NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #19: SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS

PERTINENT DATA: 6-10 last year; 45 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): There is a chance that everything that has gone wrong the last couple of years was Mike Singletary’s fault, and now that he’s picked his pants up off the locker room floor, stuffed them in a box with the rest of his shit and been sent back to Chicago or Waco or wherever the hell he spends his time being that overly intense misfit who probably browbeats the mailman and shouts at his kids through a bullhorn for not keeping their heads shaved military style, maybe the 49ers will be able to have that breakthrough season that everyone was expecting from them the last couple of years. Maybe Jim Harbaugh really is a wunderkind ubergenius of a coach who will dance circles around every other coach and then laugh at his weekly press conferences, shake his head and say shit like “Lord, what fools these mortals be.” And maybe the Patrick Willis led defense can cover for the fact that Alex Smith is still the quarterback. But, shit, he still is the quarterback, you know? And as long as that’s the case, the best case scenario for the 49ers has a natural ceiling. So maybe the best case scenario for the 49ers includes Alex Smith and his tiny, tiny hands getting injured and Jim Harbaugh slapping on some pads at halftime and charging into the game to gritball the 49ers to victory. After all, he probably has some natural chemistry with that degenerate Braylon Edwards since both are proud Michigan Men (and have both been called incredibly vile names by certain sects of the Michigan fanbase in recent times.) So, let’s say that happens. I suppose the 49ers could somehow find their way to 10-6 but they probably lack the firepower to really do much more than that. So, best case scenario? Probably 10-6 and a first round playoff loss, but that is probably a fever dream. In the real world, they are stuck with Alex Smith and Braylon will end up getting pulled over for his 18th DUI or get busted for bumfighting or some shit and the 49ers will finish 6-10, but this is supposed to be the best case scenario and so we won’t pontificate on those ugly possibilities. Take it away, Raven!
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): As the fan of an NFC power team during the '80s and early '90s, there is no terrible run of luck that is enough to satisfy my intense hatred of the 49ers. Besides having the ugliest uniform colors in all of professional football, and besides all the shithead bandwagon fans from back in the day who have long since abandoned their 49ers gear for something else, which is why one out of every five African kids you see in "Africa is so fucked" retrospectives on TV news programs is wearing a 49ers shirt of some sort. I briefly liked them just because crazy man Singletary, but that just didn't pan out. And it couldn't have. Bill Walsh was a notorious racist old curmudgeon who instituted football Illuminati through the West Coast offense where there were secret lists of acceptable head coaches, and the only black guy available was Denny Green. Eventually people figured out that was kinda fucked up, so they started making teams at least talk to black people again for head coaching gigs. That allowed Singletary eventually to get a job in San Francisco, but like Neil pointed out, crazy military House of Payne comedic style (I wish Singletary wore multi-colored slacks like that weird dude on that show) did not work in San Fran, so they hired Bill Walsh 2.0 in Harbaugh. Hey guess what? Fuck Jim Harbaugh. You know what I hated just as much as the 49ers in the '80s? The Chicago Bears. Every other asshole with a gmail account who grew up in the '80s loves the Bears, and fuck them all. Harbaugh is so hyped up as the greatest coach to ever come into the pros, but most college coaches don't pan out. Oh yeah, he should have been a pro coach but did college first to flesh out his resume. Whatever. His starting QB is Alex Smith, and the back-up option is even shittier. Michael Crabtree is a bust. Vernon Davis, for all the respect he gets from the media because he's a black guy that talks like he might've actually read his Shakespeare assignments in college, has not really proven himself to be the superstar TE he was drafted to be. And on defense, with Mike Singletary's rabid obsessiveness and pants-dropping threats, they were just starting to crack that code with some good players. This year? They signed Carlos Rogers. That dude sucks. These guys will come apart at the seams this year, and Harbaugh will have to run off half the team. Hell, even in the NFC West, considering how well this team underperformed last year, they could top that, and maybe push for Andrew Luck themselves. And it would please me week in and week out to see them suffer. Fuckers can't even protect their stadium from Raiders fans. Bitches, from the fanbase to the starting QB to the dynastic elder to famous former star Joe Montana to that creepy pedophiliac mountain running Jerry Rice dude - all bitches.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Neil): Fuck it, root for Braylon. Yeah, he is a degenerate, he’s got a big, dumb mouth and he drops tons of passes, but he’s not afraid to rock that Kimbo Slice beard, at least he says what he thinks instead of trying to play nice all the time and for every pass he drops, he’ll make one otherworldly catch that will remind you that this dude has the goods. Now, I know, I know, some of you are complaining and saying this is just influenced by my Michigan fandom, but just remember, I have sneered and called Braylon Edwards a cocksucker in casual conversation within the last calendar year. If I can rise above those feelings of disappointment and irritation then so can you. Besides, I still remember that fall day in 2004 when he went fucking crazy and demolished the Michigan St. Stantons all by himself. So okay, fine, maybe this is a pick influenced by rank homerism, but frankly, my dear Scarlett, I don’t give a fuck.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Raven): It would be easy to say Alex Smith here, but why should he be to blame for someone over-evaluating his professional value, but all the dude did was end up being exactly what he was going to be. I'd have to say more than anybody I hate Vernon Davis, mostly because this whole "He's a smart black guy because he speaks well" thing is really just latent racism exposing itself in a culturally acceptable way. Plus, I don't know, I just don't like Vernon Davis, though from watching him play in college at Maryland, and seeing the dude be overly emotional a lot of times, to a point that's borderline concerning, him being stationed in San Francisco is probably a great move to enable him to discover who he truly is, and find real happiness on this Earth. We sometimes mistakenly assume as fans that just because these guys play a sport we want to watch them, that they should be perfectly happy to play this profession - not sport - for millions of dollars, although their agent gets a cut, and they have to hire trainers and shit like that, and plus have family and entourages and all that. True happiness comes from being what you truly are, and Vernon Davis is truly not a smashmouth Tight End who can dominate the NFL. Hopefully he finds himself.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Antwan Applewhite.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): In a perfect world, the 49ers fans get excited when their team gets out to a 5-0 start or something like that, only to be brought back down to earth once they roll into Detroit and get shanked by my beloved Lions in a brutal shitkicking which will rival the vicious gang beatings they will no doubt receive throughout the season by Oakland hoodlums in Road Warrior outfits and hatred in their black and silver hearts. After this epic demolition, both Braylon and Harbaugh will be forced to stagger naked down Woodward with crosses on their backs and beg forgiveness for their various heresies and betrayals, but no Spartans better throw any goddamn tomatoes or burn any couches, for this is family business goddammit, and while I may brutally whip members of my own clan and call them vicious cocksuckers, family is still family and we must protect our own. Unless it’s Greg Robinson. Fuck him. Spartan fans, feel free to pelt that dude with tomatoes and gnaw on his wicked bones. Wait, what was I talking about here again? The 49ers? Oh right. Well, in a perfect world, following such a dreadful loss, the 49ers would regroup behind a suitably chastened Harbaugh and Braylon and coast to the NFC West Title and the playoffs, where they would again get brutalized by the Lions. Following that loss, Jimbo would quit to become an unpaid graduate assistant for the Wolverines while Braylon would get bored and try to drunkenly ride atop a live Wolverine and then jump it over the Snake River Canyon. This is also the most believable of all possible scenarios, in my opinion. After all, I am, if nothing else, a realist and I would hate to mislead you.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): You know, I talked a lot of shit out of hatred, but the Harbaugh factor will right this sinking ship, which is unfortunate, because he needs a lot of tools on offense. If their defense can remain tough, they should finish 8-8, almost winning the NFC West, but coming up just short, again.

2011 All ACLB Team Kickers & Punters

RAVEN: SEBASTIAN JANIKOWSKI & SAV ROCCA
If I have to pick a favorite kicker in the NFL, it will always be the mouthy drunk, of which there are a few still left at any time in the league. Kicker is such a cerebral position, more like a baseball player than a football player, and seems fairly well-designed to create drunkardism. And when you have to break the ties between drunks, well, being a chubby, date-raping Polock is going to put you over the top every time. It only makes sense that Janikowski has played his entire career in Oakland. It wouldn't have made sense anywhere else. And with the way NFL kickers have become this gay little club of 40 dudes who shift between teams and get swapped back and forth like wives at The Lifestyle convention, usually somewhere in Colorado, to keep out the riffraff, and allow easy access from both coasts, having one pudgy drunkard kicker who does fairly well, I mean no worse than anybody else really, that's a commendable thing. Although I imagine he gets mocked for his weight more now that Jamarcus Russell is gone.
As for a punter, I will never see the point of not having an Australian Rules Football punter on your team. Like seriously, those dudes basically play special teams gunner positions as a career, and learn how to punt like a motherfucker while doing it. Why every team does not invite two or three of these guys to America to try and make a million bucks not getting concussed anymore is beyond me.
Special teams mentality is a strange mentality, especially in today's sports concussion aware world, because the basic premise of special teams is to go head-first into a wall of humanity, attempt to pierce that wall, and then have enough of yourself left in control to knock one dude down, all of it done as quickly as possible. So when the overall mentality of a group of 11 dudes is that of a collective penetrating ballistic, having an Aussie football punter only makes sense. The only potential drawback is those down under dudes are probably all first-class degenerates, being from a continent descended from cast-offs and prison colonists, and coming from a fairly rough-and-tumble sports world themselves. I would imagine there has to be extra orientation training for Aussie rules guys when they come to America, how not to get accused of sexual assault, American intoxication laws, American battery laws, all of that.
Which is why Sav Rocca in Philadelphia makes perfect sense, even more perfect than simply having an Aussie dude on an NFL team. There is no more degenerate fanbase than what the Philadelphia Eagles have. I mean, they are a disgusting lot, and I've run with some pretty wretched of the earth types in my time. So Sav Rocca is basically one of them already, except he kicks the ball. I imagine he can drink with them and talk shit about how great rude titties are with them and generally be a societal miscreant with them. And yet he still can punt the ball well. That's probably the biggest drawback to being an Aussie rules dude coming over to punt, is holding yourself to your tough standard now that you're wearing all this pussy-assed personal protective equipment and don't have to run at motherfuckers anymore since that's not really asked of a punter except to be the save guy if the returner busts through everybody else. The life of an NFL punter is as cush as it gets to these guys probably, which may be why more of them aren't here.
They show Australian Football League games of the week on one of my local PBS stations, so I watch that shit every Monday night. It's a nice sport. I finally understand how they score, and even had a limey dude explain to me one night how all that compares to rugby, and the differences and similarities. And as the NFL lockout meanders along (we take forever to write this because you know how they have the little board you write your pick on in the actual NFL draft? me and Neil are making each other mail postcards to each other with each pick we make for this team, but the postcards have to come from different post offices each time or the pick is disqualified), and player health is of such concern now that Dave Duerson was proven retarded when he committed suicide, it's important to remember that beyond making money and being alive, the basic essence of being a Man is to lock up with other Men who are on your side, and through sheer primal brutality, physically overpower other men and make them do what the fuck you want them to do, or simply remove them as an obstacle to what you are trying to do. It's in our DNA. So as the NFL tries to modernize itself, and even talked about eliminating kickoffs altogether (what the fuck?), they need to remember that what is great about football is it speaks to our base DNA. If it gets regulated into some upper-crust cerebral bullshit, it'll lose it's greatness; and if they want to narrow down their demographic to the dorky, number-obsessed stats nerd, man, they'll lose that battle to baseball all day every day.



NEIL: JASON HANSON & ZOLTAN MESKO
Oh man, I didn’t know all that shit about Ed Reed. Actually, I think I might have. Once. But time does strange things to a man’s brain, strange and terrible things, and, well . . . yeah. I just thought that I was putting Ed Reed on the team because he was awesome, and it turns out that he is, but for reasons of which I was unaware. Naturally, I will take this as an opportunity to both apologize for not giving him the proper words of respect that he so deserved (although Raven made up for it) and to note that this obviously means that my instincts are impeccable. I knew that Ed Reed was awesome, I just wasn’t sure why, beyond being an awesome football player anyway. So, if you’re taking anything away from this, it’s that you should always listen to everything that I say and trust me no matter what, even when I can’t produce an iota of evidence backing up whatever horseshit thing I am going on about. Do this and you will know the secrets of the universe. Do it not, and remain lost in the shadows while me and my brethren dance in the light.
Anyway . . . where the fuck are we in this thing? Oh yeah, kickers and punters. Shamefully, it has been almost a month since I have written anything for this All-Pro team, but I have my excuses. Sure, some of them may include butchering Eskimos for their pelts and selling them to seedy Russians while we drink vodka standing atop the world, straddling the North Pole like degenerate gods, and some of them may involve Raven and me stranded in the Baja Peninsula with only a thimbleful of water between us, heads full of peyote, naked and in crude handcuffs or maybe I just forgot? Who’s to say in this fucked up world of ours? Who indeed?
Okay. So . . . Jason Hanson. Could there be any doubt that this was the dude who I was going to choose for this team? After all, I have written more posts about just him than any other Lion (with the possible exception of Drew Stanton, but those posts were written for vastly, vastly different reasons.), which may sound strange but it should start to make sense when you realize that he is the one dude who has been here through it all, through the bright promising morning of the Barry years to the sunless midnight of hell which ruined us for a decade, its mutant werewolves and savage vampire apes abusing us in the cold, cold night while the Failure Demons cackled and whipped us with chains made of fire and tears. Jason Hanson was there for all of it, and during those dark days, he was the lone prince, the lone knight, sitting atop a green and beautiful hill, untouched by the chaos down below, pristine and beautiful, his heart unconquerable by anything other than the creeping doom of time.
But I have written about all this before, and if you really want to know why he’s on this team, do some searching around the site. It will be fun. Actually, it will be a terrifying exercise in madness, but you will leave wiser than you did when you first entered these strange yet hallowed halls. There are a lot of words about Jason Hanson hidden within, some proud, some tragic, all heartfelt and they leave no doubt that there could be no other man I could pick to be the kicker on this transcendent team, which will stand for a thousand years and which will be forever remembered for conquering the squidmen and eating their heathen babies.
As for Zoltan Mesko, well . . . the man is a legend amongst a certain sect of the Michigan fanbase. He is known as Zoltan the Inconceivable, the Space Emperor, and one glance from his bejeweled eyes will turn the sinner to stone and will ignite the hearts of the righteous with primal joy. Sure, he may be a Patriot of New England, but he belonged to me first and it makes my heart happy to see him do so well in the NFL. Plus, his name is Zoltan, which sounds like the name of an escapee from Krypton or like some Zoroastrian mystic who spends his days taming the elements, wielding fire like a paintbrush, shaping it like a master sculptor, and his nights cavorting with his own personal harem, lost in a sea of opium and flesh, fucking his way towards enlightenment. If you need more reason than that, well . . . I’m afraid you are lost in a bewildering sea of self-loathing and dumb, ugly brutish ignorance and I have no time for you or your derelict ways.

LATER TODAY: Kick Returners

2011 All ACLB Team Cornerbackers

RAVEN: DARRELLE REVIS & CHARLES WOODSON
Revis comes from a shithole place outside of Pittsburgh, devastated by drugs and retarded social planning. He acquired a taste for the NFL by watching his fat uncle Sean Gilbert run up and down hills in front of their house in the off-season. As much as the NFL is a billion-dollar industry known worldwide, it is nice to know something as simple as a 6-year-old kid sitting on the ragged steps of his rundown rental house waiting for his NFL uncle to run up the hill and tag his hand before heading back down for another lap can motivate one to make the NFL. There's something very human in the ancient way, very tribal and learning from our elders involved in that. I respect that. Plus Revis rocks a beard which is the only way such an ancient tribal warrior should publicly present himself.
I really wrestled with putting a pair of Packers defenders on my All-Pro team, because I hate rewarding success. Usually I prefer to hate on success, as haters are gonna hate. Fuck successful people. My life has been shit from birth, and even when it gets better it's still shitty and fucked up and I'm unable to maintain even the simplest of financial comfort levels. I am doomed from the womb to the tomb. So fuck successful people. That being said, Charles Woodson is an exemplary player of the football, one who was cast aside a few years back by the Raiders, but found a home in Green Bay, near his beloved homeland of Michigan, and has excelled there, becoming the senior force on a team that is loaded with talent in the same sketchy ways the Patriots were loaded for years. Why the fuck does any GM in the NFL try to trade draft picks for players? It is obvious to even the most casual crack-addicted homeless bystander that the way you truly find success in the NFL is to build from within, not take other people's hand-me-down millionaires. So yes, Charles Woodson, my All-Pro team. I don't really have anything else to say about him because that's a serious pick and I don't feel like being serious. I feel like fucking eating like five painkillers and sitting in the sunshine listening to DJ Screw mixes. But I am at work. Which sucks. And still I'm not successful.



NEIL: CHARLES WOODSON & ALPHONSO SMITH
Look, I just figured out that it’s been, like, six weeks since I last worked on this infernal thing and so I don’t even know what the fuck I was talking about prior to this. Some bullshit about squidmen I think? I didn’t intend for this to happen but like Raven, I just am not in a football state of mind right now. I’m not sure what it is, if it’s the lockout and all that bullshit or if I am just burned out on football after three years of chronicling those wretched Lions. Seriously, I love the Lions but spending three years writing about them is the equivalent to spending three years as a war correspondent in Jerusalem during the Crusades. My fucking nerves are fried and the only thing that will help is rest, loads of chemicals and the love of a string of nameless whores, but fuck all that noise, I am better than that and time stops for no man, even me. In the end, my love for the Lions and for football in general will outweigh the creeping insanity that gnaws at my soul like a giant mutant rat in the night and I will go on. After all this is but a moment in time, a low point, stupid and meaningless and by the time anyone besides me or Raven reads this the whole thing will have passed and I will be writing like a goddamn fiend about my beloved Lions again.
But that has nothing to do with this All-Pro team we endeavored to put together those many months ago. I only bring that shit up to explain why you are reading this in June or August or November of 2018 rather than in February of 2011. I would apologize, but if you have made it this far you either started out as insane as we are or you have been captured by the same wild eyed madness which drives us to do these kinds of things and so you understand, at least on some level. Hell, chances are Raven and I will be the only two people on earth who ever read this anyway so I could probably write anything here. I could spend 10,000 words roleplaying as the Queen of England or Jame Gumb or some freakish combination of the two and no one would know any better.
Okay fine, I won’t do that but I will put on a dress and a pillbox hat while I write this and I will occasionally take breaks to dance around with my penis tucked between my legs while I paw at my tiny little dog and wail about lotion and baskets, and . . . horrible, horrible. Are you still here? Why? Why am I still here? What is going on? I can’t breathe. If a dude writes a bunch of weird horseshit in the forest but nobody is around to read it, is it still written?
Okay, enough of this simpering madness. Disgraceful, just utterly disgraceful. Let’s move on and try to forget my braying foolishness. So . . . Charles Woodson. There is no way he wasn’t going to be on this team. First of all, he’s awesome. He’s a unique weapon. He always has been. The Packers realized this and have managed to use him to his full potential after it was withered away by the fucked up soul-crushing malaise of Oakland. He can cover anybody, he can stop the run, he can blitz the hell out of the quarterback . . . basically he is almost a hybrid CB/S/LB and he’s the heart and soul of the Packers defense.
If that’s not enough, he is a legitimately awesome dude. When Obama talked about how he was rooting for the Bears, Woodson took that shit personally. Now, there are some people who would say that this was childish, but fuck those people. That kind of hypercompetitive insanity is what breeds a champion. And you know what the end result of all that was? Woodson standing triumphant while Barack Obama held up his jersey for photographers. That’s right, Charles Woodson sonned the president of the United States.
If that’s not enough part two, there was the Super Bowl itself, which saw my man Chuck get knocked out with an injury. Apparently, instead of moping around, he gathered everyone at halftime and gave the speech of all speeches and then the Packers went out and kicked the shit out of the Steelers for themselves and for their leader, Charles Woodson. Even in death, his spirit ruled the day. He was like Yoda or Jesus. Now that’s a leader: to have a spirit so powerful that even when your body is impotent, ruined and useless, you can still exert your will, like a current that can never die, flowing to the hearts and souls of all your teammates and acolytes. Charles Woodson lived on inside of every Packer on that field on Super Bowl Sunday and in the end, they all stood triumphant.
And if that’s not enough, when Woodson isn’t on the football field or pushing his dudes to glory via the force of his will he is busting ass to raise money for the Mott’s Children Hospital in Ann Arbor. To date, the dude has both raised and personally donated millions of dollars so that a bunch of sick kids have a chance at seeing a better tomorrow. If you want to argue with me about Charles Woodson, just know that you are the mouthpiece of rank stupidity and I will shit on your chest and gnaw on your wicked bones because to me the man is damn near a saint. I love this son of a bitch.
And that’s before I even talk about being a high school senior and sitting in Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, the only dude in my section wearing Michigan colors, and watching Charles Woodson leap from the turf and rise, rise, rise, like gravity was just a suggestion rather than a rule, sticking out a hand and snagging a ball one-handed on the sideline and then coming down with his feet inbounds in what remains the single greatest football play I have ever seen, live or otherwise. That play was the starting gun which signaled his run to the Heisman in that glorious year of 1997 and allowed me to strut around East Lansing in a maize and blue jacket, while die hard Spartans around me clenched their jaws and bit their tongues because they knew that they couldn’t say shit after what Charles Woodson did. We have been bonded together ever since. I have watched him win a national championship, that aforementioned Heisman, a Defensive Player of the Year award with the Packers and now a Super Bowl. He has done it all. He has climbed to the top of the world like the ultimate King Kong and he rules as a great god king and even though he has never worn the jersey of the Detroit Lions, he is my favorite player ever. I know, I know, some of you (let me have my delusions and believe that there are people actually still reading this) are disgusted right now. I figure a big chunk of the people who read this hate Charles Woodson since I know a lot of you are die hard Spartans and he has starred for the last several seasons for one of our biggest rivals. I get all that. I do. I don’t blame you for thinking I should shut the fuck up or that I am guilty of some sort of football treason, but I don’t really care. This is what lives in my heart. Read everything I just wrote about Charles Woodson again. Know that I mean every word of it. He transcends simple rivalry. He transcends uniforms. Do I root against him when the Lions play the Packers? Absolutely. He is the enemy. But I love him anyway and I will always love him. Ours is a sophisticated love, deep and true, complex and yet so very simple and pure and . . . goddamn, I should probably put my pants back on, huh? Anyway, Charles Woodson forever. He is the captain of my Armchair Linebacker All-Pro team and of my heart.
As for Alphonso Smith . . . well, there is one reason and one reason alone that he made this team. That’s right, it’s because he did the Carlton after picking off a pass against the Rams and returning it for a touchdown this past season. But it’s not just that he did the Carlton, it’s what that moment represented for me as a fan. Like I said earlier, writing about the Lions – hell, just being a fan of the Lions – is a grim enterprise, filled with terrible pain and existential dilemmas. It is emotionally exhausting. It taxes even the heartiest of souls and leaves us all occasionally quivering like a mass of ruined humanity. For over three years there was nothing but pain, but grim and terrible madness. Even our very few triumphs were bloody and without real joy. They were defined solely by their relationship to the pain. They were good simply because they served as a respite from our hellish reality. If the Lions won a game, it meant nothing other than it wasn’t another terrible defeat. It wasn’t some grand harbinger of better times and it wasn’t something that filled our souls with joy. It was just . . . relief. Like the damned feel relief when the demons who eternally torture them take a moment to sharpen their swords. That’s all it was. We knew that the pain would start anew.
But when Alphonso Smith scored that touchdown, it was different. That was the first time since I started writing about the Lions for Armchair Linebacker that I felt joy for its own sake, that being a fan felt like fun again. I think the last time any of us had that feeling was when Shaun Rogers returned a fumble for a touchdown against the Broncos in that blowout in 2007. Between that and Alphonso Smith’s interception return for a touchdown against the Rams in 2010, there was nothing but pain and agony. I dare you to think of a genuinely fun moment that took place in the three years that went by in between those two moments. You can’t do it, can you? That’s because there isn’t one! And that’s why that moment was so awesome, not because Alphonso Smith did a stupid little dance, but because he could do a stupid little dance. It was the moment that signaled that the era of suffering was over. Sure, there will still be pain but it will no longer be the rule. We can have fun again and Alphonso Smith was the dude who lived inside of that moment, who made it happen. You may think that is a silly reason to put a dude on an All-Pro team, especially a dude who spectacularly struggled much of the rest of the time, but fuck that, to me there is no better reason to put a dude on this team.


TOMORROW: Safeties

2011 All ACLB Team Linebackers

NEIL: LAMARR WOODLEY, LONDON FLETCHER, DAVID HARRIS, & JAMES HARRISON
Like I said, versatility is important, and it is with that in mind that I have compiled the perfect squadron of linebackers. We’ll start with LaMarr Woodley. Obviously, he is awesome. He is the Steelers designated quarterback assassin and he is damn good at it. But even more than that, people tend to forget that before he was terrorizing chickenhearted QBs with the Steelers as a linebacker, he was running down cowards and filthy degenerates like Brady Quinn as a defensive end for the Michigan Wolverines.
I know, I know, half of you are rolling your eyes and saying “Another Michigan dude? Come on, Neil . . .” but fuck that. I can’t help it if that is where champions and noble warriors are bred. But leaving my affinity for the maize and blue aside, doesn’t LaMarr Woodley make perfect sense in the context of what I have already laid out for you? I mean, he’s obviously awesome – the trail of dead and dying quarterbacks strung out behind him should tell you that – but he’s also incredibly versatile. If I need to, I can slide him up to defensive end, with The Great Willie Young on the other side, and Haloti Ngata and The House of Spears in the middle. Fuck you, squidmen, you aren’t gonna outmaneuver me.
And yes, I will admit that his maize and blue heart plays a part in my decision to add him to this team, but how dare you judge me for that. After all, when the shit gets bad I need my dudes by my side. I need men I am comfortable with, who are grown from the same soil that produced whatever the hell it is that I am. I grew up as a Son of Schembechler. I understand what lives inside of LaMarr Woodley’s soul. So, the real question you must ask yourself is how could I not pick him for this team? Search your heart and do not begrudge me my prejudices, for they are rooted in purity and light and they just may well be what ends up saving our entire species from the onslaught of the horrible squidmen.
London Fletcher is on this team because he is only, like, 5’2” or something and yet he has been awesome for over a decade. Fuck your 6’4” monsters with hearts of tin. I want this ferocious midget with a heart of fire and gold with me in the trenches. I am sure Raven can say much more than London Fletcher than I can and so I will let him say most of it. I’m sure he’ll pick London Fletcher. I’m positive. That’s how awesome he is.
David Harris is yet another Michigan Man and before you pelt me with garbage, consider the fact that he is the heart of everything good about the New York Jets. I know, I know, I have bitched long and hard about the Jets and I have already shamefully broken my vow twice over not to include any of those shitheads on my team, but fuck that, I see this as rescuing my boys, not rewarding the vile filth of Rex Ryan and company. Look at it this way: I am taking them away from the Jets, thus weakening the few things that prop up their bullshit kingdom. Rex Ryan is a fat fraud. He is a loudmouth who pretends to be a pirate, but when the time comes to swarm the enemy, his anus seizes up and he punts on 4th and 1 from the enemy’s 33. The only redeeming thing about this asshole is his foot fetish. The one thing everyone gives him shit for is the only thing I admire about him. So, the dude wants to fuck his wife and maybe suck on her toes? Big deal. I commend him for finding his old worn out wife beautiful. That’s true love. He’s not running whores or filming himself pissing on Jets cheerleaders or sexting dong pictures to everyone with long, blond hair and a nice chest (You don’t even wanna know about the pics Brett Favre probably sent to Clay Matthews, Jr.) No, all he’s doing is worshipping his wife and good for him.
But still, that is the only thing I find commendable about him. Everything else is bullshit. He talks and talks and talks but his team is never gonna win shit. That’s because deep down, Rex Ryan is a pussy who won’t let it all ride when he needs to. He’ll punt and then he’ll act like he won the Super Bowl because he beat Bill Belichick, and really that’s the whole problem with Rex Ryan. He creates these stupid melodramatic feuds that in the end are utterly meaningless. His team achieved an emotional high after beating the Patriots, and hey that’s cool. The only problem is that they still had a few games left to play. Oops. Rex Ryan’s job – his whole fucking point – is to make sure his team is ready to win when it matters the most. Did it matter against the Patriots? Absolutely. But it mattered even more the week after that and they couldn’t get it done. Why? Because they had already played their Super Bowl, only it wasn’t theirs, it was Rex Ryan’s. He beat Belichick and everyone supped on his balls that night, but what good did that do the team? Did it mean that they made it any farther than the year before? Nope. And that’s why Rex Ryan will never win shit. Because all he wants to do is prove infantile little points. He isn’t focused on the big goal. He’s just focused on measuring his dick.
And don’t even get me started on Mark Sanchez. That dipshit would be the quarterback for a 4-12 team if he didn’t have David Harris propping him up. Mark Sanchez had the shittiest completion percentage of any starting quarterback in the league. But . . . but . . . he wins big games! Fuck that. He’s there in big games. He’s present, just like the hot dog vendor. Good for him. David Harris wins big games. David Harris is the dude who lets jackoffs like Rex Ryan and Mark Sanchez lap up the spotlight. He is the one toiling, propping up their false empire. The Jets know this. That is why they slapped the franchise tag on him. They need to keep him in indentured servitude because without him, they are just a dumb fucking zoo, full of stupid noise and disgusting monkey shit. Take him away and you just have Rex Ryan talking empty shit and Handsome Mark shaming the good name of Joe Namath. David Harris is on this team because he deserves it, because he goes to war every day even though he is surrounded by shitheads and loudmouth idiots. He props them up because he can’t not. He lets them have their glory because it’s not about them. It’s about him throwing every inch of his being into war. It’s about him fighting for a cause that’s bigger than Rex Ryan or Mark Sanchez. It’s about winning and it’s about being the goddamn best. That’s all David Harris cares about. You don’t see him playing the clown and acting the fool for all the New York media to jack off over. You just see him making plays and winning games. He is like the sun. It rises and it sets and you always know it’s there, even when you can’t see it. He will be with you until the end.
That leaves one spot left to fill, and I decided to go with James Harrison. I could have gone with Ernie Sims here, and I was tempted to pick the Lizard King because hey, the dude has a monkey and a fucking zoo in his own home. I love that dude. But he’s also kind of a crappy football player and when the squidmen come, I can’t have some dude who just wants to feed his iguana and then overruns a ball carrier and lets them score. Sorry, Ernie, but fuck that. I also could have probably picked Ray Lewis. That would have been the cliché pick here, you know? Seems like he’s crazy, possibly once stabbed a dude, blah blah blah, but there is something off about Ray Lewis. The whole crazy thing kinda feels like a bit of a front. It’s like he’s covering for something. I bet he’d talk mad shit to the squid people and then when the shit was going down you’d find him sneaking off to hide in his gold plated bathroom. Is he a warrior? Yeah, when it comes to simulated combat but I think in a real fight he would bitch out. Maybe he’s capable of stabbing a dude. Maybe not. I don’t know. But if he is, I bet it would be a quick shanking while his boys held the dude’s arms. To me that kinda sums Ray Lewis up, but fuck him, he’s not on this team so I’m not going to spend any more time on him than that.
So why James Harrison? Well, obviously he’s a damn fine player, but he’s also a player that came from nothing. He was just some piece of shit scrub coming out of college, training camp fodder who would bounce around for a couple of years before realizing that his destiny was to manage a Home Depot back home in Ohio, but fuck that bullshit. James Harrison wasn’t having that. Instead, he refused to say die and he fought and he fought and he fought until he became one of the most feared players in the whole NFL. That’s heart right there. That’s evidence of the warrior spirit which is so key to the makeup of this team.
And the reason why James Harrison is so feared is because he doesn’t mind hurting a motherfucker. Fine him all you want. He doesn’t give a shit. He’ll cut Sheriff Goodell a check right now and then he’ll piss in Pereira’s lizard face. Fuck your rules. James Harrison is there to win and the only way he can win is to intimidate the fuck out of the other guy and the only way he can do that is by hurting him. It is basic and it is brutal and the white bread NFL pansies might condemn him for that shit, but he is the real deal, out there on the front lines, destroying himself and others like some modern day gladiator for his freedom. He doesn’t care about the NFL or being a role model. He cares about cutting off the heads of his enemies, tossing them into the crowd and screaming “Are you not entertained!” He isn’t going to be afraid of either a squidman or some asshole fascist come to drag me away. He is not afraid of Roger Goodell and his goosestepping minions and so I feel confident that when the time comes, James Harrison will stand with me and he will fight to the bitter end because fuck everything else, sometimes that’s all that’s left. And that’s what this damn team is all about.



RAVEN: LONDON FLETCHER, LOFA TATUPU, JAMES HARRISON, & CLAY MATTHEWS JR.
I have flailed on maintaining the immediacy of what we are doing, mostly because I don't really care about football anymore. We started this right after the Super Bowl I think and now it's almost draft time, and I find it harder and harder to care about what happens to the Redskins. I kind of hope they just cancel football completely and it goes away. Which brings me to putting London Fletcher on my LB squad. Dude is too good to have had to deal with this Redskins bullshit, but I think it comes from being a Division III player who is considered undersized at his position. He's got low self-esteem like a fat chick, so he'll put up with an abusive team situation because hey, at least someone wants him. He is the best MLB in pro football as far as I am concerned. A few years from now, even more so than now, the MLB will be considered the QB of the defense, with the same elevated status, and they will look back at today's players for guys who made it such a thing, and London Fletcher will be considered one of the greats at making that transition. He is a coach on the field, and the day he retires or gets run out of Washington will be a really shitty one, because you don't just replace dudes like that.
Lofa Tatupu is a Samoan, and he is the son of Mosi Tatupu, who was the first Samoan football player of note for most of us. I have a Samoan fetish, to the point I have used India ink and sewing needles to tattoo little Samoan tribal designs up and down my dick. Thus Lofa is on the team because, even as a second undersized MLB type, fuck it, I want smart and crazy.
Speaking of crazy, if you do not put James Harrison on your LB squad of all-stars, you are a goddamned fool. Dude concusses motherfuckers. I know being considerate of neurological impairment is a buzz meme in NFL circles right now, in sports circles in general, but as long as football is allowed to truly be football, having a beast of a man who knocks the sensibilities and common logic out of opposing players will always be a plus.
And being I'm gonna round out the predominant races, might as well throw Clay Matthews Jr. in as our resident whiteboy, with the long hair and boyish smile who would get all the pussy that is afraid of being a groupie for all the other man-beasts on my All-Pro team. I actually like Matthews, and he almost made me overcome may irrational hatred of Aaron Rodgers to root for the Packers in the Super Bowl. In fact, he did. Somehow I was rooting for the crackhead guy who tried to kill my youngest sister in the Super Bowl. I am ashamed, yes, but that's what sports does to you. This is why sports is so highly encouraged in our American society - to compromise our morals and weaken our will to resist that which we know is wrong.


TOMORROW: Cornerbacks (plus some bonus James Harrison being awesome pictures below)