Ghosts Burning on the River

 

Denver (+1.5) at Cleveland

 

 

Hopefully I get this up before the game starts, but if I don’t just read it during the game because it will be more interesting and also, there are no commercials here. Also, also, I write the truth into being and so this could be a magical experience for both of us, which is the same thing I used to tell my drug dealer. Anyway, let’s just get to it.

 

 

In 1986, The Broncos came into Cleveland. They were losers, more or less, with a talented quarterback, but the kid hadn’t done much of anything, hadn’t won anything anyway. The Browns were confident, tough, ready to break through and march to the Super Bowl under young hotshot coach Marty Schottenheimer, which would be the first of many for him certainly. A Young Bill Cowher roamed the sidelines as a defensive assistant, Bernie Kosar controlled the flow of the offense just like he did in college at Miami, and a strong running game led by Kevin Mack and a bruising offensive line did the rest, keeping the defense fresh to deliver an ass kicking behind blue collar Bob Golic.

 

 

Naturally, John Elway took the ball down 7 with only 5 minutes to play and standing on his own 2 yard line, and methodically devoured the Browns soul, scoring a game tying touchdown, which the Broncos would build on with a game winning field goal in overtime to send Elway to the first of his 5 Super Bowl appearances. He would lose the first 3, but won the last 2, famously retiring after giving his entire body to the madness and destruction of football as he kept the ball, running for a crucial first down. This game was the catalyst for a career and a legend and an icon and persona which defines the Broncos team to this day.

 

 

The Browns? They never won a fucking thing.

 

 

Schottenheimer became famous as a dude who would build winning teams during the regular season only to piss it all away when the playoffs came. First with the Browns, then the Chiefs, and finally with the Chargers. And now he’s dead and he never won a fucking thing.

 

 

Bernie Kosar was a golden boy in the 1980s who famously led Miami to their first national championship in 1983, overcoming mighty Nebraska in one of college football’s most celebrated upsets, launching a football program into the stratosphere as it morphed into the Jimmy Johnson convicts with bling ringing on the field team who everyone hated and who won all the games and fucked your girlfriend too. Anyway, Kosar never could take the Browns there, as Elway sonned and silenced him on that fateful day. Later, Kosar could be found on TV slurring like a drunk 8 year old, giving everyone a glimpse at the fun filled glamorous life of a retired football player with CTE.

 

This game and many others that followed literally shrank Bernie Kosar’s brain. And I suppose that is a metaphor for what it did to all of Cleveland football. After all, this is the flash point where Cleveland got the shakes, the yips, the Failure Demons, or whatever the fuck you want to call it. Before then, they still had enough of a proud identity left over from the Jim Brown days when he ran all over the league and also across the beaten bodies of racist hicks everywhere. But after this? After this, they became “The Browns.”

 

 

Insert wild and sad montage, old grannies crying in graveyards, Art Modell sticking his finger in a dog’s asshole in front of the kids, etc.

 

 

And now the Browns are a team trying desperately to erase a history which, ironically, isn’t even their own really since the old Cleveland Browns team left to become the Baltimore Ravens and exorcised their demons that way. But these Browns inherited… whatever the fuck spiritual hell that was left behind, like a kid taking on the name of a father he never knew.

 

 

And these Browns have just been shit on and shit on and shit on, and maybe it’s just the city, which famously never wins anything unless a generational talent like LeBron sacrifices all his happiness so he can drag them to a single hard-won title, or the fans, whose lunch pail Dog Pound persona is working class and like the working class, they get stepped on and shoved down into a hellhole they can never escape from. Or maybe it is just echoes of a ghost of a team that got weak-kneed and let John Elway forge his legacy right in their home. Or maybe Ohio is just a shithole and everyone who lives there deserves everything they get. We can argue on and on about this, but always remember, fuck Ohio.

 

 

Anyway, these new Browns have boldly flown in the face of all that misery. Baker Mayfield prayed at the altar of Kenny Stabler (a half drowned fishing boat down on Alabama’s Gulf Shore, beer cans floating in a helmet submerged) and got himself a great run game which echoes what the Browns were trying to do with Kevin Mack and Ernest Byner back in the day. (Byner is another name that induces curse shudders from Browns fans) And it has been going pretty well, the Browns have come up short a couple of times, but have shown they are right there with the AFC’s heavyweights.

 

So, naturally, Baker Mayfield has had his shoulder gnawed upon by Failure Demons. It was bound to happen as soon as I looked his way. He won’t be playing tonight, as Case Keenum, the wanderer who ironically once took the mantle of Elway heir in Denver and threw for almost 4,000 yards before they dumped him to Washington, steps in to replace him. Keenum is capable, certainly, but he is not the Spirit Warrior the Browns need, that their fans have clamored for. But he’s all that they’re gonna get, at least tonight. Mayfield will supposedly have surgery “following the season” which hints that they will try to grit it out with him and maybe make some Spirit Warrior shit happen with a wounded Snake, but it also could portend that the rest of the season will be a harrowing affair for this Browns team.

 

 

Of course, the Broncos aren’t doing much better spiritually speaking given their failed efforts to tempt The Devil Aaron Rodgers into becoming their quarterback for a few years. He had no interest in their Colorado Libertarian ways as a dyed in the wool communist from Berkeley, California. Really, I don’t know what The Devil believes in, he seems apolitical, just wants to fuck his famous girlfriends or at least have his publicists make him look like he is fucking his famous girlfriends, make soulless commercials that play on a loop in Hell, but he certainly didn’t want to go to Denver. I mean, if he did, he’d be there already, you know?

 

 

So, this game is really all about missing quarterbacks, past and present, about what could have been, about what has echoed down through the souls and the years from Elway and Kosar, but now will be decided in a game between Keenum and Teddy Bridgewater, which… I’ll just stick to my ghosts, thanks

 

 

Winner: Cleveland

Gambling With Sanity Post Game Edition Week... 7?

 

Obviously, things have been bungled by an arch-bungler (me) and Gambling With Sanity has gone off the fucking rails. I want to get back to getting these out in the manner they are intended, allowing you grubby bastards to perhaps gamble in real life, instead of just rehashing what the weekend of football brought us, but HERE WE ARE. My birthday fell on the weekend and there was much rejoicing, but it meant taking time away from you ghouls to be feted and loved by actual human beings, not to say that you aren’t human, but, well fuck, we’re all more human than human here at Armchair Linebacker, so let’s just get to the part where we shoot the elephants.

 

 

 

Tampa Bay 28 Philadelphia 22

 

The forlorn Eagles tried to comeback against Tom Brady and his minions of genetically enhanced cyborgs who fight for his claim to the Outer Dimensions, but were of course driven back and forced to recoil in fear and loathing after having played, yet again, a shitty football game.

 

Jalen Hurts is hurtin’ for sure, unable to really get the passing game going and doing a perfunctory I CAN RUN REAL FAST MA AND PA job at quarterback, but it just isn’t working out. Which is sad for Philly because Hurts was the dude they chose to lean on after Carson Wentz turned out to be a turd. So what do they do now other than look in the mirror at their own clownish incompetence, seeing Frank Reich dancing with another girl, and wondering what the fuck happened to them?

 

I don’t know. It is just a spiritually bereft situation and there are probably exorcisms that need to be performed before they are allowed to smash people in the teeth again and say welcome to Philly as someone’s poor grandmother bleeds out on the field.

 

But for Tom and the Bucs, it was just another day, another paycheck, and getting to rest for a couple extra days or run wind sprints in the Atacama desert in Chile while Uncle Klaus tries to determine just how much of the adrenal gland you need to steal from the local children hired by Tom and Gisele and Company to fan him in between sets. Focus is everything, and right now Tom is focusing on getting Uncle Klaus to mix the adrenaline harvested from the, uh, subjects with dashes from their pineal glands so he can get some fucking sleep before having to wake up and oppress whatever people of whatever shit city is next on his list to conquer.

 

 

Jacksonville 23 Miami 20

 

This is dark. So dark. Jacksonville, obviously, has already bottomed out and sold their soul to hell for Urban Meyer to come in and suck everyone’s life force like a vampire before he is run out of town by VanHelsing and company, and we have already endlessly explored the dark ends of his carnality, but the Miami Dolphins were supposed to be better than this, not just a team dragged as the unfortunate victims of Urban’s menace like a monster ravishing a virgin on prom night just so he can hi-five his pals the next morning.

 

But the Dolphins have allowed themselves to sink into the position of the slowest and dumbest of the herd, and only have themselves to blame for how shit ugly it is getting to be. And it’s only gonna get uglier given reports that they are close to putting Yung Tua in a garbage bag and then dropping him off at the swamp for the local gators to get at BECAUSE they are gonna trade for DeShaun Watson, who has yet to meet a massage therapist he hasn’t tried to rape.

 

Obviously, that game gets even more turned the fuck up given that a combination of Miami massage therapists, with their Cubano asses jiggling everywhere like they stole JLo from a Puerto Rican salon and had her “enhanced” with secret Cuban communist ass demons, and Watson, who will stick his dick in anything, but especially in anything that looks like Demi Lovato cloned by those Cuban ass doctors, will make it so it will only be a matter of time before Florida breaks off from the mainland and is piloted around the Caribbean by pirates doing mountains of blow and enabling DeShaun Watson to enjoy the right of “first night” with their oldest daughters on the eve of their marriage and what the fuck were we talking about? Oh yeah, the fucking Dolphins are now lowlier than the Jaguars. Which is what happens when you make Poor Choices in the quarterback room, and shit, those choices are only getting poorer.

 

 

Green Bay 24 Chicago 14

 

Aaron Rodgers flashing his devil smile and telling the Chicago crowd “I still own you!” is about as meta a super villain gets in the NFL. And, I mean, no one can argue with him, which is why The Devil is what he is. That’s peak Deviling right there, and frankly, it is astonishing that The Devil could stop feuding with lowly management, who I assume are like minion monks banished from Christendom for various foul sins and now work the gateway in Hell, and just carry on like everything is cool and the fucking Packers will run the NFC North until you and your grandchildren die, and even then The Devil probably has a lot of options to keep things fresh and miserable for everyone.

 

The Bears, of course, resemble those bears on ice skates right now, funny to look at, but you don’t want to laugh too hard because they will remember and maul you in your tent just before you jack off and go to sleep. It’s not so good now, and making your way with a new quarterback can be painful, and the Bears are almost surely gonna fuck this all up, but they are bears and will fucking eat you when you trip on a tree root or some shit and it’s time for them to nose around your innards like a racoon with garbage. Ugly, mean, owned by The Devil, but shit, aren’t we all?

 

 

Cincinnati 34 Detroit 11

 

Okay, I have stuff to say about the Lions, but I want to save that for a post about the Lions vs Rams this week as Matthew Stafford goes against his ghosts. For now, it’s enough to simply say that the team is trash and will remain trash, and that they need a quarterback, but there are no good quarterbacks coming unless you want to mess with dudes from Liberty (you don’t want to mess with dudes from Liberty) or that Matt Corral character down at Ole Miss, who at times hints at having whiffs of Stablerism, but that is probably just me mistaking Southern Rapscallionism with just another date rapist, and the kid is originally from SoCal I believe, so fuck, he’s probably less Stabler and more Patrick Bateman. So fuck all that.

 

As for Joe Burrow and the Bengals, well… I have a tendency to write things into reality, a la The Great Willie Young or deciding to write about the Lions just as they step off on an 0-16 adventure, etc., etc., but I can’t help but point out that I have sort of cast young Joe Burrow as a sex fiend from the debauched boudoirs of Baton Rouge, which may have seemed unwarranted, but then LSU coach Ed Orgeron gets fired and stuff starts to come out like he routinely mishandled sex burglary from the boys and that LSU has had 9 players accused of raping all of the Bayou since he took the reins a few years ago. What I am saying is that, yes, I write the truth into being sometimes and no matter how outlandish I get, you just have to wait for history to vindicate me. I write about the underground currents that make reality what it is. And, well, usually it all ends with sex pests.

 

 

Indianapolis 31 Houston 3

 

The bible thumping nitwits of Indiana get to pretend their team is good again just because the Texans are this awful. No, it’s not Manning time again in Indianapolis as Carson Wentz searches for his lost dignity and also his lost talent, and god help us all if the Colts tank and end up somehow landing young Arch Manning a few years from now, Arch being the son of Cooper Manning, who was allowed to have children while his brothers Peyton and Eli traded their dicks for NFL glory. That is a hell none of us need to visit, and so let’s just sneer at the Colts for being a shitty team in probably the NFL’s shittiest division.

 

And Houston being Sodom and/or Gomorrah after that one motherfucker turned back to see his wife turned into a pillar of salt, they are a big reason why the AFC South is such a trainwreck. To be fair, the Texans seemed to understand that this was going to be kind of a transition year after casting Bill O’Brien into hell and watching as franchise mainstay JJ Watt packed up and left for anywhere but here, but they probably weren’t expecting their quarterback becoming Bill Cosby’s new protégé.

 

Yes, these are dire times in Houston. The city is still trying to recover from all those nasty floods and looking with grim fear towards a future in which those floods become common and Houston becomes a frontline in the War Against Earth Itself that we are boldly embarking upon like locust people. DeShaun Watson has likely raped his way through the triage stations set up to help people fleeing from the storm, and all is chaos and mayhem, but the Texans are apparently close to dumping him on another godforsaken city like Miami, so maybe after this season they can take a breath and start to mourn before they embark on their inevitable rebuild. But for now? They are just a vile shit heap of a team.

 

 

LA Rams 38 New York Giants 11

 

 

Again, I have more to say about Stafford that I am saving for the Rams/Lions game in a separate post, but for now I will just say that it is both painful and gratifying to watch Matthew do his thing with a competent team around him. Hard to know when to feel happy and when to feel like shit in these moments, but at least we know it wasn’t him. That’s good for him, but it also lets us know that it’s us, and…. Shit, I will get more into this later.

 

Meanwhile, the Giants are still pathetic and without hope or salvation, but I did see a funny rumor that Little Bill is considering chucking it all in New England to take up with the Giants and return them to glory, which would be part of a story everyone would be horny for given that is where he started his career as a lowly bitch to Bill Parcells. But it also points to the delusional madness of both Belichick backers and Giants fans, who may share a lot of space on the ol’ Venn Diagram.

 

The idea that Little Bill could drop it all and come to New York and rebuild from the bottom up the New York Giants is fucking absurd. He is an old man, corrupt of both heart and soul and probably in other ways too, and Jesus Christ, how the fuck would he have the energy for this? He is a known misery merchant, spending all hours in his office, eating fast food and trying to remember what his children look like before giving up and going to check on Matt Patricia in his office to make sure he isn’t raping or eating anyone. There is NO WAY he could find the stomach to go through the Hell of exhuming the corpse of this fucking team.

 

And on top of that, he has also already been exposed as having been just Parcells and then Brady’s bootlicker all these years and who the fuck thinks that will translate into ancient glories relived? He was an efficient minion for a monster of a coach, the toadying crony of a horrible piece of shit person who twisted the guts of football and all of its players until everyone gave up, exhausted and laid down before him, winning in grim desolation rather than in a joyous parade. Belichick was the exacting staff secretary of that outfit, but now, left on his own, without inhuman monsters to prop him up, he is revealed as just another miserable shit eater of a coach who makes everyone around him miserable too. Good luck, Giants fans!

 

 

Kansas City 31 Washington 13

 

 

Oh shit, we are deliriously short on time so I might rush through the rest before I flip over and write the piece for the Thursday game which starts in just a few goddamn hours or minutes or who the fuck knows how time works???

 

Alright, so anyway, obviously Kansas City had to win this one or else start down their own Trail of Tears, nervously checking to make sure no one was coming for both their remaining credibility as title contenders and their team name, which honestly isn’t that far removed from the Washington team’s old face, albeit with a less crude name, but still, appropriating indigenous people’s shit is pretty high up on the Cancel Committee Agenda. I mean, there are so many other names and images to work with that don’t parody and thus marginalize an entire people, especially ones who already have such a hard time not being sad ass drunks conniving with mobsters for Casino bookings. That’s all I’m saying. They already have so much to overcome.

 

Well shit, before I get cancelled for that, let’s just move on to the next game here.

 

 

Minnesota 34 Carolina 28

 

Goddammit, Carolina, you don’t have to be good, but you at least have to be not so bad that you lose to fucking Kirk Cousins and give him another week of life and time to spread the Faith in his community of mega-church goers who will drop all their savings into the basket after Brother Kirk gets up to tell the people how he was saved by the grace of Christ.

 

We’re trying to run a dickhead out of the league, and here’s Carolina fucking it all up because Christian McCaffrey has an owie like a fucking toddler. Goddamn, Big Ed McCaffrey should have bred his boys better than that. Now he’s got Christian limping around like a baby deer while his other sons are getting worked up playing and working for him at Northern Colorado where Big Ed took the head coaching job. One of the boys even got so worked up he got in a shouting and throwing shit match with the fans. Forget these boys being the new family face of the NFL. Never trust Colorado Libertarian types. One day they are selling you on the opportunities the Rockies have to offer, and the next, they’re eating your liver like the fucking Donner Party.

 

 

Baltimore 34 LA Chargers 6

 

 

Well damn. Sometimes games just come along that clarify things nicely for everyone. The Chargers were looking like they were threating to be a team that could get the jump on everyone and explode as maybe the new Chiefs, but the Ravens just took them behind the woodshed and did unspeakable things to them that even Cormac McCarthy wouldn’t write about.

 

And so we have to recalibrate things, and as it stands now, the Ravens look like they are doing what they do every goddamn year, which is smother a bunch of people to death in a gruesome workhouse and occasionally letting themselves get smothered or ball gagged without a safe-word by some uppity team that takes the Ravens change from the dresser and runs off into the night. And the Chargers might have to pump the brakes a bit and not get too far out ahead of themselves, remembering that they are a team with a new coach who was only a Division 3 defensive coordinator only 5 years ago, and for those who don’t know how the college leagues are tiered, division 3 is like the marginally talented local kids from a small town, it’s barely college football at all and more a glorified high school team experience, which is maybe kinda sorta a lot different than coaching genetically altered mutant freak men who have teams of nerds who piss for them so they don’t melt the containers that are sent off to the lab and have their adrenaline so spiked that they are basically sex pest werewolves howling and hounding at the scent of anything remotely female. It’s a whole different feel and league for sure, and you have to imagine this new Chargers coach will have some pratfalls, maybe one of his players turns up for practice with a dead stripper in the trunk of his car, or maybe one of them shows up for bowling night (gotta keep the boys loose) and opens up his ball bag only to pull out a coed’s head as everyone laughs it up and makes jokes about her being the turkey. It’s just gonna take time, that’s all.

 

 

Arizona 37 Cleveland 14

 

My poor boy Baker Mayfield needs shoulder surgery after the season and I guess isn’t going to play this week, which is tonight as I gaze towards what I still have to write before then. But hopefully this wasn’t a swansong for him, and he will be able to make it all work with the help of good thoughts and prayer and… fuck, this happened because I talked him up, didn’t it?

 

Well shit. The weird thing is that while Baker has fallen, a new young un has arisen in Kyler Murray, who interestingly (?) is my fantasy quarterback and even more interestingly, or at least interesting at all, is that Kyler was Baker’s understudy at Oklahoma, and they are apparently pals.

 

But the NFL is no place for friends, and so one of them had to die so the other could thrive, and sure enough, Baker and Cleveland and Dan and the Me of it all took the cup laced with strychnine and we’re all having rotted guts and hearts for Christmas!

 

 

 

Las Vegas 34 Denver 24

 

So Jon Gruden has been excommunicated for being a message board poster circa 2008 and the Raiders are left to die in misery in their desert hell as the grid goes down and everyone in Las Vegas is forced to find water and stay out of the death heat of the sun, which will happen after Houston surrenders in our earlier discussed Game of the Year vs Nature. I mean, on the one hand, it shows us that this shit is all meaningless and forgettable. On the other hand, it is kind of fucking funny that Mark Davis is left in this desert of shit and despair. And on the other OTHER hand, you all know that even when it all goes to hell, there will still be at least one open casino in Vegas taking action on this and every other fucking game because we are gonna turn Hell into just another day on Planet Earth. It turns out we were all the devil all along.

 

Meanwhile, Denver realizes yet again that they fucked up by not acquiring THE Devil when they had the chance and now all they have are listening to old stories from Elway when he comes back into town or maybe Big Ed McCaffrey and his boys show up and try to force one of them into the Denver lineup. Christian is spoken for, obviously, but Dylan and that other geek are still in need of a home once that Northern Colorado thing goes belly-up on Ed and he has to take a job as the counselor at Columbine.

 

 

Dallas 35 New England 29

 

See? Little Bill is failing off on his own now, no brutal mentors to turn to, no sociopathic terminator quarterbacks to save him. It’s just him and some jackass named Mac, and oh yeah, a few of his kids on the coaching staff because that is the only way they can spend time with their father, not that they’d want to given that he is a literal ogre who gladly shook hands with Donald Trump back when Back to the Future 2 was the reality we were living in.

 

Oh, and of course, he also has Matt Patricia back licking his balls, because who wouldn’t want to have his balls curated by a man who looks like he sweats bacon grease even while he eats and he eats a lot, and whose history with genitals involves yelling at his friend to turn off the lights while he walruses himself onto some poor coed who doesn’t know if she is having a fever dream or if the unthinkable is happening, and no, don’t think about it any more because it will just make you angry when you realize that this horrible piece of shit can crawl back to Little Bill when things don’t work out for him.

 

Also, fuck Jerry Jones too. Thank you.

 

 

Pittsburgh 23 Seattle 20

 

And goddammit, that *other* rapist lives to see another day. What a fucking league. What a fucking culture. Of course, none of it means anything given that Russell Wilson is still trying to figure out how to jerk off with his left hand with his right middle finger all fucked up, and I’m sure it’s been a pain in the ass, especially since Ciara won’t fuck him until he scores another touchdown because she doesn’t “fuck losers” and Russ wonders how it has come to this.

 

But… yeah, Russ is in the shop with a bad digit, Ben is still an unrepentant rapist, and nothing matters.

 

 

Tennessee 34 Buffalo 31

 

This was a big game, both for establishing alpha dog positioning in the AFC race and for cementing Tennessee as the team to beat in the AFC South, which is a terrible division this year, just the dirt worst and Tennessee is their only hope, and it’s at least nice to see that they can throw hands with their peers.

 

It also shows that Buffalo’s run defense is mortal, or at least Derrick Henry is good enough to blast through it, proving that he is the Number One Dog in the league when it comes to running the ball, which is a thing both of these teams like to do, so it is not insignificant that he established himself like he did in this 3 TD game against the Bills who were shaping up to be the new boss of the AFC.

 

And it’s not like Josh Allen was bad or anything. The Titans and Henry just simply outdid him, and all that came after Taylor Lewan had Failure Demons eat away his knees. He is their best offensive lineman, the key to their run game being so damn dominant, also protecting Ryan Tannehill from getting ruined by swarming Death Angels. So it means extra EXTRA that Tennessee was able to outmuscle the Bills Monday Night. It could even be a preview of the AFC Championship game, but the season is still young, Patrick Mahomes still has time to get his shit together, and you never know what hell beast is gonna come out of the North. But for now, this is the NFL at its best.