Mid-Season Psychic Rankings AFC South

The AFC South is a young division that in terms of stability of power
is sort of like north Africa at this point, in that there was a
changing of the guard very obviously but nothing that seems permanent
is in place yet, and the old systems are still perhaps tinkering in
the background, or who the fuck knows? It's a division where no one
has even gotten everybody else to the ground yet, much less put a foot
to their throat and pushed a 12-inch knife against the jugular to make
demands. But let's go worst to first on the psychic scale...
#4: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (currently 31st on this season's NFLuminati
Index, which is ACLB's own power rankings system if you somehow ended
up here for the first time ever and don't know what the fuck is going
on) - This is a team with zero identity but a new owner who has the
potential for crazy. More than starting QBs, teams go with their
owners, and if this Khan cat embraces his successful zaniness, it
could be really good for the Jaguars, though they really need a
re-branding of some sort, whether it be a new logo or colors or even a
new city. The great thing about this too is that Khan could actually
be an interesting Robert Irsay, in the same division, which might be a
twitter age Jerry Jones/Dan Snyder thing. Irsay is kind of a dumbass,
so it would be great to have somebody actually try to be wacky and be
actually wacky at it and not just sort of painful and embarrassing.
All that being said, the Jags are a horrible franchise with little
psychic power at this point, if any. They are multiple factors away
from being relevant, and really in retrospect it makes Jack Del Rio's
early successes even more impressive. He should get a shot somewhere
else.
#3: TENNESSEE TITANS (currently 20th in the NFLuminati Index) - I
wrestled with where to place the Titans/Colts, but mostly because I
personally dislike the Colts and enjoy the Titans. But I was smart
enough to realize that was just bias. Historically, the Houston Oilers
are a hipster's favorite, to be sure, but they lack the storied
highpoints of the Baltimore Colts. Both teams are sort of ripped away
psychically by city moves from their most famous moments, though the
Colts have won a Super Bowl in Indy. It's also funny how a yard makes
such a difference psychically, as the Titans were that far away from a
Super Bowl victory against the Rams, and now over a decade later we
all remember the Greatest Show on Turf still, but the Titans are just
the Titans. Psychic moments like that are strong on us, the public,
and though we forget the details, the end results remain.
Not sure what direction the Titans are going either. Jeff Fischer's
philosophy was stamped deeply on this team, and it's probably going to
take Mike Munchak and the next guy after him to really take that off
the Titans. On top of that, they lack a galvanizing star, which is
sad, because Tennessee is a team placed in position geographically to
be successful psychically. It's a football-loving area, and people
need something to help them forget how low the Volunteers have gotten.
Something doesn't jibe with the color scheme of the Titans in
Tennessee though, something sort of NFL Europe or USFL-y about them.
Perhaps incorporating the state flag motif more obviously even, and
discarding the powder blue of the Oilers days would help. Perhaps more
Earl Campbell memories would help too. I don't know. I think the
potential to dominate the division is more fertile in Tennessee than
anywhere else, though player personnel at this point doesn't support
that thought. But it feels like if one of these teams were to be
powerful, it would be Tennessee.
#2: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (currently 15th in the NFLuminati Index) -
Something has never felt quite solid about the Colts ever since they
moved to Indianapolis. Maybe it's Indiana itself that feels awkward,
because I've felt the same feeling about the Pacers even during Reggie
Miller's heyday. Andrew Luck is enjoying early success, and honestly
with a last place team's schedule and no real depth of quality teams
in the AFC, I'd say it's a pretty good chance the Colts take the
second wild card spot. Don't mistake that with continuity of Colts
greatness, if they were really all that great under Peyton Manning
beyond Manning in the first place. More than any other team, this one
was a smoke-and-mirror creation of one good player, and as much as I
hate me some Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck lacks the freestyle
playcalling skills stupid Peyton has. Luck can be good and take them
to the playoffs fairly often, but he seems to me to be Philip
Rivers/Matt Ryan type, not a history maker (if football technically
does actually make history). I guess that's good enough though in the
new NFL.
#1: HOUSTON TEXANS (currently 3rd in the NFLuminati Index) - The
Texans are a team thick with young talent. The real question becomes
what on offense sets them over the top? Arian Foster is great, but RBs
expire quickly. Andre Johnson was secretly as good as Calvin Johnson
in the past, but he's on the "crafty veteran" portion of his NFL
career at this point. The Texans have definitely done themselves well
by establishing a defensive identity though, as that rape-like forcing
of will on opponents has much more psychic strength than scoring
points in abundance. And even letting Mario Williams go, a former #1
overall pick, strengthened their defense psychically because it has
established they are bigger than one man. That has humbled Brian
Cushing and will humble J.J. Watt. I cannot tell you how much I hate
the Houston name and colors, and how weak that shit all was as a
post-9/11 knee jerk marketing response by the NFL. But somehow the
Texans are currently the strongest psychic power in the AFC South.
Don't get that twisted though, as none of these teams has a strong
hold on that, and the Texans are literally one month away from being
back at the bottom, should Universal Magnetics make it so. So it
becomes a matter in this division of who stakes that claim strongest.
The Texans have everybody beat on personnel right now, and perhaps
even front office structure. And Houston is certainly a football-happy
area, who loved the Oilers, and loves football. Plus with the Cowboys
on permanent dysfunction mode it seems, the Texans are a couple of
high profile wins away from pushing their psychic ownership of this
division deeper, as well as in Texas. They need to have a big regular
season moment as well as a highly notable playoff moment that is not
followed immediately by a neutering loss. Crushing somebody in the AFC
Championship and then having a respectable and close loss in the Super
Bowl might do the trick.

NFL 2012 Week 6: AFC & NFC South (2nd Quarter)

Here, I am busy at work being forced to do actual work stuff, so I will blaze through this like whatever. We enter the second quarter of the NFL season and my NFLuminati analysis. This time through, I break them down geographically, and the geographic direction with the lowest composite record right now in the NFL is the South divisions. That may seem odd as the only two unbeaten teams left (and #1 and #2 on the NFLuminati Index right now) are from the South divisions. But the rest of both of those divisions are a vast collection of turds, with only one other team even being at .500 right now. But let me save such analytics for the teams at hand…

#1: ATLANTA FALCONS (5-0, 1st overall) – The Falcons as well as the Texans are bearing false flags upon us all right now, to make us think they are legitimate contenders. But within the NFLuminati context, neither are. The Falcons are closer, with a longer tradition, and multiple playoff appearances, though Matty Ryan and Mike Smith still lack a playoff win. I could see the Falcons getting the rub of postseason success this year, perhaps even getting to the Super Bowl to lose to a more prominent team historically, but also there are some prominent historical teams in the NFC who would deserve that slot. The Falcons might be champs in a year or two, but they’ll have to show some merchandising skills and marketability in this postseason first, before that’s allowed to happen. As it stands though, with such a weak ass division, they will run up a ridiculous record most likely, with 13 or more wins seeming very likely at this point. So fantasy owners enjoy the Falcons, but Falcons fans, do not start to think it real because it will mean nothing come January of 2013.

#2: HOUSTON TEXANS (5-0, 2nd overall) – The Texans are the most false of flags that has ever been born. With Super Mario gone and now Brian Cushing on IR, the Texans will come unraveled in a realistic sense. The thing is, the AFC South is a fairly lackluster beast at this point, so even as they unravel, they should be able to stumble to dominance and a solid record which will probably allow them a first round bye in the AFC playoffs. And perhaps they repeat last year where they win a playoff game at home to start things off, just in the divisional round instead of the wild card round. But you put a team that doesn’t even seem real like the Texans, built upon false hopes and broken dreams, and they will be crushed in the light of the AFC championship. Or perhaps they are allowed to be crushed in the Super Bowl and try to spark passion in the state of Texas for pro football without a silver star. Who knows? But I know this – they ain’t winning no fucking Super Bowl, so get that out of your silly head now.

#3: TENNESSEE TITANS (1-4, 18th overall) – The Titans are not only horrible, but they are horrible without any real set direction forward. Mike Munchak has sort of done a bunch of stuff, but also none of it is sticking out because there’s so much detritus left from the past. Is Jake Locker healthy? What the fuck is up with Chris Johnson? Can anybody replace the douchebag swagger of Cortland Finnegan? Does anybody care in Tennessee about football anymore, pro or college? Why is this world all twisted over upon itself in such a crazy manner? Were the Mayans right? What the fuck yall?

#4: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (2-2, 22nd overall) – Andrew Luck is the perfect goober-faced fuckwad for idiot Indiana people to love. I have done extensive research on American states, from the back seats of Greyhound buses, from overhead hot air balloon tours, from crawling through the intricate network of gutters that lie underneath 74% of America, and from lengthy discussions with global elite at corporate retreats in southern West Virginia where we are “reborn” through golden silk cushions meant to replicate our mothers’ wombs, and all of this has given me a deep understanding of how truly good living is in the different states. Indiana is the worst, barely edging out Maryland, and the two of them are far ahead of the distant third worst state of Connecticut. But Indiana and to a lesser extent Maryland are such shithole soul sucks that even saying Connecticut is #3 is not really fair to Connecticut. There should be like 9 more numbers in between to show the space. Maryland is a tightly packed weird little state full of old world flavors and D.C. suburbanism and other bullshit, so I can understand how shit would ferment there. But Indiana is a giant rural expanse. That should be the breeding ground of greatness. Instead the most ignorant, half-assed, disgusting people on earth – not just America, but the entirety of earth – have come to blossom all over that land. It’s sad, and pathetic, and makes me want to fight people because it’s wrong and one should always be motivated to fight wrong when it becomes evident.

#5: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (1-4, 23rd overall) – I do not care what happens with the Jaguars this year because it will just be more fuel for the Insane Wrath of (Shahid) Khan that will explode into lulz come the offseason, as well as the impending years ahead. It’s gonna be so great.

#6: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (1-3, 24th overall) – I was sad to see that Los Zetas leader Heriberto Lazcano was allegedly murdered by the Mexican Navy, because I had always hoped he would buy the Bucaneers and start calling them the Los Bucaneros. It is interesting that cables were leaked showing the American CIA has some sort of arrangement with the Sinaloa Cartel for bringing drugs into America and stifling other cartels. Not long after a CIA operative was killed in Mexico, the Navy suddenly finds and kills Lazcano, leader of the Zetas. I was heartened to see armed commandos were able to steal his body from the funeral home though, as most of those Zetas worship Santa Muerte so I am hoping this secret Civil War going on turns into zombies fighting CIA agents, in Mexico. When that happens, there is only one thing that can save us at that point. Do you know what that is? Ninjas. The 1980s taught me that. That is why I’ve dug out all my old ninja books, to re-learn my mental training and conditioning. Your best weapon against your worst enemy is inside his own mind. Peace.

#7: CAROLINA PANTHERS (1-4, 30th overall) – Remember when everybody was laughing at the Panthers for drafting Cam Newton because he wouldn’t translate to the NFL? And then remember when he was wildly successful statistically and led the Panthers to a 6-10 record, and that was supposed to be awesome? And remember how that all came crashing back to earth the following year, and everybody turned on Cam Newton and he started to seem pouty and angry? All of this is to show that Cam Newton is basically the new Michael Vick, but only like at one-quarter the status. On one hand, that means no dogfighting circles, but on the other hand that also means no playoff appearances. Stupid Panthers.

#8: NEW ORLEANS SAINTS (1-4, 32nd overall) – Even with a win the Saints are the worst team in the league on the NFLuminati scale. They have been made the goat for Sheriff Goodell’s legal positioning against concussion liability. Drew Brees’ scar is actually where a microchip was planted into his brain, and he is a secret operative for the NFL who was meant to make the world happy with a post-Katrina New Orleans Super Bowl win, and now he’ll just kind of peter away his elder years as a really awesome QB for other younger QBs to make their name beating in football contests engineered to seem “classic”. See Aaron Rodgers last year, and Matt Ryan next year, for reference, although perhaps you cannot remote view the future like me. Take more B6 for starters, but not too much, because more than 300mg a day can be detrimental in the long-term. Also, do not use the activated B6 because the slow release into your bloodstream is fine enough. That’s a good first step towards remote viewing, is to start encouraging lucid dreaming. Learning to break the conscious/unconscious barrier can be difficult, and involves some complicated mental training, so I won’t get into that right now, but the B6 supplements are a solid first step. As well as magnesium, and eleuthro root powder. I take two tablespoons of eleuthro root powder and chia seeds every day in a bowl of homemade granola with a couple fat spoonfuls of active yogurt I buy from the Afghan market in town. But eleuthro root powder is a slow-working adaptagen, and you are probably just thinking, “I want to time travel, NOW” and not actually willing to put in the work necessary. Fickle fucking modern humans – no wonder you are confined to your simple three dimensions.

NFL 2012 Week 2: AFC South & West (1st Quarter)

Our first week of the professional football has come and gone, and the coolness starts to fill our American air, and it is an election year, so we are fat with self-importance, and ready to plop down on our luxury furniture and make ourselves sick over the games we have no control of. And again, I hope to give you these weekly updates, cycling through two divisions a week, meaning we travel through all corners of the NFL four times over the course of the regular season. Just as an NFL game is broken into four quarters, most NFL coaches break the season down into four quarters, so essentially everything we know after that first week (and used as talking points on this list) is utterly useless in the overall scheme of things. Even the most shocking and devastating of victories or losses is nothing more than the season-length equivalent of an opening drive TD in a regular game. So take all that to heart, and realize that what you think learned last week may just be early season deception and trickery. Still though, my formula for power scoring these teams is in effect, and though there’s not quite enough body of work for the formula to be correct the first couple weeks, it is all I have to go by, so I use it to rank these teams of the AFC South and AFC West, two of the lowlier divisions of the professional footballs.

#1: DENVER BRONCOS (1-0, 5th overall) – Last week: beat Steelers, 31-19. This week: at Falcons (1-0). I for one do not believe the Peyton hype, and expect the Broncos to be as high mediocre as they were last year when that retarded blessing from Heaven Tim Tebow was their QB. That would be good enough to win the AFC West, with or without Manning. But I am also a lifelong Manning hater, so perhaps I am being cruel towards the gimp-necked corporate hick. They held tough with the Steelers and prevailed in the end, and though I think them not a true Super Bowl contender in the long run, if they can hang with the likes of the Steelers, that puts them head-and-shoulders-and-fused-neck above the likes of their horrible AFC Western compatriots.

#2: HOUSTON TEXANS (1-0, 7th overall) – Last week: beat Dolphins, 30-10. This week: at Jaguars (0-1). Mostly this season, the Texans have been known for giving dumbasses who think they are smart a joking point with Arian Foster being vegan. In this election year, chock full of social media, it has become painfully clear that we all are way fucking stupider than we think we are. This goes for you, and also me. Americans lack even the most basic ability to think critically, and yet we feel entitled to worship and respect and awe from the rest of the world. Even in regards to football – our version is a cruel and barbaric sport, and if our elite athletes realized they could make ten times the money playing world football, and at a far less significant rate of self-destruction, they’d all jump at the chance. But we are a nation of mongrels and retards and oversized dimwits. I am fine with that, but I do not appreciate the pretend notion we are something more noble. American football is brutal, and it should be. When the Houston franchise chose their sterile “Texans” moniker and their even more sterile color scheme, they chose their destiny as frauds in the eyes of the football gods. It only makes sense Arian Foster would be their star player, the prancing vegan. They should have chosen an ominous color scheme and an evil name, that could never be mistaken for nationalist or state pride. Think of how Earl Campbell played the game of football, perhaps Houston’s finest football athlete of all-time. It was brutal. He took years off of other people’s lives, and he is respected highly for doing so. That is America. Not this Houston Texans bullshit. They will crumble, even if they toy with success, although sometimes, with the recent shift in NFL philosophy under the black Lord Goodell, I am not sure if they now worship a new set of Football Gods, and have turned their collective backs on the old ones.

#3: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (1-0, 10th overall) – Last week: beat Raiders, 22-14. This week: hosting Titans (0-1). Dear San Diego Chargers fans, and the rest of the AFC West, and all football fans in general, I have two words for you in rebuttal for your excitement regarding the Chargers after one week of football: Norvell Turner. I rest my case. As good as you will ever get this season or next, it will be like all the ones before it, and never as good as it could have been. You are wasting one more year of Philip Rivers, as we speak.

#4: TENNESSEE TITANS (0-1, 21st overall) – Last week: lost to Patriots, 13-34. This week: at Chargers (1-0). I will be honest and tell you I’d like this Titans team offensively if Chris Johnson wasn’t disappearing in modern NFL star RB fashion. At this rate, in two years time he will have shriveled up into a Seahawk or something, and a good proof for the philosophy of always having at least two RBs, with one in the wings, because they fade fast nowadays. But Jake Locker has shown promise, and though knocked out the game last week, the Titans probably have the top back-up in the NFL in Matt Hasselbeck. They didn’t look so great against the Patriots at all, at home, and now travel across the country to go play the Chargers. But Mike Munchak seems one of those angry at the world, “Let’s go kill them all and rape their women!” type head coaches that players love so much. I expect the Titans to step up and pester the Texans in the AFC South this year.

#5: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (0-1, 28th overall) – Last week: lost to Bears, 21-41. This week: hosting Vikings (0-1). The Colts did not look so great, nor will they any time soon. This is a very much not good team, even with the Freaks & Geeks kid as their QB. What does that mean for the rest of us? Hopefully some good crazy Jim Irsay tweeting rants, but beyond that, not much.

#6: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (0-1, 29th overall) – Last week: lost to Falcons, 24-40. This week: at Bills (0-1). I think the Chiefs will show improvement facing a lower-tier team in the Bills. The verdict’s still out on Matt Cassel, and honestly after this much time it has to be considered a hung jury and he should be thrown out. But he’s shown some good chemistry with Dwayne Bowe and Tony Moeaki over his limited healthy action, so maybe they get it rolling on offense. The Chiefs are kind of the quiet trendsetter over the decades in the AFC West, where when they are good, the division is good, and when they are bad, the division is as well. They need to get it together, so that this division does not further become the Land of the Lost and Wasted and Misfit Fantasy Toys.

#7: OAKLAND RAIDERS (0-1, 31st overall) – Last week: lost to Chargers, 14-22. This week: at Dolphins (0-1). I honestly feel bad for Raiders fans. Al Davis was bad as a deteriorating old man, but he is worse as dead, because his offspring is not him. And once the ownership inevitably decides to sell the team so that someone can come in and restore Raiders greatness, the NFL would never ever in a thousand million years sell to a firebrand free spirit like Al Davis again. Ever. So ultimately as a Raiders fan, proud of the dark and ominous history, you get diminishing returns on what is left of this Raiders team, and have to wait for something to shift it into the next era. However, whatever that shift is, it will most likely be a corporate-acceptable and business-savvy shift, and not one that truly understands what being a Raider is all about. I feel sorry for Oakland, because this new football God being worshipped does not respect a place like Oakland, nor a fan base like Raider Nation. They will be starved by this new money-hungry God until what is left of Al Davis’ family abandons ship and leaves what is left to be picked through by venture capitalists.

#8: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (0-1, 32nd overall) – Last week: lost to Vikings, 23-26. This week: hosting Texans (1-0). The Jaguars will be mostly irrelevant this season, as there’s not much there. But rest easy, because Shahid Khan will soon make himself known as one of the craziest NFL owners out there, easily replacing the seat vacated by Al Davis, and these Jaguars – perhaps in a new city, perhaps in new uniforms – will become something amazingly loltastic. This terrible season of 2012 will be the previously planted garden withering and bearing no fruit, which will drive Khan into hysterical bursts of drastic change. That’s when they will be fun to watch. I predict that will start happening around the end of November.

NFL 2011: Week 10 - AFC South & West (3rd Quarter)

Sort of neglected these NFL Illuminati lists the past few weeks - been busy with real life bullshit but also didn't really care too much. But we are halfway through this season, just now entering the beginning of the third quarter of the regular year of foozball games, so I figured I'd dust off my notebook and jot down my gibberish regarding teams again. This week, we bounce through the AFC West and South divisions, because of all the geographically connected divisions of the same conference, they combined for the worst overall records. And yet at least two of these teams (meaning probably two of them) will make the playoffs. Which is fine. I live in Virginia, where they expanded the high school playoffs of the smallest sized schools for this year, and in one division there's actually a 1-9 team that made the playoffs. No shit. So we are not to that point in the NFL, thus you should stop bitching when you are all like, "Nobody from the NFC West 2010 should have made the playoffs, and because of this one time thing we should make crazy weird rule changes that make it so only the teams that ESPN and NBC put on night games make the playoffs, with like a Michael Vick wild card rule where famous players have to make the playoffs too." Because that's what you'd do, you ignorant fucks...
#1: HOUSTON TEXANS (6-3, 11th overall) - The Texans are basically an Arena League team at this point, who will be smited by superior football franchises once they actually make the playoffs. I'm still pissed a new team in Houston didn't embrace the recreational abuse of codeine as popularized by DJ Screw and have purple uniforms. Not gay purple like Baltimore but gangsta candy flake purple helmets with gold face masks and shit. Instead they look like a post-9/11 PR firm came up with their shit, which they did. Stupid fucking NFL the corporate years.
#2: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (4-4, 16th overall) - I thoroughly enjoy the continued professional shortcomings of both Norv Turner and Philip Rivers. One day, they both will be gone, and we'll have to look back and fondly remember all those wasted Chargers years together, over codeine cough syrup. You and me.
#3: OAKLAND RAIDERS (4-4, 19th overall) - I've been reading a lot about Wilhelm Reich and his orgone accumulator theories and it really makes me sad Al Davis never embraced these philosophies. I don't think Carson Palmer would've been acquired by the Raiders had Al Davis received the healing touches of an orgone accumulator. He'd still be alive and Cyborg Jim Plunkett (created through genome mapping and the use of Tesla coils combined with Silicon Valley technonerd input) would be leading this team to it's fifth Super Bowl in a row. And Kenny Stabler would be the coach.
#4: DENVER BRONCOS (3-5, 20th overall) - I like Tim Tebow being successful because he'll only be mildly successful but it will be enough to make the Broncos stick with him and the racist wealthy miscreants of Colorado to love upon him and it'll keep the Broncos from being a top-quality football team for years to come. But let's be clear - I don't like Tebow. Who the fuck believes in Jesus God in 2011? Hasn't this dude ever taken mushrooms, or read Kerouac, or really blinked hard enough for his eyelids to swipe away the blank look for four seconds to be like, "Oh shit, titties trump jesus."
#5: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (4-4, 21st overall) - I don't have anything to really say about the Chiefs because I'm thinking about Christy Canyon movies after thinking that "titties trump jesus" line. I went into a porn movie place the other week, and make no mistake about it, almost every dude who works in a porn movie store (about 75% to be precise) is a kind of composite of a Robert Crumb drawing of a Charles Bukowski story but brought to life (it needs that double filter). But I asked the dude after thumbing through about 19 shelves of strange gonzo amateur 8 hour fetish themed weirdness if they carried any classic porns, with stories and hair on the pussy and real titties, and he said, "No. They got those parody ones, which are as close as you'll get. That's the thing about classics - they ain't making no new ones." And I agreed and bought a canned Dr. Pepper for a dollar because I have a hard time looking through porn videos for like half an hour and not actually buying anything.
#6: TENNESSEE TITANS (4-4, 22nd overall) - I haven't actually seen a picture of Mike Munchak so in my mind the head coach of the Tennessee Titans looks like the Count from Sesame Street, just really serious about football, and not obsessive compulsive about counting.
#7: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (2-6, 25th overall) - Jack Del Rio is a serious about football dude, and yet he is not doing well as a head coach, though he may somehow keep his job because he coaches in Jacksonville, where most people don't know there's a football team. I like seeing the sidelines of a Jaguars game because they have a high black dudes with dreadlocks concentration factor, and being they are from Florida it makes me think of Ozone magazine and weird local rappers who get one page interviews where they talk about how they started a blunt paper company because nobody was making cantaloupe flavored blunt wrappers. I can understand that type of thinking.
#8: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (0-9, 32nd overall) - Peyton Manning should own like 10% of the Colts, and instead they're talking about dumping the dude on the side of the road to draft Andrew Luck. That would mean Peyton Manning would go somewhere else, and he's a pretty smart dude, but also probably past his prime but really famous, which means that he stands a good chance of being the Washington Redskins starting QB next year. That would crush me, like deep down crush my spirit and soul.

NFL 2011: Week 3 - AFC South & East (1st Quarter)

I have a crazy uncle named Ray who used to ride in a biker gang, and once got shot in what would've been a triple homicide but Ray didn't die so it was just a double. My uncle Ray's hand got melted to his hip by the shotgun blast, and he lost his thumb, forefinger, and middle finger as they detached it at the hospital. They took one of his big toes to give him a thumb back, so he was left with a strange hand that had a toe thumb, a ring finger, and a pinkie. He always loved jutting that thing out at people when he met them, laughing maniacally. He had been a heroin addict at one point, chronic alcoholic, batshit crazy - but not really crazy like mentally ill, just old school crazy like, "I'll do whatever." One story my dad told me about back in the day has always symbolically defined Ray: he was a biker with a giant swastika tattoo on his forearm, and he and my dad were apparently on a raging bender at some point, and they pull up to this inner-city black people bar, which this was in the late '70s, so probably not the type of place my dad felt too comfortable going in. My uncle gets out the car, goes in the trunk, pulls out a cinderblock, and just swaggers into the club, refusing to be reasoned with, refusing to stop, so my dad follows behind, expecting death. Ray goes right up to the bar, slams the cinderblock down, and yells, "I'll bet any stupid motherfucker in here that I can punch through this cinderblock." Of course, after the initial shock of, "Who are these whiteboys?" dies down, it is replaced by "That whiteboy is stupid!" and people start throwing bets down on the bar around the cinderblock. This further worried my dad, being he and my uncle were not really rolling with any pocket money to speak of. But Ray revved back, stuck a thick fist into one side of the cinderblock, and it broke over on itself like a little World Trade Center Tower, but in 1978 Petersburg, Virginia. And everyone was amazed. "That whiteboy is crazy!" and not only did my crazy uncle Ray and my dad drink for free from the bets, once that money ran out, there was no shortage of new friends to buy them another round.
So crazy uncle Ray, who has fought through drugs and alcohol, massive kidney failure, throat cancer, assorted shootings and stabbings, having a hit on his head for a couple of years, etc etc - he's now on his deathbed, and will most likely die in the next week. He was good even in poor health when he could still fish, but he hasn't been able to get out in a while, and hasn't even had a voice for six months. Dude is done, and cool with that, because he lived it up while here. But it occurs to me that there's not many dudes quite built like that - psychologically - any more, and that's sad to me. We've been feminized by technology in a lot of ways, and we just generally live in a more pussy-assed world.
This is very true of football as well, as the rules have changed so much over recent years to encourage scoring, and protect from brain damage, that the NFL is slowly morphing into more of an NBA-style league than traditional smashmouth football. That ain't no good for anybody, because rock solid salt of the earth types like myself and you are not going to be as interested in 48-42 finesse fests. There's got to be mouths getting smashed for it to be good.
So with that in mind, as I stroll through your weekly two-divisional recap - this week the AFC East and South divisions - we'll see how they compare to that old school cinderblock-punching crazy uncle style of yore, and whether they can hold up to the judging eyes of the True Football Gods, who still respect smashed mouths, not passing records...
#1: BUFFALO BILLS (3-0, overall) - No team has been as much of a shock this season as the Bills. I have a friend who's a Bills fan, and being the Bills and Redskins were both expected to suck mightily, we made a bet that whoever's team won more, the other would lose and have to do some shit that I can't remember. We are both tripping out that both our teams are actually mainstream relevant to an extent right now. I had the pleasure of catching the fourth quarter of the Bills/Patriots game, and without a doubt this Bills team has heart. It may not be "we are full of crazy guys" old school heart, but it's definitely that modern "none of us were highly touted draft picks so fuck you Mel Kiper" crazy heart. That goes a long fucking way. And Ryan Fitzpatrick, for all the hype of being a Harvard guy (did you know that? had you heard that?), Fitzpatrick is taking on the role of a team leader, which makes sense. If you have a scrappy bunch of Vietnam vets who are riding around the country in a black van with a red stripe, helping the downtrodden, they're gonna need that wise ass dude to lead them through the wacky yet dangerous adventures they encounter. Fitzpatrick is playing that role. Now it should be remembered the Bills were 1000% hyped for that Pats game at home, so they are not necessarily the best team in the AFC East just yet, in an overall sense that goes beyond the W-L columns; but they are certainly way fucking better than anybody thought they'd be, and a definite playoff contender if they can keep this good shit rolling.
#2: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (2-1, 5th overall) - The Patriots are like the opposite of an old school tough as nails team. They are finesse galore, and really with the Brady factor, very clique-ish. You are either part of the Belichick cult or not, and then beyond that, the Patriots seem very high school-like, where Brady and Wes Welker and Danny Woodhead are sitting at the cool kid's table, and they won't talk to Chad Ochocinco because he comes from the less affluent part of town. The Pats defense is impotent once you get past that D-line, which has never been the same since they shipped off Richard Seymour. So the Patriots will probably continue to be a very good football team that crumbles in the playoffs, because they are built to win games, but not beat opponents, which is the beast mode you have to switch into come January.
#3: HOUSTON TEXANS (2-1, 7th overall) - I don't know what to think about the Texans. They certainly don't seem as great as anybody hypes them up to be. Sure they can score points, but it's like a lesser version of the Patriots in that they can win games, but not beat opponents. For all the hype Wade Phillips is getting for revamping this defense, let's be real here and admit that rarely does a team successfully switch from a 4-3 to a 3-4 defense in one year. There's just too much shit to do differently. That being said, there's not really a lot going on in the AFC South this year, so the Texans might get to pretend validate their success story with a divisional title by default.
#4: NEW YORK JETS (2-1, 8th overall) - It's so easy to hate on the Jets, but I don't mind them. I mean, I don't think they're any good, just another high mediocre team like they've been the past few years, just with a few more aging superstars. I like Rex Ryan. Who amongst us, in our long American lives, has not been a gross man, fattened by Chinese buffets, who cusses incessantly, and fetishizes strange parts of the female anatomy because the vagina gets so boring after seeing three million of them naked on the interwebs? But for all the talk and confident swagger, the Jets seem to lack a fist of fury. They have a lot of guys that can be good, but no fist of doom to take over and instill fearful pride in the team, and to instill straight primal fear in the enemy. Until they get that, they're just gonna be considered a shit-talking team full of skill players. You've got to have that menace as well. Any small time band of criminals knows that sure, you've got your charming leader with the aura of success. But you always need that big, belligerent halfwit guy as well, who never feels the need to be the leader and get the glory, but loves nothing more than to enforce the leader's wishes on others who get in the way. The Jets don't have that type of guy right now, and that will ultimately be their failing.
#5: TENNESSEE TITANS (2-1, 18th overall) - Look, I would not bet against the Titans winning the AFC South this year. Hasselbeck has proven again that he is somehow this balding athletic savant as an NFL QB, and he's made the Titans better than they were last year, even without Jeff Fischer, and with Chris Johnson underperforming thus far into the season, probably from holding out and sitting around playing Madden for most of August. Even with Kenny Britt gone for the year now too, I can see these Titans working some of that magic that they always seemed to work ever since they moved to Tennessee. They always seem to be barely relevant, and were only a yard away from winning that Super Bowl against the Rams. Somehow, through a ragtag collection of NFL misfits, castoffs, and unknowns, they are doing it again.
#6: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (1-2, 23rd overall) - I don't even know about the Jaguars. I have always hated their uniform combos, and half their roster looks like an Ozone Magazine picture to me. Maurice Jones-Drew seems like a nice enough guy, but Jack Del Rio seems like a sales rep - the angry kind, which is always a hassle to deal with in real life, or even in fake lives, which most of us are living anyways. There has always seemed like something missing with the Jaguars, like they were half a chromosome short of being a for-real NFL franchise, and they know it's missing, and try to get it together, but you can't really change your genetic make-up. They seem doomed to be something else before they can be anything good.
#7: MIAMI DOLPHINS (0-3, 26th overall) - The Dolphins are a mess, which is funny to me. When your big free agent acquisition is Reggie Bush, that's not a strong move towards success, especially when it means you are putting Reggie Bush in the middle of Miami and are going to expect him to do better than he has previously done. A chronic underachiever is not going to suddenly start doing better in a place like Miami, where the distractions are higher than ever. You know how many fat-assed sorta white women there are in the greater Miami metropolitan area? I'm surprised Bush even still shows up for games. This is going to be long, painful season for the Dolphins, and I'm not sure why they were switched with the Bills at the beginning of the season by the NFL powers that be, but I would assume it's a spiteful move on Bill Parcels part for some reason, because he hates the Dolphins. Or is he still their GM? I know he's on ESPN and shit now, so I assumed he bailed on the Dolphins, because he is without a doubt a man that can recognize the stink of a sinking ship, and he will be gone once that ship is sunk.
#8: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (0-3, 32nd overall) - I've actually gained a little respect for Peyton Manning seeing how the Colts are playing without him. I knew he was an on-field coach, but I had no idea that he was basically their offensive-coordinator, and they were playing with one dude against the world. This team is ugly to watch. I heard some dorkass dude on the radio talking about how the defense was built to pass rush to pressure teams playing from behind because of Peyton and the offense, but with the offense not contributing, other teams get ahead and can just bull rush right past this Colts team. Makes sense, but also is a fancier way of saying, "Man, this team really fucking sucks at smash mouth football," which is the real problem, and goes back to what I was saying in the intro to this week. If you live by finesse, someone can snip your key to finesse out from under you, and then you are nothing. But if you live by smashing mouths, that culture fills your locker room and roster, and if you one guys falls, that just makes the other guys more motivated to fuck somebody up. The Colts don't have that. And I am going to be fucking pissed if they somehow end up drafting Andrew Luck, unless Andrew Luck ends up sucking, which I guess is just as good a possibility as him being great. So whatever.

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #10: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS

PERTINENT DATA: 10-6 last year, won AFC South, lost at home to stupid Jets in wild card round of playoffs; 18 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): Plain and simple, best case scenario for the Colts is Peyton Manning is not crippled and can play every game. Beyond that happening, they are fucked.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): The Colts are a dying empire, an empire which has survived for so long because all of its people have been delirious acolytes of a Cult of Personality, a cult built around one man – Peyton Manning. But now Peyton is old and falling apart and when he breaks down so will the Colts. To their credit, they seem to at least recognize this, but for some bizarre reason they don’t seem all that interested in improving their infrastructure or taking care of all the little things to ensure that their empire will at least remain a functional, viable state following the collapse of their dear leader. No. Instead, the Colts seem willing to ride Peyton Manning’s corpse right into the abyss. They’re just going to close their eyes and plug their ears, drown out the rest of the world and pretend that he’s going to live forever, like some mythic god king or like The Great Willie Young. But Peyton Manning is just a man and this year could very well mark the beginning of the end of his long and prosperous football life and of the Colts staggering collapse into the land of sadness. He already might miss a couple of games for the first time in his career thanks to a nagging injury and when he’s out the Colts will likely be exposed as the secretly weak paper empire they always have been. But . . . but . . . he’ll come back, you say, and you’re probably right, but let’s say that injury lingers or Peyton takes a vicious blindside hit and separates a shoulder (which, I understand, is something that happens to quarterbacks. Ahem. Excuse me while I slit my own throat.) What then? Well, I’ll tell you what: it will be Kerry Collins time and if you think the Colts are winning anything with Kerry Collins as their starting quarterback you’re fucking nuts. Yeah, they still have some decent receivers, but how much of their perceived worth is a direct result of Peyton Manning? I mean, everybody was talking about Dallas Clark as the best tight end in football and then he got hurt and his backup, Jacob Tamme, went out and put up pretty much the exact same numbers as Clark. Reggie Wayne is the real deal, but he’s getting old too and his days as a gamebreaker are probably done. Austin Collie? Pierre Garcon? Who even knows? They’re good second and third options with Peyton Manning throwing them the ball, but what happens when Peyton Manning turns into Kerry Collins? I suspect Austin Collie and Pierce Garcon turn into a shit sandwich and a turd stain. Perhaps that is a little too harsh, but it’s a harsh world and none of us can afford to be naïve. And that’s why, I’m sorry to say to all the Colts fans out there, you Hoosier animals, that the Colts could be headed for one of those 6-10 “Oh shit, it’s finally over, just like that” seasons. I’m not saying it’s likely, but I’m saying the potential is there for that shit to happen and once it does, you’re not coming back for a looooong time.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Raven): At first discovery, the fact there's a black dude named Pierre Garcon is like whoa to most people. But being I have been doing a ton of secret nerd stat bullshit for my own website regarding college football, you might find it even more interesting that Garcon comes from the most dominant college football team in the past 15 years. No, we're not talking about an SEC team or crappy Ohio State, though it is located in Ohio. Since 1993, the might Purple Raiders of Mount Union College have won 10 NCAA Division III championships, and have lost the title game in another four of those years. They've either been the winner or runner-up every year since the 2000 season. That's the type of small college juggernaut Pierre Garcon came from, so not only is he small college crafty (probably due to the lack of boosterisms and higher quality of education at a smaller liberal arts school), but he knows how to win. And with a racist QB like Peyton Manning as your QB, you need as socially graceful a black guy at WR as possible. But I'll let Neil flesh out Peyton's bullshit.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Neil): Peyton Manning seems like a loveable good ol’ boy to most of the media, but to me he seems like a humorless prick, one of those uptight control freaks who was born to work as, like, a shift manager at Home Depot or something. You know the type, the one who’s over-serious and is always riding his people for dumb shit, the sort of dude who reads books like How to be a Better Boss and pays a few hundred bucks to attend weekend seminars hosted by burnt out hucksters who take his money and tell him that he has to be the boss, the authority, the firm hand, and says shit like “They’re not your friends. They’re your employees,” like all the rest of his coworkers are just dumb animals or children or some shit. Meanwhile, those same co-workers are pissing in his coffee cup during their break because he’s such a soulless asshole and then sniggering at him while they watch him with that whiney little sneer on his face as he sips his piss filled coffee. And then, of course, because they treat him like the miserly prick he is, he goes ahead and uses that as evidence that they need a strong boss, not realizing the whole time that the only reason they don’t respect him isn’t because they aren’t inherently respectful people but because he is completely unworthy of their respect. He’s completely incapable of proving to them that he should be the man. Instead, he just thinks he deserves that shit. Look, there’s a reason why Peyton Manning never wins the big one (well, other than that one time and let’s not forget that “that one time” came when he beat Rex fucking Grossman, so . . .) and there’s a reason why he always looks like he’s pitching a bitch fit to his teammates, and it’s because, deep down, Peyton Manning is a soulless loser, and if I’m being honest, a bit of a bitch. Let’s all remember this infamous quote:

“Here we are. I'm out at my third Pro Bowl, I'm about to go in and throw a touchdown to Jerry Rice, we're honoring the Hall of Fame, and we're talking about our idiot kicker who got liquored up and ran his mouth off. The sad thing is, he's a good kicker. He's a good kicker. But he's an idiot."

Remember that shit? Those are not the words of a natural leader. Yeah, Mike Vanderjagt said some dumb shit, but he was frustrated because the Colts had just folded again, just like they always do, but rather than deal with that like a man, Peyton flipped out and whined and bitched and insulted his teammate. For better or worse, Peyton Manning was the leader of that fucking team and when you’re the leader, you have to rise above that shit. Remember a few months back when Zack Follett called Matthew Stafford a China Doll and everyone went nuts? Stafford laughed that shit off and everything was cool. He didn’t throw a hissy fit and say something like “Yeah, that idiot Follett got all liquored up and ran his mouth.” Like, how dare Mike Vanderjagt speak his mind? How dare he criticize King Peyton for folding under pressure for the billionth time? Should Vanderjagt have said that shit publicly? No, probably not but Peyton Manning should have known better and kept his cool. The man has no poise, no class and no sense of how to be a leader. He just doesn’t. He just glares at the people he perceives to be beneath him and sips his piss coffee.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Pat Angerer, because it sounds like he makes people angry, but it also sounds like somebody doesn't know you upgrade to -est as a suffix when you are trying to be even more than an -er word.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): Writing this has made me remember why I have never liked Peyton Manning all along and why I have always rooted against the Colts since he’s been their quarterback. Fuck the Colts. I hope Manning misses half the season and then comes back only to put on a Favre in 2011 display complete with a billion interceptions and a billion agonized bitchface looks. I hope the Colts go 4-12 and Manning whines about every single one of his teammates, his coaches and the fans, forever damaging his own legacy and proving once and for all to everyone that he’s nothing but a spoiled little rich boy, the golden boy who’s never had to get dirty with his teammates. He’s that Captain in Vietnam who gets fragged by his own platoon. He’s that dude who doesn’t know how to relate to his own men because he was never one of them. He never scratched and clawed and fought to get where he is. He just popped out of his mama into Archie’s arms and Archie groomed him to be nothing but a golden arm and then that golden arm took him straight to Tennessee – where he lost every single big game he played, remember – and then it took him to the NFL. Is Peyton Manning mentally tough? Yeah, I think so, but it is a selfish sort of toughness, an unbendable toughness which is completely incapable of molding itself to the needs of anyone else. The dude tries but he’s never been a normal dude so he has no idea how to relate to normal dudes. He drinks beer and wears blue jeans but it always seems like a costume. Aside from being a football player, who is Peyton Manning? That’s all he ever was and all he’ll ever be and that might seem commendable to some of you, but shit, to be a leader you need to be more than just a football player. You need to be a man, and men accept their own failings and they work with the failings and abilities of others and they find a way to make shit right. They don’t demand that the world exist on their terms and then throw a bitchfit every time it doesn’t. I know I have gotten carried away here, but seriously, fuck Peyton Manning.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): Even with not much of a supporting cast for Manning on offense, and a defense that is starting to wane back to mediocre again, an 11-5 season is likely, with another win in the lackluster AFC South, because no one else in that division is really built to challenge them just yet. But it'll be another wild card round home game loss early exit in the playoffs again. Peyton's window is starting to get painted shut.

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #12: HOUSTON TEXANS

PERTINENT DATA: 6-10 last year; 25 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): Man, this sucks. I signed on to be positive about this team before medical data was revealed to me showing the team is still afflicted with the same anti-awesomeness it has had since its creation. Part of the problem is the Houston Texans were not really created out of passion or some rich dude being like, "HOLY FUCK MAN, WHEN I WAS 9 YEARS OLD EARL CAMPBELL WAS THE GREATEST THING I EVER SAW IN MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE! AND HE INSPIRED ME TO START A CHAIN OF MEXICAN THEMED FOOD STORES THAT WERE MORE CLEAN AND NICE AND NOT MEXICAN-Y AT ALL, WHICH SPREAD LIKE WILDFIRE THROUGH COLLEGE TOWNS IN THE SOUTHWEST BECAUSE WE GAVE AWAY JAZZ CDS BACK IN THE DAY AND OFFERED LOCAL FOODS EVEN THOUGH WE CONSIDERED THE ENTIRE EARTH AS OUR LOCALE, BECAUSE WE WANTED TO EXPAND JUST LIKE EARL CAMPBELL WANTED TO RUN LIKE A BUFFALO THROUGH ANY DEFENDERS FOR LIKE TEN YEARS PAST HIS PRIME BUT STILL I LOVE EARL CAMPBELL MAN! BUT MY CHAIN WENT CRAZY AND PEOPLE LOVE IT AND CHIPOTLES HAS NOW MADE ME ENOUGH MONEY THAT I WANT TO LIVE MY DREAM OF OWNING THE HOUSTON OILERS BUT YOU FUCKERS KILLED THAT TEAM SO NOW GIVE ME A NEW ONE AND I PROMISE TO BE AS CRAZY AND EXUBERANT AS JERRY JONES AND WE WILL MAKE TEXAS WITH IT'S FOOTBALL-CRAZED DEGENERATES THROUGH AND THROUGH PROUD OF THIS TEAM IN HOUSTON WHICH I AIM TO CALL THE HOUSTON HOT PEPPERS OR ZAPATAS OR SOMETHING MEXICAN SOUNDING BUT NOT TOO MEXICAN-Y LIKE MY RESTAURANT BUT WE'LL DO SOME MARKET RESEARCH ON THIS! BUT WE NEED A TEAM, AND I WANT THE COLORS TO BE PURPLE BECAUSE ALL THE NEGRO BOYS IN HOUSTON LOVE TO DRINK COUGH SYRUP AND PAINT ALL THEIR LATE MODEL CARS IN PURPLE SHINY PAINT! HAHAHA RACCOONS, ALWAYS DAZZLED BY SHINY THINGS! YOU KNOW IF YOU PUT A POLISHED ALUMINUM CAN IN A HOLE A RACCOON WILL REACH IN AND GRAB IT BUT NOT LET GO TO GET HIS HAND BACK OUT, HE'LL JUST SIT THERE AND BE STUCK BECAUSE HE REFUSES TO LET GO OF THE SHINY ALUMINUM CAN! I'VE SEEN IT BEFORE, MY COUSIN AARD SHOWED ME ONE TIME, IT'S HILARIOUS, WE SHOT THAT FUCKER WITH A .22. BUT ALL THE LITTLE THUGGED OUT BLACK BOYS LOVE PURPLE SO WE MAKE OUR UNIFORMS PURPLE SO THEY WEAR IT BECAUSE WHITE PEOPLE ONLY THINK WHAT BLACK PEOPLE DO FIRST IS AWESOME SO NOT ONLY WILL WE HAVE FOOTBALL AGAIN BUT WE'LL HAVE COOL UNIFORMS THAT RAPPERS WILL WEAR PROBABLY AND THAT WILL BE EVEN BETTER, AND I'M NOT SURE WHAT COLOR TO DO WITH PURPLE BUT NOT BLACK BECAUSE THE RAVENS ARE STUPID AND DO THAT ALREADY, SO MAYBE GOLD LIKE THE LAKERS BUT FOR FOOTBALL! YEAH, THAT'S WHAT WE SHOULD DO, MAN I AM SO INTO THIS, I WILL DROP EVERY DOLALR I HAVE FLEECED FROM THE CONSUMER PUBLIC WITH MY FAKE MEXICAN RESTAURANTS WITH SLOW FOOD THAT'S NOT REALLY SLOW, AND I WILL SIT IN THE OWNER'S BOX AND BE STOKED AND WE WILL BRING BACK WARREN MOON AND EARL CAMPBELL TO HOUSTON AND ON THE FIRST GAME WE'LL HAVE THEM ART PEOPLE BUILD A GIANT OILER SCULPTURE LIKE THE OLD OILERS HELMET LOGOS AND THEN IT'LL BLAST OUT THE TOP PURPLE CONFETTI AND GLITTER, JUST LIKE THE CARS THEM BLACK BOYS GET PAINTED, AND IT WILL BE A SYMBOLIC USHERING IN OF A NEW ERA! YOU GET IT! YOU GET IT! FOOTBALL WILL RETURN TO HOUSTON TRIUMPHANTLY!" That didn't happen. Instead it was corporate placement bullshit, so they chose Houston as the largest non-L.A. market able to house a team, and they named them Texans because it was in Texas and appealed to the most people they called on the phone with robots, and then they used red and white and blue colors for the uniform because 9/11 changed everything, and it was more like franchising a new Burger King in a suburb than franchising an NFL football team. Which is why the Texans will always be sort of lackluster, even when they are good. And what I'm getting at is, with your whole psyche being built off market testing and corporate scams, you'll never have the heart and fighting spirit to be a truly great NFL team. But the Texans, even if Arian Foster is feeling a little anti-awesome, are about as great as they'll ever get on defense. Most of the time, I'd be worried about a team switching from 4-3 to 3-4, but they seemed to be better equipped for the 3-4 anyways, and I'm afraid Mario Williams will destroy some motherfuckers now that he's standing up all the time. Offensively, they have Andre Johnson, who may be even more of a Calvin Johnson (unequalled player mired in the obscurity of mediocrity) than Calvin Johnson now that the Lions are being noticed by the world, and with Andre Johnson, they'll put up points, because that dude just straight up wills his way into success. But they'll never be better than a possible wild card team, no matter how good they think they can get, because they are built from demographic data and consumer habits, not from actual football spirit.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): It’s Texas day here at Armchair Linebacker since the winds of coincidence have blown both the Texans and the Cowboys onto our laps which means that it will be a day of great hatred because, honestly, fuck Texas. I could go on and on here for a billion words on why Texas is so horrible but just read everything I wrote about Arizona and apply that shit here tenfold. Texas is Arizona’s meaner, more successful, and yet even more soulless older brother. Its people are twisted caricatures of the American Dream, a funhouse people, their very presence mocking everything that we’re supposed to believe in as Americans. But fuck all that noise, we’re here to talk about the Texans, who are doomed to forever be the bastard younger brother of the Cowboys, who will forever be the team truly beloved by those monsters we know as Texans, but the Cowboys reckoning is up next and we won’t dwell on them here. The Texans are pathetic. Every year they come out and every year people shout “Hey, ya’ll! This is the year!” And then they go 8-8 again even though they have arguably the best wide receiver in football (You’re goddamn right I said arguably for a reason, for as long as St. Calvin is around, I’m not hearing that shit.) and the dude who was the best running back in football last season in Arian Foster. Their offense is explosive and capable of hanging a shitload of points on anyone. Meanwhile, their defense has a few playmakers, dudes like Mario Williams and that roid freak Brian Cushing, and so it seems like they should always take that next step. But they never do, and that is because they are a team that sprang up from the tainted mud of Texas, a team culled from the dreams of the spiritually corrupt and the terminally wicked. Such a team can’t thrive because it is a team born of the New Americanism, a team whose very potential exists only to serve as a cruel mockery of reality, which exists only to remind us all of the wicked and brutal truth, which is that these days are ugly and mean and that whatever greatness is left in our hearts is overwhelmed and decimated by the rank stupidity and sheer ugliness which now jangles through the streets in a giant cowboy hat made of tattered dreams and vile hatred. The Texans are the real America’s team, a perpetual disappointment, and in these desperate hours they reach for one last gasp of glory, and then Matt Schaub throws another interception and they finish 7-9 and what else is there to say?
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Raven): Antonio Smith is the guy who ripped off his own teammate's helmet last year in that Titans game, allowing the Texans to get a 15 yard personal foul penalty for fighting amongst themselves. In Smith's defense, Brian Cushing seems like a huge douchebag anyways, and I would've ripped his helmet off too, especially if I was trying to fight the other team and he shows up to be like, "Nah brah, chill out, let's not get unnecessarily physical out here and hurt ourselves."
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Neil): Matt Leinart is a degenerate and while we like degenerates here at Armchair Linebacker, we like degenerates like Kenny Stabler, not degenerates like Matt Leinart, who is the sort of degenerate whose life’s ambition is probably to have a reality show on MTV. Matt Leinart is the sort of dude who gets shitfaced after a couple of shots of Jaeger and then tries to pretend like he’s a badass, telling everyone how fucked up he is, and about how he’s going to fuck every chick there, before he passes out and his “friends” sketch dicks all over his face and teabag him and then take pictures of that shit. Matt Leinart could be a character on Jersey Shore, and while Kenny Stabler is racing powerboats and drinking beers in the Gulf into his ancient years, Leinart will be shot by the time he’s 40 and he’ll spend his days hating his former cheerleader wife who will look like she’s 70 because of over-tanning and his nights trolling the clubs while chicks laugh behind his back and then as he drifts off to sleep, he’ll be confronted by the vacuity of his own broken soul and it will horrify him and drive him to madness and despair and then no one will be particularly surprised when he is found jerking off a hobo who sorta looks like Reggie Bush because it is his last desperate link to his forgotten glory days.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Cheta Ozougwu.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): In a perfect world, the Texans would escape the brutal hell of their own existence and defy their own destiny, which as I said before, is to serve as a symbol for the soulless degeneracy of the New Americanism. But fuck all that. They deserve to be bad because that sort of shit simply cannot be tolerated. If we have any hope as a species, it is to reject that empty flash and the mocking taunt of perpetually unfulfilled potential and to embrace something real. I didn’t make the Texans a martyr. Their existence demands it. Don’t blame me, blame the soulless monsters they were born to represent. The Houston Texans have to die for America’s sins, and when they do, when they have had all that potential, all that flash that the greedheads are holding onto so desperately, stripped bare, maybe we can all move on.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): The Texans gradual climb to respectability will get back on track this year, with a 9-7 season giving them their first ever above-.500 year in the team's existence. They still ain't going to the fucking playoffs though, because they're still the Texans. (As a bonus though, here is a picture of Ricky Williams and Earl Campbell worshipping Satan together.)

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #24: TENNESSEE TITANS

PERTINENT DATA: 6-10 last year; 75 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): Jeff Fisher been coaching longer than anybody at the same team, and still looks like he's 40 years old. Dude knows what's up, from the old school player perspective, but understands how young players are different and weird and twitter at people and don't want to do certain things in response to authority because hip hop music has brainwashed us all. (Though the new change ushered in by that stupid fucking Watch The Throne CD is trying to wash us back in the opposite direction, of exorbitant materialism, although it didn't work too well when Puffy tried that a decade ago either, but whatever. The Illuminati won't stop trying to force us into being financial chattel.) He got the best years ever out of Lord Albert Haynesworth, and was smart enough to be like, "Fuck this kid," in regards to Vince Young. And what's that left him with? The same no-superstar defense he's always had that is tough as fuck and like a Steelers-light for the AFC South. Plus, think about how Kerry Collins' retarded ass actually looked competent as a Titan for a couple years. Now they've got Matt Hasselbeck, which is automatically the same as what Collins was - a wily veteran QB - but about 20 times better. Really, if they can throw enough money at Chris Johnson to come back, there's no reason the Titans should not only be competitive as fuck with anybody in the AFC South this season, but you'd hope that Jake Locker actually gets two years under Hasselbeck to develop and you set yourself up for a competitive team for years to come. (Note: Neil pointed out to me that the Titans did actually get rid of Jeff Fisher, which means they don't even have a head coach now, so I guess Hasselbeck will just wing it as the second-tier Favre he is, and the Titans best case scenario is not so best anymore.)
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): I’ve got nothing but love for the Titans on account of the fact that they gave birth to Jim Schwartz. That said, things could ugly here. Jeff Fisher is gone, Chris Johnson is still sitting on his ass and there is a very real chance that they could hit a point of no return with this whole thing, throw their hands up and say fuck it and decide to rebuild from the ground up. Scorched earth policies are not for the weak willed. They hurt and they involve lots of blood and shit and bloody shit and shitty blood. No one needs to see Matt Hasselbeck get crucified like a common Harrington out there. He’s at least earned the right to drift off into his retirement years with grace and a modicum of dignity. I won’t say a lot of dignity because, let’s be honest here, the dude is at the point where he is not wanted but can’t quite take the hint and that is never a good place to be. Right now, everything’s great. He’s the veteran starter mentoring the young hotshot prospect quarterback, and as long as Chris Johnson shows up, there’s a chance that this team can cobble something decent together. But like I said, Jeff Fisher is finally gone and there might be the temptation there to clear the whole fucking thing out and start from scratch. If this happens, the worst case scenario is some embarrassing shit and a dude like Matt Hasselbeck will suddenly just seem like a sad old man trying to hang onto a paycheck. They might continue this retarded game of chicken with Chris Johnson and see what happens because people are dumb and they will use the fact that Chris Johnson had kind of an off year last year to try to claim that paying him would be a huge mistake since the lifespan of a running back in the NFL is roughly that of a house fly. This would be stupid since the dude is still young and really, they don’t have anything else, but that shit might work against him in the end, because again, that might just provide them with the impetus to blow the whole thing up under the belief that it would be foolish to pay him since they aren’t going anywhere with him anyway. And things would get ugly if that happened, ugly and mean. Look, already both Johnson and Cortland Finnegan seem like they hate their own team, nobody is sure whether this is a team coming or going and a team without an identity like that riven with internal strife is not long for the world of the happy. If everything falls apart – and remember this is the worst case scenario – if Johnson or the team say fuck it and he doesn’t play for whatever reason, the bitterness between players and management grows and nobody is sure whether to look to the past or the future for answers, this team could finish, like, 3-13. That may sound overly harsh, but again, this is the worst case scenario. I take no joy in this, but these are strange and terrible times and these things happen.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Raven): Not only is Cortland Finnegan a pretty good CB with a knack for getting a turnover, but he sounds like he'd be some ruthless industrial overlord from 1920s New York City, running a sweat shop with locked emergency exits that went up in flames during a fabric fire one day, and he simply did not give a fuck and had a new warehouse running two blocks down the street within two weeks time, so as to meet his promised productivity for the Sears & Roebuck catalog, finding fresh workers straight off the boats from Europe.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Neil): Man, I don’t really hate anyone on this team. But that’s probably just because this is one of the most no-name teams there is. Really, the guys they do have that everyone knows seem like they are pretty solid. I mean, I’m sure there are some people who will say hate Chris Johnson because he’s holding out or whatever, but fuck, I am almost always on the side of these dudes trying to get paid before their heads are smashed in and they end up jerking off in the middle of the street at the age of 42, making fart noises with their mouths, hooting like sad baboons and bouncing around with their pants around their feet all because their brains don’t work right anymore and they escaped from their nurses at the shady rest home they’re confined to because the NFL won’t pay their goddamn bills. I mean, let the guy make some serious money, both for his sacrifice and so he can hire a team of specially bred nurses from Brazil with big asses and a complete lack of morals to care for him as he drifts off into senility. Wait, I’m getting sidetracked. This is about who to hate, and, well, if I had to pick a name, I’ll pick Javon Ringer for purely petty reasons. Some of you can probably figure these out but they are so petty that I’m ashamed to even explain them. One of them involves a long, fucked up run and Shawn Crable. Plus, I guess you could manufacture a reason and say that he is trying to steal Chris Johnson’s job while Johnson is trying to get his but that’s not fair. Still, fuck him, I guess. That is half-hearted and not fair at all, but I’m a Lions fan, don’t talk to me about fair.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Yamon Figurs, who I think is part of Waka Flocka Flame's crew. Either that or he had a beef with Vybz Kartel in Jamaica a couple years back. I get all my Fader music blog recurring minor characters mixed up here and there.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): In a perfect world, the Titans do the right thing and pay Chris Johnson and then he has an All-Pro type season, Matt Hasselbeck gets rejuvenated and the no nonsense defense does their job well enough to spring the Titans towards a bright future filled with sunshine and blowjobs for all. Maybe they can also hold a special halftime ceremony for Steve McNair who died for the simple crime of having too much love in his heart (well, his penis, but you know . . .) Maybe they could bring in guest speakers, like my boy Harpo, who once heckled McNair at a Raiders game. I don’t know, I’m just throwing some ideas out there. Look, Bud Adams, I am just trying to help you. This is my thanks for raising a fine young man like Jim Schwartz and allowing us to have his hand in marriage. This is my dowry if you will. But if you don’t take it, don’t expect me to come back and offer you any more words of advice. I’ve got my own problems, damn it. I don’t need to be fixing your fucked up mistakes. So honor Steve McNair or don’t. It’s no skin off my ass. But seriously, dude, pay Chris Johnson. You just look like a miserly asshole and you have clearly lost the respect of your own team. It’s either do that or wake up one day to Chris Johnson and Cortland Finnegan double teaming your daughter, and if you don’t have a daughter, those dudes probably wouldn’t be above taking on your son just to send you a message. I’m not saying that the only options are to either pay Chris Johnson or watch your son get cornholed while you sob, tied to a chair by Cortland Finnegan, but I’m not seeing too many alternatives either.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): They are the Titans, which means even in a year with some big changes, they are perfectly mediocre. An 8-8 year seems likely. Below is a bonus picture of Chris Johnson's donk.

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #25: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS

PERTINENT DATA: 8-8 last year; 75 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): The Jaguars are a weird team. They might be the most existentially pointless franchise in the league, they have no fans, they seem to only exist in little sparkler sized bursts in the corners of people’s peripheral vision when someone like Maurice Jones-Drew rolls up some huge fantasy numbers, and they could pretty much dissolve into nothingness, be sucked into the hell ground of Jacksonville by a bunch of angry rednecks, fed back to the soil in the vain and insane hopes that their blood will reanimate the corpses of Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines and no one would notice or care. But it seems like they win more than a team like that should. They just drift along, a soulless wreck of a ship, and everyone agrees that they look like shit and the goddamn thing is going to sink but then a bunch of ghost pirates jump out and lynch Peyton Manning and at the end of the year, the Jaguars are 8-8. That’s what happened last year and I don’t see why that couldn’t happen again. I mean, the Jaguars are the Jaguars, perhaps the most quintessentially mediocre team in the league. In any given year they can win 5 games or they can win 11. It really doesn’t matter because in the end no one will remember what happened anyway. Because no one gives a fuck about the Jaguars. So, yeah, the best case scenario is a surprise 10 or 11 win season, a first round exit in the playoffs and the knowledge that none of it means a damn thing because in five years these dudes will all be playing in L.A. and doing blow with studio heads and fucking various Kardashian scented whores and selling Lindsay Lohan’s freckled ass for extra weed money.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): Yeah, the Jaguars are the most anonymous team in the NFL. Like if you saw them on TV, you'd wait a second if it was a full-field shot to see the other team before you were sure they were an NFL team. That being said, Jack Del Rio was supposed to be the great defensive savior of this team's anonymous philosophy, but that kind of went to the wayside. They were briefly what the Houston Texans are now, meaning a team in the AFC South that could say, "Hey, we might be better than the Titans, and might could challenge the Colts for supremacy in a year." But they didn't. Del Rio had that chopping block in the locker room for the punter to axe himself with, but that type of gimmickry only lasts so long. Surprisingly though, Del Rio has outlasted similar coaching schticks, like Mike Singletary in San Francisco, either because the NFL is actually racist, or because Jacksonville is actually as anonymous as I think, and nobody remembers Del Rio is a coach, unless they see a Jaguars game, and even then they just think he's the dude from Happy Gilmore who eats pieces of shit for breakfast. The Jaguars are a broken team with secondhand parts. Even a guy like Maurice Jones-Drew, who is a chill ass dude and great player, doesn't even realize how shitty a team he's on because it's so anonymous. Plus they are in Florida, with no state taxes on income, and lots of whores. I know usually the southern end of Florida gets the reputation for lawlessness and hookery and nonesuch, but the entire state has a certain whorish lack of concern for laws about it. Parts of the state are more weed-influenced or alcohol-influenced (the panhandle... holy shit man, the redneck types you find there are amazing) rather than the coke-fueled insanity of Miami. So basically what you have is a barely noticed team where people leisurely get high (hence the abundance of criminal issues with Jaguars over the last couple of years, as well as the number of dudes on the team with dreadlocks), and nobody really gives a fuck. It's really perfectly engineered to go to L.A., just slap some purple and gold uniforms on them, and add a QB that people have heard of, and there you have it.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Neil): Look, David Garrard was never supposed to be anything other than just some random backup quarterback who would probably end up winning 6 CFL MVP’s playing in Saskatchewan but somehow he found himself starting for the Jaguars and once he did he never gave that shit up. It’s been, what, six years since he stole the job? I think everyone assumed that was some short term shit but here he is, still the big swinging dick in Jacksonville and I think we should applaud that kind of audacious class-jacking. What makes me want to root for him even more is the horrid lackwits of Jacksonville are constantly trying to replace him. Last year, they all cried and mewled for the Tebow child which automatically marks them as shamefully craven soulless wretches. Look, I can imagine Ronnie Van Zandt rooting for David Garrard. I can’t picture him rooting for Tim Tebow. The people of Jacksonville have lost their way. But then they didn’t get their Tebow child and they were stuck with Garrard who just said fuck you, hicks and went out and had maybe the best statistical season of his career. So then what did those fuckers do? They went out and drafted Blaine Gabbert, a dude who sounds like the bad guy in a Karate Kid movie. Blaine. For fuck’s sake. They went out and drafted James Spader to be the face and future of their franchise. No wonder they are a lost cause. But for now, David Garrard is still the quarterback of the Jacksonville Jaguars and I wouldn’t bet against him. He was supposed to shrivel up and die years ago, but here he is, and I could quote some Skynyrd song here to make this especially poignant, but fuck that, the people of Jacksonville don’t deserve it. They have turned their backs on their warrior spirit roots and they can follow Blaine Gabbert straight to hell. They probably think “Simple Man” is just that one song from that beer commercial & they probably all ironically request Freebird when they’re drunk. Ken Stabler would gnaw on their wicked bones and shit on their chests and then buy the team and move it to a floating barge in the Gulf of Mexico where they would compete under the rules of International Waters which is to say no rules and they would win the Super Bowl as a gang of vagrant outlaws, with David Garrard as their quarterback and they’d fund the team by running drugs from Cuba on cigar boats and they’d pay their fines to Sheriff Goodell in the scalps of their enemies and Sheriff Goodell would get all angry and quiver and then beat Pereira or a Thai ( or Aryan or Mexican or Inuit . . . I mean, fuck, I don’t know the man’s tastes.) slave he keeps chained in his basement in order to take out his impotent rage because he would know that he couldn’t touch Kenny Stabler’s boys in their floating palaces of debauchery, where they spend every day kicking the shit out of the rest of the league and every night partying and shooting guns at the moon. Wait, I’ve gotten carried away. A bunch of this was supposed to go in the In a Perfect World Section. Oh well, fuck it, let’s just do it here. Anyway, all that would happen. I don’t know how exactly you’d reconcile that with Kenny Stabler also being the new coach of the Denver Broncos after punching out John Fox and bailing Kyle Orton out of a West Lafayette jail, which was discussed in the Broncos section, but I’m sure Kenny could figure that shit out. I believe in him. And so should all of you.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Raven): Yeah, even though he's a rookie, Blaine Gabbert is a terrible terrible person, and he does sound like the dickhead from Karate Kid IV or something. Blaine has always been a name I refuse to trust on a human being, because linguistically it sounds like a tough but sketchy/whiny type. We were divvying up players for soccer this morning, and I'm coaching 6 and 7 years old, and there was a kid named Blaine that I dumped on another coach because I refuse to believe that kid will be anything but trouble.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Leger Douzable, which I used to say when terribly drunk and was about to try to like jump off a two-story building into a dumpster, just wasted, and my friends would grab me and try to stop me and I'd try to break free as they dragged me back down off the roof, "legger... do a zable," which I think was me suggesting I could actually accomplish my desired goal, drunk or not, but it's hard to say as the memories are hazy at best and blacked out at worst.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): Read the Player to Root For section. It’s all in there and shame on you for skipping that shit the first time through.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): The Jaguars are now the worst team in the AFC South, and whatever talent they have you have to feel sorry for. David Garrard is a competent enough dude to throw 4 TDs when the other team throws 5, which means he's a fantasy keeper, but that doesn't translate into Ws. 5-11, last place in the AFC South.