NFL 2012 Week 6: AFC & NFC South (2nd Quarter)

Here, I am busy at work being forced to do actual work stuff, so I will blaze through this like whatever. We enter the second quarter of the NFL season and my NFLuminati analysis. This time through, I break them down geographically, and the geographic direction with the lowest composite record right now in the NFL is the South divisions. That may seem odd as the only two unbeaten teams left (and #1 and #2 on the NFLuminati Index right now) are from the South divisions. But the rest of both of those divisions are a vast collection of turds, with only one other team even being at .500 right now. But let me save such analytics for the teams at hand…

#1: ATLANTA FALCONS (5-0, 1st overall) – The Falcons as well as the Texans are bearing false flags upon us all right now, to make us think they are legitimate contenders. But within the NFLuminati context, neither are. The Falcons are closer, with a longer tradition, and multiple playoff appearances, though Matty Ryan and Mike Smith still lack a playoff win. I could see the Falcons getting the rub of postseason success this year, perhaps even getting to the Super Bowl to lose to a more prominent team historically, but also there are some prominent historical teams in the NFC who would deserve that slot. The Falcons might be champs in a year or two, but they’ll have to show some merchandising skills and marketability in this postseason first, before that’s allowed to happen. As it stands though, with such a weak ass division, they will run up a ridiculous record most likely, with 13 or more wins seeming very likely at this point. So fantasy owners enjoy the Falcons, but Falcons fans, do not start to think it real because it will mean nothing come January of 2013.

#2: HOUSTON TEXANS (5-0, 2nd overall) – The Texans are the most false of flags that has ever been born. With Super Mario gone and now Brian Cushing on IR, the Texans will come unraveled in a realistic sense. The thing is, the AFC South is a fairly lackluster beast at this point, so even as they unravel, they should be able to stumble to dominance and a solid record which will probably allow them a first round bye in the AFC playoffs. And perhaps they repeat last year where they win a playoff game at home to start things off, just in the divisional round instead of the wild card round. But you put a team that doesn’t even seem real like the Texans, built upon false hopes and broken dreams, and they will be crushed in the light of the AFC championship. Or perhaps they are allowed to be crushed in the Super Bowl and try to spark passion in the state of Texas for pro football without a silver star. Who knows? But I know this – they ain’t winning no fucking Super Bowl, so get that out of your silly head now.

#3: TENNESSEE TITANS (1-4, 18th overall) – The Titans are not only horrible, but they are horrible without any real set direction forward. Mike Munchak has sort of done a bunch of stuff, but also none of it is sticking out because there’s so much detritus left from the past. Is Jake Locker healthy? What the fuck is up with Chris Johnson? Can anybody replace the douchebag swagger of Cortland Finnegan? Does anybody care in Tennessee about football anymore, pro or college? Why is this world all twisted over upon itself in such a crazy manner? Were the Mayans right? What the fuck yall?

#4: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (2-2, 22nd overall) – Andrew Luck is the perfect goober-faced fuckwad for idiot Indiana people to love. I have done extensive research on American states, from the back seats of Greyhound buses, from overhead hot air balloon tours, from crawling through the intricate network of gutters that lie underneath 74% of America, and from lengthy discussions with global elite at corporate retreats in southern West Virginia where we are “reborn” through golden silk cushions meant to replicate our mothers’ wombs, and all of this has given me a deep understanding of how truly good living is in the different states. Indiana is the worst, barely edging out Maryland, and the two of them are far ahead of the distant third worst state of Connecticut. But Indiana and to a lesser extent Maryland are such shithole soul sucks that even saying Connecticut is #3 is not really fair to Connecticut. There should be like 9 more numbers in between to show the space. Maryland is a tightly packed weird little state full of old world flavors and D.C. suburbanism and other bullshit, so I can understand how shit would ferment there. But Indiana is a giant rural expanse. That should be the breeding ground of greatness. Instead the most ignorant, half-assed, disgusting people on earth – not just America, but the entirety of earth – have come to blossom all over that land. It’s sad, and pathetic, and makes me want to fight people because it’s wrong and one should always be motivated to fight wrong when it becomes evident.

#5: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (1-4, 23rd overall) – I do not care what happens with the Jaguars this year because it will just be more fuel for the Insane Wrath of (Shahid) Khan that will explode into lulz come the offseason, as well as the impending years ahead. It’s gonna be so great.

#6: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (1-3, 24th overall) – I was sad to see that Los Zetas leader Heriberto Lazcano was allegedly murdered by the Mexican Navy, because I had always hoped he would buy the Bucaneers and start calling them the Los Bucaneros. It is interesting that cables were leaked showing the American CIA has some sort of arrangement with the Sinaloa Cartel for bringing drugs into America and stifling other cartels. Not long after a CIA operative was killed in Mexico, the Navy suddenly finds and kills Lazcano, leader of the Zetas. I was heartened to see armed commandos were able to steal his body from the funeral home though, as most of those Zetas worship Santa Muerte so I am hoping this secret Civil War going on turns into zombies fighting CIA agents, in Mexico. When that happens, there is only one thing that can save us at that point. Do you know what that is? Ninjas. The 1980s taught me that. That is why I’ve dug out all my old ninja books, to re-learn my mental training and conditioning. Your best weapon against your worst enemy is inside his own mind. Peace.

#7: CAROLINA PANTHERS (1-4, 30th overall) – Remember when everybody was laughing at the Panthers for drafting Cam Newton because he wouldn’t translate to the NFL? And then remember when he was wildly successful statistically and led the Panthers to a 6-10 record, and that was supposed to be awesome? And remember how that all came crashing back to earth the following year, and everybody turned on Cam Newton and he started to seem pouty and angry? All of this is to show that Cam Newton is basically the new Michael Vick, but only like at one-quarter the status. On one hand, that means no dogfighting circles, but on the other hand that also means no playoff appearances. Stupid Panthers.

#8: NEW ORLEANS SAINTS (1-4, 32nd overall) – Even with a win the Saints are the worst team in the league on the NFLuminati scale. They have been made the goat for Sheriff Goodell’s legal positioning against concussion liability. Drew Brees’ scar is actually where a microchip was planted into his brain, and he is a secret operative for the NFL who was meant to make the world happy with a post-Katrina New Orleans Super Bowl win, and now he’ll just kind of peter away his elder years as a really awesome QB for other younger QBs to make their name beating in football contests engineered to seem “classic”. See Aaron Rodgers last year, and Matt Ryan next year, for reference, although perhaps you cannot remote view the future like me. Take more B6 for starters, but not too much, because more than 300mg a day can be detrimental in the long-term. Also, do not use the activated B6 because the slow release into your bloodstream is fine enough. That’s a good first step towards remote viewing, is to start encouraging lucid dreaming. Learning to break the conscious/unconscious barrier can be difficult, and involves some complicated mental training, so I won’t get into that right now, but the B6 supplements are a solid first step. As well as magnesium, and eleuthro root powder. I take two tablespoons of eleuthro root powder and chia seeds every day in a bowl of homemade granola with a couple fat spoonfuls of active yogurt I buy from the Afghan market in town. But eleuthro root powder is a slow-working adaptagen, and you are probably just thinking, “I want to time travel, NOW” and not actually willing to put in the work necessary. Fickle fucking modern humans – no wonder you are confined to your simple three dimensions.

NFL 2011: Week 11 - NFC South & West (3rd Quarter)

I have been reading a lot of Wilhelm Reich's theories and studies on orgonomy lately, which is a strange blending of science and metascience - meaning it makes perfect sense to me, naturally (and I say "naturally" meaning the word, not as an unnecessary add-on to the phrase, because my nature is inquisitive yet attuned to the unseen). And as I was reading something somewhere else (I can't remember, nor can I be expected to be a walking citation list for your ease of following up... go seek your own path if need be), one dude said something along the lines of "spirituality without science leads to superstition, and science with spirituality leads to materialism, therefore I maintain both." This applies to football very much so, and I bring this up because I want to clarify how this list is done, and why it is done, and commit to maintaining it for the rest of the season, weekly. There is a mathematical formula behind where these teams place, that is established before the season and fine-tuned during each off-season (though I haven't fine-tuned it at all in three or four years). Therefore, I do not arbitrarily make the positions up, which is why although many NFL Power Rankings lists had the Bengals up in the top six or seven teams in the league before last week, they had not gotten higher than 14th on my NFLuminati Index. There was no science or spirit to back up the fact they were allegedly good, according to their record.
The internet, though, is a petri dish breeding ground of societal misfits with an autistic bent for numbers, who will go mad with punter formulas and strange precise calculations of minutiae which creates things like the Football Prospectus, which is basically applying baseball nerdery to football. This is a mistake, because that type of nerdery doesn't translate between sports. Baseball is a game of thinking (not smart thinking, just boring standing around chewing sunflower seeds thinking) so a lot more can be devised from statistical gibberish. They have created new statistical categories that I still have no idea what they mean because they weren't on baseball cards in the '80s. Shit man, slugging percentage was complicated enough for my young ass using some old school mathematics.
Football is not like that though. It's not a game of standing around and reminiscing on 1953 when Ricky Blalock became the first black midget to sacrifice bunt someone to third base, or calculating how well the dude in the bullpen warming up does against left-handed hitters who are from the Dominican Republic in day games not on the weekend. There's a slight aspect of that in football, but it's strictly limited to X's and O's. They don't even need a third letter. Draw that shit up and do it, because a lot of football is just overpowering a motherfucker, pure conquest, bordering on forcing the opponent to submit. And because of that, it's a highly psychological game, meaning there's unexplainable energies involved, very heavily. You can feel it in the stands and you can feel it on the field. One crushing hit changes the momentum or one long TD pass ends a game, spiritually, late in the first half. Shit man, we've all seen it.
Why do I bring this up now? Well, one reason is I've been putting a lot of poppy tincture in my nightly Earl Grey tea, and I've been building little homemade orgone generators out of scrap materials, but also because this column, this blog, this whole thing we're doing at Armchair Linebacker is completely different than most internet NFL bullshit you read. We don't give a fuck to be asked our opinion on some podcast with some dipshit nerd. We don't give a fuck to get jobs as actual "bloggers" or "freelance writers" because those are just code words for "yeah, I'm fucking struggling to figure out what the fuck I'm doing with my life really" since you don't really do anything when you do that, at least nothing substantial that will be here in like two years (unless you go to the Wayback Machine). Armchair Linebacker doesn't want to know football players like some bitch ass fan, although I'm sure if Neil could meet Willie Young or I could hang with Chris Cooley, we'd go up in the mountains and do mushrooms together and envision a world where the righteous ruled and the weak ass corporate minded people that ruin the soul of all good things - including the NFL - perish under the weight of their own false actions.
So what I'm saying is, dear ACLB reader, share our ACLB visions with the world - with your cyberhomies in your new-fangled phonebots and all the strange little social worlds you circle in like vultures. The ACLB vision must be known, so we can stop having these fucking nerds represent football knowledge inside the interwebs and thus on other media platforms. Those dudes are science with no spirit, speaking the garbled misfit talk of social dullards who have never known the smell of vagina juice in their mustache hairs. That is not who you want to be representing the spirit of Professional Football in word form to the world. So help us, by sharing. (And fuck it, if you wanna contribute to the blog, email me - ravenmack at gmail - or Neil - neilabfree at gmail - and get your lyrical freak on. The more the merrier, and the crazier the better.)
So anyways, as I commit to keeping this NFLuminati Index weekly after some slow times in recent months, I am cycling through my second pair of divisions in this 3rd Quarter of the NFL Season of 2011. The NFC West and NFC South lack the historical urgency of the East and North (which is basically the good parts of the old Central), but both have had their fair share of Super Bowl champions. And it could happen again. LET US BEGIN...
#1: SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS (8-1, 3rd overall) - There is no doubt about it after watching a couple of Jim Harbaugh-coached games... that dude is a straight up red-assed dickhead. But he's got the 49ers clicking. And I don't mean clicking like, "Hey, we're doing good because there's been a change in coaching, but in like 13 months, we're gonna start sucking again." He has almost immediately changed the culture of this team back to something where everybody believes. You got Alex Smith controlling games, looking better than Trent Dilfer in a Ravens uniform (way better), and Vernon Davis not being all weird and shit, and a defense that doesn't look to have a weak spot, and linemen catching passes and rookie LB whiteboys playing FB and all sorts of feel-good football shit that gets the team to be like, "FUCK YEAH COACH LET'S DO THIS SHIT!" and gets the fans inebriated with the energy to where it becomes this vortex of success that can't be stifled by a single loss. And this is a huge change for the NFL, on many levels. First off, both West divisions have been scrapyards of the mediocre for a long ass time. I mean, you have the false quality team of San Diego, but they're not for-real good; and then you'd have teams flare up luckily for a year or two like the Cardinals, but nothing consistent out West. The 49ers, if they do indeed turn out to be for-real good now, change the NFC West to where eventually somebody else is going to be guilted into trying to compete with them, just to not feel like bitches for getting punked every year. Like I said, this isn't baseball where nobody cares and you can win a division for 13 years in a row. That just doesn't happen. It's personal. But also, those late games on Sunday afternoon, which in recent years are usually just eastern time zone games with a late start, can start being actual west coast teams (well, at least one of them), which has to make yall west coast motherfuckers happy. And with the psychic history of the 49ers franchise, being the launching pad for Bill Walsh, which has been the dominant force in the NFLuminati for the past 30 years, it makes sense this is happening.
And even one more thing, being they still have most of their NFC West schedule to play, which should be winnable all of them, this puts the pressure on the Packers to keep winning to get home field advantage, which could actually push them to try and get a perfect season, which I don't think another modern team would care about ever again after the Patriots blew that perfect season in the Super Bowl a few years back. Really, this 49ers team being this good alters the landscape of the NFL. (I don't really believe that last statement, it just felt like a good douchebag thing to say. I mean, it's mostly true, but the way I said that was very Jim Rome-y, which means stupid and gay and fucking stupid.)
#2: NEW ORLEANS SAINTS (7-3, 4th overall) - The Saints, even with three losses, still sit at #4 in the version of rankings I do. This is because they tend to only lose when they should possibly lose, and fuck people up when they shouldn't. Do I think the Saints can win the Super Bowl? I don't know, seems like there was a magic the year they did that that's not there. But this offense, with Jimmy Graham and Mark Ingram, seems to be a better version of that offense. And the defense continues to do just enough. But something still seems to be missing, like the Saints were given a token Super Bowl win to satisfy their second-level status as a franchise, kinda like the Colts with Peyton Manning, and that's all they'll get while the Packers and Steelers and traditional franchise heavyweights stay relevant beyond one QB.
#3: ATLANTA FALCONS (5-4, 9th overall) - The Falcons aren't even at that level where they could get a token Super Bowl. Really, as the Matt Ryan magic loses it's initial luster, the Falcons are looking more and more like a lesser San Diego Chargers - an allegedly great team that's only good and sometimes not even that. It's easy to say that Matt Ryan and this Falcons team hasn't won a playoff game, ever. It's also easy to say neither had Aaron Rodgers before last year, and now everybody acts like he's the new Tom Brady. But again, there's something missing from the Falcons, some sort of evil spirit force that energizes them in those challenging moments. The Atlanta fanbase is notoriously fickle, so I can't see them feeding their team the DMT-of-the-muscles energy it needs. But whatever. Also Mike Smith is the most anonymous dude ever, so I can't see that being successful at the ultimate level. I mean he looks like every old white guy ever. And has the same name as most of them too.
#4: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (4-5, 19th overall) - Remember last year when Josh Freeman was the league's next rising superstar? Yeah, kinda sucks, because I got that dude on my fantasy football team. That hype hasn't held up this year, and though they are mediocrely good, they ain't no playoff team, regardless of what the standings say now or will say in December. There's always two or three teams that make the playoffs that aren't legit playoff teams anyways. Maybe the Bucs can hope to be one of them this year.
#5: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (3-6, 21st overall) - I don't understand the Seahawks, as they seem to just be a confused team completely. They were AFC West, then came to the NFC, and completely changed their uniforms to something that was basically the same. And how long has Pete Carroll been coach there? Two years? Three? And yet it seems like he's only now building towards rebuilding next year. They are composed like an expansion franchise somehow. I don't get it. And yet, being in the NFC West, they are still the second best team around.
#6: ST. LOUIS RAMS (2-7, 25th overall) - Speaking of the initial luster being gone from a QB, look at Sam Bradford. That dude looks like an abused 12-year-old kid at this point. But you should notice the one week the Rams put on those throwbacks with the old school Eric Dickerson and Jack Youngblood yellow, instead of this stupid assed gold shit from the Greatest Show on Turf era, they upset the Saints. That's because that color combo of the brighter blue and brighter yellow has more orgonomic energy to it. This pyrite and dark blue shit they normally wear has depleted their swagger. Look at Stephen Jackson. Look at how good Sam Bradford (or half of their young defenders) was when he first came into the league and how not so good they all are now. They are losing their internal powers, week by week, and the changes they need to make aren't personnel-related at all. It's all ambiance, and colors, and spiritually related.
#7: ARIZONA CARDINALS (3-6, 28th overall) - Oh man, the Cardinals. Somehow Kevin Kolb, who was going to be the new savior of the franchise, got injured and might have lost his starting job to somebody named John Skelton, who I'm pretty sure is a Grand Ole Opry comedian who does a hobo schtick. It all makes me feel sad for Larry Fitzgerald, who looks likely to have a long unsuccessful career that will be ended with a couple of years of obscurity on a power franchise, in the hopes of winning a Super Bowl, only to not win a Super Bowl, ever. He will basically become a much more likeable and vastly superior Chad Ochocinco.
#8: CAROLINA PANTHERS (2-7, 31st overall) - Cam Newton tears it up in fantasy football, but that hasn't translated into Ws for the real team. Similar to how Tim Tebow sucks for fantasy football, but always wins. Maybe that should be Cam Newton's hype now - NO MATTER THE OPPONENT, HE JUST GETS A BUNCH OF YARDS (though the Panthers usually still lose). I think a great fanfic project for somebody would be to write about the young millionaire Cam Newton falling under the tutelage of the elder athlete Steve Smith, who used to waste money on fines for airbrushing gibberish on his playing cleats every week. Charlotte, North Carolina, is the home to some fine black-oriented adult establishments, and rim and detail shops galore. It'd be a 2011 version of that young bull/old bull on a hill overlooking a bunch of milfs joke, about running down and fucking one or walking down and fucking them all, except it'd be set in North Carolina with humans, not bulls, which means they could wear some cool ass clothes. Does North Carolina A&T have a creative writing program?

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

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

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #7: ATLANTA FALCONS

PERTINENT DATA: 13-3, won NFC South and NFC home field advantage, then got destroyed by Packers in divisional round game; 15 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): I’ll be honest, I have never particularly liked Atlanta. It has a soulless corporatism to it that feels vaguely desperate, like it’s just a slow moving escalator to hell and the people on it have the nebulous feeling that they are drifting towards something ugly and awful but don’t know how to get off the damn thing before they are driven into their fiery doom. This was confirmed by a close friend who spent a year living and working in the soul sucking malaise of the capital of the New South, in the home of Ted Turner and Coca-Cola. He would call me every day in misery and despair and I would tell him that it was his own damn fault for following the candied lure of a harlot he called a girlfriend and he eventually saw the light and moved on to better places and better people and she went on to found a whorehouse outside of Savannah until she was carried away by an angry whore hunting ghost who took her for his bride in the afterlife and now the two of them live in a mansion by the sea, haunting the living and pimping out the dead. Okay, I may have made some of that up, but you’ll never know which parts. Really, though, I am just putting off talking about the Falcons because, you see, I don’t really care that much about the Falcons. I don’t particularly like their quarterback Matt Ryan, whose nickname, Matty Ice, sounds suspiciously douchebaggian to me, although I admit my distaste for young Matty might be accentuated by his ass whipping of the Lions during his first game in the NFL, which by the way was the first game on that long, inglorious trail of tears known as 0-16. NEVER FORGET. But since the Falcons are the beloved team of my boy Adrian and for the sake of Kevin and Larry King and all the other Falcon lovers out there (I’m extremely tempted to go off on a tangent about erotic falconry right now which is actually a real thing if you can believe it. Don’t ask me how I know this. I have low friends in low places.) I will do my best to remain positive. The fact is, is that the Falcons will have a good season. They simply have too many weapons and too many good things going for them. I can see them finishing 12-4 or even 13-3 and winning the NFC South, as distasteful as that may be, but what the hell, you asked for a best case scenario and I am bound by honor and the oaths I swore to Raven Mack, those mushrooms and that talking tree to give it to you. So there you go, you beasts, I hope you’re satisfied.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): There is something amiss about this Falcons team, and there always has been. Back in '98, when they went to the Super Bowl to get housed, they just didn't seem like a legitimate Super Bowl team. Even when the Michael Vick star status was still in its first ascension, it didn't feel right. And they still don't feel right. I can't really put my finger on it though, so there's no gridiron pseudo-scientific explanation I can give you. I do know that their coach does not seem like the type of guy you'd run through CIA-trained Libyan rebels who are murdering all blacks now that they are in charge to win a Super Bowl for. Shit, even his name - Mike Smith - is as anonymous as possible, and you combine that with the fact he looks like about 95 million other white dudes, it just seems unbelievable that anything special is coming from his dry erase board diagrams. I feel similarly about Matt Ryan. He has been excellent thus far in his NFL career, and I like the guy - it's hard not to like the guy if you hear even two minutes of an interview with him. And adding Julio Jones to Roddy White might be pretty fucking amazing for scoreboards and fantasy geeks this year. But there's just something missing, some undefined intangible, that moves an unproven QB from being really good to being a potential Super Bowl winner. Like, when you looked at Aaron Rodgers or Ben Roethlisberger, from the beginning, you could tell they could win a Super Bowl. You didn't know why, but you knew it. But when you look at Matt Ryan and even Philip Rivers, you don't get that same feeling automatically. They suffer from Dan Marino Disease, which to be fair is a pretty good disease to suffer from, because no one in their right mind would not want a Dan Marino or Matt Ryan as they starting QB. But it's never going to translate into championships, ever. And that's sad, because unlike Neil, I like Atlanta, and Georgia, and have good Rojonekku street peoples that way, who have taken me onto their couches when my Greyhound showed up all of a sudden, and have shared long sleepless weekends in $32-a-night motel rooms. I would like these people, and that area, to experience the euphoria of being the best, because Atlanta is a great example of the New South I often brag about to others - the great cross-pollination of immigrant Mexican and southern black and southern white, with both upper and lower class elements to all three of those cultures, so that it's not just broke ass black people but rich and successful black folks, and it's not just illegals but formerly illegals who have built a nice small business lifestyle for themselves in America. All of this blends and blurs together and ferments under the thick humidity of the southern skies into a wondrous place that fills me with pride, because shit like this don't exist in other parts of the country. And yet, in regards to Atlanta football, something is not there, some necessary ingredient for being a champion.
Of course, my theory that the NFL is engineered is probably still true and applicable here, and this is all a vast sham to make southern people feel inferior, even though we do live in this rich tapestry of American cultures, because the only southern team to ever win a Super Bowl was the New Orleans Saints two years ago, and if the NFL is engineered, then that would've been a feel-good boost for New Orleans as a tourist destination to symbolically to have been reborn on the national stage from the soggy ashes of Hurricane Katrina. But I am digressing here into William B. Cooper/Alex Jones football conspiracies, and I should keep it simple since you are a football fan and probably the target demographic for those commercials that wrap fake titties in a bikini top and put a beer in front of it and sales spike almost immediately.
Something is still not there for the Falcons, and they will be very good this year, but not a factor come playoff time. The sad thing is, there's no real way to tell what's missing, and although their offense is gonna be seriously the shit and a lot of fun to watch, they have the feel of becoming the NFC's Chargers, which is not a good thing to become.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Neil): I like Tony Gonzalez. He’s been around for a thousand years and although he’s slowed down a little bit, he hasn’t fallen off too much even after being written off by the Chiefs and those monsters in Kansas City who I suspect never fully trusted or embraced him due to his Latino heritage. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it might be. It feels like something that could be true, though and so we’ll go with it. Those racist animals. Shame on them. Anyway, the real reason I like Tony Gonzalez, though, is because he is a vegan (or at least he was as of a couple of years ago. Things change, though, and I understand that. For our purposes here, he still is. Don’t take that away from me, you heartless fiends.), and while that word immediately caused revulsion in just about all of you, who simply don’t trust a man who won’t eat the occasional steak or think that it is the sign of a weak soul, of a man gone terminally soft, let me tell you something – I am a vegan too and I am a fucking warrior of light and I will gnaw on your wicked bones. I just won’t swallow them. I haven’t always been a vegan, though, and neither has Tony Gonzalez. We are reformed savages, and there is nothing deadlier than a reformed savage. All that means is that we have discovered wisdom during our many battles in this plane of existence. It doesn’t mean that we have softened. It means that we’re too chill for your bullshit, but if you piss us off sufficiently, we will eat your soul. I still have blood on my lips from my wild eyed youth. I don’t have anything to prove to you degenerates and neither does Tony Gonzalez. I once killed and ate a Silverback Ape in front of the Gates of Hell just because he bet me I wouldn’t. I promised him that I would look after his children and his children’s children just before I ate his heart. I’m willing to bet that Tony Gonzalez had something similar happen to him. I bet he had to kill and eat Willie Roaf for reasons that none of you can fathom. But I understand, Tony. I understand.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Raven): Me and Neil had sort of promised to not step on each other's toes with these players to love and hate, but I just can't bite my tongue on my distaste for Tony Gonzales. Not that he's an outright shithead like a Deion Sanders or Michael Irvin or something, but, again, there's something intangible and unspoken that makes him seem off to me. He's the prime example of the fantasy football era superstar - a guy who has never accomplished a fucking thing in January, but is regarded as an automatic Hall of Famer, because of statistical productivity. Fuck productivity. This is Labor Day, and as the America Empire becomes it's twenty-year crumble into second-rate oblivion, it's important to note that productivity is a bullshit concept force into our collective consciousness by soulless cyberlords like Ray Kroc and Henry Ford and Nelson Rockefeller and William Randolph Hearts - the very men who gutted America of it's true pioneer spirit and filled it with the red and white and blue wiring of cyborgs, which we've all become, happy to toil away monotonously so long as we meet our daily/weekly/monthly quotas, and get very little recognition nor financial satisfaction in the process, barely able to keep our head above the flood waters of our own collective eventual financial armageddon. So fuck a guy like Tony Gonzalez, who is "productive" at tight ending, and has been so for a long career, without actually winning on a grand scale, because we don't need guys like this as heroes. We need motherfuckers who slit the throats of their overlords and manifest their own fucking destiny in this sick, crooked fucking world, like Oscar Zeta Acosta.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Ovie Mughelli, because he sounds like an alternate name for the big retard in Of Mice and Men.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): In a perfect world, it would be discovered that Matt Ryan is a soulless clone – which I suspect isn’t that far from the truth – and then he would be hunted down as a Replicant by galactic bounty hunters, humanists at heart really, men who understand only all too well the philosophical perils that come with accepting the soulless presence of a clone. He will then be sent to the moon to work as a space miner, where he will dig for precious metals and some sense of his own humanity. He must earn his soul in the space mines. Look, I don’t make the rules. This is just the way it is. If Matt Ryan wants my respect he has to turn himself in as a soulless Replicant and volunteer for a tour of duty in the space mines. That sounds fair to me. I am, after all, a man of deep compassion and I believe in offering everyone – even the soulless – a chance for redemption. Sometimes I think I’m just too kind and monsters like Matt Ryan will always be around to take advantage of that kindness. Oh well. Don’t weep for me. I will get my reward in the Kingdom of Heaven.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): They will be good, like I said, and go 11-5, win the NFC South (which will be the best division in the NFL this year, other than the Panthers obviously), and if they slot into a wild card home game, they'll probably win that, but once they get to the NFL's final eight, they will be sent back home to wonder what's needed to get to that next level, yet again.

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #8: NEW ORLEANS SAINTS

PERTINENT DATA: 11-5, earning an NFC wild card berth, lost at shitty Seahawks in wild card round of the playoffs; 16 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): What's not to like about the New Orleans Saints? I mean, seriously. Drew Brees is just a dude who was run out of San Diego by petulant management because of a busted shoulder, and he goes to New Orleans and brings them a Super Bowl. This is a team that was notoriously inept in the past, barely able to make the playoffs in their highest moments, and going 1-15 in one extra dreary year back in the '80s. Actually, being I know a lot of you are Lions fans who regularly come to this blog, the Saints are really a tale of hope for yourself, because the Saints were the exact same thing as the Lions for the longest time, and they rose up from the flood waters of Katrina and turned the mangled Superdome into a wonderful football arena again instead of the mausoleum for lost souls that tragedy had reshaped it as. New Orleans is a strange town, full of oddball characters and the most loveable but sketchy people you could ever meet. Anyone can enjoy themselves in New Orleans, from a convention-attending interventional radiologist nerd types to a heroin junkie looking for a chill place to try and make the methadone work this time. New Orleans just has that vibe of acceptance, regardless of what or how you are. This team carries that personality. There is a seemingly endless list of quality skill position players on offense, and just as soon as they rid themselves of their one overhyped failure in Reggie Bush, they bring in a hungry young dude in Mark Ingram who seems will be the opposite, even with the exact same Heisman shine. The offense is unquestionable, and will be as long as Sean Payton assembles his Billy Beane-esque hodgepodge of WRs, RBs, and TEs, and has Drew Brees to distribute the ball between them. But on defense, crazy old Gregg Williams has given this team some fangs to their bite, that they're really rarely had over the years of their existence whenever Rickey Jackson wasn't on the roster. It's a fun team to watch and no one really gets my oft-ruffled feathers ruffled. Shit man, basically the Saints are like that stupid "Greatest Show on Turf" Rams team, except they have nicer uniforms, are in a much better city, have a chill ass QB instead of some dumbass born again egotist, and are coached up by coaches who deflect praise to their players, not doing the a double thumbs point at themselves as an offensive genius. If there were four more teams as fucking good and likeable as the Saints, the NFL's wouldn't have to worry about this player image problem Sheriff Goodell seems to obsess over.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): True story: I am descended from Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, the dude who is known as the Father of New Orleans. This means that, as far as I can tell, the city of New Orleans belongs to me. It is mine by hereditary rights. You could argue this point with me, but you’d just look like an unlearned asshole, and this world is already far, far too full of unlearned assholes. So, just do the right thing and accept this. Now, naturally, this means that I have always had a bit of a soft spot for New Orleans. It is one of my many ancestral homes and my blood flows through its debauched veins. How could I not feel at least a tiny connection to the city? Think about me and think about New Orleans and tell me that in retrospect this connection isn’t obvious. I mean, come on, we are both debauched, we both are a bit of a disaster and we both don’t mind dressing up in drag and parading down the streets while people toss beads at us and strangers drunkenly flash their tits from countless balconies. Part of New Orleans will probably always be with me because that’s just the way genetics work, goddammit. Don’t argue with me, I’m a man of science. So . . . I mean, what’s the point here? What does this have to do with the Saints? I don’t know. If you came here expecting a point, well . . . I’m guessing you haven’t been following Armchair Linebacker for too long. Still, I suppose I should say something since, technically this is about the Saints and not about me leading up to the claim that I am the reincarnated soul of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne and that snippets of his life – well, my life but this stuff can get confusing – have been revealed to me through the miracle of hypnosis and through copious amounts of both Ayahuasca and Peyote. Perhaps it would be more interesting for me to reveal that during my life as Le Moyne I spent almost a full decade fighting beside The Great Willie Young against Creole pirates who had snakes for hair and who attacked us with the bones of our own dead and sent zombies after us in the dead of night. Terrible, terrible memories . . . but you’re right, this is supposed to be about the New Orleans Saints and not me. I apologize for being so self-centered. Anyway, the worst case scenario for the Saints isn’t all that bad considering they are among the most solid teams in the league. I guess their biggest concern is Drew Brees getting hurt, which is also a concern for me because in Raven’s fantasy football league I ended up with Brees as my quarterback, but there I go again making this all about me. I apologize. Anyway, if Brees gets hurt – and that shit better not happen or I’m coming for revenge with my tamed army or Creole zombies and The Great Willie Young by my side – the Saints could be looking at a shitty season, but even then they could probably squeak out an 8-8 season. Fuck it, I don’t know. I’m having flashbacks and I think one of my servants was just eaten by the Vampire Lestat. Oh, New Orleans . . . I just can’t escape you.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Raven): Honestly, there are too many wacky characters that go to New Orleans for the camaraderie to even pick just one out. Overweight quote machine who stops up the middle Shaun Rogers? He's here. Crazy viking warrior spirit center of doom Olin Kreutz? Yeah, he's here. Little San Diego speed midget Darren Sproles is here. Not to mention awesomely international sounding offensive role players like Marques Colston and Pierre Thomas. But most of all, this was the home to Deuce McAllister, who is such a great and wonderful dude, that even though he doesn't play for the Saints anymore, you should still pull for him, because he's cool. I know he's cool because I met him in prison.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Neil): Well, I kinda want to say the Vampire Lestat for eating one of my servants but I don’t think he made the cut after he fumbled in the Saints last preseason game, so . . . who’s it going to be? I could say Shaun Rogers since he is basically a fat, lazy degenerate much despised by many Lions fans but I always had a soft spot for Big Baby. So the dude got handsy with a stripper or two? It happens. Besides, Rod Marinelli hated Shaun Rogers and I can’t in good conscience ally myself with that war criminal. What I’m saying, I guess, is that you should hate Rod Marinelli. Now, I know he has nothing to do with the New Orleans Saints but his miserable stench cannot be contained by one city or one team and honestly, is it ever really wrong to find hatred in your heart for the villain who engineered 0-16? If that’s wrong than fuck you, I don’t want to be right.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: I could've easily gone with Isa Abdul-Quddus, and made Al-Qaeda jokes, but honestly, as a spirit-filled man of all Gods, the mystical yet precise morality of Islam is the finest of all the major world religions. Unfortunately it drifts into militantism easily along the fringes, but the beauty of the teachings of the Quran cannot be denied. So let's say the best name on the team instead is Jo-Lonn Dunbar, because that sounds like a wacky character from a Donald Goines novel. If you have not read Donald Goines novels before, you should; they are far superior to whatever stupid fucking fantasy world bullshit you pretend is reading. (Oh wait, Turk McBride plays for them too, but the Donald Goines thing applies to him as well.)
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): In a perfect world, I wouldn’t wake up from a deep sleep and find myself naked along the shores of the Mississippi River running naked from an army of zombies whose only goal in life is to eat my beautiful brain. But what the hell, this isn’t a perfect world now is it? And that means, just like everybody else, I must accept my lot in life and move on. For the Saints, their perfect world involves Drew Brees staying healthy and throwing for, like, 6,000 yards and carrying them to another Super Bowl, after which the people of New Orleans can melt down the Lombardi Trophy now that they have a spare and sell it so they can buy a new levee system. Too soon? Fuck it, I think I have made a variation of that same joke in everything I’ve ever written about the Saints or the city of New Orleans since Katrina. I was even paid money to make jokes like that in an NFL Draft diary I did a year and a half ago or so for a company which later told me that I had been made expendable by the presence of midgets recreating scenes from Entourage, which is apparently hilarious to . . . someone, I guess. Then they stiffed me on my last check. Then again, maybe that’s what I deserved for profiteering off of the misery of my ancestral city. I’m so ashamed. Forgive me, New Orleans, I need your help in defeating the Creole Pirates. Together, we can build a better tomorrow, even if we are all a bunch of French degenerates, effete and debauched. After all, we have The Great Willie Young on our side.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): The Saints are in a tough division, even if the Panthers are there. They'll get another solid 10-6 year, wild card berth to the playoffs, win the wild card game they should've won last year except for the overpowering dominance for 14 seconds of Beast Mode punked them out of it, and then lose.

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #16: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS

PERTINENT DATA: 10-6 last year; 30 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): I hate to be a guy who talks about team football of the professional variety from a fantasy context, but I'm about to do just that, so if you are a chump ass who can't handle such nonsense being the basis for more scientific thoughts, then jump over to Grantland or Football Prospectus or something where they will ramble about numbers and sabretrons and punter formulas and all that from a pseudo-scientific background, as we live in the age of everyone believing Science is the one true Religion. I'm just going to tell you what I know, and this "knowing" comes from my gut, which in the past week a scientific study validated the concept of gut intuition, in that all those bactili floating around inside of you actually help steer your thinking, and feed off the cellular memory found throughout your DNA. This means "gut intuition" is a real thing. This also means when you ingest antibiotics every time you go to the doctor, you are actually killing off your own intelligence. Now I am not Christian Identity gun-toting Bible-thumping "let God take have His will done" type dude, meaning I'm not anti-antibiotics. I am very much pro-biotics though. Earlier this year, my entire guts were blasted with heavy duty antibiotics to kill off devils inside of me trying to take possession of my life in a slow, stinging manner. I am cool with that, because it had to be done, and in times of war, even internal wars, there will be collateral damage. But I've also worked very strongly to rebuild my internal gut flora ever since, through lactofermented sauerkraut, kimchi, even made a batch of fermented herring like my Swedish ancestors would have made. It was nasty as fuck, stank to fake heavens, but filled my gut with intuitive knowledge for decades to come. What I am getting at here is I am in a fantasy football league, and last year's winner as well as anyone who honored their debt for losing (which is beer to the winner basically) gets to have one keeper from their roster last year. I was last year's winner, and had Peyton Manning on my roster, which earlier this preseason I thought would easily be my keeper. But I also had Josh Freeman last year, which caused me to actually watch him play a good bit. As the season wore on, and he got comfortable in his role, he actually outperformed Peyton Manning on a weekly basis. I am not shitting you, although you would probably not think so judging by the number of commercials Peyton stars in. Because of this, and because of Manning's neck injury, and because of the supporting cast around each of them, I actually chose Freeman as my keeper over Peyton Manning, because he is the rare combo of an athletic QB (meaning "black") who has his head screwed on completely straight (meaning he doesn't do dumb shit, like bankroll dogfighting operations for family members or disappear in a suicidal fit for two days). He is the real deal, and has really flown under the NFL radar to an extent, even though he started getting some love last year when the Bucs made a surprising run to 10-6, just missing a wild card. And while guys like Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco get pushed constantly as "second-tier" great QBs in the league, meaning one level below the Brady and Manning and Brees level, suggesting they are waiting in the wings for their moment, an athletic guy like Freeman will be lucky to get mentioned in a positive context without someone throwing in references to Michael Vick or Randall Cunningham or whoever the fuck else they can lump together as quality players but not quite elite QBs. This seems mildly racist to me, that a guy can't be nimble and mobile and still a rock solid QB. Of course, that doesn't matter because Raheem Morris is just the young hip hop coach to bring swagger to this Bucs team, embrace the chip on the shoulder for not getting the proper respect from the football establishment, and let this guys loose on an NFC South division in love with a traditional NFL offense, like Ryan and Brees QB in Atlanta and New Orleans. Well fuck all those people. This is a new goddamned world, and Josh Freeman is going to bring his show to you all again this year, with a little bit more attention, and by this time three years from now, when Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco are still trying to get to a Super Bowl, you'll be knowing the young and loveable and best of both worlds (black and white) quarterback named Josh Freeman is truly, without a doubt, an elite player in this league, even if he can juke a DB when he gets flushed out the pocket.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): I am not buying the Buccaneers’ renaissance. Last year’s team was one of those that got by with shit like grit, hustle, mirrors and the help of a junky wizard who probably owed someone on the team money and agreed to tap into some black magic craziness to make us all believe that the Bucs had gone respectable. But fuck that. I am a man of science and am not down with that kind of charlatanism. And I absolutely don’t trust that kind of GRIT HUSTLE BOY GET YER WRANGLERS ON DOGGY shit that the media furiously beats off over all the damn time. That’s illusory, and it works upon the part of the diseased mind that fetishizes football as some sort of moral passion play. Good football teams win because they are good and because they are talented. There. End of analysis. It’s that simple. Pluck and MacGyver fucking McGruber with a pickle, a rubber band and a stick of bubblegum are not sustainable building blocks. Eventually, that shit will turn on you and you’ll be caught texting pictures of your Munchkin dong to plasticized whores who will sell you out faster than they sold their own souls because that’s what plasticized whores do. And then everyone will laugh at you and your stadium’s roof will collapse. But we’re not here to talk about the Vikings. We’re here to talk about the Buccaneers, and the only reason I dare to allude to the Dark Lord Favre is because last year people were pretty quick to slobber all over Josh Freeman and tab him the new Favre, which would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that it was only one season and that these sorts of seasons happen all the damn time and then the next year the shitbird team that somehow managed to ride a bus made of pluck, grit and unicorn wishes to a surprise 10-6 season ends up going 6-10. Happens all the time. Just ask the Jaguars. That doesn’t mean that Josh Freeman isn’t any good. He is. It’s just that I remember last season, and I remember my Lions riding into Tampa Bay, still without a road win in the last 168 years and the Buccaneers were actually scared of the Lions. And then the Lions beat them. That told me all I needed to know about those plucky Buccaneers. They are a team of cowards and false prophets and therefore the worst case scenario for them is ugly and cruel and involves them being crucified or burned alive at the stake as heretics and wicked charlatans after going 6-10. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules. That shit’s in the Bible.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Raven): I know because he has been around, a lot of people don't like him, but Ronde Barber is a man I can pull for. I saw both he and his twin brother play at UVA where I live, and even though they were identical and both pro-bound for long successful careers, there was always a marked difference between the two. Whereas Tiki seemed to need validation, probably a shortcoming brought about from being an offensive skill position player, Ronde just did his business, and did it better than anybody else. He continued this into the pros, and in an era where dudes are lucky to get through a second contract on the same team, he's had his entire NFL career in Tampa. Not only that, he is the connection to their past, to the Super Bowl victory under Jon Gruden and insane Monte Kiffin defense that knocked the NFL on its ass for a few long years. He is the connection to when the orange uniforms weren't throwbacks but standard game day gear. He is the short history of success in red and pewter that Tampa Bay has achieved. And he's the veteran presence to school the youngsters - including his head coach - in the locker room. And he did it all without acting like a complete douchebag like his twin brother made a habit of doing, both in New York, and then in broadcasting.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Neil): Look, I don’t really care enough about anyone on this dumb and pointless team to really hate anyone. Actually, that’s not true. I care about LeGarrette Blount, but I like him, which is why he ended up as my pick for running back for the All-ACLB Team. Everyone else is pretty much just there. Oh, I guess I could pick Kellen Winslow. He seems like kind of an asshole, like the sort of dude who would get caught in a crack house getting sucked off by a junky with no teeth left just because she owed her dealer who also happened to be a Miami booster but then he’d conveniently get left out of the police report and get to go back to his apartment while his teammates all spent the night in jail together just because his daddy was rich. That seems like the sort of dude Kellen Winslow is. He’s a fake bullshit soldier and he probably loves to do shit like dress up in fatigues and scream WAR at the top of his lungs while he’s riding around in his Humvee with dudes in polo shirts named Chet and Lance. He thinks he’s the fucking man and likes to pretend that he’s all hard but the truth is that he’s probably just some coddled spoiled rich boy who gets off on being a fake badass. A soldier? Shit, Kellen Winslow would probably get his ass beat by the No Limit Soldiers and that’s some sorry ass shit right there. Look, I’m just riffing here. I don’t know that much about Kellen Winslow, other than him getting messed up in that shit down in Miami, screaming “I’m a soldier!” that one time and hurting his knees all the damn time and he could be a cool dude, but these are just my impressions. He sets off my bullshit detector, which was created by NASA scientists in conjunction with Einstein’s brain, which was saved and is kept alive in a glass jar filled with special alien electrolytes in a secret facility inside of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. So, I’m sorry, Kellen Winslow, but it’s the merest of science.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Ashton Youboty.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): Man, these things keep getting longer and longer, but fuck it, we all knew this would happen. Anyway, in a perfect world the Buccaneers will be exposed as the pretenders that they are, they will slip to 6-10 and everyone will point to that time when they were beaten up by the Lions as the beginning of the end of their failed renaissance. I like Josh Freeman. Well, not really. I don’t give a fuck about him one way or the other to be honest with you, but I don’t hate him either so I feel like he should be given the chance to be a good quarterback. But I just don’t want it to happen in Tampa Bay. I can’t tell you why. It’s one of the great mysteries of our time, like how magnets work and why assholes at the beach always feed the seagulls even though it makes them all obscene and wild and will cause them to shit all over you in spite. Those hateful winged rats. Fuck them. Anyway, no one knows why. It just is what it is. Perhaps I am just in a harsh mood, violent and deranged or maybe I have psychically tapped into a future world where Josh Freeman eats babies and performs analingus on unsuspecting goats (Was that the worst thing I’ve ever made you picture, Josh Freeman tossing a goat’s salad? I mean, come on, goats will eat anything, so who knows what foul, well, shit Josh Freeman would have to work through. Okay, now that’s definitely the worst thing I’ve ever made you picture, no? At the very least, it was the most random, right? Wait, come back . . . Is there anyone even reading anymore? Shit, I don’t blame you. Not that you can read this if you’re not here. Right? Who am I talking to then? Whoa, this is getting kinda heavy. Who knew that talk about Josh Freeman defiling goats would lead to such an existential dilemma?) All I know is that in my perfect world the Buccaneers will return to the land of the eternally shitty and Josh Freeman will be protested by PETA for what he did to those goats. I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that they play the Lions in Week 1. Nothing at all.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): Last year was no fluke. This team is great enough to repeat that 10-6 season, and actually sneak into the playoffs as a wild card entrant, though they will probably lose in that first weekend of playoff games in January. But it will be one more step towards their ultimate potential.

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #31: CAROLINA PANTHERS

PERTINENT DATA: 2-14 last year; 125 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): Pro football needs to break out of its tired old racist ways in regards to the QB position. A pure talent like Cam Newton, who most likely is a renegade in regards to morality, which will be a great fit in Cackalacka, which is a great soulful somewhat immoral yet God-fearing place, where one can attend clubs with pajama parties and you can get good barbecue in 30 miles anywhere in the state... But a pure talent like Cam Newton, rather than being over-analyzed as how "he's not a traditional QB, not a dropback blah blah blah boring old bullshit from black-and-white films", he should be embraced. My homey Mavpa had come up with a two-QB system a while back that he tried to run on a semi-pro football team, and the key is to be like, "Fuck tradition." Think about how teams are all moving from having the one feature RB to having a pair, maybe three they use in this role, to rotate. Why not do this with mobile QBs? Fuck your wildcat formations as a trick, just get you a Cam Newton, and have an older Cam Newton, like Vince Young or Michael Vick, and get you a third dude who may be traditional who can air it out on 3rd and long or just be brought in as a decoy under center when you actually do some wacky next level shit. Hopefully with a new coach and Cam Newton, this is what they are ultimately conjuring up in Carolina, and young black rappers throughout the south will be wearing airbrushed Carolina Panthers t-shirts for years to come, because even if they only go 8-8 every year, they will do the most amazing shit ever each and every week.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): The worst case scenario for the Panthers probably involves the phrase “In the running for the number one overall pick” again. Which, let’s face it, is a very, very real possibility. Of course, this will involve a meltdown by Cam Newton, an epic failure by the new coaching staff, DeAngelo Williams getting hurt again, and, well, everything that probably will actually happen to the Panthers. The Panthers suck and they’re probably going to suck no matter what, and so honestly, we shouldn’t even be looking at it from that angle. We should be looking at the future, and the worst case scenario there is that Cam Newton melts down and is found sucking dick in a back alley somewhere after getting addicted to coke or something like that, which I’m not saying is going to definitely happen but I’m not saying it definitely won’t happen either. Let’s just remember: this is the worst case scenario. I mean, technically, the worst case scenario is probably something none of us can even picture, like the universe becoming inverted and us being conquered by aliens from another dimension with asses for heads who spew literal shit whenever they talk and giant penis guns that drown us all in semen. Given that scenario, the idea that Cam Newton gets caught blowing dudes in a back alley seems rather tame, you know? I’m just saying, let’s try to keep things in perspective.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Raven): It seems too easy to say Steve Smith, who although a tough-as-nails veteran WR who always gets touted by talking heads as a solid dude, he's also a borderline primadonna in the league, and came from Utah. What kind of fucking black dude comes from Utah? So I'm going to go with LB Thomas Davis, simply because he made a short trek to Carolina from the University of Georgia, which means he's a new south brother, and I've seen rides of his in Donk Box & Bubble magazine a couple of times. Any simple southern black dude who becomes a millionaire and decides a proper thing to do is figure out how to put 28-inch rims on a 1967 Buick, and then take pictures of it parked in front of an antebellum mansion you bought, that's a solid new south dude, and makes me hopeful for our collective future.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Neil): Cam Newton. There is just something slimy about this dude, and not slimy in a good way but slimy in an entitled and assholish way. Like, none of his scandals involve him getting caught with a bunch of hookers and a mountain of blow, which is a respectable scandal to get caught up in. Instead, all of his scandals involve him weaseling something out of somebody, like some self-important prick frat boy who’s never been slapped around before. That dude will turn out to be a sociopath who just takes whatever the fuck he wants no matter what and those dudes suck. Plus, he is the son of a preacher man, and not even the good kind of preacher man who is kinda crazy and has a poor ass church and who is probably porking the church secretary with the big ass because even though it’s a sin he just can’t help himself and it’s an open secret but nobody cares because that dude is pretty awesome and actually cares about things like helping poor people out and trying to make shit better. No, Cam Newton is the son of the sort of preacher man who’s into the whole fake smile megachurch thing and who would probably sell his congregation to slavers if it meant he could get a gold toilet installed in his office. You just can’t trust someone who was raised with those kind of values, especially if that dude is supposed to be the leader – and therefore de facto pastor – of your team.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Mackenzy Bernadeau, who even played at a Bentley College, which makes him sound even more swank as fuck. That sounds like some Rolls Royce DNA to me.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): In a perfect world, Cam Newton somehow proves me wrong and becomes the savior of the Carolina Panthers, but . . . honestly, my heart’s not in that shit and while that may not be fair to the people of Carolina, I don’t really give a fuck. In my perfect world, Cam Newton quickly flames out and the Panthers spiral even further into the abyss until Bill Richardson (That’s who owns this shitbird franchise, right?) is forced to sell the team to an anonymous billionaire who hires Ric Flair to be the front man for the team and Slick Ric remakes the team in his image and cuts wild promos every week on the Panthers opponents and is always getting busted trying to bribe the refs and then maybe he can feud with Sheriff Goodell and they can fight each other on the Superbowl undercard. I mean, fuck it, why not? Super Bowl Sunday is like 118 hours long anyway. You might as well cram something awesome in there in between all the pointless Bermanesque blathering. Oh, and maybe the anonymous billionaire is revealed to be, like, Larry Flynt or somebody like that.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): There is no one remotely as bad as the Panthers in the NFC South, so a 2-14 repeat is likely, just missing out on the number one draft pick, which shouldn't be such a stigma as it once was with the new rookie salary restrictions. Still though, they ran John Fox off for this? What happened to Bill Cowher? Remember what he did with Kordell Stewart? Yep, I see you working here Carolina.

2010: Where Jamaal Anderson Is No Longer A Bust?

No longer a bust?

The Falcons were up 17 to 10 and had punted the Seahawks inside the five yard-line. That's when time slowed down. Fourth year DE/DL Jamaal Anderson beat his block and amazingly rushed towards Matt Hasselback. Hasselback was in the endzone and looked shocked that Jamaal had beaten his block and was coming straight for him. Hasselback had watched tape of the Falcons and was not familiar with this version of Jamaal. Jamaal came right after Hasselback and with a mighty thwap knocked Hasselback and the ball to the ground. The best DL in the NFC South, Jonathan Babineaux jumped on the ball for a TD to put the Falcons up by two scores and basically end the game. It was in this slowed down moment of time that Jamaal Anderson might have just shredded his label of "NFL Bust". It's not his fault that the moron Bobby Petrino picked him 6th in the NFL Draft.

It's been plays like this by guys like this that has led the Atlanta Falcons to their 11-2 record, their playoff birth and their longest winning streak since they went to the Super Bowl in 1998. Dudes like Jamaal Anderson, Brent Grimes, William Moore, Eric Weems, Kroy Biermann, Jason Snelling and the list goes on. These guys have stepped up to either play critical roles in this years team or to have critical moments in big situations. It just seems like with this team that when someone needs to step up...someone will step up.

And while I'm here I might as well make the case for diminutive CB Brent Grimes to take his place in the Pro Bowl this year. With the Falcons up by 14 he made a jumping athletic interception of Matt Hasselback that led to a Falcons FG. And then on the very next drive he deflected a pass which was then intercepted by William Moore which led to a TD. Grimes is second on the team with tackles with 70, has a team high 17 passes defensed (which is near the tops in the league) and is tied for the team led with 5 interceptions. Throw this guy a bone and put him in the Pro Bowl. He deserves it and make sure Eric "Special" Weems gets there too as the NFL Special Teams guy.

Next up is some must see TV live from the Georgia Dome next Monday night as the Falcons host the defending Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints. Should be a fun one.

Brent Grimes: Rock Star

Earlier this year during the off-season I typed up a little blog about the players that I thought were in a "make it/break it" year for the Falcons. One of the guys I listed was cornerback Brent Grimes. Here is what I had to say about Grimes then:

Grimes is commonly referred to as the most athletic guy on the team. The biggest knock on Grimes is that he's only 5'10". If he was 6'2" he would probably be a world class corner. Grimes got extra playing time last year and improved as the year went on. Grimes posted a career best 6 interceptions, recorded 66 tackles and defended 13 passes. Dunta Robinson was the big Free Agent acquisition this off-season, Game One starter Brian Williams was re-signed and 2009 draftee Christopher Owens showed he could play last year. Those three guys are the main reason that this is a make it or break it season for Grimes. If he can't break the starting rotation or nail down a nickel spot I think he's going to get permanently passed by these guys. I think the best case scenario for him is nickel with Dunta and Christopher Grimes as starters. Grimes is kind of like his name. He's a gritty, grimy player that you like to have on your team. However, he might see most of his time in special teams this year.

Grimes is an undrafted guy out of tiny Shippensburg University so the deck was well stacked against him. Not to mention that he's small of stature so he's not what you are physically looking for in an NFL corner back. But he's the scrappiest guy on the field and he will fight you every second of every play. Anybody who has watched the Falcons play this year knows that this guy can ball and has really turned it up this year and has definitely turned this year in a "Make It" year for him. The perfect example of this was today's Tampa Bay game. He nearly had a huge clutch interception and return late in the 4th quarter but it was reversed by instant reply. So what does he do? He does it again! He read Josh Freeman perfectly and dove in front of his receiver and came down with the ball to seal a gritty come back win for the Dirty Birds.

Brent Grimes kind of epitomizes the Atlanta Falcons this year. The Falcons have their well known guys or "stars" like Matt Ryan, Tony Gonzales, Roddy White, John Abraham and Michael Turner but the real reason the Falcons are 10-2 is because of the rest of the roster. Dudes like Brent Grimes and Eric "Special" Weems (who had a huge kick off return for a TD today to get the Birds back into the game). It's the contributions of guys that don't get the limelight or the credit (Mike Peterson, the OL, Ovie Mughalli, Curtis Lofton, Kroy Biermann, Corey Peters, etc) that has made this into a special season for the Falcons.

The Falcons stand at 10-2 with two games left with Carolina, one at Seattle and a home Monday Nighter with Drew Brees and NO. If the Falcons can secure home field advantage for the playoffs watch out!

NFL 2010: Week 12 - NFC East & South (3rd Quarter)

Let me write of the football, as my house is in a cluster of preparations for Thanksgiving gorging. Actually, I made kimchi this evening, because I was afraid the vegetables would go bad, and wanted to clear room on the bottom half of the fridge for leftovers tomorrow evening, because even though it is only myself, my ol’ lady, and our three daughters, we are gonna have mad motherfuckin’ food in this motherfucker. What is more American than stuff our fucking fat faces full of everything, slicking even more than necessary down our gullet with some giblet gravy, and passing out drunk and half naked with our pants around our thighs to unleash our aching ass intestines on the second couch because the first one has some sort of unwanted guest already laying on it? I have stoked myself into a serious frenzy over football this year for some reason, probably because the last two Thanksgivings I have been travelling and staying with family that ain’t all that cool and not nearly as extended as I wish they were. Luckily, I probably fucked it up somehow because most of them don’t talk to us anymore. My bad, yet my blessing.
Anyways, in regards to Thanksgiving football, the NFL is a fake monster that has engineered itself, and has benefitted from the Lions being not good, so that they could justify a third game at night, without tradition, like the Cowboys/Lions home games have. Fuck you NFL. Also fuck you America. This early Lions/Patriots game is really the Truth of America’s Future, laid out publicly. The Patriots and pretty boy multi-millionaire Tom Brady are the America that Al-Qaeda hates – privileged and given everything already and getting the rules specifically changed to benefit themselves. This goes beyond the Tuck Rule which helped create the Legend of Tom Brady, but all the “don’t hurt the QB” rules that came into effect basically because of Brady. Meanwhile, Detroit’s football franchise is a blighted wasteland, much like Detroit itself, and Michigan in general, the forgotten and faded glories of America, factories with plywood windows and a downtrodden people so hopeless that they just don’t even give a fuck to give a fuck anymore.
Yet somehow, it seems to me if we are what we think we are – a nation of people who can fuck shit up and git-r-dun like no others, then we could just straight up rule the earth again, from within, by kicking ass with actual things that are shaped from steel and built with machines. Or we could just try to trick the world into respecting us using our technological trickeries, which is more likely what will happen, and very New England Patriotic of us.
I root for the Lions on Thanksgiving this year because I would like to believe there is still a second era of American glory, and we are not just riding out our century of top dog status before the Chinese call in our debts and enslave us all. If the Patriots win, you might as well think back on that Thanksgiving fable from Plymouth Rock (near the Patriots) as bullshit mythology, and realize that we are no longer the Pilgrims but the Indians, just waiting for our smallpox blankets to clear us out the way for the next financial epoch. But perhaps these hodgepodge Lions can win, and we still stand a chance to be proud Americans again, not fake ass Americans with flag magnets made in China stuck to our Nissans. Fuck.
Anyways, this week we are taking a stroll through the NFC South and East divisions, which although the NFC is allegedly a vastly inferior conference to the AFC, these two divisions have the exact same won-loss totals as the AFC’s two best divisions – also the East and South. And remember, this is a scientific process, where the overall rankings, as well as the 1 through 8 of these particular teams, is all determined through a precise set of calculations, and cross-referenced with my own psychedelic substance abuse, which lately has been a THC tincture droppered into some nice ass molasses cookies I got from the Mennonites at the farmer’s market over in Nellysford. Good stuff man, good stuff. So here we go…

#1: ATLANTA FALCONS (8-2, 3rd overall) – It’s slightly odd how far under the radar the Falcons have flown when talk of the best teams in the NFL comes up, especially considering how much hype Michael Vick’s resurgence has gotten, and how the Falcons have a better record, and the motherfuckin’ most natural blood rivalry between him and the Falcons is right there. Odd thing is – and this goes straight into my belief the NFL is engineered – that Vick was knocked out for the game between these two earlier this year. And now Vick is getting MVP talk. It certainly seems like the groundwork for a Falcons/Eagles NFC championship game is being laid early on, and the Falcons are not getting a lot of that hype at this point. They’re a solid team though, with a good offense featuring multiple threats, and a tough defense with a bunch of unknown dudes peppered with some more well-respected vets… it’s textbook footballery going on. Really hard to believe the whole Vick thing and that fat fucker from The Sopranos who was their coach who bailed on them was only a couple years ago. Matt Ryan is like Tom Brady, just without all the Bradyness shine. Perhaps that is why all this is being engineered at this point, so that the famous Michael Vick can achieve redemption, and yet do the job in the NFC Championship game to the Falcons, so that the young Matty “Ice” Ryan can step up to the big stage of the Super Bowl and be given that worldwide shine, so that the NFL can start their transition from the Brady/Manning era into whatever the fuck they have planned for us next. Who will star in NFL Visa commercials in 2015? I can’t wait to find out; and I can’t wait to use my Visa card. (See, that is America, and that is the NFL.)

#2: PHILADELPHIA EAGLES (7-3, 7th overall) – Michael Vick’s smile is no different than it was when he was a dogfighter. Personally, I will never forgive Vick for ruining the proud sport of cockfighting in America, because once he got busted, it brought the heat down on every illegal animal fighting operation across my home state of Virginia, so that cockfighting rings that had solidly been in existence for decades and decades were told to shut down or get busted, just like Vick. Now, I have to ship my gamecocks all the way to the Philippines or Mexico, and I can’t even in the comfort of my own state watch these magnificent creatures do battle. If you have never seen a cockfight, let me tell you, there are few things more beautiful than two wound up roosters flying at each other, talon first, feathers flying, bouncing with the adrenaline of a million years of natural hatred overwhelming their tiny little brains. It’s fucking beautiful, and fuck you Mike Vick for ruining it. Also it should be noted that although most NFL pundits are all like, “OHMYGOD! The Eagles are the best in the NFL!” because of a couple of games, true metasciences tell us they are only the 7th best team in the NFL right now.

#3: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (7-3, 9th overall) – Speaking of under the radar, I’m not even sure most people know Tampa Bay still has a football team. I know I didn’t. But then there they are, in the standings every week. Their quarterback is a guy who used to be shooting guard for the Miami Heat. They do have that kid from Oregon who punched that other player last year, LeGarrette Blount, which is one of those names that sounds like a product not a person, like a finer type of blunt paper for upwardly mobile inner-city types, that would probably have a commercial with Jay-Z and be partnered up with Heineken.

#4: NEW ORLEANS SAINTS (7-3, 10th overall) – The Saints have been a fairly inconspicuous and unnoticeable 7-3. Like it seems like they have fallen off, and not doing that well this year, yet they are 7-3, which is only one game out of home field advantage in the NFC playoffs. They won the Super Bowl last year, so I don’t really care much about talking about them. Winners are fucking boring. They should just have like the last four Super Bowl champions be in their own stupid league of Champions, and then the rest of us losers can try to win a Lombardi Trophy. Speaking of which…

#5: WASHINGTON REDSKINS (5-5, 11th overall) – Oh beloved Redskins, which way will your mediocrity blow this week? This is the nature of the 2010 NFL – crappy teams sprinkled with a couple of people you know being pretty good about five days after being the worst thing in history. The playoffs should be interesting as fuck, because somebody is going to have to win at least three games in a row. As for my Redskins, I am shamefully proud of them. Top stat of the year is how many opposing QBs they have knocked the fuck out this year, which gives me hope that they could perhaps end Brett Favre’s career this weekend. That would be an amazing thing and would be the second highlight of Dan Snyder owning this team, the first of which was them ending Troy Aikman’s career.

#6: NEW YORK GIANTS (6-4, 14th overall) – Now that Wade Phillips is gone from the NFL coaching ranks, the stupidest looking head coach is Tom Coughlin, with his head cocked sideways just slightly, like an old man trying to figure out what a Southern rap song is jibber-jabbering about. I imagine that goes on fairly regularly in the locker room, him all being like, “What the shit is a dougie?” and Eli Manning is chuckling while they watch somebody having a rhythmic epileptic seizure across the room, saying in budget hick Manning voice, “Awwwww coach, it’s just a dayunce they do.” Tom’s head cocks a little more sideways for a second and then he goes back to his office to crank some old big band music while studying game film on an actual projector until the wee hours of the morning. Next day when he wakes up, like the end of that last film is still spinning and the one part is flapping at the end of the reel, clickity clickity clickity, and he gets down to trying to understand what the hell is up with his players, listening to their fucking music and thinking peeing on women is a sexual act.

#7: DALLAS COWBOYS (3-7, 24th overall) – Jason Garrett has resurrected the crackhead sodomites from the dead. Last year this time, my family went to south Florida and I watched dolphins bob their heads out the water on Thanksgiving Day. When we flew home, the shuttle back to the parking lot at the Richmond Airport, we shared a ride with a pair of lesbian chicks decked out in Cowboys gear, the butchy surly one in a Jason Witten jersey, and the friendly smiley one with long hair in a Romo jersey. We made small talk, and I mocked their Cowboy fandom, and they had a good laugh and complimented our children on their behavior. Turns out that lesbian couple was the mom and mom’s girlfriend of a dude I had worked with on a few job sites. This is an amazingly small world we live in, and though you might confuse yourself and think that you are more connected by having your smart phone and access to all types of distractions, and yet we are disconnected from what is actually happening around us, like directly. Zombies looking down at their handheld tracking device. Tomorrow, since I hate the Cowboys, when their game is starting, I’m going to take my kids outside and we are going to build a fort in the gone feral pasture, and we will play cowboys and Indians, and if my kids want to be the cowboy, I am going to beat them and not allow them to have any pumpkin pie. I do not care if my children end up lesbians, but they will not end up Cowboy fans.

#8: CAROLINA PANTHERS (1-9, 32nd overall) – It looks like finally Operation Bill Cowher in Carolina will come to fruition, as the Panthers have gotten so godawful bad that John Fox will not be able to pull off a late season burst to save his job yet again. This means next year he will probably be in broadcast TV, where he’ll sit long enough for the stain of this year’s team to sort of air off of him, and then he’ll be the hot prospect head coaching dude that everyone has to have.