Meat and Potatoes

(all a motherfucker needs!)

There is a thing that is happening here with this 2010 Washington Redskins that has not happened for a number of years. No, I am not all geeked up on Homer McFanboy Kool-Aid thinking we are playoff bound and will return to Super Bowl glory. I mean, with the NFC the way it is, and the whole NFL really, the playoffs are not out of the question for anybody. And I guess somebody will have to back their way into a Super Bowl, but I certainly don’t see the Redskins doing it. The offense has been too hit or miss and is missing a full cast of playmakers plus is playing with like an expansion franchise’s offensive line basically, since nobody bothered to draft anybody worth a shit for the O-line the past ten years until this past spring.
But the defense has got me geeked as fuck. And not because they shut people down, because shit man, people been throwing like mad on us all year long. But when necessary, the defense shuts down the scoreboard, which is all you can really ask for. But even more awesome than that is how they’ve been crushing motherfuckers. Two weeks ago, Michael Vick got knocked the fuck out. He’s been gone ever since with his ribs separated from his heart or some bullshit. Last week, Aaron Rodgers got concussed, and they are saying it was on the last play of the game for the offense, but there was a shot earlier in the game where Rodgers looked pretty dazed and confused afterwards. With new NFL concussion rules, they have to act like they took people out immediately, but you know the deal. But that’s two weeks in a row where the opposing team’s starting QB is gone from the fucking line-up the following week. Gone.
This is Meat and Potatoes football, which is a played out cliché that people use for blue collar types, eating simple man meals and putting in work all day every day. “Meat and potatoes” became famous around Redskinsland because it is a phrase that Laron Landry pretty much says all the time. “Meat and potatoes” means just putting in work. He uses it so much that last week on Saturday night before the Packers game, a little before midnight, he posted a picture of actual meat and potatoes inside his Twitters, saying he was gonna eat and then work out. Apparently it is his custom, in the team hotel, to order a steak and fries right as room service is shutting down for the night, get his eat on, and then holmes works out late into the night, alone in his hotel room, pumping slow jams. Seriously. And this is not a euphemism for having sex. Holmes is crazy intense and pumps fucking booty-knocking music while working out like a madman in his hotel room the night before games well into the early morning.
That intensity does not diminish during games. If you have not seen the Redskins play this year yet, let me just tell you that Landry is on some next level shit. There are deep secondary headhunters who take shots a couple times a game and get a rep, but Landry is seriously lurking on every play looking to decapitate a motherfucker. I said the other day how this season for Landry is reminding me of Sean Taylor’s breakout season, but there was a difference. ST 21 seemed like a dude who could be chill off the field, at least after he had a kid with that chica caliente. But Laron… I don’t know. I seriously expect this guy to be involved in some sort of ridiculous criminal enterprise at some point. He seems slightly sociopathic, which, for me at least, in the context of football, is completely a positive.
I know in this era of brain damage concussions and IED caused problems, we are supposed to be extra cautious with shit like this. But I say fuck that. First of all, it’s football, and really this is the final era of real football. The brain damage shit is coming to light, and in twenty years time, to choose to be a football player will seem as retarded and reckless as choosing to be a boxer. But in this transitionary period where the NFL has concussion posters in every locker room, having a motherfucker on defense set the pace with a crush or be ashamed attitude, this is a great boon to our Redskins. Fuck other teams and their players. Also, earth is overloaded with the self-important and overly indignant. Perhaps what we could use is some more mentally decapacitated people to take us back to the simpler things in life. Fuck all these smart phones and bitly urls and 3g wi-fi zaps to our sub-unconscious. Every retarded and autistic and half-wit child born to our grand village is the gods saying “fuck you assholes,” nudging us back the other way.
So L-Double (all the great young players getting me hyped seem to have double initial – Laron Landry, Brandon Banks, Anthony Armstrong) brings the Meat on this Jim Haslet defense. What of the potatoes?
Potatoes are a simple tuber and a staple of many diets. Shit fills you up, so you can slice up a small chunk of pork, fill the meal out with potatoes and cabbage and a little salt, and you and the fam are set. Bake you a loaf of bread in the wood cookstove, and yall is set for three days, and feeling good enough that you make the kids sleep downstairs by the fireplace so you and the ol’ lady can try to loosen the bed ropes holding up your goose feather mattress one time. Feeling good.
Potatoes are also a slang bareknuckle fighter term – you know, those dudes who wear suits from the Goodwill but without a tie and ride freight trains and have fights for wine bottle money in abandoned stockyards – for a knock-your-ass-back punch.
In my brain, I consider the potato of this defense to be one Mr. London Fletcher, small college alumni, and unheralded master of the middle linebacker position. In the time he’s been in the NFL, defenses have become far more complicated, and the MLB position has become considered the defense’s equivalent to the QB – a highly cerebral and ultimately important roster spot to fill.
London Fletcher is not a homegrown talent, having put in work in St. Louis and Buffalo before coming here as Gregg Williams right hand in the huddle during that time. And the Gregg Williams era of Redskins defense, featuring one ST 21, gave us some swagger on that side of the ball, and had some solid moments, but never really hit the NFL big time. Once Williams got run off so that Snyderratto could fuck the team up with their Jim Zorn puppet, and Greg Blache (who was one of the Cosby Show’s 19 grandfathers), the team sort of coasted on their talent, basically playing not to fuck up too badly on defense, which of course left them fucking up. You can’t play to not lose; you gotta take that shit from somebody. Smash a motherfucker in the jawbone and make what’s his your’s, and dare him to look at you funny. That never happened with Blache, which is why a guy like Albert Haynesworth was in 7th Heaven, because he really didn’t have to do anything except be a big name who performed every now and then.
Fletcher stayed on and was fiercely loyal to Williams, and then Blache, and then Jim Haslet when he rolled into town this offseason. That’s #59 – the consummate professional football player. He understands what’s going on two steps ahead of most others – the consummate MLB. And he finally got a Pro Bowl invite last year after another dude dropped out of the game since it was only in Miami, after 12 years and leading every team he played on in tackles every year he has played in the NFL. He is where the ball goes.

(two weeks ago, bitch ass - REAL MEN FIGHT COCKS!)

Which is what makes this year’s defense seem like some next level shit for a Redskins fan. Because the headhunter Landry is commandeering tackles all over the field, playing like a London Fletcher, but with rabies. And London Fletcher has hit people a couple times very much unlike a dude with over a decade in the league. He’s looked like a tinier Ray Lewis more than a couple of times this year. Meat and Potatoes. And that shit spreads throughout the 11 on defense. Neither of these high profile dudes were involved in the hits that knocked out Mike Vick or Aaron Rodgers. But the defense has that mentality now. You will not score, and we will break you. We will fuck you. Shit, you are probably better than us, but we are going to cripple you and then fuck you in the end.

(last weekend, punk ass bitch looking my sister's crackhead ex-boyfriend!)

All of this has me excited as hell for this week. Sunday night football, which means I have all day to prime myself with homemade fermented beverages. I have some gruit ale I made, which is a mildly psychotropic beer bittered with herbs instead of hops made by Norwegians. It gets nasty the longer you have it, and mine has been sitting in the hall closet for close to five months now, and I’ve still got like 15 24 oz. bottles of it to kill. I have found it is not so foul-tasting at this point with a bit of ginger ale mixed in, and I plan to drink it in abundance, starting around 10 am on Sunday morning when I cook up some of my slaughtered pigs out of the front porch freezer, make a nice omelet with some eggs straight from the coop in the back yard, get myself feeling good about life. Shit man, with a night game, I’ll probably drag the radio into the back yard and stand around playing horseshoes with some homeboys during the day, try to win me a few $5 bills, and get amped and amped and amped for Colts vs. Redskins.

(welcome to D.C., fuckwad!)

Understand two things about this… First of all, it is Tuesday and I am anticipating the following weekend’s game. I do not remember this feeling as a Redskin fan from my adult years. I am excited. And secondly, I do not think the Redskins are better than the stupid Indianapolis Colts. In fact, I fully expect us to lose. But Peyton Manning has lived a relatively unblemished career so far as the injury report is concerned. He is like an Americanized European explorer, forcing his way onto the natives he conquers every week, every year, plundering defenses for whatever the fuck he wants, and getting all the glory. But he’s running into some headhunters this weekend. And it will be a night game, hopefully giving whatever faggots can afford to be in-the-stadium Redskins faithful a good chance to destroy their inhibitions with alcohol. And giving Laron Landry plenty of time to work his way through a few Sade playlists on his iPod all afternoon, getting jacked the fuck up. Precious Peyton Manning is gonna run into some motherfucker headhunters this weekend. And he may roll out with 5 TD passes and blow us out in the first half. But we will see what type of condition Peyton Manning’s condition is in come next Monday morning.