NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #12: HOUSTON TEXANS

PERTINENT DATA: 6-10 last year; 25 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): Man, this sucks. I signed on to be positive about this team before medical data was revealed to me showing the team is still afflicted with the same anti-awesomeness it has had since its creation. Part of the problem is the Houston Texans were not really created out of passion or some rich dude being like, "HOLY FUCK MAN, WHEN I WAS 9 YEARS OLD EARL CAMPBELL WAS THE GREATEST THING I EVER SAW IN MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE! AND HE INSPIRED ME TO START A CHAIN OF MEXICAN THEMED FOOD STORES THAT WERE MORE CLEAN AND NICE AND NOT MEXICAN-Y AT ALL, WHICH SPREAD LIKE WILDFIRE THROUGH COLLEGE TOWNS IN THE SOUTHWEST BECAUSE WE GAVE AWAY JAZZ CDS BACK IN THE DAY AND OFFERED LOCAL FOODS EVEN THOUGH WE CONSIDERED THE ENTIRE EARTH AS OUR LOCALE, BECAUSE WE WANTED TO EXPAND JUST LIKE EARL CAMPBELL WANTED TO RUN LIKE A BUFFALO THROUGH ANY DEFENDERS FOR LIKE TEN YEARS PAST HIS PRIME BUT STILL I LOVE EARL CAMPBELL MAN! BUT MY CHAIN WENT CRAZY AND PEOPLE LOVE IT AND CHIPOTLES HAS NOW MADE ME ENOUGH MONEY THAT I WANT TO LIVE MY DREAM OF OWNING THE HOUSTON OILERS BUT YOU FUCKERS KILLED THAT TEAM SO NOW GIVE ME A NEW ONE AND I PROMISE TO BE AS CRAZY AND EXUBERANT AS JERRY JONES AND WE WILL MAKE TEXAS WITH IT'S FOOTBALL-CRAZED DEGENERATES THROUGH AND THROUGH PROUD OF THIS TEAM IN HOUSTON WHICH I AIM TO CALL THE HOUSTON HOT PEPPERS OR ZAPATAS OR SOMETHING MEXICAN SOUNDING BUT NOT TOO MEXICAN-Y LIKE MY RESTAURANT BUT WE'LL DO SOME MARKET RESEARCH ON THIS! BUT WE NEED A TEAM, AND I WANT THE COLORS TO BE PURPLE BECAUSE ALL THE NEGRO BOYS IN HOUSTON LOVE TO DRINK COUGH SYRUP AND PAINT ALL THEIR LATE MODEL CARS IN PURPLE SHINY PAINT! HAHAHA RACCOONS, ALWAYS DAZZLED BY SHINY THINGS! YOU KNOW IF YOU PUT A POLISHED ALUMINUM CAN IN A HOLE A RACCOON WILL REACH IN AND GRAB IT BUT NOT LET GO TO GET HIS HAND BACK OUT, HE'LL JUST SIT THERE AND BE STUCK BECAUSE HE REFUSES TO LET GO OF THE SHINY ALUMINUM CAN! I'VE SEEN IT BEFORE, MY COUSIN AARD SHOWED ME ONE TIME, IT'S HILARIOUS, WE SHOT THAT FUCKER WITH A .22. BUT ALL THE LITTLE THUGGED OUT BLACK BOYS LOVE PURPLE SO WE MAKE OUR UNIFORMS PURPLE SO THEY WEAR IT BECAUSE WHITE PEOPLE ONLY THINK WHAT BLACK PEOPLE DO FIRST IS AWESOME SO NOT ONLY WILL WE HAVE FOOTBALL AGAIN BUT WE'LL HAVE COOL UNIFORMS THAT RAPPERS WILL WEAR PROBABLY AND THAT WILL BE EVEN BETTER, AND I'M NOT SURE WHAT COLOR TO DO WITH PURPLE BUT NOT BLACK BECAUSE THE RAVENS ARE STUPID AND DO THAT ALREADY, SO MAYBE GOLD LIKE THE LAKERS BUT FOR FOOTBALL! YEAH, THAT'S WHAT WE SHOULD DO, MAN I AM SO INTO THIS, I WILL DROP EVERY DOLALR I HAVE FLEECED FROM THE CONSUMER PUBLIC WITH MY FAKE MEXICAN RESTAURANTS WITH SLOW FOOD THAT'S NOT REALLY SLOW, AND I WILL SIT IN THE OWNER'S BOX AND BE STOKED AND WE WILL BRING BACK WARREN MOON AND EARL CAMPBELL TO HOUSTON AND ON THE FIRST GAME WE'LL HAVE THEM ART PEOPLE BUILD A GIANT OILER SCULPTURE LIKE THE OLD OILERS HELMET LOGOS AND THEN IT'LL BLAST OUT THE TOP PURPLE CONFETTI AND GLITTER, JUST LIKE THE CARS THEM BLACK BOYS GET PAINTED, AND IT WILL BE A SYMBOLIC USHERING IN OF A NEW ERA! YOU GET IT! YOU GET IT! FOOTBALL WILL RETURN TO HOUSTON TRIUMPHANTLY!" That didn't happen. Instead it was corporate placement bullshit, so they chose Houston as the largest non-L.A. market able to house a team, and they named them Texans because it was in Texas and appealed to the most people they called on the phone with robots, and then they used red and white and blue colors for the uniform because 9/11 changed everything, and it was more like franchising a new Burger King in a suburb than franchising an NFL football team. Which is why the Texans will always be sort of lackluster, even when they are good. And what I'm getting at is, with your whole psyche being built off market testing and corporate scams, you'll never have the heart and fighting spirit to be a truly great NFL team. But the Texans, even if Arian Foster is feeling a little anti-awesome, are about as great as they'll ever get on defense. Most of the time, I'd be worried about a team switching from 4-3 to 3-4, but they seemed to be better equipped for the 3-4 anyways, and I'm afraid Mario Williams will destroy some motherfuckers now that he's standing up all the time. Offensively, they have Andre Johnson, who may be even more of a Calvin Johnson (unequalled player mired in the obscurity of mediocrity) than Calvin Johnson now that the Lions are being noticed by the world, and with Andre Johnson, they'll put up points, because that dude just straight up wills his way into success. But they'll never be better than a possible wild card team, no matter how good they think they can get, because they are built from demographic data and consumer habits, not from actual football spirit.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): It’s Texas day here at Armchair Linebacker since the winds of coincidence have blown both the Texans and the Cowboys onto our laps which means that it will be a day of great hatred because, honestly, fuck Texas. I could go on and on here for a billion words on why Texas is so horrible but just read everything I wrote about Arizona and apply that shit here tenfold. Texas is Arizona’s meaner, more successful, and yet even more soulless older brother. Its people are twisted caricatures of the American Dream, a funhouse people, their very presence mocking everything that we’re supposed to believe in as Americans. But fuck all that noise, we’re here to talk about the Texans, who are doomed to forever be the bastard younger brother of the Cowboys, who will forever be the team truly beloved by those monsters we know as Texans, but the Cowboys reckoning is up next and we won’t dwell on them here. The Texans are pathetic. Every year they come out and every year people shout “Hey, ya’ll! This is the year!” And then they go 8-8 again even though they have arguably the best wide receiver in football (You’re goddamn right I said arguably for a reason, for as long as St. Calvin is around, I’m not hearing that shit.) and the dude who was the best running back in football last season in Arian Foster. Their offense is explosive and capable of hanging a shitload of points on anyone. Meanwhile, their defense has a few playmakers, dudes like Mario Williams and that roid freak Brian Cushing, and so it seems like they should always take that next step. But they never do, and that is because they are a team that sprang up from the tainted mud of Texas, a team culled from the dreams of the spiritually corrupt and the terminally wicked. Such a team can’t thrive because it is a team born of the New Americanism, a team whose very potential exists only to serve as a cruel mockery of reality, which exists only to remind us all of the wicked and brutal truth, which is that these days are ugly and mean and that whatever greatness is left in our hearts is overwhelmed and decimated by the rank stupidity and sheer ugliness which now jangles through the streets in a giant cowboy hat made of tattered dreams and vile hatred. The Texans are the real America’s team, a perpetual disappointment, and in these desperate hours they reach for one last gasp of glory, and then Matt Schaub throws another interception and they finish 7-9 and what else is there to say?
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Raven): Antonio Smith is the guy who ripped off his own teammate's helmet last year in that Titans game, allowing the Texans to get a 15 yard personal foul penalty for fighting amongst themselves. In Smith's defense, Brian Cushing seems like a huge douchebag anyways, and I would've ripped his helmet off too, especially if I was trying to fight the other team and he shows up to be like, "Nah brah, chill out, let's not get unnecessarily physical out here and hurt ourselves."
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Neil): Matt Leinart is a degenerate and while we like degenerates here at Armchair Linebacker, we like degenerates like Kenny Stabler, not degenerates like Matt Leinart, who is the sort of degenerate whose life’s ambition is probably to have a reality show on MTV. Matt Leinart is the sort of dude who gets shitfaced after a couple of shots of Jaeger and then tries to pretend like he’s a badass, telling everyone how fucked up he is, and about how he’s going to fuck every chick there, before he passes out and his “friends” sketch dicks all over his face and teabag him and then take pictures of that shit. Matt Leinart could be a character on Jersey Shore, and while Kenny Stabler is racing powerboats and drinking beers in the Gulf into his ancient years, Leinart will be shot by the time he’s 40 and he’ll spend his days hating his former cheerleader wife who will look like she’s 70 because of over-tanning and his nights trolling the clubs while chicks laugh behind his back and then as he drifts off to sleep, he’ll be confronted by the vacuity of his own broken soul and it will horrify him and drive him to madness and despair and then no one will be particularly surprised when he is found jerking off a hobo who sorta looks like Reggie Bush because it is his last desperate link to his forgotten glory days.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Cheta Ozougwu.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): In a perfect world, the Texans would escape the brutal hell of their own existence and defy their own destiny, which as I said before, is to serve as a symbol for the soulless degeneracy of the New Americanism. But fuck all that. They deserve to be bad because that sort of shit simply cannot be tolerated. If we have any hope as a species, it is to reject that empty flash and the mocking taunt of perpetually unfulfilled potential and to embrace something real. I didn’t make the Texans a martyr. Their existence demands it. Don’t blame me, blame the soulless monsters they were born to represent. The Houston Texans have to die for America’s sins, and when they do, when they have had all that potential, all that flash that the greedheads are holding onto so desperately, stripped bare, maybe we can all move on.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): The Texans gradual climb to respectability will get back on track this year, with a 9-7 season giving them their first ever above-.500 year in the team's existence. They still ain't going to the fucking playoffs though, because they're still the Texans. (As a bonus though, here is a picture of Ricky Williams and Earl Campbell worshipping Satan together.)

2011 All ACLB Team Head Coach

RAVEN: BILL BELICHICK
I do not respect Belichick as a head coach like most football people respect him. I am not in awe of his brilliance or ability to motivate players because I think that's mostly bullshit used by successful coaches during their peak to ratchet up their speaking engagement fees for corporate retreats. Why I like Belichick is because other than Tom Brady, he will pretty much put his penis in a player's mouth and be like, "I know my penis tastes nasty but that's because I was fucking your eventual replacement during film session earlier today. Where were you, and how much do you want to keep your spot?" The most exciting aspect to Belichick's evil demented bossman status is at some point he will no longer be coaching the Patriots and Tom Brady will be dead and gone, purchased by Mexican drug cartel overlords to perform in their own personal donkey shows, and Belichick will want to take a shot at proving how he is the ultimate greatest genius the game has ever known, and could do it somewhere else with someone else. I really hope that place is Oakland, and Al Davis is like barely alive in Stephen Hawking mode, tooling around the sidelines in a wheelchair with the driving stick in his mouth, robot voicing, "Bill, go long to that new wide receiver, they'll never expect that," while Belichick ignores him.



NEIL: JIM SCHWARTZ
Good Lord, we are almost done with this infernal thing. Sure, it’s probably July by the time you’re reading this, but hey, fuck it, I told you this shit would happen way back when we started it. Anyway . . . Jim Schwartz. Yeah. Who the fuck else was I going to pick here? Most NFL coaches – hell, most coaches anywhere – are horrible assholes. The majority of them are just ineffectual toadies just wasting space until they get their shit packed in a box by management and some other worthless asshole shows up to take their place. And then the few successful coaches are basically sociopaths. Jimmy Johnson told his whole family to basically go fuck themselves because he had to spend all his time obsessing over a dumb game. Bill Belichick is like some hideous old vampire priest who walks around in rags with dead soulless eyes and then sups on the flesh of his unsuspecting flock before retreating to his cave where he watches game tapes until his clothes rot off his back. And then when morning comes, he changes into a snake and slithers out into the wild where he lays in wait for mice and voles and then he swallows them whole, transforms into a baby and suckles at the teat of Gisele Bundchen and leers at Tom Brady before he transforms into that ragged old vampire priest again and then he dazzles poor Tom and leads him back to his cave where God only knows what kind of carnal nonsense and unholy terrors take place.
And those are the good ones! Oh sure, sure, there are others, like that fat blowhard Rex Ryan but there is something fraudulent about him. He just seems like a dude with a big mouth who talks a steady stream of shit and carries himself like “Hey, look, ya’ll! I’m a pirate! Yee-haw!!!” And then his ass cheeks clench on 4th and 2 from the opponent’s 35 yard line and he punts but nobody notices because he spends the time after the game telling dumb jokes to the media, who roll over on their stupid backs and purr and laugh while he strokes their hideous bellies. He’s a vengeful fucker too, which is cool because that is a dark, primal instinct that we understand at Armchair Linebacker. We know all about dark, primal instincts. But because we are gentlemen and warriors of light, we understand how to control our base instincts and make them work for us instead of becoming dumb slaves to their salacious and idiotic whims. But not Rex Ryan. He is consumed, like some fat degenerate Ahab, with righting all perceived slights, with slaying windmill dragons and in doing so he reveals a shameful inferiority complex, the fat little kid underneath who learned to talk shit so people wouldn’t kick him in the ass all the time. His daddy was Buddy Ryan, and he tries so hard to be his father that it is kind of embarrassing. Honestly, the only time I actually kind of liked the dude was when it came out that he worships his wife’s feet. Hey, man, good for him. At least there is something perversely honest about that shit. But everything else is just a sad clown show, false bravado meant to cover up some hidden insecurity that makes him waver when shit gets a little too hot. But back to him being vengeful. He is. He decided that the Patriots were the bad guys and he made it his life’s mission to overthrow the big bad vampire priest, Bill Belichick. And he did. Good for him. And then he and his team went out the next week and lost to the Steelers. Just like everybody knew they would. Because deep down we all understand who Rex Ryan is. We know. He can’t make it to the end of the line because he’s a damn fool. He lacks the wisdom which every great coach has, the knowledge that the only victory that truly matters is that last one, the one which involves confetti raining down and Sheriff Goodell handing you a giant trophy in some antiseptic plastic stadium. He’s too consumed with petty battles and ultimately pointless wars and vendettas. He and his team embarrassed themselves after they beat the Patriots. They carried on like they just blew up the Death Star, won the Super Bowl and killed Hitler all at the same time. But all they won was a playoff game, one damn playoff game, and then they lost the next week and nobody cared about them anymore. Rex Ryan is just a clown, the front man for a stupid travelling hillbilly circus that will eventually spin out of control and end in laughter and tears, and deep down we all know it.
So fuck all of those dudes. They’re all awful in their own way and I don’t want anything to do with them. (Quick sidenote: If Bill Belichick were my team’s head coach, I would love him forever, and if I was going to pick anyone else, it would probably be him, but he’s not my team’s head coach and so fuck him.) And so that leaves me with no alternative but to pick my guy, Jim Schwartz, head coach of the Detroit Lions. Yeah, yeah, that sounds like rank homerism, and well, to be honest, it kind of is. And. frankly, I don’t give a shit. I am not some pod person alien blogger who is trying to play boy reporter, pretending that I’m some overly responsible Keeper of the Truth who believes sports are Serious Business and that I have a responsibility to some sanitized version of the truth which is really just some bastard mutation of the hint of something true, a polite whisper in the dark that nobody will ever pay any attention to because it sounds like all the other polite whispers in the dark. I’m a fan, goddammit, and that is the only truth I care about when I’m writing this shit. What moves me as a fan? What pisses me off? And Jim Schwartz moves me. He makes me believe. And maybe more importantly, he makes me want to believe. If you’re a Lions fan, then you know how difficult a trick that really is. We are so beaten up, so jaded, after a half century plus of utter failure and horrible pain that to get us to believe, to make us willingly throw our too damaged heads and hearts on the chopping block again is damn near a miracle. And he’s done this even though the team really hasn’t won anything yet. That’s his greatest trick of all. Yeah, maybe that just makes us a bunch of damn fools for believing, but it’s easy to believe in something when everything is going good, when the world bends before you like willows in a nuclear blast. It’s easy to jump on the bandwagon then and shout and gibber about how you believe. But it’s something else to see the foundations for some grand dream laid and to believe in them even though the world keeps kicking your ass week after week. That’s true devotion. That’s true belief. And that’s what Jim Schwartz has inspired as head coach of the Detroit Lions.
Think about it. Has there ever been a Lions coach in your lifetime who made you feel like that? Not mine. Wayne Fontes was always in over his head and we knew the whole thing was a mirage, held together by the will of Barry Sanders and as soon as that will flickered and broke, we knew the whole mirage would just disappear and all that would be left with would be the desert of the damned we had been left to eternally trudge through as penance for hiding Bobby Layne’s bottle of Wild Turkey back in the 1480’s. Bobby Ross was old and tired and we knew he wasn’t going to lead us anywhere. All he could do was use what energy he had left to try to hold together even a fraction of that mirage, a fading palm tree buried in the sand. Rod Marinelli . . . I’m sorry, I just vomited into a bucket. Mariucci? A glitzy name, a false prophet who just led us in circles and left us buried even deeper in the desert than we were before.
But Jim Schwartz showed up and started talking about winning and for some reason I believed him where I had never believed any of the others. He talked to the fans, he listened to metal and, well . . . he just seemed to get it, you know? I hate when people talk about “getting it” because it’s usually just an excuse to fellate some meathead who talks in clichés and appeals to some childish willful ignorance that lies deep in the heart of every man. But Jim Schwartz is not a meathead. He’s a smart, smart dude, a dude who understands numbers and theories, who graduated from Georgetown and then cut his teeth under the vampire priest Belichick and lived to tell about it. He manages to marry the rah, rah Hey He Gets It shit with the cerebral and with the sociopathic drive for greatness which is a necessary part of every great coach, like it or not. He is the real deal. He knows that the only thing that matters is winning that game at the end of the year. That’s what Belichick understands. It’s what Jimmy Johnson understood. But unlike them, he also sees our hearts, our minds and it makes him want to win that final game all the more. He gets it and . . . he gets it. All of it. And that’s why he’s both my head coach and real life and the coach of this team. I believe in him, and in the end my belief may be rewarded with nothing but more pain and more senseless wandering through this foul desert of the damned, but to hell with all that. I have no choice because Jim Schwartz made me believe, not in a mirage, but in the finality of ultimate victory, in the salvation that lies at the end of a long, hard road. And that’s a damn miracle. And that’s who I’d want leading this team.


TOMORRROW: our team Wild Cards!