Redskins Disease Is Also A Thing.

Patient zero.

Well, here we are again, Redskins fans--I'm back after an absence of over a month, reassuring you that the circumstances which kept me away from the blog were isolated in nature and that I'll get back to my two-updates-a-week schedule that I only ever maintained for a couple of weeks back when I first started out here. Am I full of shit? Probably. My job is really difficult and pays very little money. The truth is that I'm too busy hustling most of the time to think about unpaid side gigs that I do for the love. Yesterday morning was spent harvesting unloved back issues from my comic book collection to sell at the store across town that always buys whatever I bring in (and always for the same amount--$25--no matter how much I stuff I actually sell at any given time. What's up with that?), and I barely had time to complete my actual paid duties. But it's Saturday, I've got no deadlines today, and I've been thinking about what to say about the Redskins and their current situation for at least two weeks now. So rather than spend this valuable weekend time catching up on my bloated RSS feed, I'm here to talk to you all about the Redskins at this completely uncertain point in the history of our 2012 season and, really, our entire franchise.

In order to really get into all the Redskins-related feelings I've had since our trouncing at the hands of the wretched Carolina Panthers, I'm going to have to deal in some concepts that are common on this blog, but certainly were not originated by me. Failure demons, [insert team name here] disease, raving psychotic breaks--you know the story. Neil deserves the credit for coming up with this stuff, but what he has really done with his outstanding work on Armchair Linebacker over the past several years is put a name to the sort of free-floating ideas that are present in the psychological history of any sports team that is not a perennial winner. People who like the New York Yankees or the LA Lakers may not know any of these concepts firsthand, but the vast majority of all sports teams spend significant epochs of their history, inbetween their occasional dominant runs, as cellar-dwellers. There are few teams of which that is more true than the Lions and the Redskins. Neil and other Lions fans may argue that our 5 Super Bowl appearances to their zero makes us less aware of what it's like, and they may be right, but the truth is that the Redskins have been garbage for multiple decade-plus eras of their existence. Don't just think of the time since Gibbs v 1.0 retired--look back, before Vince Lombardi and then George Allen Sr. came to town in the late 60s/early 70s. Sammy Baugh left after the 1952 season, and really, even his last few years with the team weren't too great. Between 1946 and 1971, the Redskins had four winning seasons and no playoff appearances. That's over the span of 26 years. That's an even longer and more terrible run than we've had since the departure of Gibbs v 1.0. We know about being a shitty team here in Redskins nation.

So yeah, I definitely fell victim to a vicious attack of acute Redskins disease after the Panthers loss. Mike Shanahan gave a press conference in which he said something about "I guess we'll spend the rest of the year evaluating talent," and I was feeling a much less sober version of the same thing. I'm sure I would have (and did) put it as "Same ol' Redskins." I started wondering how it could be that, with multiple promising young rookies performing at the peak of their abilities--RG3, Alfred Morris, but also Kai Forbath, who has been a godsend for a team with kicking woes that date back even longer than our quarterback troubles--we still looked like garbage out there on the field by midseason. The loss to the Steelers was worse than it seemed like it should have been, and was marked by specific errors from our receiving corps, but there was no one issue that had caused our ignominious defeat at the hands of the Panthers. Everybody looked terrible out there. RG3 and Morris were trying, and Forbath kicked everything we asked him to kick, but we couldn't put a drive together to save our lives. I found myself repeating the words of Dr. Thompson--"How long, oh lord, how long?" How much longer must we suffer with a team that finds a way to turn back into the same old sack of garbage by midseason, year in and year out, no matter how stacked with talent we are or how promising we look after the inevitable week one win?

It's comforting, though--that's the truly perverse part. When failure is what you know, the smackdowns from the failure demons that cause the disintegration of your ostensibly-amazing offense and the exposure of every weakness in your mediocrity-riddled defense start to feel strangely welcoming. "At least I know this feeling," you think. "It's familiar, and there's a comfort in its familiarity." It's like the way that, back before I was diagnosed with hypertension and the medicine I took had the happy side effect of making my chronic migraines go away, I started to kind of like the taste of BC powder. Anything, no matter how gross and awful, starts to feel strangely welcome when you're used to it. Familiarity may breed contempt, as they say, but more powerful than the contempt is that Stockholm Syndrome feeling that everyone encounters at some point in their lives (unless they're rich, I suppose. And if any rich people are reading this right now, give me some money). Sports fandom is weird, because there's no rational reason for you to even feel any sort of emotion about a professional sports team. And yet people do--and even if you wake up to the strange learned-helplessness dynamic that exists, in which you continue to show up for the beating even though you're free to leave at any time, just by turning off the TV, that emotional attachment will still be there. All it takes is news stories about your much-loved team experiencing some surprising late-season success to get dragged right back in--into a vortex of frequently-unfulfilling stress and emotion experienced in relation to a thing you have absolutely no control over.

Wow, well, that's enough psychobabble for one entry, I should think. But the point is that I had a certain set of expectations in place after two devastating losses marked by poor play and an overall inability to accomplish what we, as a team, had previously indicated was in our power to do. I figured it was time for the Skins to fold like a cheap suit, and before the year had run out, we might even be faced with the horrifying spectre of our franchise quarterback spending games holding a clipboard while we "see what we have" with less high-profile fellow rookie Kirk Cousins. It's a scenario we've all watched unfold way too many times. It's the kind of thing that made Raven quit his weekly Redskins chronicling after the crushing week two loss to the Rams--because how much more of this can we really take?

Welcome to the NFL, Nick.

That's a question that won't be answered right now, though, because we all know what happened next. The brutal defeat of Eagles rookie QB Nick Foles in his first career start was predictable, especially as the Andy Reid coaching dynasty in Philadelphia seems to be in the process of ending with a whimper as the entire team collapses around him in midseason. That didn't make it any less fun, though. And for some reason, it got me amped way up for the Cowboys game on Thanksgiving day. I went up to my parents' house, which is in the countryside west of NoVa, on the way to Front Royal, to see my relatives, eat excellent food, and watch some damn football (Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday). When I got there, I found the people who had all helped to inculcate in me my love of the Washington Redskins having a much more pessimistic attitude than I did about our chances against the Cowboys. I'm not sure it was all that rational for me to have made such a quick turnaround in thinking either, but I ended up being right, and the second quarter of that game in particular was a joy to watch. Romo and co. made somewhat of a comeback in the second half, and there was a point where it seemed like they could get fully back into the game, but RG3's talent and abilities led to an additional second-half touchdown and field goal that, to me, put the game away for the Redskins. It would have been nice for DeAngelo Hall to get that last-second touchdown and make the score more reflective of the blowout that that game really was, but he was right to kneel on the two and let RG3 kill the clock to end the game. After all, why give the Cowboys another chance to get the ball? Regardless of the score, the game was won.

It's amazing to think that, within a few weeks, my attitudes about the Redskins and their current season changed so quickly, but regardless, on the day after Thanksgiving, when the Redskins still had a losing record (5-6), I was talking about playoff chances with a friend of mine. At that point, I figured that if the Redskins won four of their last five games, they had a decent shot at taking the division. They'd have to beat the Giants, for one thing, and the Giants would have to lose to one other opponent--but with the Saints, Falcons, and Bengals on the schedule for the rest of their season, it seemed do-able. The game I saw the Redskins most likely losing was the one against the Ravens, but I thought that we could still potentially make the wildcard even if we did lose that game.

At the same time, it seemed really crazy to have the conversation. I thought then--and still think now--that the Redskins have played well enough this year that a decent number of total wins wouldn't be surprising or undeserved. But let's be honest--this squad hasn't done that much to indicate that they really deserve a playoff berth. Regardless of the fact that they've been good enough over the course of the year to pull out a whole bunch of wins that would have been losses for Sexy Rexy and the 2011 Skins, they've had quite a bit of trouble putting together 60 minutes of good football. The defense is "bend but don't break" at the best of times--meaning they can make a drive take a little longer, and force teams to settle for field goals a good bit of the time, but have trouble consistently making stops. Thankfully, the improvements in both the running and passing games have led to the offense being on the field longer, making the problems that plagued the defense late in games over the last couple of years (being tired, starting to make mistakes they wouldn't have made earlier in the game) show up far less often. But regardless, there are some glaring holes in team chemistry that mean, even if we could score a playoff berth, we're not gonna make it very far into the playoffs.

But as Clint Eastwood once said, "Deserve's got nothing to do with it." If we can score a playoff berth, I don't think any of us are gonna turn it down, right? If we can win the division, I welcome that with open arms. I fully expected that the two games we played in the last two weeks would determine our fate--that either the Giants or the Ravens would end the winning streak and bring things back down to earth, leaving us with only the most ridiculously outside of shots at getting into the playoffs. Instead, we ground it out against the Giants, playing the kind of old-school football late in the game in which a team strives to shut down and outlast their opponent, rather than actively gunning for a high point total. 17-16 isn't a glamorous final score, but winning by one point is still winning, and I'm happy with it. If nothing else, it's nice to see the Redskins finally in one of those late-game lead-holding situations that we used to get in a lot over the last few years in which we end up successful. I can't count the amount of times I've watched the Redskins get about 7 or 8 minutes away from the end of the game, get the ball back with less than a one-score lead, and at exactly the time when they could put the game away with a long, clock-killing drive, they fail to get even one first down, and then the defense caves because they're at the tail end of a game in which they've spent 35 to 40 minutes on the field and they just don't have the energy to hold the other team back anymore. The 2012 Redskins offense is, more often than not, able to put together enough successful plays to push the ball down the field and finish up the game in proper fashion.

And now, after a truly miraculous win over the Baltimore Ravens--who I saw as the only team on our post-Thanksgiving schedule who was sure to beat us--the Redskins have a winning record for the first time since week one. The three games that remain are the ones that, back on Black Friday, I saw us as most likely to win. And yet, since the first of the three is the Cleveland Browns, I find myself fearing exactly what I feared when we headed into the Rams matchup in week 2. It's a trap!

Why the hell can't I find any photoshopped pics of this guy in a Redskins uniform?

Make no mistake, if this is a trap game, I don't think it is thus because the Browns have some kind of special ability to defeat the Redskins. They're either good enough to beat us, or they aren't. The thing that scares me about the Browns is that they've gone from losing their first 5 games to winning their last three, and the game before that three-game winning streak was one against the Cowboys in which they jumped out to an early lead and lost in overtime. People think of the Browns as garbage, just like they think of the Rams as garbage. And yet, like us, the Browns seem to be figuring out how to gel as a team. They did so too late to make it into the playoffs, but they're still in a position to spoil our hopes for the year. A lot of people involved with that team's coaching staff are playing for their jobs right now. Trent Richardson is just as tough and strong of a young running back as Alfred Morris has been for us. Brandon Weeden is no RG3, but he's shaping up and looking like someone who might really be capable of quarterbacking successfully on a pro level. And RG3's old receiver, Josh Gordon, looks great. That's not to mention the fact that the Browns have had a really good year defensively. If the Redskins walk into the game tomorrow thinking "It's just the Browns," they're going to be surprised, and not pleasantly.

And none of that mentions what is, for the second time this season, the elephant in the room. Is RG3 starting? Well, if you're asking me, going purely by my instincts, I'm going to say yes. I think the guy heals quickly due to his youth, loves to play, has a leader's heart, and is going to find his way onto the field anytime it's physically possible. The qualities I like most about him, both as a player and as a leader of the offensive division of our team, make me think that you'd have to do a lot more to keep him off the field than give him a sprained knee. The Shanahans are keeping their decision about whether to put him onto the field under wraps, and football pundits are saying shit like "If the Redskins are good enough to beat the Browns with RG3, they should bench RG3 and start Kirk Cousins. And if they're not good enough to beat the Browns with RG3, they should stop worrying about limping into the playoffs this year and make sure they'll be in better shape for next year by benching RG3 and starting Kirk Cousins." Which is easy to say when you aren't part of the organization and are therefore able to take a long view and concern yourself with the team's fortunes over the next several years. I'm sure RG3, the Shanahans, and anyone else involved in the organization--from Danny Snyder all the way down to some random fan who posts regularly on his facebook page about the Redskins and has RG3 as his avatar on twitter--finds the prospect of considering the game in those terms somewhat insulting. I'm way down at the low end of that particular totem pole, and therefore have much more emotion invested in the fortunes of the Redskins than I have any semblance of control over what the team does. But I will say this much, and I think I speak for everyone when I say this: This isn't about longterm fortunes. Every week, when the players suit up and we head for the stadium or turn on the TV, we're looking for a win. We might say "The team needs to rebuild, there's no way we'll make it past round two of the playoffs this year," but in that moment, when we're watching the game, we want to see the team do everything they can to win the game. There's a fine line between playing it safe and giving up, and nobody in the organization is going to be cool with giving up.

So yeah, if RG3 can't play because he's still hurt, then bench him. But if he can play, fuck this "if they can't win with Kirk Cousins, they don't deserve a playoff berth" attitude. The playoffs are an abstraction right now anyway. Even if we beat the Browns, we've still got two more games to win before we can even start thinking about them. Even then, if the Giants, Bears, and Seahawks all win out, we could finish the year 10-6 and still get eliminated. Whatever, fuck it. Worry about it later. This week, the mission is to beat the Browns, and we need to do everything in our power to do it.

Not that I'm saying Kirk Cousins is terrible, nor even that he's incapable of beating the Browns himself. I don't think he's RG3 by any means, but the kid is all right. It's nice to have a decent backup who can come in and spell the superstar if we need him to, and it's nice that he's calm under pressure and talented enough to, for the most part, deliver when we need him to. But really, he pulled off two very clutch plays in the Ravens game, and did a half-decent but not by any means perfect job in the fourth quarter of the Atlanta game, so we've got no reason to think he can play equivalently to RG3. And I'm not going to pretend that we don't need RG3's talent to win games right now. As I said earlier, there are a lot of holes in the team's performance right now. We need our upsides to compensate for our downsides. Fuck any idea of whether or not the Skins deserve to win this game if they can't do it without RG3. We're sick of waiting til next year. If there's an advantage we can have, we want to have it. We want to win.

Maybe this is just another manifestation of Redskins disease--pushing anything that seems remotely positive until it screams, until we wear it out and kill it because we're putting all of our other weaknesses on its back and hoping it can save us from them. I don't know right now. But I don't think that's it. Really, part of what has been happening since the team returned from the bye week and seemed to remember how to win games is that they now seem to be taking that next step. I could name all the players who have been playing well--the aforementioned rookie triumvirate, Pierre Garcon, London Fletcher, Ryan Kerrigan, even recent injury-replacements like outside linebacker Rob Jackson and new punt returner Richard Crawford--but it doesn't come across like the result of individual effort. It seems like the team is working together. We're not perfect, but we've figured out how to function and succeed as a unit.

Maybe the Redskins won't make the playoffs this year. Maybe they'll lose a game down the stretch, or maybe too many other teams will win and a 10-6 record won't be good enough to score them a wildcard spot. But right now, going into the Browns game, I feel good about things. RG3 or no RG3, trap game or no trap game, failure demons or no failure demons, I have become convinced that these really are not just the same old Redskins. I fell victim to Redskins Disease back in early November, and I'm not going to say I'm cured of it now, but it's definitely in remission. However, I'm not taking this Cleveland game for granted, by any means. Let's hope the team doesn't either.

The Endless Hypocracy of the NFL Hype Machine

Pictured: Roger Goodell's ideal of exemplary leadership.

So first off, yeah I know I haven't been as active this season as I was last year. I could go all Livejournal and regale everyone of how my life got flipped, turned upside down, but no one who reads this (people do read this right?) gives a shit about that, so on to football REAL TALK.


Last week was another entry in the storied Steelers-Ravens rivalry. All the pregame masturbatory hoo-ha was about how this was exactly like a heavyweight title fight, and I don't think they meant it was like two gangly 7 foot Eastern European motherfuckers engaging in a bro hug for 12 rounds. No indeed, this was all about two teams who are all about beating the shit out of each other and that is exactly what we got. That's when the bullshit began

First, Ray Lewis leveled Hines Ward, who got knocked the fuck out. No penalty was called, and Ward was out for the rest of the game with a likely concussion. Replays showed it was probably a helmet to helmet hit in the technical sense (it was more of a graze than actual contact) but not something you would think was blatant or intentional. Later on, Ryan Clark laid out Ravens TE Ed Dickson with one of those 70s style "DB crushes a receiver with a legal hit that makes you blurt out OH SHIT" kind of moves. However Dickson turtled up in a ball like he was Sonic the mothefucking Hedgehog and in the process what was going to be a clean hit to the chest into a helmet to helmet collision. A completely bullshit personal foul was called, and I'd like to think that was what Clark was trying to figure out when he was out of position for the game winning TD.

The result? A $40,000 fine for Clark and a $20,000 fine for Lewis. Why the higher fine for what was ostensibly the same transgression? Not the "wah, Goodell hates the Steelers" garbage, but what seems to be the actual reason is probably just as idiotic. It appears Clark gets the stiffer penalties because he has a rep as a repeat offender because he's known as a hard hitter which in this era of football is the same as being dirty. This is even more retarded when you consider the entire AFC North is pushed as a rough division where every team beats the shit out of the others and every game is like one of those Old West fights where someone gets punched out and slid across the entire length of the bar. So on one hand the NFL will promote the hell out of the beatings these teams put on each other, but turn around and fine them when they actually knock the shit out of each other.

Even Big Ben took a break from rehabbing his image (possibly emboldened by officially no longer having the most hated penis in Pennsylvania as of this week) to take a swipe at the NFLPA leadership for being such fucking imbeciles for agreeing to a system where King Rog is judge, jury, and appeals process: "Someone needs to stand up and do something like De Smith. He is our player guy, stand up and do something for our players."

It's not like Clark was doing some kind of dumb headhunting move that should be eliminated from football on general principle, he was making a clean (but hard hitting) tackle on someone trying to catch the ball in his vicinity, which to the best of my knowledge is still his goddamn job.

To his credit in a world where everyone goes out of their way to never say anything of substance, Clark seems to be done with the commish's bullshit: "I mean you can appeal, but I'm appealing to the same person," Clark said, alluding to Goodell. "The same man. I know, he's not going to sit across from me because I'm not going to sit across from him unless they handcuff me, which is probably the next step anyway." Which was followed by my my personal favorite quote "This time it's wrong," Clark said, "not that I respected Roger before this."

Preach on, brother. If they want to keep pretending they care about not turning guys' brains into pudding, all while running hype videos comparing games to pugilistic contests designed to do exactly that, then fuck those guys. The Steelers need to bring Mel Blount back as a special consultant in charge of knocking guys the hell out. I want to see guys throwing lariats like fuckin' Stan Hansen out there, if the NFL is going to issue fines then goddamn it let's make it worth the money.

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #9: BALTIMORE RAVENS

PERTINENT DATA: 12-4, earning an AFC wild card berth, beat Chiefs in Kansas City in wild card round, lost at rival Steelers in divisional round of playoffs; 16 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): On one hand, the Baltimore Ravens were born of the greed and despicable shape shifting guile of Art Modell, which isn’t cool but on the other hand that pissed off the people of Cleveland and anything that makes those filthy animals weep and drown their children in the muck of the Cuyahoga River is okay with me. On a third hand (just imagine this is being written by some weird alien with 18 hands, 46 legs and, like, 12 dicks which, sadly, shouldn’t be too difficult to do) the Ravens seem like a thuggish bunch of animals, led by a dude who may or may not have been involved in a fatal stabbing in Miami, but on the fourth hand, we like thuggish dudes around these parts. So, what am I supposed to think about the Baltimore Ravens? Now, I know this isn’t supposed to be about my personal feelings but about the Ravens best and worst case scenarios as a football team, but to hell with all that, these damn previews descended into madness and vile mud-slinging long, long ago. If you’re here for punter formulas and efficiency charts then you’ve stumbled into the wrong saloon, friendo and you’ll be lucky if you get out of here without being deeply scarred in some way. My only advice to you is to avoid the hookers upstairs because they will either cut your balls off and rob you or leave you with a case of dick rot so severe that you’ll wish they had. But I’m getting off track, which . . . hell, is anybody reading this right now surprised by that? Anyway, with all that said, I don’t know whether to like the Ravens or hate them. I guess, in the end, I admire their thuggish Miami-bred style and their hardnosed disdain for rules and order. There are no Mannings here, just a collection of wild eyed semi-retarded hitmen whose only two goals in life are to break opposing runners in half and to own a purple Lamborghini that they can crash through the front window of a jewelry store at 3AM. I think that counts for something, you know? Exactly what, I have no idea. Look, I’m conflicted. I think the best case scenario for the Ravens is what it always is – a solid 12-4 type season built around a savage take no shit defense and an adequate offense culminating in a deep run into the playoffs and a blood filled war with the Steelers. Beyond that, don’t ask me what I think because honestly, I just don’t know.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): I have really always wanted to like the Ravens, because, you know, they have my name as their name and shit. But I've just never been able to do it, mostly because if my immense disdain for the state of Maryland, which is a strange place full of strange people. It's not even an outright shithole, although parts of Baltimore certainly would make you think twice about the sensibility of seeing the sun set. It's just Maryland people are... I don't know... just kind of sterile. They are the type of white people who love those goofy pretend horse races that places put on once a year where they don't actually horse races, so all the white people put on nice dresses and shirts and get rip-roaring drunk and take ecstasy and obliterate themselves in the hot sun for a whole day, and the local cops completely tolerate it, in fact, keep it safe by keeping the riff-raff out, so that these sheltered white people can party it up like degenerates but in a controlled environment. I worked with a girl like that one time, and she always wore thong panties and executron woman slacks, because she was a sales lady, so that was appropriate. But she always acted like she was all that, including talking about how she jumped up on stage to karaoke "Baby Got Back" or some shit one time, when in actuality, like a lot of women who tend to be in that sterile white people culture, she had the ass of a 7-year-old boy, all the beneficial fats jogged off into unsexiness that was slapped into a thong to pretend it's sexy from overabundance of scrawny ass cheek exposure. In fact, that girl was from Maryland, and she also lied about me liking her cookies one time, which were store bought cookie dough cookies, to my wife at a work function, which pissed my wife off because I never eat cookies at home (this is not a euphemism for cunninlingus, I assure you), but I just had to tell my wife, like so many men have had to tell their wives in similar potentially dramatic situations, "That bitch crazy." Anyways, that type of person is really what Maryland has always seemed like to me, and I have honestly never met anyone from Maryland who has dispelled that as my intuitive feeling about the state. Thus, I have a hard time rooting for a team from Maryland, because even their creepy little bird logo and state flag is tinged with that knowledge. And the players seem to vibrate with it as well. It's weird how a place can pollute you like that, but environmental pollution is a very real thing, not just for like mercury in rivers and all, but for electrosmog and psychic pollution in our very own neural make-ups. You should remember that. I am a scientist, I know these things to be factual.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Neil): You would think I’d pick Ray Lewis here but you’d be wrong. Here’s what I wrote about Ray Lewis when I was explaining his exclusion from the All-ACLB team a few months back or whenever the fuck I wrote it – well shit, this is embarrassing, I was sure I wrote something about Ray Lewis back then but apparently I did not. Does it surprise you that sometimes these things exist only in my mind? Goddammit, I swear I wrote it but I can’t find it anywhere. Help! What is going on? Where am I? Anyway, Ray Lewis seems kind of fraudulent to me. Not all the way fraudulent but just kind of like the sort of dude who likes to scream a lot because he thinks it makes him sound like a warrior and who probably never stabbed anyone but just stood around and watched his boys do that shit all wide-eyed and then ran off, hyperventilating and muttering “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck” under his breath the whole time. I’m not saying any of that is right but Ray Lewis wants you to think he’s capable of stabbing a dude and therein lies the issue. So, anyway, it’s not Ray Lewis even though I don’t really have a huge problem with him or anything. It’s Ed Reed you should root for. And here’s why: Ed Reed is such an awesome player that I picked him for the All-ACLB Team regardless of whether he was a solid dude or not. Frankly I didn’t know. But then Raven picked up my slack and wrote the following:

“But first let us speak further of Ed Reed. There is no other football player in the NFL who looks more like he is about five years into a 20 year plan to look like one of Fred Sanford's best friends than Ed Reed. He has the homeless man beard, the bug eyed look that is simply the result of being such a dark-skinned dude with beautiful almost twinkling bright eyes. He seems like the chillest dude on earth, just by looking at him. Seriously, there was always the one homeless dude who you knew was smoking crack with your dollar donation to his cause, but he just seemed so goddamned chill, you couldn't resist. And he'd recognize you, and call out, "Hey Potna, what's goin' on today?" and you would feel good about this crazy man calling you "partner" in mangled but happy speech. That's Ed Reed in years, except he is a successful millionaire dude instead, yet still looks like that.
Why is he successful? Because there is no better ballhawk in the NFL. Early on, in the shadow of Ray Lewis, Reed was a headcracker, like any great safety. But he has transitioned into the one guy on an NFL field defensively who can turn a game around. This is probably partially due to his early times in Baltimore where the defense had to win games, so they might as well throw six up on the board from time to time to help their own cause. But you put that on the field with an offense that is actually competent beyond Brian Billick's ego strut, and what you have a formidable motherfucker.
On top of all this, as he was doing just these very things last season, he was doing it under the duress of his brother having run from the cops and disappeared/drowned in the Mississippi River. Like it's one thing to have tragedy strike where someone dies suddenly, but to have your little bro running from the sound of the beast, take a desperate dive into the biggest river in America, and then not show back up, that's some heavy fucking shit. And yet Ed Reed was there for every game, still making huge plays, still showing mad heart, no matter how heavy it was, and fucking shit up.”

Well there you have it.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Raven): I have always thought it would be neat if players had to play for the pro team near their college. One time, I think with Madden 07, I even started re-assigning the rosters to teams where pro teams got the players from colleges closest to them, or at least had dibs on that, but then it got complicated with later rounds or lower players or who got a player who was not deemed good enough at a stocked position, and how to go about the next year's draft and all. It just got really complicated, so I stopped that scientific nerd project. The Miami Dolphins offense was crazy though, and Ladainian Tomlinson played for the Cowboys, which made a lot of sense to me psychically. I mention all this because of Joe Flacco being the star QB for the Ravens. He played college ball in Delaware, which is right there. For those of you who have never been there, which is probably most of you, at least other than the interstate headed north or south, Delaware is a weird fucking place. It has oceanfront, but you never hear about anybody being like, "Oh shit man, we got a cottage rented down in Delaware for vacation. I can't FUCKING WAIT!" And there's a reason for this. Now let me preface this by saying I love Delaware, and have had some good sordid times there. But I'm a special breed of man. Delaware, for all intents and purposes, is one long skinny truck stop of a state, and as weird and creepy but neat as a truck stop is. Sure, you can find some wacky shit and get yourself a cup of coffee injected with liquid adrenaline for the long haul, and you might have a fun weekend in a rundown motel drinking 4-Lokos and tomato juice with some girl you met at the D.C. Greyhound station the day before, leaving glow-in-the-black light stains on the sheets and carpet for Dateline to find later. But you don't want to live in Delaware, or be from Delaware. It's where people who can't afford Pennsylvania or New Jersey go to live. It's where hookers go to get murdered. It's a sad but simple place. Basically it's like Charles Bukowski was made city planner for an entire state. Because of this, and knowing Joe Flacco grew up in Delaware, played college ball at a Football Championship Subcompact college, and is proud of all that, I have to question Joe Flacco's sensibilities as a human being. I know he is hyped up as the equal to Matt Ryan in Atlanta, and they are often billed as two future superstar QBs. But it also feels like the league trying to force a Manning/Brady rivalry of greatness down my throat that isn't really justified, especially for Flacco. So because of all this questionable history, and the fact that you compound this with him living in Maryland, the land of sheltered and sterile white people like I already mentioned, it's just not a good combo. This does not mean he's outright crazy awesome like Roethlisberger, or even constantly far above mediocre like Matt Hasselbeck. He just is whatever, you know.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Sergio Kindle.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): Look, this project has turned sneaky on me. It started as sort of an innocent, fairly straightforward, albeit occasionally weird preview and now I’m ranting and raving for 2,000 words about every single team. By the time this thing is done it’s going to rival the All-ACLB team in size and scope and Raven and I will have done it in a lot less time. Like, I bet I end up writing 40-50,000 words about all of these teams in the span of less than a month. In the book world that’s a novella. Shit, add Raven’s parts to mine and we’re going to end up writing a fucking novel’s worth of words. What does this have to do with the perfect world of the Ravens? I don’t fucking know. Leave me alone. All I know is that both Raven and I have spiraled into madness here. Okay fine, in a perfect world, Ray Lewis and Ed Reed burst into Sheriff Goodell’s office wearing ski masks and force him to piss his pants. I figure there’s at least a 5% chance of that actually happening which means that a perfect world is attainable. Don’t listen to the cynics. Never give up. We’re all about inspiration here at Armchair Linebacker. You’re welcome, America. You’re welcome.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): The Ravens are a really good team constantly barely outshone by division enemies the Steelers. The Ravens will go 12-4, which will be enough to barely win the AFC North, but they'll lose early in the playoffs, perhaps to those very Steelers, at home. That's what the mushroom river sticks told me, but that seems awful fucking specific, so I'm not tied to the outright exit it told me. But they will go 12-4 and win the division.