2011 All ACLB Team Quarterbacks

NEIL: KYLE ORTON
Some would say that I am just celebrating Kyle Orton here because he is a drunk, and I’ll admit, that does play a part. He’s kind of a fuck-up, and I’ll be honest here, I am comfortable with fuck-ups. This is because a fuck-up isn’t afraid to just be himself. There is no pretense there. You get what you get. You can relax around a dude like that. You know he’s going to get drunk and he’s gonna be fun to be around and he won’t get offended by anything you say or do. He’s not going to smile at you and then run off to plot your destruction behind your back. That’s a man I can get behind. In the heat of battle, that’s a man who I want to fight for.
On the other hand, I am incredibly uncomfortable with the “Yes sir, I believe in apple pie and America, and you can trust me since I have a square jaw and I wear a suit to church every Sunday” types. Sure, sure, I can get along with these people because I am good at finding common ground with people, but I don’t trust them. They seem good and honest and decent and this is the prototype that people like Joe Buck jack off to, but damn it, I don’t trust them. These are the dudes who will inevitably flip the fuck out and chase you down a hallway naked, covered in blood and wielding a chainsaw. I have a hard time getting behind these people as leaders because you never know what they’re really thinking. Their true selves – if they even exist and they aren’t just robots created in some super-secret NFL laboratory – are hidden behind a placid, dull mask. Sure, they might be thinking about the best way to lead you to victory, but they also might be thinking about chopping your body up and leaving it in the dumpster after the game. Obviously, these people kind of freak me out.
Unfortunately, most quarterbacks seem to fall into this latter category. They are emotionless drones, crew cut fetishists who make the NFL overlords happy because they are ciphers upon whom the John Wayne loving legions can imprint their own damaged childish fantasies of killing evil Indians and punching out Stalinist aliens with fists made of bald eagles and freedom. I can’t celebrate these dudes.
But I can celebrate a man like Kyle Orton. It is a testament to his refusal to buckle under and become such a cipher that he keeps ending up on teams that want to replace him. After all, he’s not marketable and he isn’t what a quarterback is supposed to look like. He’s not tall, handsome and blessed with a rocket arm. No, he’s a degenerate and a drunk and he always look like he was carried to the field in a boat made from a hollowed out beer keg on a river of King Cobra. But he also gets the job done. He’s always discounted, always treated like the last resort. No one wants to end up with him unless they have to. He’s an unwanted misfit but he never goes away. Instead, he gets better and better and one of these seasons he’s going to have a Rich Gannon or Steve Beuerlein type of breakout that sees him ride to the Pro Bowl and throw 30 touchdowns and then we’ll hear a bunch of dumb bullshit about how he doesn’t look pretty, but he’s just a leader and loaded with intangibles. I can see it coming.
But it won’t come in Denver, where Orton has been kicked to the side in favor of that false prophet known as Tim Tebow. This comes on the heels of getting dumped not once but twice by the shameful Chicago Bears, who first pushed him aside for that idiot Rex Grossman and then dumped him for that asshole Jay Cutler. He is forever unwanted but he just keeps coming back. People forget that before the antichrist Tebow showed up, Orton was having a damn good season. This is an easy thing to miss because the Broncos were fucking horrible but that shit wasn’t Orton’s fault. Prior to this season, as a starter, Orton’s record was 29-19. That’s pretty fucking good. Before he went out with an injury this season, Orton had thrown for 3653 yards, with 20 touchdowns and only 9 interceptions. And again, this dude was playing for a shitty team.
He’s constantly dismissed, constantly being shoved aside for idiots, assholes and antichrists and yet he keeps going out there and putting up numbers that, say, Mark Sanchez could only dream about. Everybody laughs at Kyle Orton because he’s apt to be photographed with a giant bottle of Jack Daniels and a horde of sluts hanging off him. This is because people are repressed assholes. Yeah, Kyle Orton likes to drink and fuck, but he also keeps getting better as a quarterback and he refuses to go away. That is evidence of a warrior spirit right there. He has been forsaken once again, supplanted by a false prophet and now he’s likely to wander the world, waiting for an opportunity to prove that the heart of a champion lies not within the body of a haloed prayer merchant but inside of a broken, bearded, booze soaked body. Once upon a time the world spat in the face of a ragged, poor straggler and strung his ass up and nailed him to a cross because he didn’t look the part. Instead they waited for their false prophet to come and rescue them, for their golden hero, for their Tebow and the tragedy was that all along, their savior walked among them and they turned on him because he had a beard and long hair and he liked to sip on some wine. Fuck your Tebow. Give me Kyle Orton.



RAVEN: BEN ROETHLISBERGER
Popular consensus around the world is that Peyton Manning and Tom Brady would be the top QBs in the World, but as really any President since TV went color will show you, popular consensus is usually bullshit. Peyton Manning is a doofus who, outside of one Super Bowl run, has historically lost big games. And I will admit to the intrigue of picking Tom Brady as my man in this list. Brady is an attractive guy, with his longhair, the type of guy I could see having an affair with for financial reasons. I mean, I’m not bi-curious, even slightly, but really, he’s just such a wealthy and unblemished guy, why wouldn’t you want to stay in a secret condominium, cuddle up with the multi-millionaire QB every now and then without anyone knowing, curling up beside that lanky body, your nose tickled by those beautiful locks, smelling of lavender conditioning, feeling all tingly and happy and knowing he could sign you off a six-figure check and not even blink an eye.
But this is about the QB that best represents the Armchair Linebacker mentality, not creating fanfics about finding financial freedom through entertaining a non-threatening white penis every now and then. And for me, the football mentality is not about being marketable or attractive, because this site is not marketable or attractive. I am not marketable or attractive. I am rough as fuck, tend to do stupid things, and yet still I’m better than most of the shitty sports columnists that get actual American money to write about football. And throwing that all into the NFL roster machines, then for my lack of money, there is no better more superlative QB going than Ben Roethlisberger. Sure, he lost the Super Bowl, but he’s already won two. Sure he probably raped a chick, but he also had sex with a chick in the bathroom of a small town Georgia club. Sure, he’s well known to be a probable asshole in real life, but I’d bet he’s a more fun probably asshole than Peyton Manning or Tom Brady. Roethlisberger’s play is ugly, yet entertaining. It seems like it’s always about to breakdown, and then he finds someone open downfield, or he stagger stumbles 9 yards for a first down. He gets it done.
To put it more simply, whether we do this every year for the next forty, or this is the only time we compile one of these lists, the single QB criteria I will live by is the question of how would this guy compare up to Kenny Stabler’s autobiography? Peyton Manning is a corporate entity designed by Nascar. Tom Brady is a corporate entity designed by GQ. Ben Roethlisberger is no corporate entity, and gets drunk publicly and wrecks motorcycles without helmets. He gets suspended for allegedly enough raping a woman, and his team’s self-righteous owner is thinking of dumping him, and all Big Ben does is come back and kick ass with a smirky smile on his face, buy his O-line a round of drinks, making bank shots on 8 foot pool tables, taking pictures of titties, and living the good life of a real deal NFL QB, the way it should be, the way we all dream it when we are kids. We don’t dream of doing Visa commercials. We dream of living as proudly and irresponsibly as possible, and being successful with it. That is the American dream.

TOMORROW: Running Backs.

Lions vs. Redskins - the game I remember the most, yet least

(what up white people)

The Lions and Redskins are two of the NFL’s oldest ass franchises, both afflicted with painful ownership powers in recent memory, but still, they’ve been around since the NFL was all white dudes who wore leather helmets for decoration not for protection, and the crowd consisted entirely of like 139 people none of which bought a single piece of official merchandise because motherfuckers made everything their self so if you wanted a jersey you ended up fighting one of your least favorite players on your favorite team behind the local bar and running off with his shirt if you could kick his ass, except the rest of the team was lurking around as always since football teams were basically fraternities of hellbent drunkards, and they’d end up beating your ass, but the next weekend at the game, you’d be like, “You see my chipped tooth and this gash on the side of my head? The famous nose guard Bugsy Balmer did this!”
So needless to say, I have many many memories of the Redskins playing the Lions over the years, including the one time Barry Sanders thought he might go to a Super Bowl, as well as the first round playoff game of that one scab year where everybody played 9 games and they had 16 teams in the playoffs. But there was one game in particular that I remember very clearly as a Lions/Redskins game, and it was a game where I did not visually watch even one play. Today kids, I’d like to share the story of the first time I ever rode a railroad train.
It was November of 1997, and I was in the midst of a two-month long pill and drinking binge at my man Born King’s crib in Richmond, Va. All his roommates had gone to Mexico so we had free reign of a 2-story house, bills paid, to do dumb shit like try to duct tape a naked chick to the wall and chop a bunch of shit up with a samurai sword. Plus we had this thing called Soul Food Sundays where folks would get together on Sundays and cook up some good ass food, get drunk, and wind down the weekend in communal style. It was good times.
Well this one Saturday night, our friends in the epic band RPG who were stoner rock before it was a genre, they played a show as their previous incarnation with the lead singer we all loved who would eventually turn into an undying heroin junkie (seriously… I heard dude was still alive in Las Vegas) at some cop dude’s birthday party somewhere a few blocks off of Shockoe Bottom over towards the ghetto. It was basically a party full of cops and my friends doing coke in the back bedroom, which I didn’t do coke, so I was drinking purple passion with a pair of gay black men who seemed rather crackardly to be at this cop party. But we had a good time laughing about how you could steal a Jeep Cherokee with nothing more than a flathead screwdriver back in the day, and how much cops sucked.
Perhaps I did not mention I was doing what I could to work through a liter of Jim Beam that day, by myself. That was basically my goal for the night, and the purple passion and additional beers, it was to sugar coat the Beam bourbon and make the night even more crazy.
Well, at some point during the cop party, it got hazy. I had heard tell of another party where my old school homeboys from Williamsburg were playing a rare Richmond show, The Superiors I think was their name at that point but seriously who the fuck remembers? So my man Hippie Nick gives me a ride to that party in his dad’s Miata, us looking gay as fuck zipping drunkenly through the Richmond night, back towards The Fan, arriving just in time to see the band start playing a rather uptight house party where some belligerent halfwit dude stumbled out buck naked to introduce the band. Who knew later on that night I’d be sitting on that guy’s lap?
So that party involved me finishing my liter of Jim Beam, sharing it a bit, but drunk as fucking fuck. The drummer in this band was my original college roommate, Ten Dollar David (who actually earned that name from this adventure). His Williamsburg posse was headed back to the Burg from Richmond after they made them stop playing because it was loud and obnoxious and scaring everybody, and about nine of us piled into some sort of late model car to go back to Dave’s crib to get more fucked up. I had always known Dave as kind of a bum, rarely employed, who somehow went to Europe with only $20, but because of that was stuck there for five years, spending the majority of that time in hipster Prague, and mailing me novels by people I never heard of about Europe-y things. So when we got to his house he rented a room in, it was kinda nice. There were things actually displayed in cabinets as opposed to stacked on cinderblocks. His roommates seemed a little stuffy about nine drunken fools stomping around. I sensed this so started making small talk with them, which probably didn’t ease their mind, but I am sure even through my drunken haze, I was making a good impression. I was trying to fuck his one roommate, but I imagine it was one of those Homer Simpsonesque memories of what was going on that was nothing even close to the truth. At some point, everything went black.
I woke up in a puddle of drool, smelling of liquor, on a hardwood floor, with no idea where I was. I saw Dave, and remembered I had gone to a party where his band had played last night, but I did not remember going to Williamsburg or know where I was, city-wise, much less specific place-wise. After a couple minutes I woke up Dave and asked him where the fuck I was. He told me at his house. I asked where that was, and he told me Williamsburg. I was like, “Shit man, I have to go back to Richmond. I’m supposed to work tomorrow.” Of course, there was no ride, and I had no money. Well, actually I had $2. Seriously. Great men do not plan their drunken adventures, they just jump on board.
Oh man, was I fucking hungover. Turns out Dave knew that a train ticket from Williamsburg to Richmond was $12 one way. So we went to his work, where he was going to borrow $10 from his boss, being he didn’t have any money either. As I sat there uncomfortably trying to force a grilled cheese sandwich into my body that I think they gave me out of sympathy, the naked dude from the night before came out and made small talk. He was a dishwasher at this joint like my boy Dave, and after a couple of minutes of conversation I realized he was just drunk last night, but actually a mumbling crazy halfwit of some sorts. But a good dude. One thing we try to do nowadays is pretend we are better than the rest of the world, in our little internet cubicles of fake cool. The truth is nothing is better than being black mind blind drunk with naked halfwits and unemployable vagabonds. Fuck security.
Anyways, eventually I got my $10 bill to add to my two crumpled up $1s, and I meandered towards the train station, which was a block off of part of Colonial Williamsburg, where freshly bathed white families promenaded down the olde fashionista streets, taking in the great history of their great nation. And here I was, a stumbling drunk in the middle of their beautiful day trip, stinking of last night’s liquor, wearing Friday’s clothes still, with just enough money to catch the goddamned train back to what was home at that time, which wasn’t home at all, and had nothing but two changes of clothes and my broke down Datsun that needed a new alternator (which is why I was actually making an effort to get back to go to work on Monday, because I had a ride that day with someone else and could maybe get a new alternator since I was doing daily work for daily pay for an asshole named John).
The train did not leave for four hours, and usually me and Born King always made it a point to settle down enough to sit in front of the TV screen to watch our beloved Redskins play on Sunday afternoons. (In fact, it was during this stretch that the Skins played the infamous 7-7 Sunday night football tie against the Giants, because we didn’t have cable and had to go to this chick’s house to watch the game and by the end of the night had wrecked her car doing donuts through Church Hill… ahh, those were good times.) I was not there, and had no cellaphone because they did not exist for degenerates yet at that time. So I curled up on the empty bench of a Sunday afternoon Amtrak station in Colonial Williamsburg, and tried not to vomit. The only other person there was a janitor, and the ticket booth had a sign that said “Train to Richmond – 3:30 - $12 – pay the train dude.” It didn’t say it that way but that’s what it meant. So I laid on the bench, and the janitor dude had the football on the TV behind some wall, and it was pregame time, and I was like, “Fuck, I could really curl up on the couch and watch the Redskins.” I took a stroll through the rich people on tours, contemplating panhandling enough money to get a bottle of water or something, but shit man, this was a tourist place, and I was not there for the right reasons. They would’ve thrown me in jail, and I’d never make it back to work on Monday morning. I didn’t know enough dishwashers in town to make any type of bail, nor know anybody’s phone number to call.
During my wander, I found a pay phone and did that thing where you make a collect call and when the robot says, “State your name,” you give the message you need to give. So at Born King’s hosue, he answers the phone and the robot says, “You have a collect call from fucked up night pick me up at train station at 7. Do you accept?” and then I hung up the phone.
Back in the train station, I curled up, and between violent shudders of my liver being worked triple-time to process leisure poisons, I made out audio snippets of the Redskins struggling with, but ultimately handling the Detroit Lions. It was not a done deal though when the train finally arrived. I stumbled on and found a quiet corner across from a black chick with a nice tits and a smile, and watched the backsides of strip mall buildings and all its unseen forgotten trash and graffiti, opposite end of the neon and window displays, thinking, “Hey, I’ve never rode a train before.” Then I crashed, anxious for soul food Sunday to replenish me before trying to pretend I was employable the next morning.
The train station in Richmond is way the fuck out of downtown, hence the call to get picked up, too far to walk, and I came out not expecting anybody to be there really. Shit man, when being zonked on a xanax and bottle of Beam and waking up in a strange city is nothing odd, you don’t really expect anything anymore. But there was Born King and the chick we both hung with all the time. Relief. We got in the chick’s car, and headed back to the grill again.
“Soul Food Sunday on?”
“Nah man, we didn’t know where you were, so we didn’t get it going.”
“The Redskins win?”
“Yeah, they fucked ‘em up.”
And then we started piecing together our individual nights like a drunken quilting bee. The chick bought me a Whopper, and I was just starting to get halfway upright again. Back at the crib, we kept it chill, laying on three different couches. Of course, around midnight, we decided the best way to wind down the night would be to run up to the corner bar for a beer or two, which of course went until last call, which of course also pushed into 4 in the morning, playing Trivial Pursuit for shots. I still made it up to catch my ride to work that next morning, this guy Phil from Tennessee who was an ex-con but talked about Kahlil Gibran all the time. We had to replace a couple of rotten beams under a house, so we got up under there, jacked it up real quick, slammed in two new beams in about half a hour, even though you’re not supposed to raise a house that high that fast, and then we slept under these people’s house for a few hours. I got paid, but blew it on drinking and drugs instead. The chick we hung out with though, I helped her steal a pound of weed from her dad in exchange for her buying me a gold tooth, but instead I got her to buy me an alternator for my Datsun. I switched it out and rode back home to Farmville, Virginia, to my shitty little trailer on Lindy Hamlet’s trailer park, and didn’t drink for five whole days.
So yeah, whenever the Redskins and Lions have a game, I think of that day, and how awesome life was even though it was the grimiest and shittiest time of my life. People are fucking pussies on this American Earth, and refuse to allow their dark side to infuse them with fighting spirit. I am not one of those people. Nothing in this story is made up or embellished even slightly, and I am ashamed of none of it (except for the letting one of the gay black dudes at the cop party suck my dick part, which I didn’t mention for a reason). In fact, I’m proud of every goddamned detail, and I am a Redskins fan. If all of them were like me, we’d have so much goddamned sisu, these fuckers would never lose another game forever.
During that spell, me and Born King made a promise that for the rest of our ever-loving lives, if Washington made the Super Bowl, we’d drink a beer for every point they score. I am doing my psychically energetic part to make that happen. Everything else is up to the rest of this faggot earth.

Midnight Boxing

Back in 2001, that year when that asshole HAL went apeshit and apparently some monkeys threw some bones in the air while dramatic drums played in the background, I found myself piss drunk in the backyard of a friend deep into the night with a pair of boxing gloves strapped on my hands and one of my best friends standing across from me, pummeling me.

Now, this might strike you as vaguely odd, but if it does then you really haven’t been paying attention. Shit like this happened to me all the time in college, largely because I was an utter degenerate.

Anyway, earlier that night I had helped celebrate another close friend’s 21^st birthday by buying him a metric shitload (technical term) of shots. I, of course, felt it was my duty to match him shot for shot because I am a real friend. Cut to several hours later and I was standing in the living room of another friend with boxing gloves on. She seemed obviously ill at ease with the whole idea, but I assured her that everything was cool and I just wanted to wear them for a while. Then I punched out a window in her living room. She was remarkably patient with me, but still, it was time to take that shit outside.

One of my closest friends during that time was a dude who was an all-state football player in high school who had drifted, like me, into degeneracy. He joined me outside. He was soberish (I won’t say sober because nobody was, but in terms of relativity, he was sober. I mean, I was so drunk that Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas was sober by comparison. Anyway, for further discussion, see Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.) and he had also acquired boxing gloves. Meanwhile, I am a fairly athletic dude. I can throw a punch. But I was so drunk that I could barely stand which is, naturally, a fairly important thing when it comes to boxing.

I had another friend who sat outside and watched us because, hell, that shit was funny. He sort of took on the role of de facto ref because that’s the sort of thing you do when you’re all fucked up at three in the morning.

So, the stage was set for an epic battle. My friend was a sober beast and I was incoherent and even Iggy Pop probably would have told me that I needed to chill the fuck out. But fuck all that, it was time to brawl. Naturally, I got knocked the fuck out over and over and over again. But I kept getting back up, much to my friends’ amazement. They would just laugh – mostly because they were assholes – but I was out of my head and I would stagger back to my feet after a 40 count or so and start slurring a bunch of unintelligible bullshit and then I would get knocked out again. But I kept getting up because fuck them, that’s why. I kept getting up because there is something inside of me that is hardwired to not stay down. I am stubborn and the more I get beat on the more ridiculous I get. After probably the 912^th time I got put on my back, I crawled back to my feet and called my friend a coward and a cocksucker and a lot of other hideous shit. I was indignant and defiant, drunk and disorderly, completely out of hand, and he just laughed again and knocked me the fuck out one more time.

There was never a moment when I thought “You know, you might want to stay down you damn fool. You can’t win this. You’re too drunk and you can’t even stand up to throw a proper punch.” No, in my mind I was convinced that I would make it back to my feet and this time I would connect with a miracle punch and knock my friend out cold. (By the way, I know this makes no sense. Why would I want to knock my friend out cold? Just remember, I was shitfaced, and this is the sort of thing that happens when you are a man, young and filled with a combination of adrenaline and booze. There is no such thing as reason. He was there, we had boxing gloves on, and so damn it, I was gonna knock him the fuck out.) If anything, the only way I was winning that fight was if I vomited on him and he gave up.

It even got to the point where my friend who was doubling as the referee started to bellow the theme to Rocky every time I scrambled to my feet. Even in my addled haze I knew that he was mocking me but fuck it, sometimes you just have to fight for yourself even if no one else believes in you, or hell, even cares at all about the outcome. I am an intensely competitive person, to the point where it is not fun to even play a game of cards with me. I can make a game of darts miserable with my shit talk. I am relentless and blood thirsty and I recognize this about myself. I am not proud of it, but there are times when I shouldn’t win but I do because I won’t back down. You can name just about any sport or game and I can point out at least one time when I won just because I was a psychotic asshole who had to win.

That’s all great when you’re sober. But when you are completely shitfaced, and you can’t see right and everything feels like some giant psychedelic hillbilly circus, you’re just going to get your ass kicked over and over and over again. And that’s what happened. I had the will to keep fighting but I was too fucked up to really do anything about it. I was fatally flawed and that was that.

I want to say that there was some grand moment where I stood up and my friends all respected me as a fighter but the truth is, is that they just laughed at me until finally the night just got old and everyone went back inside. And then, I sat in the passenger seat of my friend’s car – the same friend who had just spent who knows how long pummeling me – and I wept like a stupid baby. I wasn’t sad or angry or upset or anything like that. I was just overloaded with adrenaline and booze and the combination makes for some weird side effects. One of those is crying. It just happens. You don’t even know why you’re doing it, but there you are, blubbering like a damn fool while your friend tells you that he understands and hey, it’s cool because it’s happened to him before too and then the next thing you know, the sun is coming up and you feel like a zombie and you have already wrecked the toilet with your vomitous thunder and so now you’re on your hands and knees on the back patio dry heaving and wondering if you accidentally slipped through a secret portal into hell.

I woke up the next day on my friend’s couch like some vagrant and my entire face was killing me. I looked in the mirror and my gums were all caked with dried blood and there was a mat of what I hoped was blood right underneath my nose, my poor, poor nose which would hurt for a month afterward. Everything was swollen and Goddamn, if there was ever a point in my life where I could have been thrown into some sort of shelter or rehab facility without anyone questioning it, it was then.

One thing about me is that even if I get stupendously drunk, I never black out. I always (okay, almost always. I am allegedly only human, after all.) remember what I did the night before, which can, uh, lead to some embarrassment. So, there I was, staring into a mirror in my friend’s bathroom (By the way, I just crashed at his place because my place was further away and, well, let’s just say that distance may have been a factor when it came to his deciding whether to drive home or not that night.), staring at my wrecked face, dried blood everywhere, and I felt both embarrassed and proud. I was embarrassed because, well, obviously . . . but I was also strangely proud because I remembered that I kept on getting up. Even though my friends were laughing at me and even though no one was taking that shit seriously at all, in my heart, my drunken foolish heart, it meant something to me. I kept making myself get up to prove something to myself. I had to get up because no matter how much I got knocked down, if I did that, then I couldn’t lose. There was no way I could win the fight because I was drunk and had been rendered retarded. But if I just managed to stand up after I got knocked down, then hell, I’d still be there and really, wasn’t that the point?

I finished looking into the mirror and I walked back out into the living room, looking and feeling like I had just walked off the set of a Romero flick and I saw my friend standing there. He saw me and just started laughing. I laughed too because really, what else can you do? But in my heart I was proud because I looked at his face and on his forehead was one big raw mark where a bunch of skin had been ripped off. It would seem that at some point, I had managed to land one shot. I was drunk and I couldn’t win, but I always got up and I never quit coming. Time eventually ran out and everyone went home, but I never lost, never looked at him and said I quit. Instead, I gave him a nasty looking cut in the middle of his forehead. I was behind on points, but if we fought forever, I still think that eventually, I would have won.

That is a convoluted metaphor for what just went down against the Giants on Sunday, on the anniversary of my birth. I meant for it to only be a paragraph but, well, much like that night, shit got out of hand in a hurry. But as that game was finishing up, that night went through my mind and for good reason. The Lions fought and they fought and they fought and they never stayed down, even though they kept getting knocked on their asses. But they were also drunk and fatally flawed. They were never going to win that fight. They couldn’t. But they kept fighting anyway until finally, time just ran out and everybody walked off the field.

It seemed like a game where everything from the ref to Dick Stockton to fate itself conspired to keep the Lions from winning. Hell, God even tried to kill poor Zack Follett. But still, the Lions wouldn’t go away. Dick Stockton spent half the game blathering about how the Giants could do anything they wanted against the Lions defense – which, no, damn it, just . . . no – and then spent the rest of the game gibbering like a fool and openly wondering how the Lions were still in the game. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the cameras cut to the booth and a shot of ol’ Dick wearing a Giants jersey. Really, shut the fuck up, old man.

But what made Dick’s dickery even more obnoxious was that it was a narrative that just didn’t mesh with what was actually happening. The story he was telling and the story that a lot of fans will come away with is of one team dominating the hapless Lions yet again while the Lions shit themselves, roll over and then die. But that is all a bunch of hideous horseshit. The Lions kept stopping the Giants. On a down by down basis, they were punching with them, hanging in there, and damn it, in a position to win that fight. But they were also drunk and fucked up, and they couldn’t recover from that.

Really, you can point to a handful of moments that decided this game. It wasn’t outright dominance by the Giants – the Lions actually outgained the Giants over the course of the game – and anyone who thinks that’s what it was either didn’t watch the game or is just being lazy. On the Giants second touchdown drive of the game, the Lions had them stopped on a 3^rd and 20 but Ndamukong Suh’s hands wandered up a little too high onto the face of the center, Shaun O’Hara, and what was a dead drive, killed by the Lions defense, was given new life that ended with a touchdown. It was a penalty that really had nothing to do with the effectiveness – or ineffectiveness in that particular case – of the play. It was just a stupid, quirky little thing. His hands got a little too high and that was that. It seems like such a fractionally stupid thing, such an unimportant little incident that it’s absurd that it should have had such an impact on the result of the game, but it did and here we are.

On the Giants third touchdown drive, the Lions stopped the Giants on 3^rd down and had forced them to kick a field goal. But, wait! Hey, isn’t that Cliff Avril swinging away like a drunken degenerate at some fool? It is! Well, hey, that had nothing to do with the play but let’s just give the Giants a first down inside the five yard line. Touchdown, thanks for trying.

That’s 14 points that should have been 3. By my count that takes the Giants to 17 points, and well, that’s a slippery slope, the whole if this then that game, but well . . . yeah. It’s not like those were pass interference penalties or things that actually had an effect on the damn game. They were away from the play incidents, things that had nothing to do with football and they lost the Lions the game.

There are those who will tell you that is the point entirely, that those moments are relevant and are what separate the good teams from the bad, and honestly, those people aren’t wrong. But when it comes to football, to snapping the ball and stopping the other guy, well, the Lions did that. They were just too drunk to win.

I will talk later about Drew Stanton gritting his way down the field and about how that game was the perfect summation of the entire being of Ol’ Plucky, but all that is just background noise for what really mattered, and that is that the Lions actually showed that they could play with anyone right now. It’s just that, well, they need to sober up.

Every time they would stagger back to their feet, they would just fall back down again. Drew Stanton would fumble or Nate Burleson would lose the ball in a fumble that was so barely a fumble that it felt like the refs should let the Lions keep the ball just out of principle or Ahmad Bradshaw would finally break loose and Goddammit, you’re so close, just take a swing and you can win this fight!

But . . . no. The truth is that no, no they couldn’t. Because they were drunk and fatally flawed. Did the Lions deserve to win this game? No. Did the Lions deserve to lose this game? No. That’s the best way that I think I can put this. They couldn’t win because they were too fucked up. But they wouldn’t lose either. Time just ran out and everybody went home. But even though the Lions are caked in their own blood, the Giants also woke up today, looked in the mirror and saw a big, nasty gash on their forehead.

I don’t believe in moral victories. I believe in winning or losing. And so, naturally, I’m pissed that the Lions lost. I’m pissed that there are people who will take this game and look at all the penalties and all the mistakes and think “Same old Lions.” But, Goddamn, this was a team that was down to its third string quarterback, on the road against a team that has a pretty decent shot at the playoffs, with a star receiver who spent the whole week unable to even lift his arm high enough to put a shirt on without difficulty, and they were drunk off their ass. And somehow, still, if one or two things happen differently, they would have won the damn game. That is almost miraculous. I’m not happy, but I’m not mad either. I’m just sort of sore and upset because we got knocked the fuck out, but I’m also proud because we always got back up and if that fight would have lasted forever, eventually, we would have won.

The Odyssey of Tom Lewand

The big news this past week(well, other than the dreaded Willie Young signing his first contract) was Tom Lewand's drunken drive to oblivion. Yes, as soon as the story broke, I knew that I had to say something about it. You see, it's my responsibility as a Lions blogger to show you these things. It's not like I want to do it. I have to. It's in the Constitution. You can check. John Adams didn't think we needed it, but Thomas Jefferson was all "Oh no, motherfucker. That shit is the bedrock of freedom." Then they went whoring. Ben wrecked some plain old French lady, but old Tommy went buck wild on a Burundian whore named Sha'Quilla. But that is all a story for another time. Anyway, back to Tom Lewand.

Today, the dashboard video from the cop car was released and man, to be honest with you, it's pretty great. When I first heard about the arrest, I figured the dude was barely over the limit. You know, the whole "Well, officer, I had a couple of beers, but I feel fine . . . oh shit, I blew a .09? That's like four beers, officer. Come on, now, this is bullshit," kind of thing. Then I heard the dude blew a .21 and I knew this shit was wild. I mean, .21 is college drunk, you know? That's "Fuck it, just give me the whole bottle," kind of drunk, the kind of drunk that leads you to do stupid things like flicking on a lighter, taking a swig of Everclear and then accidentally burning your house down with a giant fireball Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat style. That kind of drunk.

So when I watched the video today, I think I was expecting some hilarious shit, like poor Tom Lewand stumbling all over himself, falling down, maybe puking on a cop. There are those who will tell you that that shit isn't hilarious at all, but tragic and sad, and well . . . sure, yeah. But those people need to lighten the fuck up. For our purposes, they are hilarious, and like I said, I have a responsibility as a blogger to dissect and point and laugh at this shit. It is my duty as an Ambassador of Truth and as a Defender of Freedom. I do not take it lightly. I mean, I could join the parade of sad sacks shaking their heads and scolding poor Tom for his unfortunate life choices, but that is the way of the average man, the way of the square. It is boring as hell and my chief responsibility as a blogger, even more than my responsibility to truth and freedom, is to be interesting.

Anyway, that is all spinning in a different direction than I meant to go and I apologize. Back to the Tom Lewand America's Funniest Home Video entry. Like I said, I was expecting some crazy hijinks with that level of drunk, but instead I was surprised by what I saw.

I mean, the tape starts up as you would expect, with Tommy Boy swerving all over the damn place and in my mind, I was thinking "Well shit, here we go." I admit, it was ghoulish, but I felt a sort of gleeful anticipation. It's wrong and shameful as all hell, but fuck it, there's no time for self reflection here, there's a drunk exec on the loose. Anyway, things continue in a hilarious direction when the cop comes to his door and is all WHOA. I mean, it probably smells like a brewery in there, you know? And things perhaps reach their peak when Tommy reasons that the officer must be smelling A BREATH MINT because he hasn't had anything to drink in a year and a half. Well, Goddamn. I mean, a breath mint, Tom? A FUCKING BREATH MINT?

Indeed. Apparently, Tom Lewand enjoys sucking on Jack Daniels flavored breath mints and hey, why not, you know? But really, come on now. The cop then asks him what he's been up to and Tom stammers some incoherent bullshit, some gibberish about picking some other chump up from a bar or hotel or restaurant or from the zoo or from who the fuck knows where. The cop of course then asks him to get out of the car and Tommy complies like the good citizen he is, and then things take a bit of a turn.

You see, Tom Lewand was drunk off his ass. You don't blow a .21 without being legitimately hammered. I mean, there's no mistake there. There's no "Gee, officer, I guess I must have had one too many." At that point, you are fucked up and you know it. But good ol' Tom gets out of the car anyway, knowing he's doomed and gets ready for all the dreaded field tests that half the population would fail stone cold sober. He takes them and it's still pretty obvious that the dude has been drinking, but damn it all, I was impressed by Tom's ability to maintain. He held his shit together the best that he could and didn't really do anything all that embarrassing. There were a few fuck ups but nothing so egregious as to suggest that this dude's piss could probably be set on fire.

That's where the story turned for me. I felt a strange sort of admiration for Tom Lewand. Look, I know that's wrong and irresponsible of me to say and a bad example for all of the kids who read this blog.(I'm sure you all sit around and read this blog as a family, don't you? Like back in the '30's, how they used to sit around and listen to the radio as a family. Sure, why not? I mean, you've got Dad sitting in front of the computer, reading this out loud to the wife and kids, trying his damnedest to approximate my voice, or whatever he imagines it to sound like - maybe Frank Booth after huffing a bunch of ether, I don't know - and the kids all laugh and clap and get excited whenever I bring up monkeys or werewolves and shit. It happens. I'm sure of it.) But even though it's irresponsible and wrong according to the accepted standards of this Great Society to admit something like that, I can't help it. It's the wild rebel in me. He doesn't come out all the time, and I can even reasonably pass for human most days, but he's in there and he can't help it.

By the time the field tests were all wrapped up, I was actively rooting for Tom. Fuck yeah, man, you're gonna do it! I knew it was ridiculous and wrong, but to hell with all that, I couldn't help myself. And then the cops had to go and haul the breathalyzer out. Game over, Tommy Boy. Shit.

Of course, this then leads into a comical "Oh shit, if I take it, I'm fucked," bit of legendary stalling from Tom, who even invokes the old "But what if I get a false positive?" That last desperate gamble of the doomed drunkard is brought into play, along with shit like "I'm just trying to figure out my options. I'm a lawyer." It just keeps going and going and going and the cops just keep getting more and more pissed off until Tom is finally all "Okay, shit, let's do it," and the cops are all "Man, you better. If you even hesitate, we're hauling your ass to jail and getting a warrant to test your blood." The moment of truth arrives and they get out the breathalyzer, stick it in his mouth and then Tom, my hero, is all "Well, I don't know guys." I laugh, and the cops say fuck it and arrest him. And that's it.

That was the twenty minute scene. But what led to that? I mean, it's pretty obvious that Tom Lewand probably has a drinking problem. First of all, there was the whole "I haven't had a drink in a year and a half." That sounds like the proud ravings of the recovering alcoholic. Then there is the fact that he decided to drive with a .21 hanging over his head. I mean, shit, you don't do that unless you've probably done it before, you know? You just don't get that level of drunk and think that you can pull it out without some experience. That was no rookie drunk on that tape. His ability to semi-maintain was near Jedi like. Only a dude who has spent great portions of time as a functioning drunkard can pull that off. I mean, again, .21. That's seriously fucked up. Dude is lucky he could even speak English by that point.

So, what we seem to have here is the case of a recovering alcoholic who slipped up and went for a joy ride. It happens. But as it so often happens, this wasn't a case of a dude having a drink or two and thinking "What the hell am I doing?" before heading out into the night. No, when a drunk falls off the wagon, he fucking falls forever. The wagon rolls over his besotted ass and then backs up and rolls over him again. The horses even kick him a few times for good measure. By the time he's finished, he's broken into a million pieces, dirty, wrecked, and in no condition to do anything other than lay there and hope someone scrapes his ass off the road and tosses him back onto the wagon.

But still, how does a dude who's managed to stay clear of the demon juice for a year and a half find himself blowing a .21 on the side of the road while cops search his car? Well, here, for the first time, I present to you a possible scenario:

[Open on a suburban bar. A neatly dressed middle aged man peaks his head into the door. He seems nervous.]

Bartender: Can I help you?

Nervous man: Uh, well, I'm supposed to meet some people here. I think I'm supposed to give them a ride home.

Bartender: Playing designated driver tonight?

[The nervous man chuckles uneasily.]

Nervous man: Uh, I guess so. I don't see them anywhere, though.

Bartender: What do they look like? Maybe I can tell you if they were here.

Nervous Man: Uh, well, they look like . . . ah, um . . . maybe I should just come inside and check around.

[The bartender shrugs.]

Bartender: Okay, sure, whatever you want.

[The nervous man enters the bar. He runs a hand through his hair. He's starting to sweat. He shouldn't be in here. He needs to leave. He doesn't, though. For some reason, he finds himself moving closer to the bar. He rationalizes that his friends might still be there, that he just needs to wait it out. He's tired though. He needs to sit down. He's had a long day and it shouldn't be a big deal just to sit at the bar for a while and wait. I mean, it's not like he's going to be drinking or anything. He nods to himself and then resolutely sits down at the bar.]

Bartender: Can I get you something?

[Oh shit, the nervous man thinks. He wasn't expecting this.]

Nervous Man: Uh, I'll . . . uh . . . [Get a grip, he thinks to himself. Shit. Just order something. It will be a test. Yeah. That's it. A test. If he can sit here and stare at a full glass without touching it, he'll prove, once and for all that he's beaten this thing.]

Bartender: Sir?

Nervous Man: I'll have a vodka tonic. Go easy on the tonic. [Shit. Why did you say that? Relax. It's just force of habit. It doesn't mean that you'll actually be drinking it.]

Bartender: Alright man, here you go.

Nervous Man: Thanks. [Jesus. This was a mistake. God, my heart is pounding. I'm so nervous. My finger tips are tingling. I just need to calm down. Relax. You're fine. Shit. It's not working. I just need to get it together. What if . . . no. That would be a huge mistake. But . . . no. I can't do it. That would just defeat the purpose, wouldn't it? Then again, I'm not doing anyone any good this nervous. I'm a wreck. Isn't that why you stopped drinking in the first place? Maybe just a sip. Maybe just something to calm the nerves. Okay, here goes . . . damn. I missed you, baby.]

Bartender: You got a name?

Nervous Man: Tom . . . Tom Lewand.

Bartender: Huh. That name sounds kind of familiar.

Tom: Yeah, I work for the Lions . . . you know, the Detroit Lions. Team President.

Bartender: The Lions?

[A flash of disgust crosses his face. He tries to hide it, but can't help himself. Both men realize it and each looks away. Tom looks down and takes another drink. His life is tough. I mean, he should be able to feel proud of himself, but he gets that same damn reaction every time he tells people he works for the Lions.]

Bartender: Can I get you another one?

[Tom looks down and is shocked when he realizes that he's finished the drink. Wow. He needs to leave. Now. This isn't good. But without even thinking about it he motions for another one. The bartender is already pouring it and . . . shit, just drink it man. Just finish it and get the fuck out. You've already crossed the line. Don't be weird. Just maintain and then get home. You can deal with this in the morning.]

Tom: Thanks.

[Tom takes a drink. He just wants to finish this one and leave. He pounds it. Goddamn. Feel that burn. It's so familiar, like an old friend. I remember you. Feels good too. Oh, this is nice. Fuck it, what's the difference between two and three . . .]

[Several drinks later, Tom staggers off of his stool. He's finally willed himself to leave. It's too late and he knows it. He's fucked up. He shouldn't drive but he can't call a taxi. That would be admitting, both to himself and to the rest of the world, that he made a mistake. He's a public figure, a prominent executive, an important man. He's famous. He can't admit something like that. Shit. He's only a couple of miles from home. He can do this. He's done it before. It's been a while, but what the hell, it's like riding a bike.]

[Tom takes a deep breath as he starts his car. Shit, he thinks. Maintain. You can do this. He pops a breath mint. He belches and then exhales, slow and long. He turns the radio off. It's a distraction. You have got to focus, Tom. Maintain.]

[You're doing it, Tom! You're gonna make it. Shit, this isn't so hard. Tom starts to relax. He laughs. He just remembered the time Ernie Sims brought his monkey to the team Christmas party and it went wild and attacked Old Man Ford's wife. That shit was hilarious. The little guy shit on the floor and everyone got worried when Jason Hanson slipped in it because it looked like he pulled his groin but he came up laughing and so everyone else started laughing and the monkey started hooting and then tried to fuck Matthew Stafford's date. She looked horrified and Matt just laughed and said it wasn't like she hadn't done worse and she got all offended and stormed out and Dominic laughed at Matt and said it looked like it was "a night of self reflection" and then made a jacking off motion with his hand. Everyone laughed and Matt pretended to scold the monkey and . . . oh shit, oh fuck. Sirens. Maintain, motherfucker. Maintain.]

Okay. Maybe it didn't happen exactly like that, but then again, maybe it did. Who's to say? The only one who knows for sure is Tom Lewand. All I know is that it's June and thank God something happened. I know it's cruel and ghoulish of me to think like that, but these are strange and terrible times and we must find salvation wherever we can. If that is at the bottom of a bottle or in the story of a Lions exec run amok then oh well. I'm not proud of it, and I'm sure many of you think that I have behaved irresponsibly in this post, but this is the cross that I must bear as a Warrior of Light, an Ambassador of Truth and as a Defender of Freedom. I am a blogger, damn it, and as such I have a responsibility to provide both news and analysis. Some dude on Twitter said so. It may be ugly, but this is just the way of things. Vaya con dios, Tom Lewand. Vaya con dios.