: Miami

N.Y. Giants (+9.5) at Indianapolis

The Colts are sort of a hoboish version of the Chargers in that I’ve basically written them off but here they are hanging around still. I don’t think they’re any good, but there might actually be some redemption for Andrew Luck. On the other hand, they seem like exactly the sort of team that’s just gonna fuck it all up and fold as soon as people start to get expectations, and this line seems absurdly big.

Pick: Giants

Houston (+2.5) at Philadelphia

The Eagles upset the Rams last week, and is that a team getting ready to make one last push or is it one last gasp of pride as they remember that they’re the champs? I don’t know. They haven’t been able to get it together all season, and everybody just keeps kind of waiting for them to get there, but there’s literally only two games left and they are who they are at this point. Yes, they beat the Rams, but I think that’s more about the Rams being in kind of a weird funk right now than the Eagles reasserting themselves. In the end, you just have to go with what you know, and that’s that Philadelphia will always, when up against the wall, completely and totally fuck itself.

Pick: Houston

Minnesota (-5.5) at Detroit

Listen, I’ve pretty much already damned and then eulogized the 2018 Lions so there’s little to be said there. The Vikings, on the other hand, deserve to be pointed at and laughed at because lol man did they bet on the wrong dude. Kirk Cousins walked into a situation just begging for a quarterback to take it all the way. This is a quarterback’s dream, but it’s also the sort of situation where a quarterback can’t hide. There are no excuses, no copouts. Whoever was the Vikings quarterback had to win because it was set up for him. But Kirk Cousins hasn’t done shit. He’s gonna end up with the same fucking team he had in Washington. It’s the ultimate indictment of his corny ass. This is Who He Is, and the evidence is damning and irrefutable at this point. Still, the Lions are the Lions.

Pick: Minnesota

Green Bay (-3) at N.Y. Jets

It feels weird that the Packers are pretty much just playing out the string this season. It’s over for them, and even though Aaron Rodgers was named to the Pro Bowl again, this has probably been his worst season. You can’t tell it from the stats necessarily, but the dude just looks miserable out there. He’s still the devil and the devil is gonna get his, but man, this dude does not want to be out there for this team. The fans have picked up on this too and a few have started to turn on him, which is fucking insane, but that is life in the Big Time, Bubba. Not that Green Bay is the Big Time, but I mean in NFL terms it kind of is, and also because Green Bay is so ridiculously small, everything about the Packers is magnified. This is the only thing those miserable bastards have to care about so of course they’re all gonna be up Aaron Rodgers’ ass 24/7. I can see the dude wanting to get out, maybe going back to California to finish things out, shoot insurance commercials 6 days of the week and stroll in on Sundays to throw meaningless touchdowns for the 49ers or some shit. That’s how this all ends for Aaron Rodgers, and maybe that’s closer than anyone thought. Please let this be true. Please let this be true. Please let this be true.

Pick: Green Bay

Cincinnati (+8.5) at Cleveland

lol look at the Browns swinging that dick around. All 5.5” of it. But shit, 5.5” is a lot to work with when you’ve spent your whole life with a baby dick man-clit down there, just furiously jacking away with two fingers, flicking the ol’ bean like a woman. Anyway, the Browns may have actually finally found their way out of hell. They aren’t anywhere near heaven yet, but fuck it, who among us, amirite? Anyway, Dan, I’m glad you at least can get your whole hand around your dick now.

Pick: Cleveland

L.A. Rams (-14) at Arizona

“Beware false crownings.” That was my most prescient line from that ill-fated Haiku abomination last week. I could sort of sniff this out. The Rams were almost impossibly explosive and there comes a point where you sort of let down and then you realize it’s harder than you thought to get it back. In other words, the Rams peaked too early. It happens. They can still probably get it back, but that shit isn’t easy to do. Beating the piss out of the dogshit Cardinals is a good place to start, but to be honest, I’m not really sure if that’s true. The Rams almost need a real test, a backs against the wall kind of game to force them to step their shit up. They can sleepwalk through this game, which means that one more week will go by and if they’re not careful they’re gonna run out of time and get got by some half-shitty wild card team.

Pick: Rams

Chicago (-4) at San Francisco

The 49ers have struggled out of the muck and now lay quivering and exhausted in the reeds. They didn’t drown, which is good, but there’s still a long way to go and there’s every chance that they’re just gonna be pecked to death by a seagull or some shit anyway, so fuck it. The Bears, meanwhile, have made this their year, which they do every 6 or 7 years in between sufferings. They probably aren’t gonna win anything important because come on, but still, good for them, I guess. Listen, I have always hated the Bears so this is as good as it gets from me.

Pick: Bears

Pittsburgh (+5.5) at New Orleans

This should probably be a fun game to watch. I mean, if you ignore that one quarterback is a degenerate rapist who one woman said she felt more uneasy around than Donald fucking Trump, while the other is a torture advocate. lol what a league. Still, people will put that out of their minds because that is what people do and unless there is video footage or unless the woke brigade decides to march on the town square no one will give a shit. This is the shallow, ridiculous world we live in these days. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Pick: New Orleans

Kansas City (-2.5) at Seattle

The Chiefs are pretty much the mirror of the Rams in that they peaked too soon, but in their case, I think the Kareem Hunt thing fucked them up more than people thought it would. I mean, yeah, he was an important part of their offense, but I think people just sort of expected Pat Mahomes to throw bombs while everyone hooted and beat their wives in celebration, Kareem Hunt easily dismissed and forgotten. But it hasn’t really worked out like that, and who knows if the Chiefs can really get it back? As it is, they might have to settle for a wild card thanks to the Chargers unexpected palace coup which takes Arrowhead out of the equation for them and probably dooms them to yet another playoff disappointment. This is truly an Andy Reid team after all.

Pick: Seattle

Denver (-2.5) at Oakland

Two old and bitter rivals playing in Oakland for the last time. Naturally, the game is completely meaningless beyond that and both teams are of shit. Life is rarely a song, hardly a coherent story. It is usually just a mess of fucked up coincidences that ends with some rich asshole ruining your life. At least Oakland fans can finally be free of this wretched cycle of abuse. That is something. I mean, I guess.

Pick: Denver

Buffalo (+13) at New England

I’ve had a lot of fun with Tom Brady this season, but the truth is that the whole cold souled serial killer thing only works if the dude continues to be inhuman and sadly, this season, at time anyway, Tom Brady has actually looked . . . old? Yes, it pains me to say it because, all the bullshit aside, I have been a ride or die Tom Brady dude since his years at Michigan (Go Blue) but time is a bitch and she comes for us all. Tom is only a year older than me, so this one is especially poignant. I mean, he has kind of been a generational touchstone for me going back to the Michigan years. I have followed this dude since he was a literal teenager. Since we both were literal teenagers. To know that the end is at least peaking over the horizon, maybe still a ways off but definitely there, years and years and countless memories behind us both if we dare to look back, is kind of depressing. But what the hell, Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time, he’s won a shitload of titles and will be remembered forever. And I . . . well, I’m a junkie who can never get his shit together, an ocean of promise and talent sabotaged by a complete lack of hustle or will to play the sort of soul dick suckery games that can get me noticed by the People That Matter. But fuck all that. You Matter. I Matter. Everything else is just a soul con. It’s been a hell of a run for Tom Brady, and when I look back on my own shit, I realize that I have blazed a fucking wild trail of gibberish and also had an impact, if not for my own benefit, then for a lot of dudes and lady dudes who have taken what I’ve done and maybe let a touch of it bleed into their own art or their own way of looking at the world. I am not a “success” artistically by any conventional means. Hell, I am an utter failure by that metric, but I don’t have thousands and thousands of followers who only sort of like me. I have a handful, though, a large handful, maybe even an armful, who love my stupid ass, who know that, like Tom Brady, I am the goddamn greatest of all time. Fuck the rest.

Pick: New England