Gambling With Sanity Week Whatever I'm Sorry I Don't Know Jeremy, Okay?

6-7. That’s what I went last week, which means that no thumbs are getting broken but you might want to put your hands in your pockets just to be safe. Don’t blame me, I abhor this disgusting scene, a bunch of fucking vultures picking on the brains of the stupidest of us all. There are bodies buried in the gambling desert, fat cats and idiots alike. I’m only here to help you beat this disease by explaining to you that the world is totally fucked and no one is getting out of this shit alive. That’s right, Everybody Dies here at Armchair Linebacker dot com even if that isn’t the address anymore because I am a wretched idiot who has made far too many poor choices to count. I had to sell the OG address just so I could get some chap stick to suck a man’s dick behind a dumpster for five dollars. You don’t want to know what I spent that five dollars on, so let’s just get to this week’s games, idiots and ghouls.

LA Chargers (+1.5) at Oakland

Amazingly, the Raiders are actually a nose ahead of the Chargers in the standings at the moment, but really, this is a football game for Los Angeles’ Soul. Sadly, LA doesn’t give a single shit about the Chargers, who began their journey here, were exiled to San Diego, which is more chill than LA, and then they came back home to a people who wanted nothing to do with them. Meanwhile, the Rams had vacated the city for St. Louis, and the Oakland Raiders had become the Los Angeles Raiders during the wild 80s, when culture as we know it exploded and then died. In this postmodern culture we’re living in now, the Raiders have moved back to Oakland, only to sell out like whores yet again, this time to Las Vegas, the Rams have come back to LA to reclaim their crown even though nobody ever really gave a shit about the Rams anyway, it was always about the Raiders, and the Chargers are back home but nobody wants them. It’s a fucked up situation, and the real solution to all this madness is probably to put the Raiders in LA which sucks for my boys in Oakland, but the world is fucked, they know.  LA is a strange place, a decadent place, the most American thing in the universe. LA is every wild stupid dream we have collectively had as a country. It is the City of Angels, the City of America. It is the Beach Boys and Guns N Roses. It is Hollywood. It is Michael Jackson making a goddamn scene. It is Terminator 2 with that sick chase scene in the LA River basin. Yeah, there’s supposed to be water there, they really did build a concrete river. It is the dark heart of the American Dream, Paradise City where the grass is green and the girls are pretty, never mind the urchins living under the streets. LA is everything we believe ourselves to be. LA is our Mecca, the place where we all belong as idiot Americans. There is no city more American than LA, which is funny because more than half the people who live there are Mexican, but that’s the whole fucking point. Americans are a relic, a stuffy assed people who got off a boat and read their bibles, but in our heart we are Mexicans, and LA is the capital city baby. This is who we are. Anyway, enough rambling. The point is that LA needs a team to ride, but neither of these teams are that team. Who will win? Fuck if I know.

Pick: Chargers

Kansas City (-3) at Tennessee

Obviously, this hinges upon the health of Patrick Mahomes, but assume he plays and this is probably an easy call for the Chiefs. The Titans do have a decent defense, but this is 2019 and nobody gives a fuck about defense anymore. All that said, I don’t care about this game at all.

Pick: Kansas City

Buffalo (+2.5) at Cleveland

Man, I feel so goddamn bad for my dude Baker Mayfield and also my loving son, Dan. I fear that I cursed them by attaching my interest to their ups and downs, which of course meant that there would be many more downs than ups.  I feel like they can still turn this thing around, but not this season, which is already lost. Meanwhile, the Bills are sort of the Browns mirror image in that one is 2-6 and one is 6-2, but also that they both represent steel belt American cities, dying cities with fat people clogging their arteries with sausages and suffocating under a blanket of snow and misery, occasionally setting fire to a river here and there. They are two depressing cities filled with depressing people and the only way out is a heart attack. Somehow, the Bills are making moves this season behind a damn good defense and the Browns are, well, the fucking Browns, drowning in the toilet yet again, slaves to their fucked up Failure Demons. It’s a bad situation, a never ending shitter of a situation, and I feel bad for them. Me, a Lions fan, feeling bad for the Browns and Dan, and my god, that is so very tragic. Anyway, they’ve fucked it all up again and I don’t know what to tell you other than I love you, Dan, and one day I will crash at your place and read books and watch the other football with Jude and watch movies and maybe make love.

Pick: Buffalo

Arizona (+5.5) at Tampa Bay

Both of these teams are shit, but more importantly the places they represent are shit. Arizona is an awful place. It is a beautiful place, a desert place, but the people are fucking rotten, ground zero for fascist build the wall America. And Tampa Bay is no better, home to retirees who hate the Jews and shit and piss in the ocean. Put these two peoples up against each other and you have a Nazi reunion. Gather them all together in one place and just hit the fucking eject button on these evil cocksuckers.  Anyway, they all suck and so do their football teams.

Pick: Tampa Bay

NY Giants (+1.5) at NY Jets

Not exactly a road game for either team, as the stadium will be packed with a bunch of Yankee jackasses who have ruined America for everyone else. Fuck New York and Wall Street and all you motherfuckers who have fucked this place up. The city that never sleeps? Fuck it, it’s a goddamn outhouse of the soul and I hate it and I hate all its stupid fucking teams which are a blight on the culture. There is nothing that separates Jets and Giants fans. You’re all a bunch of sweathogs, mouth hanging open, loud ass motherfuckers, rude as hell. You people are shit. Just the goddamn worst. Fuck New York. Fuck Rudy Giuliani and fuck the Cuomos. Fuck the Yankees, and the Mets, and these two goddamn teams too. Fuck ‘em all. You are a pestilence on humanity. You ruined it for everyone else and I hope you rot in hell.

Pick: Jets

Atlanta (+13) at New Orleans

Now, New Orleans, now that is a hell of a town, a town with character and soul. Fuck New York. Shit. Let me calm down. Anyway, New Orleans is a hell of a place and the Saints are a hell of a team. Meanwhile, the poor Falcons are still struck dumb from whatever cursed them on that 28-3 day that none of them will ever be able to forget. It’s hard out here on these cursed streets, and you especially don’t want to be trading hexes with the people of New Orleans who will voodoo you into insanity. Atlanta, they should have never rebuilt you after Sherman burned your dumb ass to the ground.

Pick: New Orleans

Baltimore (-10) at Cincinnati

Man, the Ravens have just slayed the king and now they are gonna hang their nuts all over everybody the rest of the season. They have the best offense going today, that ground attack that no one can defend because everyone is a soft ass pussy these days. They are like stormtroopers marching through Belgium. And now you have the worst team in the fucking league in front of them. This one will be ugly. War Harbaugh, the Bo Schembechler way will never die as long as these whacky fuckers are still alive putting these death walkers to work.

Pick: Baltimore

Carolina (+7) at Green Bay

Cam Newton is still out, but the Panthers have incredibly survived so far thanks to Christian McCaffrey running wild on everyone. He’s on pace for like 1700 yards rushing and 700 yards receiving. He’s the MVP right now, in my idiot opinion. The Panthers don’t even need Cam Newton with this dude running on everybody’s ass. But he’ll have to run the goddamn devil into the ground if the Panthers have any hope of taking down the Packers, who are still led by that evil motherfucker, Satan himself, Aaron Rodgers. He will get his, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he took McCaffrey’s soul here. I mean, the dude is named Christian and he is coming to the devil’s house at Lambeau in November, which is the most hideous hell house of them all. I just can’t pick against the devil here. I just can’t.

Pick: Green Bay

Miami (+15.5) at Indianapolis

It’s been a tough season for the Dolphins, who haven’t been any good for a long ass time now. It’s almost shocking given that the Dolphins were one of the OG NFL badasses of the 70s and 80s. But that’s a long time ago, and Bob Griese and Dan Marino are old as hell. Don Shula is senile. All they have is that pathetic little party that they have every year when the last undefeated team goes down so the 1972 Dolphins can keep their perfect record. That was 47 years ago. That’s a long fucking time. You senior citizens can’t drink like that. Go to bed before you piss yourselves.

Pick: Indianapolis

LA Rams (-3.5) at Pittsburgh

The Steelers are hanging in there even without the rapist. That’s because they happened upon my boy Devin Bush, Jr., a goddamn Spirit Warrior king and a Michigan Man. We have so much in common. I’m so happy he’s running wild on the NFL and I curse my fucking Lions for not drafting him. He was right there you idiots. But fuck the Lions and fuck me, I guess. But never fuck Devin Bush. He is a king of men, and he will be a Hall of Famer and The Man in Pittsburgh, and I’m happy for him. I just wish the fucking Steelers weren’t the beneficiaries of his grandeur. Especially that idiot ape rapist quarterback, who will ride Devin like a parasite as his career winds down. Someone get that asshole in chains.

Pick: Rams

Minnesota (+3) at Dallas

Kirk Cousins meets Jerry Jones and this is why America sucks so goddamn bad these days. These two idiots are front and center in the worst parts of our discourse. A despicable oil conman and a good Blackwater boy get together to ruin the whole fucking world. It’s all money and fake ass Christianity with these idiots. I’m surprised that Jerry Jones didn’t just go out and buy Kirk Cousins and start a megachurch of the Dallas Cowboys. What a goddamn scene that would be, right? Jerry and his cheerleaders, crack and cocaine spilling out of Michael Irvin on the altar all while Kirk Cousins talks about Jesus. What a fucking fiasco. Thankfully, these two jackasses have not consummated this unholiest of unions yet, and maybe we can take them down one at a time before they join together and ruin the universe. Fuck them both. Fuck ‘em all.

Pick: Dallas

Seattle (+6) at San Francisco

Nobody saw this 49ers domination coming, right? It’s amazing to watch them be reborn yet again as the NFC’s biggest monsters behind a killer running game and a dominant defense. It almost feels like a Harbaugh team even though there are no Harbaughs here anymore since that dipshit York ran my boy Jimmy back home to me. But the 49ers are doing it the way Jim would do it, the way his brother John is doing it in Baltimore, the way their dad Jack did it, the way their godfather Bo did it at Michigan back in the day. This is Michigan football, baby, and I love it whenever I see it. I don’t love the 49ers and their fancy ass fans, but fuck it, we can hate fuck our way to a Super Bowl between these 49ers and the John Harbaugh’s Ravens. I want to watch that game. Fuck you kids with your Air Raid offenses. I hope you all die a violent death and rot in hell.

Pick: San Francisco

Sisu

So close, but so very far away, the Lions wheeze their way to 3-4-1 and we all pray for rain in this desert of the doomed. We have been here before, and we know how this story ends. It doesn’t matter if it’s Fat Matt and Bob Quinn and their Patriot Way or Matt Millen and his How Did I Get This Job Way or Wayne Fontes and his I Like My Spaghetti This Way or Jim Caldwell and his I Don’t Understand How The Sun Works Way or Marty Mornhinweg and his Take The Wind Way, we are damned to repeat this nonsense, wandering in the desert of the doomed, where there is no water anywhere, and the end is just a shallow grave.

It’s apropos that the Raiders are headed to that desert to make it their home, and we’ll welcome them because we’re already here. Matthew Stafford is a damn fine quarterback, and he has toys to play with here in the desert and he makes beautiful sand castles with them, but it’s too goddamn dry here in the desert of the doomed, and it will all just collapse after being withered away by hell winds that never stop, that have been blowing for 60 plus years now, that are eternal and are the heart of the Detroit Lions story.

So, that sucked. Losing to the Raiders as they pack their bags and shit on their fans is classic Failure Demon shit. You can check out anytime you want but you can never leave, baby. This is all that we know as Lions fans, this stupid bullshit that has a thousand different names and a thousand different faces but is all one thing: death. Death and defeat. This week it was dying at the 1 yard line because we don’t get to have nice things. Next week, it will probably be somebody running out of the back of the endzone or a Hail Mary or just a good old fashioned buttfucking by the refs. It doesn’t matter how it happens, it only matters that it happens and it always happens to us, and my god, how long, lord, how long?

There are people who will never flee this sinking ship and I suppose I am one of them. There is that Finnish dude who marches around, his name is Joe Pauqette and he tries to infuse the team with Sisu, which means perseverance, and yeah dude, I get it and we are sworn Finnish brothers baby to the end, but my god, man, just my god.

Sisu is all we have as Lions fans. It is what keeps us together. It is what keeps us from falling madly off the face of the earth, cackling and huffing ether at 3AM, which is the time I am writing this right now. Sisu is the stubborn old man inside all of us that won’t let us let go of this godforsaken team.

Sisu is the heart of the Detroit Lion fan experience. It is all we know, all we have ever known, all that we have tried to warm each other up with as a Barry Sanders gets broken and a Calvin Johnson gets mutilated for our sins. Sisu is the word that we whisper to each other to let us all know that we are in this dumb fucking thing together, and I have your back and you have mine, and it doesn’t matter how this collapses like it always does because we have each other and even in the desert, people need people, and we need Sisu.

Moses once led a people through the desert, but this one is longer than that one was and there is no salvation to be found at the end of this journey together, only pain and regret and rotten memories. Moses knew about Sisu. He had to or else his people would have crumbled on him, strung him up and sent his ass back to Pharaoh. But he knew Sisu and he used it to guide his people out of that damn desert and into their holy land where they have proceeded to fight with everyone else there because we are all just idiot fuckups who can’t get along with each other.

Moses and Joe Paquette both understand Sisu, and so do all of us who have wandered this desert of the doomed for far too long. I am thirsty as hell and a few days back one of the camels spit on me, but what the fuck am I supposed to do? I can’t escape this desert. I have tried and it wouldn’t let me. All I see is sand and sadness, bitterness and regret, but I have you and you have me and we have Sisu, so maybe that’s what it’s all supposed to be about, I don’t know.

The Oakland Raiders are a gang of vagabonds, idiot hustlers who will attempt to tame this desert, but they will fail and their bones will lie next to ours, in shallow desert graves, while people gamble away their children’s future in a neon sunset that we’ll never get to see. I am 40 years old now, 40 ridiculous years old, and that is nothing compared to the epoch of sadness that is Detroit Lions football. When my grandfather was 40 the Lions were a good decade and a half into this desert of the doomed. When my kid is 40 (I’m sure there is one out there) he will look back and he will see me decrepit in this same damn desert and behind me he will see my grandfather and we are all here and the scenery never changes.

There are a lot of people responsible for this shit heap of a team. It starts with the Ford family, those Nazi loving fucks who have cousin fucked their way down the incest tree to produce a litter of ever stupider Fords, all suckling from the teat of Big Daddy Henry who started this godforsaken thing, this team, this family, this city and its cars. They are still here and they will never let go because this belongs to them and so do we all in our shame and failure. It is goddamn hard being a Lions fan, being owned by the Fords like this. It doesn’t matter which idiot of the week they put in charge here because in the end it all comes down to that old lady and her kids and their kids and it goes on and on and on and it will never end as we march through this desert of the doomed, with Sisu the only thing keeping us sane.

It was another football game, another inevitable defeat, and even the goddamn Raiders fans feel bad for us as they watch their dudes pack their bags to flee town yet again. I don’t know who is next up to try to lead us out of this desert, but I do know that it doesn’t matter, just like it doesn’t matter to these Raiders fans, who have been abused for far too long by an idiot family. Al Davis isn’t a Ford, but he might as well be. Both sold visions of an America that wasn’t real, all while supporting fascists on the side. The Raiders are dead and gone, and we were beaten by their ghosts. Can’t even beat a goddamn ghost these days. That is life as a fan of the Detroit Lions.

But we still have Sisu, and even if that is all we have at least it is something. Our Lions are not leaving us any time soon. We are stuck with them, and they are stuck with us in the desert of the doomed, but we have Sisu. We have Sisu. My boy Harpo gets to cleanse himself of his Raiders and I get to sit here and eat shit yet again. That is just the way it goes here, baby. We are all in this together, and we will all need Sisu if we’re gonna make it out of here alive. In the meantime, I invite you all to get high as fuck and howl at the moon and I will see you all in Valhalla.

Brother vs Brother

The Lions get a final visit to Oakland before the moving vans start hauling ass to Las Vegas, along with the shredded heart of my boy Harpo, who is the dude who invited me to first write about football at Armchair Linebacker so you know he is Spirit Warrior #1 for me.  And in the many years of our friendship we have seen our two teams fuck up in about as many ways as a team can fuck up. At least his team is abandoning him for what is essentially a moral Thunderdome of a city, to a place where the whole point of its existence is to fleece goobers and get fine upstanding tow truck drivers to sell their trucks and their families in a desperate chase for that winning hand that never comes except for maybe as a failed hand job as life rips your dick off.

It is a horrible thing to continue to chase the idiot dreams of fandom long past the point when it was fun, and at least my boy Harpo has a way out here. I mean, your team straight up walking out of town on you gives you an opportunity to say okay well fuck all y’all then. This isn’t like the time Vampire Al Davis took the team to Los Angeles and then brought them back again. At least there was still an unbroken link between fan and team vis a vis borders, but this time is different, this is a divorce that is ugly and will only hurt my dude Harpo and people like him, who grew up on the fierce Spirit Warrior Raider way, that started with Kenny Stabler and the gang and then infused new blood like Marcus Allen and Bo Jackson as the glitzy 80s rolled on.

After that, it was all punk moves and waiting for Uncle Al to shuffle off this mortal coil. Sure, there were bright spots, one last run at the Super Bowl behind Rich Gannon of all people. But, the Raider Way has been a dying light for far too long, and now it is just a bloated corpse that its people are ready to dump off on some other shithead city, just bury that fat fucking whale in the desert, baby and tell your kids that there used to be a team here called the Oakland Raiders, and they were badass, but the world is fucked up, and now they are gone and all that’s left are memories and ghosts.

For me, though, the memories are all fucked up too, because I have no living memory of my team being any damn good except for a bright star flash here and there. Even the best parts about being a fan of the Lions are cloaked in a sort of bitterness that it’s almost like the world decided to fuck us over twice more. Barry Sanders was the best goddamn dude to ever play football, and the Lions broke him, made him walk away from football because they crushed his spirit. Calvin Johnson was the most talented athlete I’ve ever seen. He too walked away too early, and now spends his days fighting with the organization that ruined him. He has been brain damaged and fucked over by the team that I am a fan of and for fuck’s sake, this is not how it’s supposed to be.

And this goddamn team doesn’t even have the decency to just fucking leave like a failed father. You fucked up, might as well move two states away, you worthless piece of shit. They just sit here, punishing us, year after year, too dumb to die, too stupid to live, and it never ever gets any better. It is just an endless parade of clowns and charlatans who have no idea what they are doing. Owned by a family that were Nazi supporters, run into the ground again and again and again by their stubborn ineptitude, channeled through jackasses like Matt Millen, who by the way is a former Raider because the world is fucked up and stupid. And now we have witless sociopaths pushing some bullshit Patriot Way to cover for the fact that they are just leeches, fucking parasites that the Patriots were all too ready to get rid of.

It doesn’t really matter what happens this Sunday between our two teams. Harpo and I have seen an endless shitstorm of fucked up garbage from them through the years, and we have always commiserated and laughed together because that’s what friends do. We could swap teams, but what is the point? The Oakland Raiders are probably my favorite team of all time, but that team existed before I was even born. The Lions have never been worth a goddamn thing to me, and if they left town like the Raiders are doing, I would help them pack.

Fuck both of these teams. Fuck them to a place so dark that all we see is black. I don’t like writing this, or saying these words to you. But fuck it, man, we have been fucked over for so long by this goddamn team, by the NFL, by the refs, by the entire goddamn shitty industry, and I don’t have to love these fuckers. I want to love them, and that is the fucking problem. It sucks being abused like this, and every time we say enough is enough and that we are walking away, we still come back because we are weak and stupid and pathetic. At least Harpo’s team has the guts to walk out on him. They don’t even want him chasing them.

So that’s what’s up as we sit here ready to watch another fucked up week of NFL football, cheering for teams that have ruined our hearts and our minds, secretly hoping that the whole fucking thing would just go away and leave us alone. Harpo gets to wash his hands of his team. I don’t. This is because I am a goddamn idiot. I’ve been abused, shit on, fucked up by this worthless team and it’s never going to get any better because THE MANIACS ARE INSIDE THE HOUSE. They’re here and they hate us and they will never let us get any joy from this idiot life. Fuck the Raiders, fuck the Lions, they are two shitty teams leeching off whatever life we have left inside of us. I will see them in hell, and I will see my boy Harpo in Valhalla.

Raiders 16 Lions 12