Showing posts with label New York Jets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York Jets. Show all posts

Monday, August 19, 2019

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 21st 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


Friday, September 7, 2018

Out of Time


After a preview which saw my hands ripped cruelly away from Hope as I was pulled with every word back into the Abyss, it’s time. The season is here, The Fear becomes rooted in something Real, something Tangible, instead of in the horrors of the Past . . . or it doesn’t, and we’re all surprised and delighted in ways we’ve never been before, in ways our fathers have never been, our grandfathers, aunts, uncles, the old lady next door . . . look, we’re still 0-0 and in that record all things are possible. They’re just not probable.

Was it wrong of me to give into utter Panic so soon? Maybe, but the thing is, is that Lions fans have a sort of fucked up sixth sense for these kinds of things. We have seen things go bad in every single possible way that they can go bad. We have seen all the variants, and so it’s easy to spot when we see it happening again.

This past week or two has seen Bob Quinn, Matt Patricia and the boys telling Lions fans to “have patience” and to “trust the plan,” which . . . we’ve seen this one before. Unearned arrogance is a killer, a sort of swaggering con addicted to the smell of its own ass even while various dick-shaped objects get shoved up there. Unearned arrogance is The Enemy. It always has been, and that’s what I’m seeing from Quinn and Patricia.

They are so taken with the idea that they are secret geniuses, that they are responsible for The Patriots Way, that they never stopped to consider that they were just hangers-on. They were not responsible for the Patriots success. Tom Brady was. If Tom Brady had never come into their lives – no, let me correct that – if they had never come into Tom Brady’s life, they would be nobodies. Patricia would be a second-rate position coach at some shithole college and Quinn would be selling insurance. They should get down on their knees every day and pray to a statue of Brady, and then they should understand that they have not earned any of this “Trust me, I know what I’m doing” bullshit swagger and smarten the fuck up.

The sad thing, I suppose, is that there’s only so much you can do with that. Maybe they do turn out to be secret geniuses. I doubt it, but hey maybe. But if they’re not . . . then we’re fucked. Because it means that they’re just a couple of arrogant dolts who will crash this fucker into the rocks – again – instead of paying attention to the lighthouse telling them to change fucking course.

Right now, we’re the lighthouse. The only problem is that we’ve been conditioned to think that every ship that passes by will crash into the rocks and so our light never shuts off. This is a mess. It means neither us nor the shitheads in charge can really be trusted, and what do you do with that? Where do you go?

Suppose that Quinn and Patricia see Jesus and realize that they don’t know shit, that they are what they are: lucky to be here. What then? You’re still left with just a couple of ordinary dudes who aren’t up to the challenge. This is bat country, brotha.

This is all almost hilariously grim, which is absurd given that, you know, we’ve yet to play a game, but my sixth sense is screaming at me right now. The reality, the sad, almost too horrible to contemplate, reality, is that it almost doesn’t even matter if these guys really are secret geniuses. Because in order for that to even be true, to even be given a chance to be true, it means that we have to give them our unconditional Trust, and that is a hell of a thing to ask of Lions fans. An impossible thing.

It is not a new idea to compare Lions fans to battered wives. We have spent years getting the shit kicked out of us by a succession of mean drunks. We have PTSD from this shit. Right now, Quinn and Patricia are sitting on the couch pulling from a bottle of Wild Turkey and snapping a belt in their hands. They say they won’t hit us, they haven’t hit us yet, but fuck, man. Just . . . fuck. Asking us to Trust, and then having the fucking gall to be so goddamn rough about it all shows an almost extraordinary lack of understanding for who we are and where we’ve been.

Then again, I suppose it’s not their job to coddle the fans. It’s their job to win football games. But our situation is unique, and if you don’t at least respect the former, it makes the latter a hell of a lot more difficult. It’s pretty hard to win football games when your own fans despise you and are lighting fires under your feet.

But the crazy thing is that Quinn and Patricia don’t even seem that concerned with winning football games. At least not right now. They seem content to just preach patience and build for some future that isn’t real, some hazy ideal that only they can see. It’s the mark of a charlatan, of conmen, and my god, you’d have to be Christ himself to have patience here.

It gets even crazier when you consider that Matthew Stafford is already 30, is signed to a huge long-term deal, and has a window of opportunity that is shrinking with each game. I mean what the fuck is the plan here? I have said many times now that it seems to be trying to capture recent vintage Patriots teams, which is insane enough on its own, but if they’re basically willing to run out the clock on the Stafford era and start anew, then what the fuck could the plan possibly be? How long are we supposed to wait here? They already have a top five/top ten quarterback. What the fuck is the plan?

I am entering panic mode. That much is obvious, and I suppose I should remind myself that the Lions are still 0-0, that anything can happen even if that anything is something we’ve never gotten to experience in 60 years and . . . shit, at some point even the secret games we play with ourselves to keep going, the hidden mind tricks that we torture until they coalesce into something resembling Hope just aren’t enough. The weight is too much, and baby, we’re out of time. Patience is impossible. You either understand that, or you fail. It’s that simple. You either understand the Lions, or you get run the fuck over by the monstrous runaway train of it all. You respect it, or you die of Lions Disease. We’re out of time.

I suppose I should actually talk about the Jets, and if you’re still reading in between huffs on the ol’ ether rag, I commend you for your warrior spirit. We are not like the others, and we press on.

The Lions should be able to beat the Jets. Let me rephrase that: the Lions have to beat the Jets. Not just for this season, but because if they don’t, the dam’s gonna break and shit’s gonna get toxic. Already. After one goddamn game. That is almost absurdly extraordinary, but we ain’t in Kansas anymore for all the reasons I just spent 1,000 or so words gibbering about. This is the world of the Detroit Lions and you have to understand these things if you want to live in it.

The Lions have to beat the Jets because the Jets are a 5-11 team with a rookie quarterback, a whole bunch of injuries – especially at wide receiver – and nothing that should really scare anyone. If you can’t beat a team like that on your home field, on Monday fucking Night, with everyone watching, you ain’t winning shit all year and Plans and Trust and Hope just become cruel buzzwords uttered by charlatans.

Sam Darnold is a rookie, and more than that, he’s a rookie who no one expects to be very good this season. He was drafted in the first round by the Jets pretty much because someone decided at some point that he should be. He never really did enough to earn that, and in his final year at USC he was inconsistent, turnover prone, and had the look of a dude who would be easily overwhelmed at the next level. This is not a dude who anyone should be afraid of, and the Lions should be able to stop him.

Of course, “should” is a dangerous word and given the general sorry-ass state of the Lions defense, this isn’t so much the irresistible force vs. the immovable object, but the resistible force vs. the movable object. It is not really a collision, but two sides running away from each other and hiding under their mothers’ skirts. Or their fathers’ skirts. It’s 2018, I can’t make assumptions like that.

The Lions hope is basically that Darnold self-destructs on his own. They’re certainly not going to do much to make it happen. Darius Slay might have something to say about it, but even the best cover corners get exposed when the defensive line can’t get to the quarterback, and let’s face it, the Lions defensive line, all six(!) of them (R.I.P. Anthony Zettel) isn’t getting to anybody this season.

Still, there is a very good chance that Darnold blows it himself. He’s basically Mark Sanchez 2.0, and that makes it even more hilarious that the Jets of all teams took the bait again. But even if he’s better than I think he is, his receiving corps is decimated by injuries and suspension talk and basically the whole damn group has some question about whether they’ll play or not. This is not a good situation for a rookie quarterback on Monday Night.

The Jets really don’t have anyone who should scare you on offense even if everyone is healthy. Everyone is sort of a C+ starter. Bilal Powell and Isiah Crowell at running back are basically the definition of C+ players. The receivers we’ve talked about, and the offensive line is average on a good day. This is not a good offense. It might not even be a competent offense. If the Lions defense gets ripped up by these dudes – and they very well might given they couldn’t stop anyone in the preseason – then we’re in for a Very Bad Time this season.

Defensively, the Jets have some promising players like Darron Lee and Jamal Adams and a dude who might be called legit good up front in Leonard Williams, but none of them have quite taken that next step towards being stars yet. They might be dangerous, but the thing is, is that the Lions offense should be good enough to face down almost any defense this season. I’ll be interested to see if the Lions can run the ball on these dudes. If they can, the Lions might have a fighting chance this season. If they can’t, then it’s probably all on Stafford again this season.

The thing is, is that Stafford is probably good enough to almost handle that by himself. He’s gonna win some games on his own (well, with the help of his excellent receivers, but still, you get the point.) But it’s that almost that is Stafford’s tragedy, right? I already spent a whole preview post talking about this so I won’t get into it at length again, but you understand what I’m talking about. You’ve seen it, you’ve lived it.

If this game comes down to Stafford having to put it all on his shoulders, the Lions will still have a shot. That is comforting, I suppose. It is also fool’s gold, because we all know what we have with Stafford, and almost isn’t enough. It will mean the Lions go 7-9 instead of 3-13 and really, who cares? We’re out of time.

Listen, the Jets have 16 different dudes with some sort of question mark hanging over their ability to play on Monday. That is ridiculous. That is almost a third of the entire team. They have a rookie quarterback, no real stars that can take over a game by themselves, and a bunch of C+ players at various important positions. The Lions have to beat this team. It is that simple. I think they will, and 1-0 should buy a little bit of goodwill, but I’m not sure that it will tell much of anything. Of course, if the Lions lose, well . . . we’re out of time.


Lions 28 Jets 17