NFL 2011: Week 3 - AFC North & West (1st Quarter)

At my riverside hiking spot by the abandoned freight trains, I found a patch of jimson weed, and like any good-natured spirit-walker, I've been chewing on datura seeds a lot lately, to get my mind attuned to the level of reality above the electrosmog cyber clutter of our new-spangled bullshit world. This has caused me to be tortured by visions of our not-so-distant future lately, which isn't entirely bad as I've written about five short stories this week in a genre I call Recession Apocalypse, but it also leaves me up at 5:00 am on a Saturday morning, freaking out over things that don't yet exist, and yet excited about the vast societal changes we'll all be seeing. For example, the future of the NFL. In these very clear visions I've been having, which can only mean they are more prophecy than dream, the NFL is the one sports league that really survives the financial decay the world continues to spiral through, though it happens in fairly bizarre fashion. The NFL of the not-so-distant future is larger - roughly 48 teams - but actually smaller, as only 16 teams stay in the actual NFL, comprised of two 8-team conferences. The other around-32 teams play in regional NFL divisions of six to ten teams, and it fluctuates, and teams fold and start up, and the desire is to move up to the main tier of the NFL. That main tier, they play home-and-aways with every conference rival, plus four games out against the other conference, and then two against second-tier teams. I remember in my visions being at a Redskins game in the second-tier playoffs, and I got the sense from the people I was surrounded by that making it back to the first tier was the most important thing, but the second-tier playoffs were generally considered the best, most exciting shit to watch every year. So I figured I'd share with you what I know the future of the franchises I'll be covering in this week's Illuminati index to be. I am cavorting through the AFC West and North this week, and trying to keep separate what's real and what's envisioned, so forgive me if the two cross over into each other...
#1: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (1-1, 10th overall) - The Chargers have one of the more fickle fanbases, and I can't really blame them. If I was in the sunshine with a bunch of hot bitches around all the time, I probably wouldn't care either. It is unfortunate there is such a military presence around that area though. The military is something you can appreciate for doing whatever the fuck it is they do, but you don't want them around you physically or else it compromises your quality of life. Anyone who tells you otherwise has been fed too much brainwashing musical MSG pop country music over the course of their life. The Chargers, however, as the world plummets in mainstream economy, start to market themselves to their Mexican fans, especially just across the border in Tijuana, and eventually are the favorite football team of various drug lords, who secretly pay star players slush funds to complement their official contracts to play for San Diego. They are also believed to be behind the disappearance of Phillip Rivers, whose body never was found.
#2: BALTIMORE RAVENS (1-1, 14th overall) - The Ravens, in my future visions, are still a first-tier team, but not one of those solid "always going to be first-tier" teams like the Steelers or Cowboys. I mean, realistically, the Ravens have a very short history, being their Browns back catalog was usurped from them via legal means, and they have won one Super Bowl in that short time. But you cannot deny that when you look at the Ravens, they feel like an upstart that has yet to prove themselves, even as they are widely considered a Super Bowl contender right now. Sure they punked the Steelers in week one, but then they lost to the Titans, who were supposed to be mediocre at best. That is not the week-to-week swoon of a dynastic franchise, now is it? And something is not quite right about Joe Flacco. He has a strange look in his eye, which is not Gunslinger Eyes, but some sort of Delaware-based interbreeding retardation factor. I fear that will ultimately hold this team back, not matter how scary Ray Lewis and Ed Reed make it in the locker room for anybody who doesn't make them win. (By the way, Ray Lewis's pre-game dance is still the stupidest thing ever, and makes me embarrassed for Ray Lewis, since he doesn't seem capable of being embarrassed for himself.)
#3: OAKLAND RAIDERS (1-1, 15th overall) - The Raiders, in my futuristic visions, end up willingly moving to the second-tier, because Al Davis - who is still alive like 30 years in the future - thinks the NFL multi-tier system is complete bullshit, and hates the owners who make up the main cartel of the top-tier. Of course, Raiders fans are the most appropriate fanbase for a soccer-like regionally-based rivalries and influxes of riotous revelers from visiting teams. In fact, there becomes a group of degenerate vagabonds known as Raiders Nomads who travel with the team to games, making the Raiders one of the largest draws as an opponent, but with dangerous side effects. In one of my visions, Salt Lake City - which had a second-tier team at that point - was partially destroyed by riots brought into town by Raiders fans, as Oakland Raiders/Utah Leaders was considered a natural philosophical war by Raiders Nomads, who took it upon themselves to burn the town since it had little alcohol and pillage it of buxom young purish women, who would eventually be systematically broken of their prudish values.
#4: PITTSBURGH STEELERS (1-1, 17th overall) - The Steelers will always be a first level franchise, especially since 30 years from now it will be revealed that through genetic research at Carnegie-Mellon University in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh, the Rooney family had cloned their patriarchal original Art Rooney, and raised him in a completely sheltered private school/football-centric world, creating a Liberal-Minded Football Hitler, so to speak, who continues to lead the team for another generation, which a couple more little Art Rooney clones are raised in a group of three to replace him, so as to compensate for the fact that one, through environmental conditions, will end up being slightly superior to the other Art Rooneys v3.0s, thus further solidifying the team's well-being.
#5: CINCINNATI BENGALS (1-1, 22nd overall) - Obviously, my visions were spotty, but I do remember on four instances reading newspaper agate results of NFL games from the previous weekend, and the Bengals never showed up, so I guess they don't exist in the future. They hardly exist now. Only the Bengals could somehow be happy with the fact a great proven QB like Carson Palmer is being frozen out and some rookie hype job like Andy Dalton has performed better than expected as a rookie starter. The Bengals fanbase is the most demoralized group of football fans that could possibly exist. Prostitutes and porn starlets laugh at Bengals fans' self-esteem levels.
#6: DENVER BRONCOS (1-1, 26th overall) - Probably the most shocking tidbit from my future NFL visions was where in the future Colorado becomes this totally racist state, using rising violent crime trends to pretty much banish blacks and Hispanics from the state. John Elway ends up being owner of the Broncos, and institutes a whites only rule for players. When the NFL attempts to force him to not do such a thing, he legally sues the NFL to force every NFL team to have at least one white WR, one white RB, and one white defensive back, claiming it is the same as the Rooney rule for interviewing coaches. Somehow, he wins, and for about four years, every team has to have one white dude (legal standards are eventually set at 67% white, to stop the ginger trend some teams were using to satisfy the rule) at all three of those skill positions, in what ends up being known as the Jason Sehorn rule. Because of this though, the Broncos sort of suck, although they do develop the most brutal running game seen in the NFL since the early '70s, under offensive coordinator Peyton Hillis. Also Bill Romanowski was their head coach, which was pretty awesome. I mean, all the racist stuff is bad, but just getting to hear Romanowski ramble on and on about Romanowski things as the head coach of an NFL team, that was pretty entertaining.
#7: CLEVELAND BROWNS (1-1, 27th overall) - In the future, Cleveland was sold for scrap to Canada, so the Browns moved to Montreal and became the Bleus. This year's Browns team was supposed to be taking a step towards being better, but after two weeks it is a little too obvious that this is still a fairly shitty team. Colt McCoy's brief shining star looks to be just another Chris Simms-style piece of shit from Texas, and although Peyton Hillis will keep the drunken racists of northwest Ohio properly consuming alcohol and bratwursts on weekends throughout the fall, he is no credible threat to build an offense around. Again, as I always do when I write about the Browns, I feel sorry for Joshua Cribbs. In a more forward-thinking NFL, he could be a QB/RB/WR hybrid to build a new-fangled offensive machine around, but instead he gets forced to just do kickoff and punt returns, to give him touches, and get concussed into early dementia and out of the league without ever really getting a shot to earn whiteboy money like a traditional starting QB.
#8: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (0-2, 32nd overall) - The Chiefs are a joke, as are every Bill Belichick coaching tree coordinator who goes on to coach his own team. You know why this is? It's a behind the scenes Illuminati battle for power between Belichick and the Bill Walsh cartel. The Walsh cartel still holds immense power, and though they tried to placate Belichick's movement by allowing an Eagles loss to the Patriots in the Super Bowl a few years back (Andy Reid is one of Bill Walsh's main purveyors at this point), Belichick is a greedy motherfucker and through controlling the motivations of marketing machine Tom Brady (notice how Tom does very few endorsements? the NFL hates that), he's trying to strong-arm his way into a bigger role, and get the Patriots to at least a fourth Lombardi Trophy. The NFL will never allow a fifth one though, at least not under Belichick, because the five that the Bill Walsh system got in San Francisco is the high watermark for a reason. Even the Steelers, who have six, only got four under Chuck Knoll, then had to wait two decades for a return. The problem is there's not credible Walsh disciple to hand over power to at this point, as Andy Reid is a fat fuck loser, and Denny Green has had too many high-profile failures, though Green was always the hope to get it. Brian Billick at one point was being groomed for the position, but overheard these plans and became too full of himself, thus is blacklisted from coaching again. How this all relates to the Chiefs? They made the playoffs last year with a Belichick-fueled coach, GM, and QB, but the NFL can use HAARP beams to injure any player it wants at any point. Usually ACL and MCL tears can be pinpointed and caused to happen with EMF guns that look like digital cameras from luxury boxes, and the NFL has systematically obliterated the Chiefs roster to make them an impotent shit storm this year, not only to demean the Belichick coaching tree further, but also to put the Chiefs on the spot for the first pick in next year's draft, because Andrew Luck was kept back at Stanford for another year by the Walsh NFL Illuminati machine to get further grooming to be the figurehead warrior to battle Tom Brady. Did you notice that it was always Manning vs. Brady as best QB, but now Manning has conveniently been sidelined - perhaps permanently - by a mysterious neck problem? And Andrew Luck will storm into the league next year and become Tom Brady's immediate nemesis in a couple of years, in order for the Walsh group to publicly wrest control back from the Belichick group as Tom Brady falls victim to age, and maintain their iron West Coast grip on the NFL's behind-the-scenes controlling power.