Mid-Season Psychic Rankings AFC South

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

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #25: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS

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