NFL 2011: Week 2 - NFC South & West (1st Quarter)

So this is week one of my weekly NFL round-up type shits, which sometimes in past years has been at websites that would give me scraps of money, but really, it's not worth making lists of 12 Hot Pictures of Islamic Women Camel Toes and finding pictures to do the type of shit that is considered freelancing anymore. So I do it for love of the bullshit, in the way it was meant to be done - at my kitchen table with a creepy clay coffee cup that has a finger for the handle (pretend, not real finger) full of mushroom tea, chewing on eleuthro root, like a fucking man. The way I've done this is to break up the NFL season into four quarters, like a game, because it follows that pattern. First quarter of the season, we stroll through the league, and shit's just started, so things are settling in, and the way things look very well may not be the way they shake out. Most football nerdernet writing people would not admit this to you; they want to seem all-knowing and ever-present like the pyramid eyeball. But I'm no Illuminaut, bros, I'm just a rock solid dude with a heart of whatever is the working man equivalent to gold, who keeps up with shit with a half-assed mathematical formula which actually calculates but also involves drawing pentagrams in goat's blood under a red light in the tiny non-working bathroom of the 18 foot camper trailer a French Canadian Jewish Gypsy woman left on my property a while back. I do some crazy shit in that camper, and if they did that blacklight semen looking thing in there, man, it'd be ugly and unexplainable. But hey, that's life, when you're actually living it.
First quarter of the season, we'll go through two divisions a week, from the same conference, roughly worst to best, judging by collective record. From that criteria, since most every division went 2-2 last weekend, I thought it was gonna be hard to get two geographically attached divisions to roll with. I mean, I knew one of the West divisions would represent, because they both tend to suck. In a lot of sports, there is claimed to be an east coast bias, which is probably true, but not so much a bias as it is just the way shit is when games are played at 2 in the morning our time where most of us in this country live. You should be thankful you don't live around as many assholes as I do, and accept your sports teams being slightly overlooked as a little yang for that yin, you know?
But at the same time, there's no denying in the NFL the west coast ain't representing enough to really claim a bias. However, first week of the NFL season, every division, including both western divisions, went either 2-2 or 3-1, except one - the NFC South. Yes, the division that many (including myself) was touting as potentially the NFL's best went 0 for the weekend, including get outright punked in 3 games with the NFC North. I decided to attach the NFC West to that because even though they went 2-2, just like the NFC East, if it wasn't for game within the NFC West, or against the Panthers, they wouldn't have won a single game. So let us go through this first week of rankings of the NFC West and South teams, with their overall rankings according to my NFLuminati Index in there as well, for you to be like, "Oh yeah, this shit looks kinda scientific, but also metaphysical, like real life shit; it's a shame stupid fucking grantland ain't more like this, so I think I'm gonna click that button on the right and donate $5 so that Neil and Raven can share hallucinogens at next year's Gathering of the Juggalos"...
#1: NEW ORLEANS SAINTS (0-1, 12th overall) - Yeah, even with an opening night loss, the Saints are still sitting the highest. It's hard to really punish a team, even in nerd formulas, for losing on the road against last year's champion. The Saints look to be a better version of what they were last year on offense, as Mark Ingram - goal line stuffage ignored - is a definite upgrade at their premium RB position, and has the potential to be the first top-tier feature back they've had since Deuce McAllister went away. Their defense looked shitty against the Packers, but you know, probably anybody would've looked shitty in that light. So let's see what these fuckers in gold and black look like hosting the Chicago Bears this weekend.
#2: SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS (1-0, 13th overall) - So Coach Jimbo Harbaugh comes out the gate after one weak ass victory over a shitty Seahawks team, going "How come ain't nobody talking about us? Where's our highlights?" already going to the west coast bias card. Or worse yet playing the "No one respects us" schtick to his locker room. I think that's an overrated method, because it only works while you are shitty. Once you get to a good level, the motivation behind that is gone, and what's left to prove? I really like the idea of Jim Harbaugh, but already he's coming across as kind of a douche. It must be something about San Francisco, because who didn't love Mike Singletary before he coached there. He's in the fucking graphic at the top of this website. But now he seems kinda like a dumbass after what happened in San Francisco. There's something not right about that 49ers place. Bill Walsh has cast some sort of NFL Illuminati voodoo spell over that shit, that only George Seifert was allowed to bypass. There's always been something slightly ominous and unsettling about that color scheme they have. Anyways, lucky for them they are in the NFC West, so a team full of half-witted retards and Afghanistan war vets with one prosthetic leg each could contend to win the title.
#3: ARIZONA CARDINALS (1-0, 18th overall) - The Cardinals are like the rebound team, where jaded people go to get pretended over. Kurt Warner post-Rams, or Kevin Kolb post-Eagles. Cardinals fans are Cowboys fans with nothing better to do. They've never been an actual team it seems, just this thing that exists out in the desert that pretends it was once a team and will again be a team but has to go through the purgatory of the transition, forever. That's the Cardinals. When Larry Fitzgerald signed his gazillion ear dollar deal this past offseason (or was it last?) all I could think was, "Aww, poor Larry Fitzgerald." But then I remembered NFL deals don't really mean anything, as it still works under the pre-housing bubble refinancing every two years scheme.
#4: ATLANTA FALCONS (0-1, 19th overall) - Last week, people were talking up the dirty birds to go to the Super Bowl. This week, they are like, "Shit man, what went wrong with the Falcons?" Chill out bros; football is not as immediate as the interwebs, and the Falcons will be okay. They won't be a Super Bowl team, but they really weren't anyways. They will be good. In fact, Julio Jones should help make them even better than last year, or at least exciting as fuck to watch, with the collection of WRs/RBs/Tony Gonzalezes they've collected for Matt Ryan to toss the ol' pigskin around to. Personally though, I think they should get Denny Green to be their coach, like right away. They'd be cooler if they did.
#5: ST. LOUIS RAMS (0-1, 22nd overall) - Haha, the Rams are like last year's Lions, coming into the season thinking, "Maybe we'll be better finally," and then wracked with injuries and doom right out the gate. I think like half their team got injured last week. They do have the makings of a strong defense though, which is going to be necessary because if Sam Bradford is already getting banged up, with him looking about as tough as a Boy Scout in his staunchest mode, that multi-million dollar investment is going to not be so wonderful on the dividend tip. Also, Stephen Jackson is already banged up, as is that Danny Algondola dude or whatever who was their best receiver by default last year. They might just have to start punting the ball on 3rd downs.
#6: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (0-1, 26th overall) - The Bucs got beat at home by the Lions, and I don't care how much more improved the Lions are supposed to be, you cannot lose a home game if you are a potential fringe element playoff team to another fringe element playoff team. That's like a best of three series you'll play like three times this year with other teams in that predicament, and now the Bucs are down one game, after one week, in that spot. This week they go on the road against the Vikings, who I'd say aren't even a fringe element playoff team, but if the Bucs get duked in that one, count them out this season, which is gonna suck, because I have stupid Josh Freeman on my stupid fantasy team.
#7: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (0-1, 27th overall) - The Seahawks are not only a shitty godawful team, but they are coached by a shitty godawful dude, who somehow seems perfectly Seattle-ish. I imagine him with a chai latte in hand, parking his Prius in the coach's spot, heading into Seahawks facility which is wind-powered, to do yoga with players in a unitarian universalist chapel before film study. Tarvaris Jackson as your starting QB is a good sign you've given up on the year though, so I guess they're just riding out the season, hoping to get Andrew Luck, so Pete Carroll can continue to pretend by amassing every former Pac-10 star there ever was in one place, he can recreate the magic he had at USC.
#8: CAROLINA PANTHERS (0-1, 29th overall) - So Cam Newton didn't suck like people thought he would, and played air guitar on the football to celebrate a TD. Haha, and it all happened against the Cardinals. Panthers fans are convincing themselves that Cam Newton was not a wasted pick as franchise QB because he had a good game against the Arizona Cardinals. Hahaha, good luck with that. Green Bay's coming to town this weekend, Mr. Newton, so let's see how many air guitar solos you get this week, brah.

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #22: ARIZONA CARDINALS

PERTINENT DATA: 5-11 last year; 60 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): The Cardinals only have to be so good in the NFC West, and Ken Whisenhunt is a good coach by default compared to his divisional contemporaries. Kevin Kolb's addition gives them a functional arm to throw balls at Larry Fitzgerald, who doesn't really need them to get but so close to haul them in. Seriously, that dude is a monster, and it's a shame he was basically playing with no QB last year. I think they started an undrafted rookie by year's end. And being they are in the NFC West, as Seattle proved last year, and Arizona themselves proved a couple years back, all you have to do is stumble your way into being division champion, get hot in the playoffs, and you'll look far better than you ever really were. The Cardinals certainly have about as good a shot at accomplishing that in the NFC West than anybody else.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): There is something dystopian about Arizona. Its people are all vile shape shifters belonging to no one and nowhere. There is a reason Pump Up the Volume was set in this postmodern version of hell, a combination of a giant Las Vegas suburb and the waiting room in a dentist’s office. Strung out whores, angry racists, broken cocktail waitresses, the dead and the dying, the soulless and the forgotten, these are the monsters and animals who populate Arizona. And so it stands to reason that their football team should be a similar wraith, too vapid to live yet too stupid to die. It too belongs to no one and nowhere, having moved around a bunch of different times, floating from city to city on a sea of failure until it finally washed up on the arid shores of this dystopian hell, where real estate hucksters blow their brains out in seedy motel rooms and have their remains eaten by Gila Monsters and Sand People and where dreams are twisted into vicious nightmares, black and ugly and mean. The Cardinals have no real fans, just a bunch of wretched and ruined automatons too simple and horrible and filled with self-loathing to even be Cowboys fans. They are the new Americans, the breed of the insane and the lost, eating shit instead of Apple Pie and sucking off Failure Demons for even a small taste of the twisted mockery of the American Dream. In this environment, the worst case scenario is ugly and horrid, too damn obscene for words, too sick and depraved even for me. What is a single season in the face of this nightmare? What is a glimmer of success other than a cruel mockery of the pointlessness of their reality? Their existence is brutal and worthless and it is endlessly surprising to me that there aren’t mass suicides at Cardinals games, but what else can you expect from a vapid, craven people? They are too plasticized and numb to even understand death and so they beat on, like twisted zombies in the night, their very existence a mockery to all things decent, and they beat on and they beat on and...
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Raven): Larry Fitzgerald is just too damn good, both in on-field play as well as a dude. He's a quiet, unassuming, hard-working guy who never complains, which unfortunately means he'll probably spend most of his career prime being wasted in Arizona where more people show up to root for the other team than the home team on many game days. The squeaky wheel gets oiled, and Fitzgerald is about as non-squeaky a wheel as you could have. It's almost a shame this guy won't get to play for a real team until he's in his declining years, as like a token veteran for the Patriots or Jets or something, to try and get a Super Bowl ring.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Neil): You can’t respect or trust a man named Beanie, especially one from Ohio and so I have no choice but to tell you all to hate Beanie Wells. Some may say that these are superfluous reasons, inane and the sign of a diseased mind, and maybe those people are right, but maybe, just maybe, these reasons are the most valid of all. Think about it.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Paris Lenon, but only because I thought saying Curtis Gatewood and referring to some obscure photographer from the '80s who took wild black-and-white pictures of decadent homosexual sub-cultures would be wasted on the type of people who read this blog. But you should go to google image search and look up "decadent homosexual sub-cultures 1980s" and diversify your frame of reference a little bit.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): In a perfect world, Arizona is overrun by a horde of Mexicans, who enslave its people and ride them like donkeys until they drop. Meanwhile, the Cardinals tyranny of irrelevance is overthrown by these immigrants with fire in their hearts and the Arizona Cardinals become the team of the Mexican people, and the rise to glory by the Cardinals will serve as a metaphor for the rise of a new Mexican empire. And when the Cardinals finally win the Super Bowl, a terrified Sheriff Goodell will be forced to hand the Lombardi Trophy to the masked owner of the Cardinals, a swarthy beast with wild eyes and a heart full of hate for everything that Goodell represents. This masked owner will tear off his mask revealing himself to be none other than Oscar Zeta Acosta who will reveal that he survived after all and that he hijacked a boat filled with cocaine and established a drug fueled empire in Baja, which netted him billions, billions which he used to purchase the Arizona Cardinals. He will then proceed to pistol whip Sheriff Goodell on national TV and then his followers will pull Chris Berman from his sty and beat him and they will light fires which will burn through the night and then they will parade through the streets of Phoenix the next day, drunk on bloodlust, victory and tequila and they will drive Goodell, Berman and their ilk through the streets naked and ashamed, weeping and begging forgiveness while Oscar bellows at them and whips them with chains made from the tears and broken dreams of the people of Arizona.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): A 9-7 year will make them easily the best team in the NFC West, winning the division, but then losing a home playoff game like Seattle should have last year.