AFC South Preview

Things took a grim turn for the entire division over the weekend, when Andrew Luck said fuck this shit and retired to a life of doing Andre the Giant impersonations at children’s birthday parties or drowning in wine in the Napa sun while his Stanford degree magically earns him even more money than the $100million he heisted from the Colts, and Lamar Miller, the Texans starting running back, tore his ACL which means he will spend the season at the glue factory.

That cripples the two teams who were probably the favorites going into this season, which leaves the whole fucking division an utter mess with no one around to clean it up save for a wild Mariota turning shit up in Tennessee or Nick Foles bringing some of his Super Bowl magic to Jacksonville. But these are hard things to ask of dudes who have been less than spectacular for most of their careers.

So, what’s left? I don’t know, man, but it will likely be a depressing cripple fight that ends with whichever team has the least amount of injuries “winning” the division and then getting skull-fucked out of the opening round of the playoffs to a lowly Wild Card team. That is some bad energy to go into a season with, but what the hell, strange things happen in the NFL, especially in this division, which always seems to end up with a surprise team running away with it in the end.

I think I would have gone with the Texans this season, and I still might, but I don’t know how they replace Lamar Miller, which means that DeShaun Watson will have to take even more of the offensive burden onto himself, which is no big deal for a dude who has already taken a hellacious beating and suffered a ton of injuries in his first couple of years. Yup, no big deal at all, as he rides out December in a cryogenic chamber to keep him alive until robots find a way to save his life.

If he can stay healthy, though, Watson is probably the one dude in this division who can be a true difference maker on offense. He’s an exceptional athlete, a true dual threat in a time when the speed of the game increasingly begs these dudes to be multi-dimensional, and he does still have DeAndre Hopkins to throw to, so maybe this could still turn out alright?

Yeah, that’s a big maybe, considering that they’re unlikely to get any help from the running game. That means that they’ll need to rely more heavily on a defense that can probably take it if JJ Watt stays healthy and Jadeveon Clowney takes another step towards being a fucking terrifying murder monster along the defensive line. And all of this has to happen while the city still recovers from the wild floods of yesterday, which has left a sort of dank pall over the entire community, of which the Texans are a central part.

It’s hard to focus and go all in on football when you have to be worried that some crazy apocalyptic global warming monster hurricane emerges from the depths to wreck all your shit again. That has always got to be somewhere in these dudes’ heads, just a creeping kind of terror that they don’t know how to combat because they are simple brutes who have been tought to just smash whatever annoying bullshit comes into their lives.

But you can’t smash a hurricane, not even if Trump and his boys Slim Pickens a nuke into the heart of every hurricane that threatens your very existence. That is the kind of hopeless energy that has to hang over these dudes day after day, which I guess makes them fitting representatives of the New Americanism I have written about in the past, just spiritually drowned broken people trying to get by just one more day without their houses being swallowed into the great monster suck of Consequences of all our parasitic destructive ways that has left an entire ecosystem hostile to our very presence.

It’s a hard thing to be in a one on one death match with your own fucking planet, but that is the place where humanity finds itself today, and the Houston Texans are just dudes on the front line, waiting to be swept away by the inevitable tide of vengeance that God swore he would not do again after drowning everyone save his boy Noah back in the day. But God is angry, and fuck it, why shouldn’t he be?

So, anyway, that takes care of the Texans. Which brings us to the Indianapolis Colts, who were probably the one team that could run with Houston at the top of the division. That all came to a hilariously depressing end when Andrew Luck told his team and the entire state of Indiana to fuck off two weeks before the start of the season.

The big uproar in the discourse, of course, (discourse of course, of course discourse) is about the fans booing the shit out of him as he ran off the field in misery and contempt. Everyone rightly piled on dudes like that pissant Doug Gottlieb for calling Andrew Luck soft, but you also can’t blame a bunch of frustrated fans who can only see their favored son, their hope, abandoning them to their own hell. I mean, I get it. I have been through this with Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson. It absolutely sucks, and I think you have to cut people a break here for venting their wrath at their own Failure Demons.

It's okay to separate the reaction from fans who are just behaving like fucking fans always have from the bigger argument about Luck walking away. These are two completely separate issues. One is about that child like battle lust that is pure and untainted, swelling in the hearts of every real fan, who don’t give a fuck about the propriety of their feelings, only the rollercoaster madness of euphoria when your team comes through and the crushing despair when they fuck you over just like everyone else in your life has fucked you over. That is because sports fandom is a cypher for all of that, allowing people to experience extreme swings in emotion in a relatively harmless context. Fans are assholes, and they have every right to be because that is what the whole fucking thing is here for. That is literally why these big spectacle sports exist and you are just clowning yourself if you can’t understand that. And then the other issue is about stepping away from all that and saying “Yeah, I get it, live your life bro” instead of demanding he turn his brain into pudding for your cannibalistic ass. You can both boo the man for the moment, for the fan in you, and respect his decision to walk away from it all. These are not mutually exclusive things.

But still, that leaves the Colts pretty much shit out of Luck (lol indeed) for at least this season, and maybe for the next several seasons. You just don’t recover from losing your crown jewel like that. Trust me, I know. I have been here before.

It sucks too because the Colts managed to upgrade their defense and were poised to ride Luck maybe all the way to the top. But all that shit is gone now, a fire extinguished in the heart of a team, a smoking crater left where Andrew Luck was last seen before he lurched off into the woods to live his life as a Bigfoot.

So that leaves both the Texans and the Colts crippled as they try to drag what’s left of themselves into this new season. And I guess that means that the Tennessee Titans might just win this thing by default, if for no other reason than they haven’t just been spiritually skull-fucked like everyone else. Fuck it man, welcome to America in 2019. MAGA indeed.

The Titans start from an okayish place, a 9-7 kind of place, that can probably be artificially padded by the downfalls of their rivals, but unless Marcus Mariota turns into a big boy that will likely just be a hollow thing waiting to get smashed in the first week of the playoffs.

The Titans are strong enough defensively to hold the line here, especially when they have a head coach like Mike Vrabel who will literally put the pads on in practice to show his defense what he wants. I mean, that kind of hands on I’ve Been There Before leadership can only help a team, right? If he can make Jurrell Casey his avatar on that defensive line then things will probably work out well here, especially since the Titans have one of the better pass defenses in the league.

Still, it will likely all come down to Mariota, who has been okay but not exactly great either. If he can’t do it, the team did bring in Ryan Tannehill to maybe save the day, and who knows, a change of scenery might just be all that dude needs to break out of the promise he showed in Miami a few years back. Either way, the Titans at least have a solid floor to lay face down on when the whole world goes to shit. The Colts and Texans are looking out over an empty elevator shaft, just waiting to fall into oblivion when things get tough.

That might make all the difference here, which is kind of sad, but fuck it, this has never been a happy place and you can fuck right on off if you think I am gonna shine this up nice for you.

I haven’t talked about the Jaguars yet, but to be honest that’s because I don’t know what to make of them. They do this shit all the time, where they seem poised to break out before collapsing in a heap of Failure Demons and shattered dreams. Blake Bortles has been exiled for the crime of being a Jaguar in an even numbered year, and now Nick Foles is supposed to show up and save the day, which is hilariously depressing when you consider that the dude has mostly been a career backup, managing to ride the lightning one perfect time and thus fooling everyone into believing he can be some sort of savior.

I mean, come on, man. Nick Foles can step in and do the job for a team that is already right there. But he is not a dude who you can count on to shoulder the whole fucking franchise and pull it to new heights. That is an insane thing to expect and if that’s what Jacksonville is hoping for, well . . . yeah, you know how this shit goes. Tears and Regret. Huffing Ether in the Cold Night while the Failure Demons howl outside your window, which quivers and threatens to break and let them all come in and devour your soul.

That is where the Jacksonville Jaguars find themselves, huddled naked in the dark, hoping for a miracle from a dude whose only real powers lie in deceiving people that he will keep them safe when all those Failure Demons and the howl of their madness threatens to break on through to the places of your soul that aren’t already ruined.

It’s a shame because the Jaguars still have the makings of a cut-throat defensive outfit, with Calais Campbell, Myles Jack and Jalen Ramsey giving them legit studs on all three levels. But this isn’t the 1970s and defense doesn’t win championships anymore in the NFL. I mean, it does in the very bitter end, but you can’t build a team to get to that end that relies on the defense to carry it. No, this is a wide-open passing league now, a gunslinger’s delight, and if you don’t have the fastest draws and the biggest hand cannons you aren’t gonna make it in these wild streets.

The Jaguars want to run the ball, but Leonard Fournette is kind of busting there, and there have been reports of him wilding out from an emotional maturity standpoint, and so trusting in that to carry the team would be ludicrous even if this wasn’t already a changed league, where running backs don’t seem to matter all that much as long as you have guys throwing nukes all over the place.

Which I guess brings us back to the Texans and Colts. One lost their franchise quarterback. The other didn’t. It lost a running back. In 2019, that is a crucial distinction, and one that might tell you all you need to know about who is gonna take this thing in the end.

I think Houston can probably hold onto the division, but don’t count out the Titans, especially if Mariota can take a step up. If he can, then the AFC South might have something here, If not? Well, shit, I guess they’re all out of Luck.

Predicted Standings

1. Houston Texans 10-6

2. Tennessee Titans 10-6

3. Jacksonville Jaguars 7-9

4. Indianapolis Colts 6-10

AFC North Preview

The AFC North might be my favorite division in the NFL because all the teams and fans hate each other. You’ve got the Browns leaving to become the Ravens and then the “Browns” being brought back for revenge, and then you have the Steelers and Bengals trying to cut each other’s throats, throw in the fact that this division represents a corridor of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Cincinnati, and you have just an unreal cauldron of hard people trying to stab each other in the face to not be so fucked up as the next town over.

I mean, this is ground zero for MAGA bullshit because it is a fucking furnace of layoffs, the plant closing, the dying of a million bullshit American dreams sold to desperate people in a desperate place, and the fire is just getting hotter and hotter and hotter. These are the places where angry low class white trash motherfuckers are so far past the point of salvation that the idea that it was ever even offered to them is a sick sort of joke. They are hatred made animate, crushed beneath the weight of a society that never had much time for them anyway other than as beasts of burden in the steel mllls, fucking Carnegies and Rockefellers pitilessly sucking the life out of the people like vampires, bleeding a people dry just because they fucking can and when you’re dead in the dirt, they’ll own that too and have your bones removed and thrown into the furnace of their greed because they will get your fucking marrow and everything else that is you as a human being in this horrible fucked up world.

And this is where the heart of American football has always been. And it’s appropriate, I think, a violent game, run by cartoon villains with cutthroat brutality, like pimps in the night, and you best believe they will get those dollar bills and leave you broken and crying, wondering what the fuck happened to you, fleeced shamelessly with the implicit understanding that tomorrow you will do it all over again. This is what exists in the hellmouth that is the AFC North. Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide yourself, because these streets are raw as fuck, and the only way to survive is to cannibalize your own, eat the fucking dead and hope that maybe if you make enough noise someone will finally see what the fuck is going on but probably not because we’re all in the fire and even though your smoking husks were the first ones to go up in flames, no one will come back for you because they’re all too busy trying to figure out how to avoid getting immolated themselves.

This is the metaphysical energy that permeates every game played in this division. It is raw and evil, it is Ray Lewis stabbing motherfuckers and Ed Reed barking because he knows that you either eat or get eaten. But that doesn’t even begin to explain the petty resentments, the longstanding grudges and feuds, everyone jealous of the Steelers, the fucking Browns burning like the Cuyahoga River year after year after miserable year, and the Bengals, always the second wife of Paul Brown, knowing that Cleveland resents them for even existing. And then there are the Ravens, who were the fucking Browns before utterly savaging Cleveland and moving to Baltimore. Oh, and everyone usually has a nasty ass defense and it’s cold as fuck in December and whoever gets out of it alive will do so only because they are the most merciless, raw dogged assholes imaginable. I mean, shit, the division’s one longstanding star of stars is a fucking rapist.

And that is where we start from here, in 2019, after a season that saw Baltimore sneak in at the last minute to steal the division from the Steelers, who left Le’Veon Bell behind and now Antonio Brown too, and there is a real sense that anyone could win this fucking thing this year because maybe the Steelers are vulnerable, the Ravens are always seemingly on the precipice of a collapse that they stubbornly hold off year after year, and the Bengals and Browns are, well, the Bengals and Browns.

But that is what makes this season so interesting. You can’t just automatically slot the Steelers in there. I think they’ll actually be better this season without Bell and Brown because, well, they pretty much played without Bell last year anyway and Antonio Brown has become too goddamn ridiculous to indulge. Still, that is a lot of talent to just let walk, but the Steelers do have JuJu Smith Schuster and James Conner ready to be younger, maybe better versions of Brown and Bell and without all of the ridiculous bullshit gibberish drama those dudes carry around.

They also drafted Devin Bush, my man from Michigan at linebacker, and he is tailor made for being the whirlwind destroyer for that defense. He’s gonna be a huge fucking star for the Steelers. I guarantee it.

And yet, I’m not picking the Steelers to win the division. That’s how hot the AFC North is right now. You’re gonna laugh when I tell you who I think will win the division, but fuck it, here we go. I think the Cleveland Browns are about to explode from their shit befouled kennels and finally get some of that Jim Brown energy back.

It all starts with Baker Mayfield. A lot of people don’t like this dude, and I get it, he’s probably a gigantic dickhead, but he has a sort of renegade energy that I can sniff out. I’m not saying he’s Kenny Stabler (r.i.p.) or anything, but he is the sort of dude who will shit down your throat and make you beg for more. He’s a cocky piece of degenerate shit but that’s exactly what your quarterback is supposed to be, all cock and balls and ready to plant a flag in the heart of the enemy, which he fucking did back when he was at Oklahoma and they went into Columbus and whipped Ohio State, He went in there, beat them and then desecrated their shitty field and God bless him for it.

That is the kind of wild spirit warrior energy that can ignite an entire team. And it’s not like he’s alone. He’s got Odell Beckham Jr and Jarvis Landry, two LSU cats who probably got up to god only knows what in the bayous back in the day, and then there’s Nick Chubb, who looked like a bluechip running back fresh out of Georgia last year, and then they went out and got that crazy motherfucker Kareem Hunt, a savage outlaw banished from Kansas City for beating his lady on tape. Now, I don’t condone that shit, but my God, this team has all the makings of a fucking hit squad from hell, all wild energy and feral madness channeled into blowing up out on the football field and dragging Cleveland back from the dead.

It also helps to have Myles Garrett, maybe the best pass rusher in the league, taking care of things on the other side of the ball. But really, it’s all about the potential of all that wild energy. It takes a special dude to harness that and turn it into magic, like Stabler did with those wild Raiders teams back in the day. I think Baker Mayfield may be cut from that same cloth, and if he is, and he can harness all that wild spirit warrior energy, this team is gonna be the next big thing, which is fucking crazy given the whole CLEVELAND BROWNS of it all, but here we are, and I honestly think it could happen.

Of course, odds probably favor it exploding in some horrific yet spectacular meltdown only a couple weeks into the season. I mean, the Browns aren’t fucking around. They have brought in some combustible elements and now they’re asking everyone to trust them with a box of matches and a drunk teenager spraying lighter fluid everywhere while Sabu jumps off the ECW Arena or some wild ass shit. That’s the kind of scene that they are counting on to hold together long enough to burn everyone who isn’t them. Is it insane? Yeah, probably, but fuck it, man, you buy the ticket you take the ride. Everybody Dies, and you might as well fuck a lot and maybe wild out on a terrified Goodell, ripping his clothes off and setting them on fire and shit. Vaya con dios, boys, leave everything burning behind you as you go.

But we can’t count out the Ravens either, can we? I mean, they did win the division last year, and they might have something with Lamar Jackson if they can find a way to uniquely tailor the offense to what he does best, which is run really fucking fast by people and also sometimes throw it past them too. And I think they’re gonna go all in on that approach, with Greg Roman at offensive coordinator because if there’s one thing that dude knows how to gameplan it is running the goddamn football. Jackson can be fused with the whole hardass Harbaugh way and coupled with a defense that always manages to find its way near the top of the league, especially with Earl Thomas coming in at safety, which just feels like a natural fit, they could very well be the ones who survive the orgy of violence that is going to be the AFC North this year.

I mean, the Ravens never really fall too far back, having established the kind of winning culture that just spills over from year to year, team to team. It’s a culture built on strength and brutality, and if the power run game gets going like they want, they’re gonna be hard as fuck to knock off.

And that just leaves the Bengals, who are finally moving on from Marvin Lewis’s corpse. And the Bengals are, well, they’re the Bengals. You never know whether they are going to shit it up or surprise everyone with a division title run. They still have a core of decentish players, with Andy Dalton at QB, AJ Green at WR and Geno Atkins on the defensive line, and they have Joe Mixon’s scandalous ass out there too running the ball. That talent, aside from Mixon, is aging, though, and you have to wonder whether the team will take one last shot at it with this group or whether they’ll choose to blow it all up with a new coach.

They could be feisty, but my guess is that there just isn’t quite enough there and after this season, they will scrap and rebuild.

And so where does that leave us? Well, I already put my ass out there for the Browns (Hi, Dan!) and I still think the Steelers are probably the smart choice to win the division, but I still can’t dismiss the Ravens. In the end, I just have to go with my gut and ride with the Browns or else end up looking like a bitch of some kind, which, well, I am, but not like this.

But it really doesn’t matter who wins this division because the fun will all be in the wrecking hate that ruins all of these teams and their fans while their left behind cities decay into sour memory and grief, a last angry white trash cacophony of shrill terrified shrieks from ghosts who were dumb enough to believe that America was anything other than a con right from the fucking start. That is what will be the story of the AFC North this season and I can’t wait to watch it because I am a fucking ghoul just like you and these little hatreds keep us from looking out across the terrifying plane of Americana and seeing what vicious hatreds and monsters are waiting for us, that live with us, that are us. Are you ready for some fucking football????

Predicted Final Standings.

1. Browns 11-5

2. Steelers 10-6

3. Ravens 9-7

4. Bengals 6-10
 

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